January 31, 2012

Participants: Laurie, Ellis,Abraham, Jon, Ofer

Another small group, enough for one game. We only get through one game in an evening, because we start late (7:45 or later) and we’re always learning a new game.

Age of Industry

Jon 27, Ellis 22, Abraham 21, Ofer 17, Laurie 17

Ellis brought this. First play for me, Ofer, and Laurie. Apparently 2nd or 3rd for Ellis, but Abraham had played a few more times (I couldn’t tell if they were joking about this or not). Ellis warned that Abraham was bound to win.

The game is a Martin Wallace game, a trimmed down version of his other game Brass, much in the way that Steam is a trimmed down version of Age of Steam. The comparison is apt, because this game also has a strong “train game” element to it.

The game is about building sources of goods, tracks, and ports on a map (in our case, New England). You score points for the amount of money you have at the end of the game ($5=1 point) and for the buildings you have on the board. The buildings all cost money to build; since they give victory points at a slightly higher than 1/$5 ratio, this is ok. The building will also pay out cash to you if it makes all of its deliveries or receives a delivery (depending on the building type), and the cash value is always higher than what is cost to build in the first place. This is how you get money and more points. Although, primarily you use the money again to buy more buildings.

You can buy rail lines for $1 each; these pay out $2 plus the number of buildings at either end of them at the end of the game, so generally $5 or $6, but in a few positions on the board they will pay $7 or $8. I.e. about a point or a point and a half each.

Some buildings, and all train tracks beyond your first, also “use up” goods on buildings, which hastens the buildings that supply these goods on the way to their cash payout. If the goods aren’t available on buildings, you can buy them from the supply.

The tricky part is the restrictions on what you’re allowed to build. Each player has a hand of cards, each of which either names a building type or a location. You can build the building type named but only in a place to which you have a track, or any building in the location named. You have stacks of buildings in six different types, and the stacks go from lesser (costing less, giving less payout) to greater (costing more, giving greater payout), and you have to build them in order, or spend actions discarding the lesser ones. By the time the game ends, you will be lucky to have built or discarded a third of your buildings, so you have to choose your strategy depending on the cards you have and on what other players are doing.

In our game, both Abraham and I took a rail building strategy, though I built mine more than he did. Abraham also locked down one of the goods types on the board, and I built strongly in the other good type. The other players seemed to spend more time with harbors and ships, from what I recall. It’s hard to see that rails will do you much good, since they take invested money and don’t pay you out until the end of the game, and then only a point or a point and a half, but they also give you more room to build if you get stuck with the building type cards. I ended up with the most buildings on the board.

It’s a nice strategic game; I thought more on my turns than I have for many a game in a long time, but it wasn’t painful thinking. Laurie said that she understood the idea of the game better than Carson City. I would happily play it again, and would buy a copy if Ellis didn’t already have one and that we play only one game a week and have many more games to get through still.