Saturday marked the end of Matthew's football season, the end of Jacob's regular season (they have a playoff game next weekend), and a chance for Jacob and I to try out a new Essen release: Through the Ages.  This is another civ building game, but unlike many in the genre there's no map.  This is essentially a card game that most reminded me of the 2005 release Parthenon: Rise of the Aegean.  The map in Parthenon was largely superfluous, and I applaud the Czech Board Games folks for streamlining the game in this manner.

Through the Ages comes with three different play levels: simple, advanced, and full.  The simple game is meant to introduce players to the basic mechanics with no direct conflict allowed between players.  This is what Jacob and I tried on Saturday night, starting at 8pm and finishing before 10pm.

Each player starts with a basic civ - despotism government, a couple of farms, a couple of mines, a lab, and a warrior.  These are represented by cards plus workers (little yellow glass stones).  In general, a card represents the capability of building something (i.e., the technology).  The yellow stones represent population, so when a yellow stone is on a card that signifies that you've built that building and are manning it to bring some good to your civ.

Your government determines the actions you can do on a turn, with the starting civ of Despotism giving each player 4 civil actions and 2 military actions.  Civil actions are used to draft cards, increase population, play cards, and build buildings.  Military actions are used to train new warriors in the simple game.

What I think makes the game special are the civil event cards.  These are brought out on a holding board and are purchased using civil actions.  These cycle through the board and get cheaper as they slide left (think of the drafting mechanism in Atlantic Star), with the three left-most cards leaving the game each turn in the 2-player game.  The cards allow players to customize their civ and choose their own path, including leadership, government, technologies, and production.

Our simple game felt like it was over almost before it started, and the designers should take this as a compliment.  It really is an introductory scenario and it served us well in teaching the basic mechanics of the game, and I was thrilled that we were able to complete this in less than two hours including setup and instruction.  We thought I had won, but in hindsight Jacob probably won as we miscounted some of the bonus points.

Jacob and I embarked on an advanced game this morning at 9am.  The advanced game includes all of the rules of the full game minus the ability to declare war (though there is military conflict) but is played without the 3rd age cards.

There's a system of checks and balances at work in the game, not unlike Antiquity.  You have to do some planning and forecasting to make sure that you keep enough resources (food and mined product) around to do the things you want to do, but not keep around too much.  The advanced game introduces the notions of happiness and corruption which forces players to balance their development, keep their population happy (mostly by supplying religion), and not stockpile too much of their goods.  It also forces a level of efficiency in production, as the finite number of resource counters can represent different numbers of raw goods depending on where they live.  A token on a basic iron mine may be worth 1 resource, while the same token on a bronze mine is worth 2 resources.

Jacob pulled ahead early in military strength which turned out to be a big advantage as the advanced game introduces military events, many of which benefit the player with the most strength (or hurt the player that is weakest).  I clawed my way back, mostly through superior resource production, and was able to slingshot past him in the last turn in military strength.  This gave me a 10 point bonus at the end which turned out to be the difference in the game.  The bonus came from a set of 4 random 3rd age event cards that we flipped over at the start of the game which specify bonuses players can earn based on the state of their civs.

We completed the advanced game in just under three hours and had a blast.  There's more interaction in the advanced game but this is still largely a do-your-own-thing sort of game.  The downtime was minimal with 2 players, but I can see it getting excessive with more players.  I do need to give the designers credit in specifying how to minimize downtime in the rules - they encourage the next player to start his turn once the current player completes his actions and starts end-of-turn production.  We followed this guidance and found the time between turns to be no more than 5-10 minutes, sometimes even less.  After 2 plays Jacob and I are rating this one a 9 and look forward to playing the full game.

Julie and I started the Game On! class this week at Matthew's school (read more here and here).  We ended up doing two classes to accomodate the 40 kids that signed up.  The Wednesday class is mostly 3rd/4th graders and the Thursday class is 4th/5th graders.  Julie will usually teach Wed and I'll take Thu, though with my travel schedule we will often flip things around.

Julie and I tag-teamed our first class on Wednesday.  We started with an overview of the class, discussed rules and guidelines, mentioned a few of the games we expect to play, then dove right into explanation of our first game: Walk the Dogs.

