Age of Steam: 1830’s Pennsylvania

Adam suggested Through the Ages to play again. But when Mike and Doug joined in and we had six people over, I sat out. With Adam out of the picture, Jon suggested Age of Steam. I certainly was willing to play that. I could tell that John was not looking forward to playing it again by the pout on his face. In fact, he earned the nickname: Mr Pouty-face. We were going to let him pick the next game in appreciation for playing with us.

This map has black cubes as coal. There are two special rules for the transportation of coal to a gray city. You can either transport it like normal and score it double. Or, you can double your engine size and score it normally. The coal towns are on the western half of the board and they are situated in mountainous country. On the east are normal towns with better location. So I ignored the coal and focused on that area. I started out pretty well and built up a good network. But it became clear that John was on a downward spiral. So we called it and reset the game.

In the second game, John did much better. I still focused on the eastern half of the board. And Jon was adventurous and went after coal. When it became clear how powerful delivering coal was by how much of a boost it gave your income, I started to turn my sights westward. Jon was in the lead by delivering single coals and I was in second with good double deliveries. When I finally made it to some coal towns, I was able to make 5 and 6 length coal deliveries. This boosted my income by 10 and 12 points at a shot. So much so that we had tons of money halfway though the game. I was able to outdistance Jon again. When Jon’s income was 50 and mine was 56 and we were 3/4ths of the way through the game, we called it again.

Unfortunately, John had to leave and we could not play Medina like he suggested. Sorry, John. Next time!

Tichu

While we were waiting for Rehana to show up, we played Tichu. Our heroic team was well out in the lead when Rehana showed it, so it was desperation Grand Tichu time. Jon was the one to call it. Adam lead a straight and made a random King wish. His intention was to then lead a pair and hope to get Jon to play a pair of Kings. Unfortunately play had to pass through me first and I had a King bomb (natural). Sigh. Jon did manage to go out first. But, fortunately, we were able to stop the one-two.