Canal Mania is better, when everybody has some idea on how to play and manages to create a decent network of canals. We played a good game yesterday, despite the lack of training – I gave my mother and Ismo the game to learn, but they were busy with all sorts of shady ditch business and whatnot they didn’t actually play the game (they tried, but were stopped by rules a bit too difficult to comprehend). Still, they played well.

I would’ve won, except the cards didn’t feed my network properly with new cubes. Well, that and the fact that my network had bad colours (Liverpool-Stoke-Coventry line is not very good after all) and wasn’t exclusive enough. Ismo, on the other hand, had a nice exclusive line from Bristol to London which was well supplied with cubes. Thus, he was last until the goods decay phase in the end, after which he was in a strong lead. Ouch.

When we played the last time (two years ago!), I commented: “I think my mother would do much better the next time we played”. Well, we had a two-year delay and they probably forgot ever playing the game, but she did do much better. She lost, but she was in the lead until the final round, so it was far from a crushing defeat.

Canal Mania is fun – if played sufficiently fast.