Kris Hall: Short Takes

No big developments in the hobby for me this week, so I thought I’d just comment on a few new-to-me games that I’ve encountered recently.

Rails of Europe

By now, if you are a Railroad Tycoon fan, you are probably aware that most of the reaction to this expansion has been positive.  I see no reason to buck this trend.  We tried this out a couple of weeks ago in a three-player game, and everyone seemed to enjoy it.  The printed-on-the-board bonus points means that everyone knows from the start which routes generate the big points.  The choice of Tycoon cards given to players at the beginning of the game, and the new event cards were also welcome changes.

In an effort to cut down on disputes, the new rules state that every hex with water in it is more expensive than a non-water hex.  While this rule may decrease arguments about river hexes, we saw no reason to penalize players who are building along a coast, and we made a house rule to ignore the water penalty in coastal hexes except for hexes that clearly are filled with water like the ones near Copenhagen.  As expected, this house rule worked fine, and there were no disputes.

I have read some comments that a full six-player game on the Rails of Europe map would probably get very crowded very quickly, and that is probably correct.  But the European map is fine for three and four player games.

I’ve also read that there is another Railroad Tycoon expansion in the works.  That’s good news to me.  As long as there are sensible minor variations between the expansions, I’ll probably keep buying them.

Amyitis

This game has gotten a lot of mixed reviews, and I can’t come down hard on one side of the fence or the other just yet.  My one-and-only session of Amyitis was certainly less than optimal.  For much of the game, I experienced the Goa dilemma: each action seemed to contribute to victory in such tiny incremental ways that I had a hard time figuring out what to do.  My irrigation strategy didn’t work; I flooded the board with my irrigation cubes but came in last place in terms of victory points.  But that only means that I have discovered a useful strategy by means of the route not taken: everyone who concentrated on claiming garden tiles scored higher than I did.

More problematical is that Amyitis features a mechanism that I find annoying.  It isn’t often that I am actually made frustrated and angry by a game.  The last time that happened was when I played my first game of Age of Steam and discovered on the second turn that I had already lost the game. 

The mechanism that bothered me in Amyitis is a series of cards that provide benefits to players who can snag one of the lower-level cards early.  Caravan cards help players manage the caravan track; banker cards help players with their income, and palace cards provide victory points.  But there aren’t enough low level cards for every player to get one, and higher level cards are unavailable to those players who fail to obtain a low level card.  I tried in vain to grab a low level caravan card, and soon found myself the only player without one.  I did grab a banker card, but I failed to get a low-level palace card, and so the high-scoring palace cards remained forever out of reach. 

While the presence of these cards gives players goals to aim for at the beginning of the game, I can easily see one or more players becoming frustrated when they lose the competition for these resources.  I have written more than once about how I enjoy games that offer players special ability cards and tiles, but usually games have a wide variety of these so that all players can get one or more unique abilities.  Limiting the variety of special abilities to a small series of cards and then ensuring that some players will be left without them seems to me to be the worst way to add special abilities to a game. 

I am not ready to give up on Amyitis because of one less-than-happy session.  But I know that if I ever get around to designing my own games, there is one mechanism that I will avoid.  And it is front-and-center in Amyitis.

Vapor’s Gambit

I had never heard of this game until Ted Cheatham dragged it out of some dark corner last night, and announced that we would finish the evening with it.  Vapor’s Gambit (designed by Benjamin Baraga) is about racing rocket boards in some futuristic science fiction world, but all that means is that it is a roman chariot race in sci-fi clothing.  Each turn, a player draws a new tile or two, and plays one in an effort to speed up his race around the track, or tries to delay his opponents by dropping garbage dumpsters in their path.  As you might suspect, this game is short on strategy and long on chaos and wacky events. 

If you are a rigid rules lawyer then you had better avoid Vapor’s Gambit, because the rules seemed sloppy, and we had to come up with committee solutions on the fly to the various disputes that occurred (mostly when one player rammed another, or used a tile to send an opponent smashing into a wall).

On the other hand, there was a lot of laughter when Ted’s power-booster tile sent him face-first at full speed into a wall.  And any game in which I can zoom to victory with a double-consecutive ramp jump that sends me flying over the finish line and head first into a garbage dumpster can’t be all bad. 

Note: On Saturday, March 15, there will be a Game Day at the West Virginia University Institute of Technology in the Tech Center Ballroom.  The event wil run from 9:00 AM to midnight and an all-day pass will cost $7.50.  There will be door prizes.  The Appalachian Gamers will be there, and will provide a game library.

© 2008 Kris Hall

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Comments:

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> I have read some comments that a full six-player > game on the Rails of Europe map would probably > get very crowded very quickly, and that is > probably correct.  But the European map is fine > for three and four player games. It is important to note that the publishers of Rails of Europe list the game as for “3 to 5 players”. They do not supply enough player aids for 6 players and the map is not intended to play 6, despite the fact that RRT does. This is, a good thing, I believe. I would never consider playing RRT with less than 5. The board is simply too wide open and there would be little incentive to build into another’s area and “mix it up”. But with 3 or 4 and a desire to play RRT, RoE steps up quite nicely. Posted by David Fair on Mar 14, 2008 at 06:42 AM | #

Strangely enough, my copy of Rails of Europe did have enough player aids for 6 people. Posted by Jason Spears on Mar 14, 2008 at 07:09 AM | #

I can second that. I just looked at my copy and it had six player aids also. Posted by Randy Schmucker on Mar 14, 2008 at 08:09 AM | #

I need to play Amyitis again to get a better feel for it, but I think your actions are limited enough so that if you managed to get one of each of the special cards you’ll end up with a lower score than if you concentrate in a few areas and you’ll end up not having enough time to get more of the higher level cards that really provide greater benefit.  It’s been a while since I played though, so I could be wrong… Posted by Greg Williams on Mar 14, 2008 at 08:44 AM | #

In an email with FRED, I learned that there are more maps in the pipeline as we speak. My only hope is that the artists get the colors correct this time. In the RoE, the black and blue are too much alike for my tired, old eyes. Having sailed several oceans, I can truly state that I have never seen any water as dark as they have it on the map. That said, I really like the new aspects of the game. It shines with 3/4, but 5 gets really crowded. It forces one to think a lot more about what you are doing. I can’t wait for the new boards to become available. Posted by John Daniels on Mar 15, 2008 at 06:56 PM | #

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