Russian Railroads and holiday White Elephant

Hello, peeps of the Internet! It’s been quite a hectic December with the holidays and major life changes, but it’s been a great week of board-gaming.

I was happy to play my new copy of Russian Railroads this week. I actually received the game a few weeks ago from my BGG Secret Santa. On the BGG website, you sign up to be assigned a Secret Santa target and send $50-ish gifts out into the world. The person who received me was super duper generous, as I had received three large games, as well as a donation in my name to Oxfam so some impoverished family would receive a pair of goats. The other two games I received were Android: Netrunner and Lords of Vegas. I’ll keep you posted when I finally bring them to a gaming night.

So this week, I played Russian Railroads three times this week. I do love the smell of freshly punched-out cardboard …

Russian Railroads is a worker-placement heavy strategy game where you are trying to build the most advanced railroad, of which there are three to choose from on your player board.  It’s a 2 to 4 player game, with the playing time about 2 hours.

To build your railway network, you place your meeples on various locations on the game board that correspond to an action. Each spot requires a certain number of meeples, and once that spot is taken, nobody else can do that action. Players need to move their track pieces along the line in order to make room for more advanced pieces later. As you move various colored tracks down the line, bonuses open up or you get the opportunity to upgrade your tracks.

Players can also invest in purchasing engineers, which will give that player an extra action space that only he or she has access to. There is an end-game bonus for the player with the most engineers. Also, players can work on improving their industry by adding factories. Factories give bonus actions once the industry marker passes through it. Scoring only happens at the end of each round, and after 7 rounds (in a four-player game), the player with the highest victory points wins.

I totally love the game but, ugh, I still haven’t figured out how to win. Some players abandon the factory track and work on boosting one of the three railways. Others just work the factory track and barely advance the railways up top. I’m still trying to figure out a balance between the two while going for the engineer bonus, but that obviously isn’t working out for me. But now that I own the game, I can totally keep working at it. And that I did, playing it three times this week! I even introduced it to a new group of folks, who said they would totally play it again.

In other gaming news, last Saturday I attended a White Elephant gift exchange for one of my gaming groups. I got a really low number out of about 30 folks, so I knew immediately that I could potentially be robbed of all the good gifts. For our game, after three steals, a game is “dead” and can no longer be stolen.

First, I had unwrapped Libertalia, which then got stolen from me. I then stole Alhambra (which I had wanted to buy at BGG Con but didn’t have room in my luggage for), but it got stolen from me in the next few rounds. I then unwrapped Battlestar Galactica (a game that I love, love but don’t own) and squealed, only to see it escape my hands in the next round. I then unwrapped Kanban (which I heard is a great game) so I was happy for a few minutes. Somebody then stole Kanban from me, so then I re-stole Battlestar Galactica from the guy who stole it from me. I had BSG for a full 10 minutes and totally thought it was going to end up with me. Alas, somebody stole a gift from the guy who took BSG from me, so of course he took BSG back and then it was a dead gift. Womp womp. I was sooooo bummed out. So I went back to the tree and unwrapped a gift, and what I ended up with was Food Fight Card Game. Alas. It was a fun event though, and I was happy to be a part of it.

And that wraps up my busy week of board gaming. Has anybody out there ever played Food Fight? I’d love to hear about it!

Anyway, I hope everybody has a safe and wonderful holiday. I’m excited to go back to my hometown and see family and friends, and hopefully get some board gaming in.