Eurorails with Chris

October 30th

Chris and I hadn't gamed for a while, so, Sunday, while playing Dune, we discussed getting together to play some games on my day off (a teacher workday for DPS). I ran some errands in the morning, and Chris came over in the later afternoon. We had a few hours, and could play something a little heavier. I received Eurorails through ebay a while back, and Chris was very familiar with playing it 2-player, so we decided to give it a go.

This is one of Mayfair's crayon-rail games. A pickup and deliver game, on a map of Europe, that involves making connections by drawing in crayon on the board as you build track. You build based on contracts that you get, which require you to bring goods of one type to specific places. The individual goods are only produced in certain areas, so you build, based on your contracts, to do more building. Later in the game, you try to build to harder to get goods, in order to satisfy higher value contracts. The game ends when someone has connected to seven cities and has 250 million in money.

I expected Chris to win, and he did. I didn't do too poorly, though, and would have met the victory conditions in two turns. The big turning point in the game, I think, was when I had a set of not very desirable contracts, which I flushed (wasting a whole turn) only to replace them with even less valuable cards. The only way I could see making these cards valuable was going up into Scandinavia, which seemed like a poor proposition. I didn't want to waste another turn, so I kept them, and built up North. This slowed my expansion West into more desirable territory. It did pay off for over 100 million in big contracts on my second to last turn, and provided me with all the resources needed to finish the game. I just didn't have enough time. I guess that's the whole point, though. There was a little bit of a feeling that the game was playing me, though, as, often, it seemed I just had obvious choices to make with the contracts/building. At least they were choices, though.

This was pretty fun, a nice way to spend my day off, and I'm happy I own it. I'm sure I'll get to play some more, and knowing the crayon rails system will certainly be helpful.

GG, GL
JW