Monday night at Kurt's, July 17th, 2006

For some reason, I again agreed to playtest a game during a very busy time in my life. I've had a responsibility to put Tide of Iron to the test for a couple of weeks now, and with the wedding and everything it's been hard to organize. On top of being busy, I think there are just too many good games to play right now. It seems not many of the usual suspects are anxious to play an early version of a forthcoming game, when they each have a handful of tested, award-winning games they are trying to get to the table! Kurt graciously agreed to run the rule over the game with me, and invited me over to his new house to boot.

I'm bound by NDA not to talk about Tide, so I'll just say we played a nice, quick, game, and had fun talking, as usual. Kurt's kids were having fun running around the new house, and his daughter was a bit of comic relief serving as a cheering section for her dad. We got done with the game and playtest forms with enough time to play another quickie. Kurt's sizeable collection was still mostly packed, but a brand-new Rio Grande edition of Thurn and Taxis, winner of the 2006 Speil Des Jahres earlier that very day, was looking lonesomely down at us from Kurt's shelf, and we were unable to resist putting it on the table.

We ran through the rules real quick (neither of us had played) and got started. I've read comparisons between this and Ticket to Ride, but I think I'd have to side with those who have opined that, though there might be a couple of similar mechanics, these are quite different games that can occupy happily different niches in one's collection. They have about the same weight, and should, generally, be hits with the same groups. I, for one, am one of those people for whom TTR is a hit...

For those not in the proverbial know, Thurn & Taxis is a game by Rudiger Dorn, the author of Puerto Rico. It is a set collection/sequencing game with elements of area connection/control. It is themed aroud development of stagecoach routes for postal service in eighteenth century central Europe. Each turn, you draw city connection card(s), claim connection(s), and, if you choose, score a route. You may use one of four special actions each turn, either drawing or playin an extra card, claiming a coach (they build up in size based on progressive length of routes scored) for up to two cities less (in size), or getting rid of all six face-up city cards and replacing them before drawing. Whenever a route is scored, you have a choice of building stage stations in either each city in a region that you are connecting to, or one city in each region that you are connecting to. There are bonus tiles for route sizes 5/6/7, for building a station in all the cities in an or two regions, or for building at least one station in each region. These bonus tiles exist in descending multiples, addig a race element as players try to fulfill the conditions first, to get more points. In a two player game, you are really fighting for every point. At the end of the game, the houses you have left over will be deducted from your total score. The game ends at the end of a turn when someone gets the largest (seven) carriage, or builds thir last station. That person also gets one bonus point.

In the early going, I think both of us had some neurons misfiring regarding evaluating the relation between route building and station placement. I started building a route, and only after I had put a few cards in it did I really realize that I wasn't going to be able to put houses on ALL the cities. At that point, it was time to decide whether to build big routes, going for the 5/6/7 bonus tiles, or to build successive smaller routes, trying to push the race to the endgame. Happily, both of us, it seemed, were more interested in playing the big routes, which made the game a little longer.

I connected to multiple regions in the SW part of the map, including two that were only once city. This allowed me to place a number of stations, and gave me a jump on the big bonus tile (six points) for one station in each region. Kurt built in the center, and actually claimed the first bonus tile for the big seven route. For the second set, I chose a bit of a new area, but Kurt really went in the middle. He got to claim the big (five point) tile for having a station in every city in the big, central, gray region. I didn't have a great hand, but a couple good tiles came up, and I was able to finish off another decent sized route, and claim a couple bonus tiles, including the giant six-pointer for a station in each region. From this point, we started to push a little more, trying to get through the coaches and score points. I ended up having to use the "build with two less cities" action to get my seven coach and trigger the endgame. With the extra point from ending the game, and with Kurt having three more stations left than me, I ended up pulling out the victory by five points.

I would say that it played really well for a first session. It only really took us about one turn to develop some ideas about how to play, and we certainly had a decent grasp of strategy by the midgame. I think the next play might be a little different, but not too much. I certainly haven't played every game released this year, but, knowing the kind of games that have won in the past, this seemed a deserved SDJ winner.

Another night of gaming at Kurt's wound to a close, and I was spared having to say another goodbye to a good local friend by the probability that I'll be stopping back by to pick up some of Kurt's discarded boxes to help with our move. It's also quite likely that, as Kurt put it, given the nature of our hobby, we'll continue to stay in relatively good touch in this relatively small world. BGG T & E here I come!

As one last comment, I'll add that I'm quite happy for the opportunities that the internet provides to stay in touch with/keep track of people spread far and wide, via boardgamegeek, brettspielwelt, spielbyweb... even myspace and friendster. Not only am I much better able to stay in touch with old friends, but it seems I'll have a variety of connections in North Carolina before we even get there!

GG, GL