Martian Rails and other cool demos from Mayfair Games
I wanted to post about this Sunday, but I've been way busy.
This past weekend was Origins. I only made it to the convention on Friday and Saturday, but I certainly made the most of the time, including a first-place finish (by the skin of my teeth in a very close match) in one round of the Babylon 5 CCG.
One of the very cool things I got to do was play an almost-final version of Martian Rails at the Puffing Billy (train game) area in the tabletop game room. Steve and I played this with another person who was there for EBI Potluck on Saturday night, and now we're both dying to get a copy when it comes out later this year. (Due at GenCon if they can make the release on schedule.) This is the latest offering in the Empire Builder series of crayon train games from Mayfair.
Let me start by saying Martian Rails is too cool for words. The entire game is peppered with references to classic (and not-so-classic) science fiction, often with punny twists. For example, there is a special event card to deliver quintotriticale and roddenberries to the Star Fleet yards at Utopia. I assume they were worried about getting sued if they used "quadrotriticale", which was printed on an earlier version of the game. They also changed soylent green to soylent red, presumably for the same reason. You can get turbinium ore at the Pyramid Mines (Total Recall) or visit cities named for Bradbury and Burroughs. I'm sorry I haven't read enough Edgar Rice Burroughs to get all the references from his books, but our third player got them and filled us in. The draft manual in the box had pages of description with references for all of the sources for the names of various resources and cities. I suspect the game designers had almost as much fun putting the jokes into the game as we had discovering them.
We had one complaint regarding game design and balance. There were lots of cards where all three loads connected the same two areas of the board. The first load would only come from region where the delivery city for the second load was found, and vice versa, and the third load would usually connect the same areas. This is a problem if you draw a card that forces you into an area where you don't have track and had no intention of building track, especially since it's very expensive to build on most of this map. I think you will see a lot more players pitching their cards. I don't like this design, and if you look at earlier games in the series such as Eurorails, cards like this did not occur. All three contracts on a card were geographically diverse, so you had more options.
The Martian Rails map uses a 3-D map concept similar to Lunar Rails, with the wrap points to allow you to move from one map section to the next. The difference is that instead of being divided into two hemispheres, it's divided into three sections joined along the equator, more like an orange peel that's been flattened. This is their way of representing a 3-D world on a 2-D map, because let's face it, we don't want to deal with playing on an actual globe. Our third player made a comment at one point about 2-D thinking, which made me realize I was guilty of not taking full advantage of the wrap points and the 3-D geography. Near the poles, things just aren't that far apart! Mountains and alpines are a different story, though.
As I said before, Steve and I plan to buy this when it comes out and hope to play it over and over again. Now I think it's time to go find some classic Edgar Rice Burroughs novels.
Moving on, I also wanted to mention another new Mayfair game, Catan Geographies: Germany. This is the Settlers of Catan system done on a semi-historical map of Germany. Game play is close enough to regular Catan that I was able to sit down at the demo and play with minimal instruction. You build settlements at defined town locations rather than any hex point, which means that the 2-spacing rule goes away. And the board is fixed rather than randomly generated, which has its good points and bad points. The distribution of the numbers seemed a little goofy. We got through most of a demo game at the booth before the dealer's room closed. I think this would be a lot of fun to play, but I couldn't quite bring myself to spend the $55 list price. Maybe I'll buy it next year with my 50% off coupon from the Mayfair Ribbon Quest. As a sort of consolation prize, when I was knighted for collecting my ribbons, I selected the Hesse (a state in Germany) scenario map for regular Catan as my free gift. It gives a little of the flavor and it's a fun way to mix up regular Catan without buying a whole new board.
Those were the highlights, but as always, much fun was had by all!
This past weekend was Origins. I only made it to the convention on Friday and Saturday, but I certainly made the most of the time, including a first-place finish (by the skin of my teeth in a very close match) in one round of the Babylon 5 CCG.
One of the very cool things I got to do was play an almost-final version of Martian Rails at the Puffing Billy (train game) area in the tabletop game room. Steve and I played this with another person who was there for EBI Potluck on Saturday night, and now we're both dying to get a copy when it comes out later this year. (Due at GenCon if they can make the release on schedule.) This is the latest offering in the Empire Builder series of crayon train games from Mayfair.
Let me start by saying Martian Rails is too cool for words. The entire game is peppered with references to classic (and not-so-classic) science fiction, often with punny twists. For example, there is a special event card to deliver quintotriticale and roddenberries to the Star Fleet yards at Utopia. I assume they were worried about getting sued if they used "quadrotriticale", which was printed on an earlier version of the game. They also changed soylent green to soylent red, presumably for the same reason. You can get turbinium ore at the Pyramid Mines (Total Recall) or visit cities named for Bradbury and Burroughs. I'm sorry I haven't read enough Edgar Rice Burroughs to get all the references from his books, but our third player got them and filled us in. The draft manual in the box had pages of description with references for all of the sources for the names of various resources and cities. I suspect the game designers had almost as much fun putting the jokes into the game as we had discovering them.
We had one complaint regarding game design and balance. There were lots of cards where all three loads connected the same two areas of the board. The first load would only come from region where the delivery city for the second load was found, and vice versa, and the third load would usually connect the same areas. This is a problem if you draw a card that forces you into an area where you don't have track and had no intention of building track, especially since it's very expensive to build on most of this map. I think you will see a lot more players pitching their cards. I don't like this design, and if you look at earlier games in the series such as Eurorails, cards like this did not occur. All three contracts on a card were geographically diverse, so you had more options.
The Martian Rails map uses a 3-D map concept similar to Lunar Rails, with the wrap points to allow you to move from one map section to the next. The difference is that instead of being divided into two hemispheres, it's divided into three sections joined along the equator, more like an orange peel that's been flattened. This is their way of representing a 3-D world on a 2-D map, because let's face it, we don't want to deal with playing on an actual globe. Our third player made a comment at one point about 2-D thinking, which made me realize I was guilty of not taking full advantage of the wrap points and the 3-D geography. Near the poles, things just aren't that far apart! Mountains and alpines are a different story, though.
As I said before, Steve and I plan to buy this when it comes out and hope to play it over and over again. Now I think it's time to go find some classic Edgar Rice Burroughs novels.
Moving on, I also wanted to mention another new Mayfair game, Catan Geographies: Germany. This is the Settlers of Catan system done on a semi-historical map of Germany. Game play is close enough to regular Catan that I was able to sit down at the demo and play with minimal instruction. You build settlements at defined town locations rather than any hex point, which means that the 2-spacing rule goes away. And the board is fixed rather than randomly generated, which has its good points and bad points. The distribution of the numbers seemed a little goofy. We got through most of a demo game at the booth before the dealer's room closed. I think this would be a lot of fun to play, but I couldn't quite bring myself to spend the $55 list price. Maybe I'll buy it next year with my 50% off coupon from the Mayfair Ribbon Quest. As a sort of consolation prize, when I was knighted for collecting my ribbons, I selected the Hesse (a state in Germany) scenario map for regular Catan as my free gift. It gives a little of the flavor and it's a fun way to mix up regular Catan without buying a whole new board.
Those were the highlights, but as always, much fun was had by all!