John is a temporary bachelor. So he invited us over for gaming. I arrived a little late because I gave myself the luxory of a shower after disc golf. John’s house is pretty close to mine. Which is nice. He did warn me about his new dirty neighbor, another barn swallow in a mud nest. Complete with bird poop.

Age of Steam

I brought some meaty games to play: Indonesia, Byzantium, Zepter of Zavandor, and Lexio. We ended up playing Age of Steam… with Adam… who is a very strong player in this game. However, Adam was really nice and consentented to give us some advice during this game. I also took some pictures of the board (although I did miss some turns in the game). In fact, I should have brought my tripod with me to set up and automate taking pictures. Sigh. I did take pictures with my new lens though. I pushed the aperature as narrow as I could (a little too much… the shutter speed was 1/15″ and the aperature 4.0… which resulted in a little bit of shaking. I miss the image stabilization of this 2.8 lens. It is interesting how dark our gaming environments are and how little light there is when you want a full depth of field).

Anyways, back to gaming. Adam was generous in giving helpful advice. Which was a little detrimental in his maintaining of the game’s state (he is usually very good at that). Mike initially jumped out in the lead. He was shipping some good intermediate length routes. I tried to concentrate on the east side of the board. Building routes that would eventually allow me to ship length 6 goods. Adam concentrated on engineering his locomotive. He also heavily borrowed money. Much to his detriment later on in the game. I was able to locate some stealthy yellow goods and deliver them along 6 cities. Adam tried breaking into my eastern territories (Mike only built two routes over there and never used them) but was too late. I was able to jump into the lead and stay there.

It was a good educational game. I hope Adam writes some good tutorials about this game. He needs some competition. Jeff has left and Mike Ashley-Rollman is leaving. Oh yeah, Marty is leaving too.