For tonight, we had a good selection of games on the table. We decided to go with Tinners’ Trail.
Martin Wallace’s new game is out. This one is about mining Tin and Copper in Cornwall, England. While it is not as heavy as Age of Steam, it was an interesting game with hard trade offs. At the end of each round, you can convert money into victory points. The amount of victory points that you can buy for the same amount of money decreases as the rounds pass. At the end of the game (round 4), you get half as much victory points than you could have gotten on round one. Besides victory points, you use money to purchase new mines and to actually mine. These mines come with an amount of tin, copper, and water on them. The number of water cubes determine how much it costs to mine each cube of tin and copper. So you want to spend turns reducing the water on that spot. Keep in mind that each time you mine, more water comes back to haunt you.
Next, we tried another new game. This time you build “gardens” in order to collect tiles for victory points. The problem is that you are forced to pick up a card and you are forced to play it someone on your plot legally. This usually hoses your plans. I was going for two different sets. I was not that efficient in building either. But I was able to complete one set and pick up the bonus tile for that set for the win.