Game: Age of Steam Expansion - Chile, Egypt and CCCP

Thread: Re: EGYPT - Felluca

nabla — 2008-11-16T14:52:14+00:00

My example about pyramids was for the felluca
The felluca only allow to not pay any fees and collect fees from other players
The felluca does not allowed to transport goods to flooded pyramids

Thread: Re: EGYPT - Felluca

Marflow — 2008-11-16T14:11:29+00:00

Hi Alban,

your answer to my question 3. contradicts with the rules I have found in the game. There is clearly stated:

[BGCOLOR=#00FF33]The player selecting it will be allowed to transport goods over flooded track and to / from flooded cities without paying the normal fee.[/BGCOLOR]

I agree that there is a reference to the Nile Flood section of the rule but it is nevertheless missleading.

Thread: Re: EGYPT - Felluca

nabla — 2008-11-15T19:20:44+00:00

1. If you have no cash, you may not deliver goods, it is not possible to reduce the income track
2. Deliver a good to a flooded city cost $1 per flooded tiles. So a flooded city is a tile in itself and it would cost $1
3. A pyramid is not a city, it is just a stack of goods. You can never pass throught to deliver to a pyramid a good at any time in the game even if you have the felluca. It is also forbidden to take a good from a flooded city , or from a flooded pyramids, that's why there is a blue disc on them

Thread: EGYPT - Felluca

Marflow — 2008-11-15T15:54:56+00:00

We played the game yesterday and several questions came up:

1. Has the fee for the traversing of a flooded hex to be paid in cash? Or is it possible to reduce the income score, if the player has no cash in hand?

2. How much is the fee for delivering a good to a flooded city when no other flooded tile is used for the transport route: $1 or $2?

3. The owner of the felluca may transport goods out of a flooded city. May he do so for a flooded pyramid as well?

Thread: Re: EGYPT - New Cities

Marflow — 2008-11-13T11:45:51+00:00

Thanks!

Thread: Re: EGYPT - New Cities

nabla — 2008-11-13T10:03:09+00:00

you may urbanize in whatever colors oe new cities. There is just one yellow city on the board

Thread: EGYPT - New Cities

Marflow — 2008-11-12T19:24:08+00:00

I read in one of the games reviews that there is only one yellow city. Does that mean there are no new cities?

Thread: Re: EGYPT: Building through the Suez Canal

marioaguila — 2008-10-09T15:00:19+00:00

In other words, there are 2 water tracks. I didn't realize very well because in other expansions water tracks can not be built (Scandinavia, Northern California) or have another color, and because the size I thought the black line appeared to be more to a canal.

Thank you for your clarification.

Thread: Re: EGYPT: Building through the Suez Canal

nabla — 2008-10-09T14:00:14+00:00

as stated in the rules, building the canal would cost the two $4 hexes printed directly on the map. The black line is not the Suez canal. The 2 $4 hexes ARE the Suez Canal

Thread: Re: EGYPT: Building through the Suez Canal

marioaguila — 2008-10-09T11:27:18+00:00

If the black line represent the Suez Canal, I don't understand this statment:
"The Suez Canal is impassable for the first two rounds, on the third its hexes can be built through for $4 per hex".

Thread: Re: EGYPT: Building through the Suez Canal

nabla — 2008-10-09T07:30:11+00:00

Black lines are impassable as usual

Thread: Re: EGYPT: moving cubes through pyramids

nabla — 2008-10-09T07:28:51+00:00

No , Goods may only leave pyramids not reach a pyramid.
Then pyramids cut your network and are always a starting point of goods deliveries

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marioaguila — 2008-10-09T05:05:53+00:00

Finished game. Green player won.

Thread: EGYPT: Building through the Suez Canal

marioaguila — 2008-10-09T04:57:36+00:00

It's possible to build a track to the east, from the yellow city (bottom left)?

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marioaguila — 2008-10-09T04:52:38+00:00

Around the pyramids

Thread: EGYPT: moving cubes through pyramids

marioaguila — 2008-10-09T04:51:14+00:00

RULES: Goods cannot be shipped through or to pyramids.

What does it means? Between them, without a track?
It is possible to move the red cube from one pyramid through the track (green player), passing through the second pyramid to reach the red city?

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marioaguila — 2008-10-09T04:46:16+00:00

Around the Suez Canal

Thread: Re: Egypt Flooded Hexes

wmspringer — 2008-10-09T04:30:35+00:00

There's also an extra cost for building in flooded hexes - $4/hex for flooded plains instead of $2/hex for regular plains.

Thread: Re: EGYPT: Felluca

wmspringer — 2008-10-09T04:29:33+00:00

It replaces production.

Thread: EGYPT: Felluca

marioaguila — 2008-10-08T23:52:50+00:00

Felluca is in replace of another role o simply we create a virtual box for that purpose?

Thread: Re: CHILE: transporting gold without a track

nabla — 2008-10-08T08:58:37+00:00

Yes Mario and the owner of the network increases its income as usual

Thread: CHILE: transporting gold without a track

marioaguila — 2008-10-07T16:54:22+00:00

If I'm not the owner of a single track between the cities involved, could I move a cube of gold for the sole purpose of decreasing the number of shares issued?