This turned out to be a great choice.  Julie had the great idea of having the kids rate the games on a 4-point scale (we are using Chuck's system) and most rated it a 4 with just a few giving it a 3.  Same results on Thursday.

All but one of the groups in the 2 days were able to finish their games.  Turns out the setup time for Walk the Dogs is longer than I remembered, so on the second day I took the time to set up the doggies ahead of time.  That is part of the fun of the game, but I figured it was a reasonable tradeoff to give the kids a better chance of finishing.

Next week we will likely play Pickomino, followed by Take it Easy.  After that we'll revisit all three games and give the kids the chance to pick one of them for play during an open gaming session.

This year I'd like to give a bit more information about the games I saw and played while at Essen.  I'll do another post where I talk some more about the Sunriver Games booth, but this one will just be focused on the games.  Most of you know it isn't my style to go into depth on any one game, so this post will give broad strokes across a wide range of games.

Fiji

This was the first game I saw played at the fair while stopping in on Tuesday to hopefully get started on booth setup.  This is one of the latest 2F games and I never got a chance to play it.  The main reason: I heard it was almost a pure blind bidding game and one friend indicated that she would rather play a simple roll and move game than this one given the chaos involved.  Maybe there's more there than I think, but this is one you should most certainly try before you buy.

Gloria Mundi

Another game I watched folks play (including Valerie Putnam and Lorna Wong - not sure who the other chap was).  This is the collaborative release from James Ernest and Mike Selinker and it is essentially a racing game with players trying to race to one end of the board while the goths race towards Rome.  Players have equivalent decks of cards in their hands that they use to produce certain resources that allow them to advance along the track, with the goth movement causing certain not-so-good things to happen to those resources.  I hope I got that approximately right.  This looks like one I'd like to try.

Shogun

All of you Wallenstein fans know about this one - the Japanese themed version of the now classic multi-player Euro-style war game based in Germany during the 30 years war.  Wallenstein has been out of print for a while so many folks who've had a chance to play it online at Mikael's spiel-by-web site have been anxiously awaiting this release.  I picked up a copy in a trade with Queen games and I'm quite excited.  Here are some differences from the original:

• A double-sided board.  In the words of Barbara Henn (Dirk's wife), one side is nicer and the other isn't so nice.  I'm certain nice meant "less confrontational" in this context.
• There are some new action cards that allowe players to directly influence the player order, which was a sometimes significant random element in Wallenstein.
• The cube tower appears to have a better construction than the original, though I'll need to see it.

One interesting piece of information I got from Queen was that they are generally releasing three versions of every game: German with only German language box and instructions, International A aimed at the Americas with English, French, Spanish, and German, and International B aimed at central Europe with French, Italian, Dutch, and German.

Alhambra the Dice Game

Given the wide range of games that are now branded in the Alhambra series we tried to convince Queen that "Alhambra the Numeric Domino Tile Laying Game" would be a good idea - not sure they bought it.  The new dice game is one I also picked up in the trade it looks like a nice dice rolling game that blends some of the Yahtzee mechanics with scoring based on the building styles/colors in the original Alhambra game.

Yspahan

I still feel that I don't know much about this game other than it is much lighter and shorter than its predecessors from Ystari (Caylus, Ys).  Jim Ginn quite liked it and I think he bought a copy.

Die Saulen von Venedig

AKA the "other Saulen" game, I never got a chance to sit down and play or watch this new Gold Sieber release.  The board makes it look fairly light but I could be wrong.  Very attractive box and bits though.

The Thief of Bagdad

The final new Queen release, this is a multi-player game where players play both the thieves trying to steal from Sultans (?) and the guards trying to prevent the thieves from stealing.  Clearly all sorts of room for bribery and corruption and I'm glad I picked up a copy - looks to be fun.

Die Siedler von Catan: Kampf um Rom

This is another Settlers game with a fixed board that appears to introduce a few new mechanics.  Mayfair will have the English version in very early 2007.

TurfMaster

My single most expensive acquisition over the weekend at 69 euro, this was an easy decision to buy after checking the 'geek and playing a game at their booth.  The component quality is amazing - painted horses, plastic deck boxes, and a very attractive double-sided board.  It also supports 2-8 players.

