2008.03.25
Easter Trains
Trains filled my Easter weekend this year. Or at least, railroad-themed board games did.
On Friday afternoon, I played Ticket to Ride: Europe with my family. It was our second game, and everyone remembered the rules more or less, so getting started was really quick. The play was fast and furious, with my sister coming out ahead at the end.
Friday evening, we started a game of Empire Builder.
I had never previously played Empire Builder, and while I quite enjoyed it, the game ran longer than I would have liked. In fact, it ran long enough that we put the game aside after a couple of hours and finished it on Saturday.
Empire Builder also didn’t have the same type of tension I’ve grown accustomed to in Eurogames. Owing to its longer length, it plays a bit less tense, and the focus is more on long-term strategy than short-term optimization. It would probably have been tenser with more players, but the tension level was OK given the length of the game.
My biggest complaint about Empire Builder is that about an hour away from the end, it was already pretty clear to me that unless something drastic happened, I was going to win. There was nothing the others could actively do to screw me up at that point. My network was as built-out as it needed to be, and it was just a matter of moving enough freight to earn the rest of the $250M I needed to win.
If there was some way to cut the game short at this point I would have been happier – playing when the outcome seems like a foregone conclusion is not my favorite thing in the world. And I can’t chalk it up to superior strategy since I’ve never played the game before.
All in all, I enjoyed both games, and I would consider playing Empire Builder again, though it’s not a game I would want to bring out all the time.
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