Everyone was in attendance Saturday night. Phil, Ryan, Louis, Kevin, Laurel, and Joe all wanted to play, so I had to setup an additional table to fit everyone in.
Louis, Phil, Kevin and I played Castles of Burgundy, while Ryan, Joe, Gina and Laurel learned Ginkgopolis. In Castles of Burgundy, I was ignoring boats and animals early. I was trying to fill in my cities and grab the bonus tiles for the buildings. I was mostly successful, netting a bunch of Watchtowers and Workhouses along with their bonuses. Phil and Kevin were both shipping a fair amount of goods, while Louis was filling in a lot of small areas in his estate, grabbing a bunch of bonus points early.
In the end, I was able to fill in my animals, cities and knowledge areas, but the end game bonus wasn’t enough. Louis had built a huge lead with all of his bonuses during the game, and then added a fair bit more at the end.
After we finished that and the others finished both Ginkgopolis and 7 Wonders, Ryan and Laurel had to take off. The rest of us sat down for a round of Railways of the Western U.S.
My baron was to have the most bonds, but that idea got shot down in the opening bid. Joe was bidding hard for the opportunity to go first and I didn’t want to hamstring myself that much. I ended up picking up Hotel Topeka with the intent to deliver a bunch of the purple cubes that were in the area.
Gina was also down in that area, delivering to Oaklahoma City and eventually connecting to Grand Junction for the major line bonus. Joe had Texas to Denver handled pretty well, and Louis had the Tacoma to Ogden route completed. Phil and Kevin were both on the West coast, with Kevin working much more efficiently. Phil had taken a ton of bonds to get started, but he eventually started making some big deliveries.
We were all shipping quite a bit, and a lot of towns were emptying out quickly. The game ended before a lot of us expected it to, and scores were tallied. Gina finished with the fewest bonds and had scored the Baron for that. That pushed her into first place, with just barely over 20 points. It was the shortest and lowest scoring game we’d ever seen. It was at this point, that someone noticed that there weren’t enough Empty Cities. Apparently I had miscounted and we only had 16 instead of 18. We called the game as it was, and another round would not have significantly affected the score most likely.
After everyone left, Gina and I finished the night with a quick game of Ginkgopolis. I focused on spreading out with the urbanization action. I managed to get the building card that provided a bonus for each building that was size 2 or less. That netted me about 15 points at the end and provided the winning points.
Until next time, happy gaming!