The game play is very tactical with just enough luck involved to keep things interesting.  Each player starts with a shuffled 32-card deck with numbers up to 12 (I'm not sure of the distribution).  A game is played over three races, with each player drawing 10 cards for each race.  Because the decks are identical, luck of the draw should even out over the three races.  The race is run by alternating moves where players play a card from their hand to move the indicated number of spaces followed by a move where one player rolls 2D6 to determine how all of the horses will move.  The player who rolls gets to decide how the dice are used: he can use both dice or just one of the two.  This responsibility rotates clockwise so a new player gets to choose each time.

The game really shines with the handicapping system whereby horses in the first three positions are limited in their maximum movement.  This means that a hand of all high cards can be a hinderance, because when you play a card that is over your handicap limit you move zero spaces instead of the indicated number.  This can be devastating towards the end of the race so hand management and planning is critical.  Further, if the player rolling the dice chooses a combined die roll that is over the handicap limit, the handicapped horse only gets to move with one of the two dice.

There are also very interesting rules about lane changes and spacing that I won't get into, but the game is easy to learn and I expect it to be a lot of fun.

Imperial

I thought this was going to be an automatic purchase for me but I decided to wait and see.  This is the next game from Eggertspiele that uses the same rondel mechanic for action selection, but I've heard that that is where the similarities with Antike end.  Interesting note: Matthias Catrein, our artist for Incan Gold, is also the artist for Imperial.

BattleLore

The game wasn't for sale but there were several demo copies at the Days of Wonder booth that saw heavy use.  It looks as nice as you would expect it to look and I'm sure it will be a great hit.

On the Underground

Another game I would have liked to have tried, but when Erik, Jim, and KC decided to play early in the week it was just too late for me to learn a new game and still be fresh enough for the morning.  Matthias also did the art and graphical design for this game.  The obvious comparisons were to Ticket to Ride, but there's enough different about the game to make it interesting.  Jeez, the map of the London Underground is enough to keep me interested!  I was also very impressed with the compact box for this game - this is a big board with nice bits all packed in a very small box.

Hamelyn

Didn't pre-order it, couldn't buy it, didn't play it.

Green Town

This Bambus Spiel release had a lot of promise when I watched Rick Soued, his son Alex, and Ned Medinger from Funagain play it.  The game involves tile laying, structure building, and traveling along increasingly lengthier routes in the town based on an objective card each player holds.

The problem is this - the game has a bad arc as it gets increasingly more difficult to plan moves as the game goes on, increasing downtime and analysis required for each player.  It just dragged on towards the end and didn't have a satisfactory resolution.  There's something good inside this game but I think it needed some more development.

Fowl Play

The new Richard Breese design had favorable comments but I didn't manage to learn much about the game.

Die Baumeister von Arkadia

One of my top 2 games in Essen, I already wrote a more detailed description of the game earlier in the week.

Salamanca

The driest of the bunch I played in Essen, I also wrote about this game earlier in the week.

Die Saulen die Erde (Pillers of the Earth)

While I didn't see a full play of this game, I did watch Jim Ginn play for a turn and finished his game while he had to return to the booth to meet up with Ben.  This game does have quite a bit of German text on cards, but they are always open so it is easy to discuss translations and recognition will be easy based on pictures and key words.

The basic mechanics of the game work like this (I just might get some of this wrong so be kind):

• Players allocate workers to a number of different resource areas (sand, wood, and stone) based on 7 of 9 different cards that are turned up each turn.  A player chooses a card then allocates the proper number of workers to that area and will harvest those resources later in the turn.  Extra workers can be used to earn gold.
• Each player has three action tokens that get dropped in an opaque bag.  A player pulls out a token at a time - the player owning the first token drawn gets the choice of going first if and only if he is willing to pay 7 gold.  If he decides not to, his token goes on the seven marker on a semi-circle at the bottom portion of the board.  The next player token is drawn and and offer to go is made at 6 gold, and so on, until it gets to zero gold.  At this point, the player order is just in the order drawn.  This is a creative way to randomize selection order while still making players pay for the right.
• When a player opts to place an action token, he places it in one of several regions on the board that will grant some benefit (a special card, protection from taxes, etc.).  These regions are then walked through in order where players take those actions.
• It seems like the main way players earn victory points is by getting work cards that transform different resources into VPs.

