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Who's the more foolish? The fool or fool that plays after the fool?(loofish)United States
DURHAM
North Carolina
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October 18th:
Mike had to bail, which put our group within the limits for a game I bought ostensibly for my son: Railways of the World card game. I had had doubts about how this would play after a fairly limp first game, but I was willing to give it another try with a full complement of four.
Some initial placements symmetrically around the central hub, then things started to fly as dominance over many cities was contested. J had some trouble getting matching track, but then she entered the fray with a 5 point city so we saw what she was up to. Tom built up a nice long network for deliveries - he moved a set of 3 yellow over 5 and 6 links. Rick also got some deliveries going, while building a bunch of cities. He ended up the only one to get a full set of different goods. He and Tom stretched out ahead of J and I and J struggled to get much going, putting down only a few cities and delivering a few goods. With the final count it was very close, Rick got up to 64 with most of the cities scored, Tom was left looking desperately for the one more city to jump over him. Ironically, it turned out to be one of Rick's cities that Tom had muscled in on (sharing the dominance with J) that gave Tom his win. I pulled up within hollering distance on the city scoring.
Me: 58
J: 38
Tom: 65
Rick: 64
My first full game of this (a 2 player with my wife) was not a very engaging game, but I put that down to either not enough players and not enough aggressive play. My post to the WDYPLW GeekList to this effect was commented on by the designer himself, who noted that tentative play was common among first time players. There is little doubt that was borne out here as there was a lot more looking at the board and seeing where you can knock someone else back while improving your own position. Resources were also a lot more restrained (it seemed we had plenty of everything in the 2 player game) and that made more harder choices. A much better game and a much better experience.
And for the lunch gaming crowd, it played neatly within our hour, even with the slightly fiddly city scoring at the end. It did take up a fair bit of table space. Tom and Rick seemed to be aiming to get their cities into my play area! There is some luck of the draw of course - J will tell you that her position above was due to not getting the right cards - but overall this is a neat little game. We'll see it again and probably next week.
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