Terra Mystica rematch, and playing new games

I was lucky enough to do some back-to-back gaming sessions this weekend. I was starting to get some gaming withdrawal as I hadn’t been able to attend my weekday game group because of work. And missing gaming totally makes me a cranky Meeple Lady.

Last Friday night after work, a group of us met up to play Terra Mystica. We had recently played a few weeks ago and we all wanted a rematch. As much as I love playing Terra Mystica, it isn’t one of those games I play frequently, namely because so few people want to spend time playing such a heavy game and it has a steep learning curve that makes it hard for people to jump into.

It takes a few plays to understand the mechanics of the game, and then throw in the fact that you can choose one of fourteen different “peoples” with their own special abilities and drawbacks, well, it’s a complex game.

The box says it plays for 100 minutes, but that’s a huge underestimate. It usually takes about 2-3 hours, depending on the number of players. With five of us playing, it still took us about 2 ½ hours to play, and that’s with all of us knowing the game already.

In a nutshell, your people are trying to expand and build cities on the board, but you are limited by your environment. To expand, you must terraform surrounding landscapes and then build various buildings to increase your workforce or reap benefits. Building next to other groups gives you extra power but it will make it hard to expand. There is also a cult track, in which you can get points by progressing on it.

There is no luck in this game (which I love), so it’s all up to strategy, managing your resources and achieving bonus points for each round, of which there are six. Full disclosure — I have not yet won this game. I have only played three of the fourteen people in all my games, and I’m still trying to figure out how to pick a people that best benefits from the goals set up for the game. But I do really enjoy playing it, and am always happy to find a group of folks willing to do so as well.

Then on Saturday,  I did more gaming. This couple hosts a gaming day once a month, and it’s always a great time. They literally have a library of board games, and about 30 people come over for gaming and food. I got to play two new games, as well as other various games I’ve played before.

The first new game I played is Jaipur. This game has been on my wishlist for a while so I was super excited to be able to play it in person. Jaipur is a quick two-player card game, in which you’re collecting sets of cards in order to sell them. The quicker you make sets and sell them, the better point rewards you will receive. Also, the bigger the set you sell, the higher your rewards will be as well.

You collect cards via the “market,” which shows 5 face-up cards. But camel cards also pop up, making it harder to complete your sets. At the end, you count up your rewards and the player with the highest points wins that game. You play best of three games to determine the true winner.

Overall, Jaipur plays for about 30 minutes. It’s fast-paced with good strategy. You can decide to sell your set immediately, or wait until you have a bigger set. But by then, the higher-point reward might have been already taken by your opponent.

The second game I played on Saturday that’s new to me is Railroad Tycoon (also known as Railways of the World). When I first sat down, the first thing I noticed is that the board is ginormous! It’s basically 3 cardboard boards that you place together to create a giant map of the Western U.S. There were six of us playing, three of us were new, myself included.

The game takes place in the Age of Steam. You are a railroad tycoon building railroad tracks from city to city in order to ship goods and collect income from those goods. Building tracks costs money and it gets more expensive when you build over rocky terrain or rivers. Shipping goods also require strong train engines, and you can upgrade your train engines to ship goods through more than one city. You can also get a bond to borrow money in order to build or upgrade.

There are also bonus cards that you can spend an action to pick up or immediately get if its condition is met. Each tycoon also has personal goals that will give you more end-game points. A round consists of three turns, and at the end of each round, you can collect your income. The bonds you hold (which last through the entire game) are deducted from your income. The game ends when 18 cities (for our 6-player game) are emptied of goods.

The game has great components. There’s paper money, cards, bond cards, and plastic train figurines for each player. The markers for an emptied city are also substantial. They are railroad crossings, water towers, and various buildings.

All in all, it was a great weekend for gaming.