There are certainly some details and subtleties that I left out, but that's the basic idea.  Yes there are some similarities to Caylus but this is different enough to warrant a try if you like that sort of game.  There should be a Mayfair release of this Kosmos title in early 2007.

I'm sitting here in Carey's bathroom while Carey, Linda, Lorna, and Erik work on packing our various leftovers (not many!) and acquisitions into our return luggage.  It might all fit.

I want to say thank you to our booth helpers this year: Lorna, Jim, Marty, Erik, Tim, Carrie, Ben - thank you for your support of Sunriver Games and for donating your time and energy to making it another successful year.  We had a great celebration dinner at the Ystra tonight and the wine, food, and Narnia improv by Erik were memorable.

I got in a turn of Pillars of the Earth (Die Saulen der Erde) when Jim had to leave the game early to meet up with Ben.  This is a good game and I'm sorry I missed out on getting it (prices were going up during the day as the game was in short supply), but no fear - looks like Mayfair will have an English version early 2007.  This is the game to play if you want a shorter version of Caylus with an even stronger graphical design.

I'll do a more in-depth post-Essen report once I return where I can include some photos.

I managed to be just inside the main entrance in hall 12 (I forgot the cash box key in the hotel room) when the fair opened today - wow, what a crazy scene. People sprinting to demo tables to get a spot to try a new game.

Weather has been great, with only one day of rain and mild temperatures.

Just sold our first copy of 24/7 today - woot!

We are in the home stretch.  We had a great dinner at one of the nicer places I've seen around here - the name escapes me, but the food was on the gourmet side of things and a nice change from the regular fare.  The not-so-nice change was the tray full of water and apfelschorl that was spilled on my back and down my pants before I had my first beer. Apparently the waiter's first night as a waiter and not a bartender, and I think the balance of the 1/2 liter beer he served me through him off.

What a crowd today!  Busier than I remember last year and it was damn tiring going through the distributor/retailer booths (where the good deals can be found) let alone just getting from hall to hall.   Sales for 24/7 picked up a bit today - about 20 units sold and several given out as review copies (Moritz Eggert, Spielbox, Spiel des Jahres committee).  We have a cute teenage girl across the aisle that played each of our games at least twice today - apparently she's bored with her father's action hockey game.

I picked up the 20,000 Rails Under the Sea Age of Steam expansion for Peter plus a few of the freebie Settlers expansion given out at Kosmos.  I didn't play much today - it is very hard to get a seat at a demo table on Saturday.  KC and I had a great meeting with a product manager at Queen Games and we saw some sincere interest in his Metro 2 sequel.  We also ended up on the great side of a trade of games between our companies that landed me copies of Shogun, the Alhambra dice game, and the new Thief of Bagdad game. My only "real" purchase today was the Baumeister von Arkadai game for 22 euro - so far the hit of the show for me.

This morning I spent some time in the heart of Essen for the first time as I went downtown with Erik to ship some games to Lorna and Erik's gaming slave master Doug Garrett.  I think the two have shipped at least 6-7 boxes total.  I've been restrained enough that I should be able to fit everything in my two suitcases.  There's a nice little downtown here that I'm sorry I missed last year, and it is convenient enough that it may be worth staying at sometime in the future.

Jim and I are comparing notes on what we need to check out for tomorrow.  I think I'm done getting new games (unless I can swing a new trade or two) but we do have a few we want to try:

• Leonardo daVinci
• Space Dealer (real-time ship construction and trading)
• Perikles
• Yspahan

The game with the most buzz so far is what I've resolved to calling the Ken Follet game - a Caylus-style game based on a novel with a name I can't pronounce.  I've been worried about the card text in German, but Rick Thornquist assures me that cards are open and transalations are easy, so I shouldn't be afraid.  Maybe I can get a game in tomorrow before cleanup.

