Steam

Last night we played Steam. The update/re-make of Martin Wallace’s classic train game Age of Steam. We played the Northern England board, which comes with the Steam Barons expansion. The expansion comes with additional rules for stocks, but we chose to keep it simple and play with the rules from the base game. I say simple, but even with just the base game this is a meaty affair and with six players we just got it finished by last orders. Jimmy, the old hand, won easily almost 20 points clear of the pack. I just pipped Northern Luke to second place, Pete came fourth, Tash was fifth and poor old Lovely Rich was last, but it was very close between the five of us. This was the second time I’d played Steam and despite owning the original, I am now convinced that I need to get this. In fact, as if to prove how good Steam is we even had spectators for most of the evening. Rory and Sarah turned up a bit too late to join in any games, but hung around and watched the game and had a few drinks. Hopefully we’ll see them back next week and they'll get to enjoy some gaming.

First Essen taste 2008

Twelve arrived and over time departed. The early players got to experience the dexterity game ‘Hamster wheel’ this was a hit and drew interest from players as they arrived. As a result Jack requested to play it later after he had beaten Luke and Lewis at Mykerinos but had lost miserably at Pueblo.

Matthew very kindly led a five player game of Agricola which took all night and the rules session for that and Jimmys rule session for Comuni for Richard, James and me took as long as the other groups game of Pueblo.

Comuni has a few neat mechanisms and gives players 3 choices of actions. Placing workers, retrieving workers and gaining the benefits or raising revenues. In addition you can build buildings that you have won and build walls to stave off one of the four attacks scheduled in the game. Each player has a strength in income of one of the types of cubes and each type of cube that can be won has its own benefit. Gold helps workers win regions, white helps build more and increases the quality of cards to help build, 2 brown cubes are wild and a brown also aids in worker displacement leaving black cubes which represent soldiers and a way to defend your city when under attack.

As you build you acquire victory points which relate not just to final game score but also to exposure to the savage attacks from the hordes. But when you fall victim you don’t lose VPs (which would limit your exposure later) you are given negative VP markers which lose points at the end of the game. Be warned then that steaming off on a build strategy has serious long term repercussions. James very nearly won this game which came right down to the wire.

After the brand new Comuni we played the equally brand new steel driver, a Martin Wallace train game that nods a head towards Wabash cannonball. The game is played over six rounds and despite a few maintenance mistakes (both Jimmy and I must be slipping) the game flowed well. Richard had dropped out so it was just the three of us and the game felt really tight with some master tactician moves from James and some experienced train game tactics from Jimmy the end result was as Comuni with Luke wining.

I loved both games as was to be expected and I am so pleased Jimmy continues to bring back winning Essen releases. This is the first of what promises to be a bumper batch from 2008 role on next Tuesday.