Thread: Re: Egypt Flooded Hexes

snoozefest — 2008-10-06T16:26:16+00:00

Thanks!

Thread: Re: Egypt Flooded Hexes

hrdkor — 2008-10-06T01:03:36+00:00

Moving good through.

Thread: Egypt Flooded Hexes

snoozefest — 2008-10-05T23:57:49+00:00

Just reading the rules ... what does "Traversing flooded hexes costs $1 per hex" mean? Is it referring to building in flooded hexes, or moving goods through flooded hexes?

Thx.

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marioaguila — 2008-10-03T03:48:39+00:00

CHILIE:the end of the game

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marioaguila — 2008-10-03T03:45:48+00:00

CHILE: the south was for yellow player

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marioaguila — 2008-10-03T03:41:12+00:00

CHILE: green player trying to send yellow cubes to CORDOBA

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marioaguila — 2008-10-03T03:38:01+00:00

CHILE: highly populated coast - Altamente poblada costa

Thread: Re: It's getting cool in here..

marioaguila — 2008-10-02T18:33:39+00:00

Very good report (only a few mistakes: is Cordoba, not Cordosa; the correct names are Antofagasta and Chañaral)
I'f like to know if there are another rules change concerning the special actions.
Thanks

Thread: Re: It's getting cool in here..

wmspringer — 2008-09-28T01:14:38+00:00

Yes, this is kind of a combination review and session report, but I had to pick one category to put it in! Shame I didn't think to take pictures, though.

Thread: It's getting cool in here..

wmspringer — 2008-09-27T18:20:40+00:00

So we were just about to sit down to a game of AoS: CCCP when a few more people showed up, so we switched to AoS: Chile. The players:

William (me) and Tim: two regular players with an ongoing AoS rivalry
Anna: used to be a regular player, but not as much lately
Jay: has played a few times
Nikki: has never played Aos

None of us had played the Chile map before.

Chile is a very expensive map to build on; most of the country is mountains (either high mountains that cost 5 to build on, or low mountains that cost 3), with a strip of plains running down the West coast.

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The rules are pretty much vanilla AoS, with an extremely important exception: there are only two yellow cities, Cordosa in the middle of the country and Cuzco in the far north (the yellow new city is removed) and they play a very important function: when you deliver a yellow cube (gold), in addition to your regular income, you get to go back one space on the shares track.

Think about this for a minute: this means that delivering a yellow cube effectively gives you an extra $6: $1 for the share you don't have to pay at the end of the turn, and $5 for being able to take the share again next turn. In our game, the random draw gave two pieces of gold in Arequipa, just three spaces from Cuzco; accordingly, I bid high to win the auction and took first build to guarantee my gold delivery. Tim had seen the power of gold as well, and also put his first track in the north, increasing his locomotive and preparing to get in my way later. The three less experienced players all built in the less expensive southern part of the country.

First turn, I delivered two gold for 2 income...and minus two shares! Tim delivered two cubes for a total of 4 income, but ended up owing the same as me due to now having more shares. Most of the other players delivered for two income.

As it happened, Antofaqasta and Chanaral, down the coast, had some gold as well, so over the next two turns I worked on building down there. Tim was doing his best to get in my way, and set it up so he could deliver some of the same cubes I could; I therefor responded by delivering those cubes first, which gave me slightly lower income than I could have had, for the moment, but left him unable to do much more than increase his locomotive. Unfortunately for him, he miscalculated; he did manage to get in my way, as planned (taking, for example, the only cheap link between Antofasasto and Cahanaral - 4 total cost vs 15 for the next cheapest) but after I delivered his preferred cube, he realized he had no way to pay his bills at the end of the turn, and for the first time in forever, found himself bankrupt!

With the other experienced player out of the game and half the map to myself, the outcome was pretty much determined. While the other players managed to deliver some gold to Cordosa, it was split between the three of them, and due to the high costs of building in Chile, they were constantly taking more shares; all three of them were at 15 shares by the last turn (two were there on the second to last turn as well, but delivered gold to move back). Meanwhile, I was taking shares as well, but not as many as the others, preferring to build slightly less than I could in order to keep low on the shares track. While they managed to steal a few gold cubes from the north to deliver to Cardosa, I got most of them, leaving me with only 5 shares at the end of the game. Anna was fairly close to me on income, but thanks to the shares difference the scores weren't even close; I ended up with more than everyone else combined.

Overall I enjoyed the map, but I think the scores would have been closer had everyone else realized the importance of gold early on. With 5 experienced players, I could easily see everyone concentrating on the yellow cities at the beginning of the game, and ending up close to the maximum number of shares by the end. I definitely want to try this map again.

Thread: Re: Training in the pyramids..

wmspringer — 2008-09-21T22:45:48+00:00

Played this map again, with 4 players and the correct rules. Based on this play and a play of Chile (review coming), I've increased my rating to 8.5, and that may go to 9 after I get to play CCCP.

