14th May 2025
An interesting night that coincided with a Mayoral Mace Ceremony in the hall. The gamers who braved the gauntlet were rewarded with class struggles, planting meadows, train dealing and unknown planets.
The first game of the night was Wandering Towers which is a light fun game, only played once before in session 72. We had two plays, as unfortunately in the first play, Darren and Jeremy who had played before had forgotten the rules, so we played a single card, single action variant as an “introductory” game! On the second play, with 6 wizards using the correct rules, it seemed much more chaotic with towers flying around everywhere and wizards endlessly chasing the black tower. In the end it was Annalee who showed her prowess at magic by getting all her wizards into the tower and completing all the required 4 potions before anyone else.
In the background a pre-arranged meeting of classes was happening in Hegemony: Lead Your Class To Victory. Hegemony, played previously in sessions 73 and 61 made a return back to the club after a fairly long hiatus. All three players had played previously, although two of the players were keen to play different classes to the ones they had played previously. Therefore Iain D decided to take on the role of the capitalists, Steph H decided to try the working class and Jyo K took the middle class.
Each game of Hegemony is unique and ends up looking very different. This time around, the working class, led by Steph H had a super smooth journey. The workers enjoyed good wages, all of them found gainful employment, had enough money to buy food, goods and services and prosper. They also managed to successfully make some trade unions. No strikes or demonstrations were required. All in all, a textbook perfect game for the workers.
When something goes so well for one class in Hegemony, this means something else has gone quite wrong. The capitalists opened a lot of companies but probably ended up benefiting the workers they employed in those companies more than themselves. They influenced policies and reduced taxes, but things somehow didn’t work in their favour. The middle class plodded along at a steady pace, trying to catch up with the working class, but ended up a few too many points shy of victory.
A rematch has been requested to right some wrongs and the game will be back in action at a future club session.
Then some late comers - Ian & Richie - joined Graham and set off to create the best Meadow. This is a lovely game of choosing cards to form your meadow - both flora and fauna. It has a puzzle element when selecting the cards from the grid of possibilities in that you use numbered workers that can only be placed next to a row or column to select the matching numbered card. The first play has a more detailed write up of the mechanics. The way players have to compete for cards is also interesting, and the need to balance background moves with getting points. The game ended with equal points, which a recount did not resolve. Hence delving into the rules – the tie-breaker (more cards played in the main section) gave Graham the win.
After chasing towers, the players split up to form two new tables playing Planet Unknown and a new train game called Prussian Rails.
The 4 space faring adventurers playing Planet Unknown had played it before, so they tried some new planets and one tried a new corporation as well. You can read about the polymino laying mechanics of this simple but varied planet terraforming game from session 96.
Prussian Rails is another of the so-called cube rail games, a class of train games with… rather plain graphics… but typically rather simple rules, the complexity comes from how the players interact (many cube rail games also fall into a type of game know as “Shared Incentives Common Space”); it’s also another Winsome Game re-released by Rio Grande Games.
So there are train companies, making connections on a board by placing cubes, and players buy shares in those companies. That’s the common foundation of lots of these games, so what’s different with Prussian Rails? Two big things: the turn order each round is random, in fact it is possible for a player to not get a turn in a round; and the other is that there are eight companies with variable powers trying to “connect” across the map - connecting triggers dividend payments and most money is how you win (shares are worthless at the end of the game). So there’s a dance about positioning your income, which determines your chance of getting a go in the random turn order mechanism, and building the right lines at the right time to make more money than the other players. Also, when all the companies have connected twice the game ends.
Three of us sat down to play, with so many companies it was slow to get going but there was a moment mid-game when a winning company jumped ahead. That lead remained strong despite a late surge from another player. The random turn order had a couple of surprising rounds, but sadly, there was one minor rules mistake (bad teacher): accidentally drew five instead of three (the number of players) random discs for the turn order each round. This effectively accelerated the game, but it was still good fun.
After creating the best Meadows, the three gamers tried their hand at tile laying with 2 games of the fiendish Azul, first played back in 2019. The first game was won convincingly by Richie. The second game was won by Ian who even though he got left with 7 tiles he could not place in the final turn, so racking up many of negative points - he ultimately won the game due to a very good early tile placement gaining a lot of bonus points. So, by the end of the evening, all 3 of us won one game each.
The next session is May 28th, please use the Discord channel to request games or join suggested games from others.
- Total Session Attendance: 13
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Board Games: