A Session Re-Report

What a night. Sadly, Jef was unable to attend, but Mike arrived at around 4:30 and we setup Memoir '44. I don't remember the scenario we played, but I do know that I had some troops on top of a hill that let me use Recon cards as if they were Air Power cards. And I dropped some pain on Mike's troops. Then, I was able to use my artillery to drop even more pain. The pain was too much and the game ended in an Allied victory in a shorter amount of time than it took to set the darn thing up.

After Memoir '44, we tested a new prototype. It was fun. A good deal of fun. That's all I'm saying.

Then we ate dinner. After dinner, we setup the main game of the evening, Trainsport: Switzerland.

Mike compared the overarching goal of this old Winsome train game to Ticket to Ride. While the comparison does not do it justice, it is a good way to quickly explain the game. In Trainsport, you build track with the hope of completing specific routes that will then instantly payout cash. The difference between this and Ticket to Ride are numerous. In Trainsport, there are N goal cards setup next to the board (where N=the number of players). Any player is allowed to complete these goals, so for most of the game you are racing to complete them first.

Second, you can build any track you want, so long as your network is contiguous and you can afford it.

Overall, the game was hampered somewhat by the Winsome production quality. I have no problem with Winsome games, they are what they are. But it did grow difficult to figure out tie-breakers as the game neared completion.

Also, the games real depth comes from a knowledge of the different goal cards. In this game, though I won, it was probably a bit more to do with luck than anything else. Becuase I didn't know what routes were important, we couldn't plan on the better ones.

I had a very good time playing Trainsport, and I think that it would get better every time.

Oh yeah, while waiting for Dan to arrive and after setting up Trainsport, Mike and I played 3 quick games of Pico 2. This is a very good game of out-guessing your opponent. Well, it is "very good" because it is an average game that plays really quick! But it's fun. And the art is cool.

After Trainsport, we tried out the prototype again. This time with 3 players. It's still fun.

Then, we played FITS. I cannot give enough thanks to Ted Alspach for releasing the expansion boards for FITS. Without them, the game would have grown stagnant. With them, I get very very low scores. But I have alot of fun doing it. We played 3 different expansions last night. The first was from the MOTS set, and featured a basic symbol scoring. I ended up with 9 points, Mike had 4 and Dan had 7.

THEN, we played this crazy expansion with lots of negative circles that you really should cover up. I didn't cover up many. I had -59 points. Dan had -33 and Mike....Mike seems to be FITS god. He had 65 points. Finally, we played a neat expansion that has a bunch of letter dots. Your goal is to, after dropping all the pieces, to take the uncovered letters and form 2 words. You score points for letters used and lose them for unused letters. And this is where things became violent.

Mike tried to tell us that "redousing" was a word. Dan disagreed. Mike wanted a dictionary. Dan pulled out his iPhone. I grabbed a dictionary. Bugs flew out of it. Redousing? Nope, not a word. What!, Says Mike. Nope, Says I. Not a word. Then Dan threatens to Re-Punch Mike if he keeps this up. Mike is scared. He knows that for Dan to Re-Punch him, there must be a punch that takes place before that. He thinks this over. Two punches? Nope, not worth it. Mike re-sulks into his corner. Re-Calculates his score. Then re-tells us his re-score. Mike re-had four points. Dan had 5. I had -20.

Thanks for gaming guys!