Trying out the Amigo card game Der Elefant here in the conference room at the Arosa. This is about the classic "elephant in the china shop" story (? I thought it was a bull).

According to Erik it has a series of scoring rounds similar to Too Many Cooks. I've played that game and have no clue what he's talking about, so I'll ask what to do each turn. Interesting element: everyone plays with their cards face up, so there's no hidden information in the game.

We are now scoring our first round and I have no idea what I've done except I scored the worst. Apparently I score my own china shop and I get to choose whether to count it as the lowest in each color, highest in each, highest overall, or sum of a total color.

Like many German card games the subtleties are... well, subtle. You've got to play a game or two to understand how to control the scoring. At least that's my excuse.

Second round - scored ALL of my cards for 26, which seems like a decent score. And I'm hardly paying attention (I'm blogging after all).

Third round - things are going really well. Scored highest in each color for a 22, which is very decent. Even excellent.

Final round - did well again and won the game with 75. Have no idea why. Hmmmm.

I'm here in the Messe hanging out in smoke-filled hall 4A between 4 and 5. Sorry for the lack of posts, but it is such a non-stop craze that it is hard to find time to even sit down for 5 minutes.

So far the day has been great (it is 6pm here). Havoc continues to be our best seller and we've nearly sold out of our remaining supply, including the expansions we brought. 24/7 is gaining momentum but wasn't the first day hit that Havoc was last year. The good news is that when people sit down to try it we almost always convert the demo into a sale.

Games I purchased today (I'm on about a $300 budget this year):

• Through the Ages - automatic purchase from the Czech Games dudes
• Turfmaster Deluxe - this is my big buy at 69 euro, but the game is a blast and I love the components.
• The Experiment - a cool little Belgian card game that won a design competition and got a free 1000 copy print run from Carta Mundi.
• 3 copies each of Pickomino and Cartagena for my games class - all of the above for a total of about 50 euro.
• A bunch of small stuff for Peter Loop and Mike Deans.
• Astoria - I don't care if the game is good... 20 euro for an engraved wooden box with 4 glass bottles and gems in it. Great value for bits.
• I pre-ordered the three train games / expansions from Winsome and picked those up today for 75 euro.

One highlight of the week so far is spending an hour in Reiner Knizia's hotel room getting pitched about 6 of his games for possible publication by Sunriver. We are going to try out 3 of them.

We've had great support from our demo team, and many fans have come back to say hi after purchasing Havoc last year. Most ask where my family is :-(.

Hard to tell what the big buzz of the show is. On the Underground is getting some hype but reviews are mixed from the folks I talked to. Gloria Mundi and Perikles look pretty nice. I have room for 1 or 2 more games so I'll be picky and get something on Sat or Sun.

I'll try and get another report out tomorrow!  Check out some photos over at Flickr - I'll keep adding to the set.

The time is quickly approaching where I'll board a Lufthansa flight here in Portland to join a bunch of my partners and friends for the trek to Essen.  Sunriver Games will again have a booth at the fair (hall 4, booth 69) and we'll be selling 24/7: the Game, Abagio, Havoc: the Hundred Years War, and the Havoc Expansion.

Preparing for the show has been nowhere near as involved and tiring as last year.  Ludo Fact handled all of the final production for 24/7 and the first set of copies will be delivered directly to our booth.  Quite a bit easier than hand assembling, shrinkwrapping, and carting the games to Essen in our luggage.

Not to say that we don't need to bring any games with us.  We are going to take about 35 copies of Abagio and KC came up with the brilliant idea of packing 4 Havocs inside each Abagio box (yes, there's an excess of air in the box).  This will allow us to bring about 100 copies of Havoc (supply is dwindling, and what we have leftover after the show will be sold through Funagain).  There are currently no plans for a reprint though we will reconsider in 2007.

We have a few special promotions going on at the show:

• We are giving away some very nice "Gamers Do It 24/7" buttons to folks that try a demo of 24/7: the Game at our booth.
• We will be giving away the very cool Start Spieler spinning fingers to folks that spend 20€ or more at our booth.
• We are running some 24/7 contests and raffle giveaways of a very nice handmade wooden board for the game.  We will also raffle off some spiffy Sunriver Games t-shirts.

