Thanks to Easter, we had to reschedule our Thursday games to Wednesday. I started the session with Don. It’s been a while since I last played this little filler. Too long, actually, as I was already getting hazy with the rules. That’s unconvenient, as I only have the German rules… Well, we did play it right in the end.
It’s nothing spectacular, but perhaps I should play it a tad more often? It’s pretty cool for a small auction game. Few people seem to like it, my rating of seven stands pretty high amongst my GeekBuddies (but Iain likes the game).
Then we played Wabash Cannonball. Two games this time, both with same group of experienced players. That’s nice and effective, though Wabash is pretty easy to explain.
Hannu got the first one, dominated it, really. I was stuck with a pretty weak portfolio. Hannu ran the NYC with great success. I was doing fine with shared Pennsylvania, but when Hannu snatched the third share, it kind of lost the point. Hannu was basically involved in every good deal on the board, which is a no-brainer. I don’t actually know what went wrong here.
The second one was all mine. I got Pennsylvania, but instead of the standard expansion, I capitalized NYC. NYC expanded twice and B&O once, blocking Pennsylvania in. That suited me, I just let it rot there — hey, I’m getting $7 in dividends every round doing nothing, suits me fine! NYC had some good prospects, but when the share distribution went 1-1-1-1, it kind of lost momentum. Nobody bought the fifth one, even though NYC was, what, four hexes from Chicago (that fourth hex was probably critical, one hex closer and it would’ve been different thing).
Riku got stuck, he had the same shares as Hannu but paid more for them. Hannu also made a bit of a blunder when he let me have a share of B&O for five bucks. I must’ve made about $30 with that share, and I was able to develop B&O with Petri leaving Hannu out of the equation (I knew Hannu was my biggest enemy). Hannu got the final nail in the coffin, when he bought Wabash for eight when the line to Chicago cost ten. Ouch.
Really interesting, once again. The two games were quite different! First one took 50 minutes, second just 40 minutes, which was rather effective. Wabash is a devious game, and I love it more and more. It’s also breaking records: no big game has ever been played three weeks in a row in our game evenings. In general we do repeat plays rarely. It’s just that good…
After Wabash we played Great Wall of China. This game by Reiner Knizia is kind of like Samurai, but quite different. It’s supposed to be a 30-minute semifiller, but for me, it’s more like 40-45 minutes. Tad too long, that is.
I had learnt something from my previous games. I drew cards quickly to get a strong hand and then picked my battles carefully, avoiding the big slugfests. That was successfull, I was able to win with a safe enough margin. It’s a nice game, but perhaps not my cup of tea. I think I’ll try to sell it…
Quick game of Set finished off the evening. Well, not that quick, we sucked and had to draw the extra cards quite a few times…
2 responses to “Thursday session: Wabash Cannonball, Great Wall of China”
How many played Don? I prefer it with four, as with three players one person gets cut out completely.
Four, me and three newbies. One of them learnt hard way why you shouldn’t ever run out of money…