I have a small backlog of session reports that I haven't gotten around to posting.  I think I'll do them in reverse order, since Tueday's session is fresh in my memory.

 

Age of Steam
Tuesday night was the regular Borders night with the Dallas Gamers, which I missed last week.  This was a good turnout, with 4-5 tables of games going on most of the night.  Jay had requested via email that we do another Age of Steam game, and Eran was happy to bring it along.  John joined the three of us to play the vanilla game with no expansion maps.  I started off as first player and took the "urbanization" action.  I connected St. Louis to a new city to Evansville, and Jay followed me up connecting to the north end of St. Louis.  Eran claimed a city in the east, while John took a city in the Great Lakes area.

 

 

On the second turn, Jay and I were already in competition.  We were both eyeing Des Moines to the west of us, with cubes that could be shipped to the middle of the board.  I snagged "first build", thinking I would get there, making him choose another city.  He wound up grabbing "engineer", which let him build four tracks this turn.  This piqued my curiosity, because I noticed he could connect to the city I wanted from another spot 4 spaces away.  Since he had used "locomotive" on the first turn to increase his links, he would be able to ship a 2-link good while I wasted a shipping action to upgrade my locomotive!  Not good!  Thinking this was probably the route he would take, I chose to build in such a way to block him from the city.  This meant I was not able to complete the route immediately, but I thought I would finish it off next turn.  This would prove to be an error in judgment that would put me far, far behind and effectively take me out of the game.

 

On the next turn, Jay built before me and blocked the incomplete route I started last turn.  I had exactly the amount of money I needed to build a complex track to complete the route, but that left me with a shortage of money and I was not able to pay my expenses that turn.  Instead of having a surplus of cash and breaking even, I had no money and went backwards on the income track!  I never recovered from the block, and was non-competitive the rest of the game.

 

 

John and Eran fared much better than I.  Eran played a similar strategy to his last game, creating a long string of connected cities from east-to-west, and was able to ship some excellent goods in the middle turns.  John was content to form his own network in the northeast, and had little competition for the goods he was shipping.  He shipped a lot of 5-link goods in the final three turns.

 

Jay kicked all of our asses.  He kept up with John and Eran in the mid-game, increased his locomotive to six, and was able to capitalize with some 6-link east / west purple routes on the last two turns.  He wound up in the -8 income adjustment on the last turn, and outdistanced everyone for the win.

 

Final thoughts:  I knew that calculating your own income incorrectly and going backwards on the income track could be disastrous, so I've been careful with my planning.  I wasn't aware that another player's actions (specifically, a block) could set someone back as far as it did.  I'll have to be more careful next game about leaving unconnected track lying around.  That can be very dangerous.

 

Niagara
Our Age of Steam game lasted a while (of course), but I had a chance to jump into a quick game of Niagara with Carl, Jeff B, Mike and Eran.  I missed the rules explanation, but had read a good description of the game on BGG.  The rest of the rules were very intuitive, and I only had one flub during play because of this.  (notably, that you may only steal a treasure from another canoe while moving upstream.)

 

For those that haven't played, Niagara is a novel game with an interesting board.  As you can see from the picture below, the playboard is a river made up of loose clear plastic discs, which represent the spaces that the canoes may move along.  The goal is to gather a certain number of gems from the banks of the river, and return them (one-by-one) to the mouth of the river.

 

 

Players are given tiles with numbers 1-6, as well as a "weather" tile.  Each turn, players play one tile face-down to represent their movement for the turn.  Clockwise, the players reveal their number and move their canoes along the river, either downstream or upstream (but not both for a single canoe).  Additionally, a player may grab a gem from the banks of the river for 2 points.  If a player lands their empty canoe on the same space as another player's canoe while going upstream, they may steal a gem from that player.

 

After all players have moved, the river flows downstream.  The river moves a number of discs equal to the lowest number played by all the players, adjusted by the current weather total (from -1 to +2).  The clear plastic discs are inserted one at a time at the top of the river, and pushed down 1 space, causing discs at the end of the river to fall of the falls.  If canoes leave the board in this way, they are out of the game!  (they may be recovered by sacrificing a gem).  The starting player token now passes to the next player, and players play another round using the remaining tiles in their hand.  Once all the tiles are exhausted, players pick them back up and they are all available for the next round.

 

Our game was mostly unremarkable, other than the fact that Eran was strangely efficient at moving his canoes.  He was able to very quickly pickup four purple gems.  (I only had a single gem when he finished!  Although I would have had two more in the next round.  Grrrrr!)

 

I wondered from the description if this game would be nothing more than a weak game with a novelty board.  I can't say there is a lot of depth to the game, but it plays quickly and the rules are very streamlined.  It is a nice light game with a high visual appeal, and could easily be played with kids.  This would be a great family game.  I don't think I'll ever purchase it, but I would definitely play it again after another brain-burning game of Age of Steam.

 

Wrap-up
The unofficial list of other games seen played last night:

 

Go West!
Princes of Florence
Through the Desert
Shadows Over Camelot
Domaine
Union Pacific
Roma
Cronberg
Cold War
Trendy
San Juan
Ra

 

 

More pictures are available in the gallery.