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M.J.E. Hendriks
Netherlands
Velp
Gelderland
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Lunar Rails
Game Weight: 2.8
Playing Time: 135 min
Players: Peter, Michiel, Marco
Location: Peter
Date: 14-06-2011
To the Moon and Back
This Tuesday evening session saw the same three players as the week before. Marco was a little late again and thus once again lost out on his favorite green.
After a few minutes of rules explanation, we were off, looking at our cards and puzzling our way through the lunar map and all the difficult names used for the cities. This is always the hardest part - the beginning. Still, we got off to a good start and everyone seemed to be doing fine.
I started and built up from Scott to Clavius, later building down from Mare Humorum to nearly complete this first piece of track in the two building phases you get to start the game.
Peter started on the far side (or as I call it, "the dark side") of the moon, building track from Mare Moscoviense to Joliot to go for a double fish product to deliver both (to Mare Moscoviense and later Mach).
Marco started out on the Near Side like myself, working from Mare Humorum to Linne. He planned to use my track to get himself a nice payout. This only cost him 20m, and as he was last he used his second build phase to upgrade his train twice to the 14 speed locomotive. It only took Peter one turn to do the same.
So, Marco used my track twice and figured that might have been a mistake, but all in all it seemed worth it to him.
Peter was building all alone for the longest time but was doing really well with lots of deliveries.
I was doing well with some killer deliveries, but then I seemed to have worked myself into a mess and it looked like I would have to trade in my cards for better options with 19m left and 26m needed. I grabbed a good card though with my last delivery, and the world for me was saved, but boy, this game can be unforgiving.
Oh, and the event cards, the horrid, brutal event cards. You will want to know what happened with them, right? We never saw a single one of them!
Anyhow, the upgrades for Peter and Marco in the very beginning got them up to speed 14 within no time and saw them flying along their tracks. I never made it to 14, getting to 12 speed only a few turns after them!
Then Marco made a mistake by building to the wrong city (both started with an "A"), and that was that - he couldn't make it anymore. He finally figured out an alternative, not wanting to throw out his cards and exchange them (he had $6m left), but it would take him close to 6 turns to get back to the city he needed to get to. So he gave up.
Peter, in the meanwhile, was also making odd little mistakes, but he felt he could take them back still, something that didn't sit well with Marco, since he was not allowed to take back his mistake. I should've allowed both to take back their mistakes but got caught up in the moment and didn't make the ruling.
With Marco out of the running and bored and depressed, and calling it a night, Peter also felt it was time to call it a night, since he was not going to finish the game anyway, he felt (I didn't agree, but hey...). And thus we finished at 22:30 - the night was just getting started as far as I was concerned...
FINAL SCORE (INCOMPLETE)
1+ Michiel (only player left)
1 Peter
3 Marco (forfeit)
All in all an eventful game and good fun - agreed by all - but different opinions. Michiel felt the game should've been finished or a different limit set (for example: who's leading at 12PM wins the game or what not), Peter felt it was a game for the afternoon, or at least a 19:00 start and Marco felt the events (none of which we saw) were too harsh for a game like this.
Oh well, c'est la vie I guess.
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