Wednesday 13 January 2010

Steamin' Tuesday!

or Steam on Tuesday...

Last night was the weekly Wednesday night game at Darren's place, except we have switched to Tuesdays. This week, following our new system of 2 player games one week (last week was Twilight Struggle) and Wallace games the next, we played the Mayfair train game Steam.

Steam is part of the Age of Steam game family because it does share certain elements with both Age of Steam and Railroad Tycoon. I consider Railroad Tycoon as the friendlier game and Age of Steam the game that wants to knife you in the alley...

Steam started off as close race with me pulling out to an early revenue lead and Bruce plummetting to -8 revenue deficit. This was not to last. I developed in the Southwest corner on the US map (the NE USA map), Bruce at the top with Ottawa, Darren was in the Boston - Hartford area and John was caught between Darren and I.

Darren took control of the game about turn 5 and never looked back, as John was forced to use Darren's tracks in places to ship goods. Darren's margin of victory was the amount of delivery John did on his tracks. We finished the game in about 2.5 hours, as we had two new players and John and I each had one play.

Final scores were: Darren 35, Bruce 32, John 30, the other John 27.

Whenever I play Steam or Age of Steam, I always finish the game smiling. I find this game so enjoyable that I could play it more often then I do.

1 comment:

Darren Bezzant said...

I really enjoyed this game (amplified by the fact that I won :)). There are definitely a lot of different strategies that became apparent and a lot of opportunites for player interaction.

Thanks John for teaching this game to the group, I can't wait until we get it to the table again.