All the Billygamers including Jo gathered round Garry's for a day of gaming. On the table first was Railroad Tycoon, a game that Richard brought back for me from last year's Essen. I had played it once before, Richard and Jo I think had played once, Steve 3 times and Garry not at all. The board was all set up when Steve and I arrived, Richard and Jo had misread the time and arrived at 10 instead of 10.30. Anyway after a run through the rules, obviously for Garry and I think we all needed a refresher, we started around 11.15. For those that have played this game before you will know there are some optimum places to start on the map. Northeast around New York there are plentiful opportunities depending on cube distribution, the Bluegrass triangle of Lexington, Louiseville and Cincinatti and Charleston and the Southeast are all nice. Obviously cube distribution will dictate to a certain extent, but the auction for first player was hotly contested, I won it for 5K, and chose the card that lets you build open rail links for free. Garry(green) started just north of the bluegrass triangle, Richard(red) in the BT, Jo(yellow) wasted no time in building out of New York to Philly and Baltimore and Steve(purple) built from Baltimore to Washington. I (black) built from Washington to Richmond next turn effectively boxing Steve in. Jo started building down the east coast not leaving me much room so looked at Mobile and saw a nice line of black cubes on Jackson, Memphis and St. Loius. With a 4pt bounty for 1st delivery to Mobile that's where I built next. Steve moved his attention to the BT and muscled in on Richard's area. As the game progressed Jo had tied up the East coast, Richard and Steve where vying for the area in the centre and Garry, was beavering away around the Pittsburgh, Cleveland and Wheeling area.
I did manage to get the 10pt bonus for the New Orleans to Minneapolis link, but was falling behind. Garry, Jo and Richard were pulling away with Steve and myself chugging along behind. Garry reached a 6 level train and revealed his RT card to claim 6pts. Richard had the Chicago hotel and was gaining points from that, he had pretty well tied up Chicago! The game end trigger was 16 empty city markers, Steve urbanised one to try to extend the game further but in the end we had 16 and had to try get as many points as possible in the last round. As I said Garry had attained his RT card, Richard had the 2pt per link into Chicago card (6pts), Jo had built the Wester Link, which he didn't do, Steve had largest railroad (most links) for 6pts, and I had most money which I was nowhere near. The shares issued told a story too, I had 8, Garry had 13, Richard 6, Jo 3 and Steve 13. The scores were very close in the end with 2 tiebreakers to separate Jo and Richard needed. So the game lasted a very enjoyable 3 hours and 20 minutes and these were the final scores.
Final Score
Jo 65 (11 links, 38,000), Richard 65 (11 links, 9,000), Garry 51, Steve 46, Colin 45
After a short break for some very nice lunch courtesy of Garry, Canal Mania , the new Ragnor Bro. game was lined up. See part 2 when I get round to it. There will be a page of pics with a link in part 2 as well. See you all then. :)
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