Thread: Re: Training in the pyramids..

nabla — 2008-09-08T09:27:06+00:00

Thanks for the review, Egypt is better with 4 as always on my maps

Thread: Training in the pyramids..

wmspringer — 2008-09-07T20:08:04+00:00

Having greatly enjoyed his earlier work, I was definitely looking forward to getting my hands on Albain Viard's new Age of Steam maps. This weekend I finally got to try out AoS: Egypt.

What you get:
This set comes with 3 maps: Egypt and and CCCP, for 3-5 players, and Chile (a long, thin map on the backs of the other two) for 4-6. The maps are printed on heavy stock suitable for playing, though I laminated mine anyway; the printing is high-quality. The rules translation is unfortunately not very good, but I have an early version; it should be much better when the game is formally released next month.

Egypt is, naturally, centered around the Nile river. While the land on either side of the Nile is 2-cost plains, the rest of the map is largely desert, which costs $3 to build on. This arable land near the Nile comes at a price, however; every turn, the river overflows one of its banks, making building and shipping quite difficult! (This results in doubling the cost to build on the flooded hexes, to $4/hex, as well as movement rules to be covered later)

The flooding of the Nile is the key element in this game, similar to the day/night switch in the Moon expansion. Two cities will be flooded every turn; these cities cannot have goods removed from them, and players wishing to ship goods to or through them must pay additional money to move goods through the waters! Fear not, though, as a new action - Felluca - replaces production; not only does the player selecting this action not need to pay extra to transport goods through flooded tiles, but other players now pay him instead of the bank, possibly giving a nice boost to his cash on hand!

There are three other elements keeping things interesting on this map. To the north is a green city that accepts any color of goods; you can imagine the competition to reach this city! This is partially balanced by the fact that any routes into the city will -always- be flooded, as it sits between two branches of the Nile. The Suez Canal, in the northeast, cannot be built until the third turn, at which point it becomes possible to reach the only yellow city on the board. Finally, there are two pyramids, one on either side of the Nile; each consists of a whopping 14 goods, in a 9-4-1 pyramid, which must be taken from the top down. The catch is that you cannot ship to or through a pyramid, so your routes involving them must always start there, something that caused us no end of frustration as we tried to ship goods across the Nile, only to find a pyramid midway through the route!

Overall, I felt this map was maybe a little weaker than Albain's earlier efforts, but still fun to play; I gave an initial rating of 7.5 but may raise that on the second play. With 3 people it didn't feel like there was a lot of pressure for cubes, but part of that was we accidentally used too many - again, working from an early rules translation. Moving the blue player disks (used to denote flooded areas) from one side of the Nile to the other was definitely getting annoying by the end of the game. On the whole, though, this map comes highly recommended; if you like Age of Steam games with extra twists, this has several to keep you thinking. Will get played again.

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nabla — 2008-08-19T14:32:57+00:00

Set up the Egypt expansion

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nabla — 2008-08-15T18:06:10+00:00

Round 2, blue is first build, where will he build ?

Thread: Re: A new set of 3 maps for Essen08

nabla — 2008-08-10T16:22:45+00:00

This set is released only for the Essen fair, sorry

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nabla — 2008-08-08T19:36:54+00:00

the cover of the triangular boxes with the limited 120 "tracks"

Thread: Re: A new set of 3 maps for Essen08

medievalbanquet — 2008-08-08T03:18:10+00:00

Can I preorder and have it shipped to me in the States?

Thread: A new set of 3 maps for Essen08

nabla — 2008-07-29T15:47:49+00:00

This year again , the AoS team will release expansions for Age of Steam and it is a set of 3 maps that will be in the triangular box ( next year it would be easier to stack three triangular boxes than only 2 )

Chile and its gold (yellow cubes), its expensive montains (5$ for 40% of the map! and another 40% will cost 3$ with only 15 shares).... Do you want to test a new way of playing??? (suitable for 4/6 players)

Egypt is divided into two parts by the Nil that floods each turn one side by placing blue discs on adjacent hexes of the Nile river... Pyramids will contain enought goods for every player but are often flooded. The new action "Felluca" will help you to deliver goods in flooded hexes and if you are lucky enought, you can build the Suez Canal to reach the yellow city! A green one has been added but is surrounded by hexes that are always flooded.... nice challenge in the desert (3$)!! (suitable for 3/5 players)

CCCP will add tension to your group because of a new victory condition. Try to convert black cubes into red cubes to remove corruption, or deliver directly red cubes to hope that your points will be counted at the end of the game. (suitable for 3/4 players)

Be carefull CCCP and Egypt is for advanced players because of tight money.

The set contains TWO heavy plastified papers , same quality as the moon/mars expansion (that you fit together to make Chile). You do not need to buy two sets to have a big map !
This expansion is limited to 120 sets and numeroted
The set has to be preordered like past years at ageofsteam08ATyahoo.fr, will cost 30E and picked it up on the Winsome booth hall 10, stand 10-66
I will bring few copies of the MOON/MARS expansion and WiI/NYC for 15E each

Thanks