Day 466. April 11, 2018. Lagos...
This time, I turned HAL online on the expert level, hoping to face a greater challenge while building the future tree-loving city of Ginkgopolis. In the Expert level, whenever HAL draws an Urbanization card, he'll try to replace it with a Construction card or at the very least, another urbanization card that will give him more points. The result is that the city, grows upwards, much more than sideways. Districts are smaller and tighter. Pushing HAL out of a tile becomes more expensive and, since the area where we are battling each other is smaller, whenever he bullies you out or cuts merciless a district in half, it has much more impact!
![]()
Let's go again.
![]()
Expert HAL.
I lost... finally! He not only won the majority in most districts, but he also got a hold of a few endgame scoring cards that gave him extra VP boost! I should have tried harder to push him out more often and extend the game this way. The game ends when the tiles run out or when either of us runs out of resources. I'm beginning to think that the REAL endgame trigger in solo Ginkgopolis is HAL's resources! so the more I keep those out of the game, the more time I have to build the city I want.
![]()
Defeated by city tree.
Excellent. HAL's turns are just the way an A.I. is supposed to be in a boardgame. Unobtrusive in the face of your gameplay experience! Draw a card and tile, place the latter with a few resources and that's it! I'll take the game over to gamenight today to see if it has a chance to shine.
:star::star::star:
I subscribe to [user=thevig]Janine[/user]'s JV's PnP Extravaganza geeklist of beautifully crafted PnP games and/or redesigns of her own. And when today's recent entry showed a few pictures of the currently on Kickstarter Tramways Engineer's Workbook, I began to wonder... Is there a PnP to the book/game somewhere? The game has drawn my curiosity (a lot actually!) but I failed to see any link to any files... So where did [user=thevig]Janine[/user] got a hold of the game?
![]()
Track writing.
I began searching for breadcrumbs in the game's main BGG page...
The forums and files sections had nothing about PnP. Maybe in geeklists where the game was added? Not many lists had the game, but the most recent What Print 'n Play Games are you crafting or planning on crafting this month? April 2018, had the most potential for links to the files. Unfortunately, the entry was [user=thevig]Janine[/user]'s own mention with more links to her geeklist. No luck for Tramways EW I thought... So I scrolled up and down the geeklist to see what's hot on the crafting this month.
An almost hidden entry, with no pictures of a game that until, a few days ago, was hot on my own The Thirteen... made the scrolling finger abruptly stop on is tracks! Mini Rails?!?! Is someone trying to build a PnP version of Mini Rails? Where did that come from?
It came from yet another geeklist, Heiko's (not very) secret redesign addiction, including (some) PnP-links, from an impressive graphic design artist, Heiko Günther, that after devoting endless hours pursuing his passion (redesign the art in boardgames) ended up creating the highly coveted Black Box edition for Glory to Rome! But he didn't stop there! Heiko's portfolio includes redesigns of Puerto Rico, Container, Bonanza, For-Ex, Sushi Go and the recent Mini-Rails and Peak Oil! His style and minimalistic approach to games is clearly identifiable in everything he touches. And while Rome's black grail game art as no hold on me (I prefer the euro versions), I can't say the same about the rest of his re-designs? Pure joy to the minimalist loving sights!
![]()
Puerto Rico.
![]()
A Straight Road.
![]()
Container.
![]()
Mini Rails.
:star::star::star:
I carried a bag full of games to play at gamenight, where the longest and "heaviest" was Ginkgopolis. But I was mostly hoping for a relaxed gamenight with the push your luck kind (Snowblind and Herbaceous), a quiet stroll in Escape's dungeons or even, a leisurely bike ride in Flamme Rouge, after building the tree-loving city...
But as soon as I enter the shop, [user=chewbakaPT]Nuno[/user] shouts: "Seasons or Trajan?" ...I know Seasons. But when will I have the chance to experience Trajan? Ok, guys... let's go to Roman's point salad war! When asked, [user=drope]Pedro[/user] revealed that he had never played the game before. So much for anything else being played tonight! A four-player meaty euro, in which no one has ever played it before, will surely absorb all the time until midnight if you add to the normal AP, the rules break down, the mid-game rules check, the backtracking, and so on, so on, so on...
![]()
The famous mancala.
After a while, listening to [user=drope]Pedro[/user] talk (impressively) about the game's rules like if he had played it thousands of times before, my long-term strategy brain began to shut down. Too many paths to score, and without having played it before, no way to measure what was more worthy or valuable, or efficient... But if there's one thing I've learned (the hard way!) in well-designed euro's is that if you pursue the main subject of the game, in the end, you'll turn out fine. Unlike in my first play of The Great Western Trail, where I made sure that the locomotive reached the end of the line, completely forgoing the main subject: the deckbuilding cows!
So In Trajan, I focused on two things: the mancala and the Trajan tiles! That made VP sense and instead of trying to make sense of the chaos of icons and stuff I could do on the main board, I tried to crack the famous mancala.
![]()
Workers and legionnaires.
![]()
The mythical salad.
It turned out well. The mancala IS the game, and you need to subdue it to conquer Europe's provinces, convince the Senate to vote on you, trade in the Mediterranean, feed the people's needs for gladiatorial bread baking priests, or work your way into set collecting in a number of ways under the form of tiles and cards.
A good game. Even if I wasn't in the mood for hours long euros tonight, that mancala brought back good Five Tribes memories. Now here's a mechanism I need to explore more in games. Here's a street of the gaming world I have seldom traveled... the mancala!
Thanks for reading and see you soon.
