First Plays: Fealty and German Railways...

There was a  full-frontal nerdity again last night at UW games night and, as usual, I forced people to play some of my new games that have been waiting patiently to be played.

We started with Fealty, a sharp, nasty, tactical game that is remarkably short.  8 turns and you finish and score.  It was an interesting experience and a relatively simple game but figuring out the right play seems nearly impossible.  I think it'll require a few games to get a handle of but I imagine it'll be just excellent with 2 players.

Final layout with scoring tokens.  Colourful.  I lost horribly.

We also got German Railways to the table.  It definitely felt like the successor to Chicago Express but different enough to stand on its own merits.

The clever turn-order mechanism made this one feel a bit like Power Grid, you know, all about the timing, and the winning condition (most money overall, stocks worth nothing) made correct bidding paramount much like a great game of Modern Art.  In fact, in our game the top 2 players at the end ended up owning the least amount of stock.  This is a very, very interesting game - quite devious and very much open to table-talk and coercion.  Definitely a favourite of the new year and in my mind an even better game than Chicago Express.

One caveat, though:  Queen really messed up this design by leaving one thing out.  There are 8 different railroads each with a unique power and in the original Winsome title these powers were clearly laid out ON THE BOARD!  In this reprint, Queen stupidly removed that and just left it on the back page of the rulebook.  This was a horrendous oversight and something we kept screwing up over and over.  We had to continuously check the rulebook throughout the game every time we went to make an action. I'm really not sure what the hell they were thinking and I'm actually considering taking a Sharpie to the board and writing them on myself.  Painful.

On The Horizon: a sequel to Chicago Express...

A new train game seems to be released every few weeks, so many so that I don't play many.  I do love some great train-themed games, though, like Ticket To Ride and Age of Steam.  One particularly good train game from a few years ago is Chicago Express.  It is short, heavy, and totally luck-free.  I can't claim to have ever grasped the right way to play CE, trying to balance investing in successful companies whilst not diluting one's profits too much.  My friends weren't too fond of the heavy calculations but the math crowd I game with eat this one up.

A (sort-of) sequel has already been released by Winsome Games called Preußische Ostbahn but like most games from the very small Winsome Games, the print-run was limited and the quality is... er, lacklustre. Queen Games, released CE, is now releasing PO as German Railways so I expect the quality to be fantastic. The game bears many similarities to CE but differs greatly when it comes to the fascinating new turn mechanism. Turn order is determined before every round by drawing lots from a pool of cubes put together by all the players. The persons with the highest income/score puts only one cube in while the person with the least puts in cubes equal to the number of players. Since only a subset of these cubes is pulled out before scoring, it is entirely possible for a player to never get a turn. Interesting.

These players can, of course, still take part in the auctions and purchase stock but may never run the train track for their companies. This makes a huge strategic shift - dilution does not occur in German Railways so you basically want to buy into companies that are thriving and let the others do the work. One reviewer on BGG describes winning the game without ever playing a single turn. He just purchased the right portfolio of stocks. Crazy.

Sounds good, eh?

A picture of the PO board thanks to BGG user duartec

Oh, Chicago Express....

Played a couple of games of Chicago Express last night with some newbies at games night. Very fun but in neither game did any one train company get even remotely close to Chicago. It was weird since in my other games Chicago was reached repeatedly, the Wabash opened, and in one of the games it was even particularly successful. I feel like we were burning through the stocks as an offensive maneuver most of the time. Hmmm. Love the game but I sure haven't come remotely close to figuring it out....

Anyone else had weird experiences with this one?

UPDATE (Oct.2, 09): How about next time I read the rules CAREFULLY... Each time an expansion action is taken, up to three hexes can be played NOT just one. Stupid me.