29th Sep 2022 - Russian Railroads
by Robin. Wed, 25 Jan (Updated at Wed, 25 Jan)As you may have gathered, we were mostly playing Russian Railroads this week. It’s about railway-building, but it seems to follow a familiar template for other accumulator games about civ-building (and Golem-building). It was good fun, though thematically I find the accumulator mechanic makes more sense in the context of civ-building: the more you develop your civilisation, the faster it can develop further. I couldn’t see a parallel for that in building my line closer to Vladivostok.
We only had 6 players in the end, so the initial suggestion of a mini-tournament between 3 tables was abandoned, and we just played for fun like normal. If we had played the mini-tournament, the clear winner would have been Andrew-H, who finished with a score in the 400s. I’ve not played the game before but apparently that’s pretty good. On both tables, the winner was the one who advanced furthest on the Industry track. Ian had predicted this outcome at the start, but then curiously chose not to pursue that strategy himself, and so didn’t win… Do as he says, not as he does.
The other game in play was the last of the current round in the real tournament: Last Train To Wensleydale. In this case, the consensus prediction was that the winner would be the one who was first into either Wensleydale or the Lune valley. This prediction was also correct, but it could have been different.
Following some sort of distortion in the space-time continuum, Bill did not win – having not bagged either of those valleys. But he came very close, despite having made the mistake of selling a link in the middle that allowed others to connect between the two major railways and complete more sets. Given all this, I found myself rooting for him to win, notwithstanding his 100% record thus far. But at least now we know that he can be beaten – occasionally – after all.