:nostar::nostar::nostar:
One year ago: ...pirates from Portugal to Antarctica...
Photo & Image credits: ZombieBoard, thevig
This time, I turned HAL online on the expert level, hoping to face a greater challenge while building the future tree-loving city of Ginkgopolis. In the Expert level, whenever HAL draws an Urbanization card, he'll try to replace it with a Construction card or at the very least, another urbanization card that will give him more points. The result is that the city, grows upwards, much more than sideways. Districts are smaller and tighter. Pushing HAL out of a tile becomes more expensive and, since the area where we are battling each other is smaller, whenever he bullies you out or cuts merciless a district in half, it has much more impact!
Let's go again.
Expert HAL.
I lost... finally! He not only won the majority in most districts, but he also got a hold of a few endgame scoring cards that gave him extra VP boost! I should have tried harder to push him out more often and extend the game this way. The game ends when the tiles run out or when either of us runs out of resources. I'm beginning to think that the REAL endgame trigger in solo Ginkgopolis is HAL's resources! so the more I keep those out of the game, the more time I have to build the city I want.
Defeated by city tree.
Excellent. HAL's turns are just the way an A.I. is supposed to be in a boardgame. Unobtrusive in the face of your gameplay experience! Draw a card and tile, place the latter with a few resources and that's it! I'll take the game over to gamenight today to see if it has a chance to shine.
I subscribe to [user=thevig]Janine[/user]'s JV's PnP Extravaganza geeklist of beautifully crafted PnP games and/or redesigns of her own. And when today's recent entry showed a few pictures of the currently on Kickstarter Tramways Engineer's Workbook, I began to wonder... Is there a PnP to the book/game somewhere? The game has drawn my curiosity (a lot actually!) but I failed to see any link to any files... So where did [user=thevig]Janine[/user] got a hold of the game?
Track writing.
I began searching for breadcrumbs in the game's main BGG page...
The forums and files sections had nothing about PnP. Maybe in geeklists where the game was added? Not many lists had the game, but the most recent What Print 'n Play Games are you crafting or planning on crafting this month? April 2018, had the most potential for links to the files. Unfortunately, the entry was [user=thevig]Janine[/user]'s own mention with more links to her geeklist. No luck for Tramways EW I thought... So I scrolled up and down the geeklist to see what's hot on the crafting this month.
An almost hidden entry, with no pictures of a game that until, a few days ago, was hot on my own The Thirteen... made the scrolling finger abruptly stop on is tracks! Mini Rails?!?! Is someone trying to build a PnP version of Mini Rails? Where did that come from?
It came from yet another geeklist, Heiko's (not very) secret redesign addiction, including (some) PnP-links, from an impressive graphic design artist, Heiko Günther, that after devoting endless hours pursuing his passion (redesign the art in boardgames) ended up creating the highly coveted Black Box edition for Glory to Rome! But he didn't stop there! Heiko's portfolio includes redesigns of Puerto Rico, Container, Bonanza, For-Ex, Sushi Go and the recent Mini-Rails and Peak Oil! His style and minimalistic approach to games is clearly identifiable in everything he touches. And while Rome's black grail game art as no hold on me (I prefer the euro versions), I can't say the same about the rest of his re-designs? Pure joy to the minimalist loving sights!
Puerto Rico.
A Straight Road.
Container.
Mini Rails.
I carried a bag full of games to play at gamenight, where the longest and "heaviest" was Ginkgopolis. But I was mostly hoping for a relaxed gamenight with the push your luck kind (Snowblind and Herbaceous), a quiet stroll in Escape's dungeons or even, a leisurely bike ride in Flamme Rouge, after building the tree-loving city...
But as soon as I enter the shop, [user=chewbakaPT]Nuno[/user] shouts: "Seasons or Trajan?" ...I know Seasons. But when will I have the chance to experience Trajan? Ok, guys... let's go to Roman's point salad war! When asked, [user=drope]Pedro[/user] revealed that he had never played the game before. So much for anything else being played tonight! A four-player meaty euro, in which no one has ever played it before, will surely absorb all the time until midnight if you add to the normal AP, the rules break down, the mid-game rules check, the backtracking, and so on, so on, so on...
The famous mancala.
After a while, listening to [user=drope]Pedro[/user] talk (impressively) about the game's rules like if he had played it thousands of times before, my long-term strategy brain began to shut down. Too many paths to score, and without having played it before, no way to measure what was more worthy or valuable, or efficient... But if there's one thing I've learned (the hard way!) in well-designed euro's is that if you pursue the main subject of the game, in the end, you'll turn out fine. Unlike in my first play of The Great Western Trail, where I made sure that the locomotive reached the end of the line, completely forgoing the main subject: the deckbuilding cows!
So In Trajan, I focused on two things: the mancala and the Trajan tiles! That made VP sense and instead of trying to make sense of the chaos of icons and stuff I could do on the main board, I tried to crack the famous mancala.
Workers and legionnaires.
The mythical salad.
It turned out well. The mancala IS the game, and you need to subdue it to conquer Europe's provinces, convince the Senate to vote on you, trade in the Mediterranean, feed the people's needs for gladiatorial bread baking priests, or work your way into set collecting in a number of ways under the form of tiles and cards.
A good game. Even if I wasn't in the mood for hours long euros tonight, that mancala brought back good Five Tribes memories. Now here's a mechanism I need to explore more in games. Here's a street of the gaming world I have seldom traveled... the mancala!
Thanks for reading and see you soon.
One year ago: ...pirates from Portugal to Antarctica...
Photo & Image credits: ZombieBoard, thevig