We also managed to pack our buttons and the Havoc Expansion into the dead space in the Abagio boxes.

Carey purchased three travel trunks to cart all of the goods.  With my Star Alliance Gold status, I should be able to check all three of the trunks without any extra cost with Lufthansa.  Fortunately (or unfortunately) this should give us lots of space to pack up purchased games on the home trip.

If you are heading to the show, you might enjoy listening to my segment in the Dice Tower, episode 23 where I talk about 10 things you need to know about going to Essen.  See you at the show!

I recently picked up the Avalon Hill game Nexus Ops from Toys R Us (great deal - $19.99 with free shipping) and we all sat down to give it a try today.  The game is meant to be a fast-moving build-your-units-and-attack style game and it certainly achieves this goal.  Originally it was just going to be the three boys playing, but Jacob and Matthew managed to talk Julie into joining us.

Each player starts with some money (Rubium), with early player advantage offset by a lower starting bankroll.  On your turn you produce units, move them, flip over any discovered exploration tiles (which can be mines, new units, or both), resolve combat, receive income from mines, and finally draw a secret mission card.

The goal is to achieve 12 victory points (we set our limit at 10 to speed up the game), and you get victory points primarily by attacking and winning.  There are other ways to get points - Secret Mission cards - but most of those involve winning battles in certain locations, winning with certain kinds of units, or destroying certain kinds of enemy units.  Given that all players are racing to the VP condition, there's no way a player can turtle and build up and win the game.  This keeps the game moving quickly and encourages confrontation.

Matthew raced out to an early lead with 5 VPs while the rest of us were at 1 or 2.  The rest of us caught up quickly and we were facing a close contest with everyone in the 5-7 point range.  On what turned out to be the last turn of the game, Jacob asked me if I was going to be able to win on my turn (I think I had 6 points at the time) and when I said "no" he said "oh, I think I will then."  And he did, winning a few one-sided battles that triggered some 2 point secret mission VP cards.  Final score was Jacob: 10, Chris: 9, Julie: 7, and Matthew: 5.

Ratings on the game by the group were high - all 8s and 7s.  Given the short play length (easily played in an hour or slightly more depending on the ending conditions) I think this one will come out more than usual.

Time for a quick update on my unplayed games burndown project.  In my last update, I mentioned that I need to kick the playing and possibly the getting-rid-of into high gear.  I think I did pretty well in August and September.

The top line (red plus the blue) shows the overall size of my game collection that has been unplayed at some point in the year.  It dropped down significantly in August as I sold and donated a number of games.  It bumped up a bit as I picked up a few games: Antiquity, Roads and Boats, and Canal Mania, but net I made good progress.  I'm down to about 30 or so to play, so I should be in good shape by the end of the year.  The key, though, is this: not buying games at Essen that I don't play at Essen!

Nearly a month ago I spent the better part of a Saturday over at Doug's to play the Splotter game Antiquity.  Doug already did a great job of describing the session in detail, so I'll limit my commentary here to my impressions.

We started the game using the forgiving beginner rules - no polution, no famine.  As a group we decided to kick it in around the 5th or 6th turn.  In hindsight, it would have been better to start with those rules or not use them at all.  We just weren't ready to handle it, and as we scrambled to prepare a few of us came precariously close to a death spiral.  Much of my first town filled up with graves, though I built a second town in time to provide some space for new buildings.

Down-time can be a problem with the game if the players aren't taking about the same time for each move.  Even though much of the game can be played with parallel activity, I still found myself waiting quite a bit.  No dig on the other players at all - it is a very thoughtful game!  Still, I'm not sure a 3rd and 4th player adds much to the game, as you spend the first half in solitaire mode and the second half bumping into 1 or maybe 2 other players.  I think the right way for me to play this game is with 2 players - it will play faster and will be just as enjoyable.

As it was, we didn't manage to finish the game as I had to get home for some guests that were having dinner with us.  I felt liked I played the game enough to understand all the mechanics and look forward to trying it again, perhaps with Jacob or Ken.  This is a pretty brutal game as far as planning and forecasting go - I compare it to predicting cashflow in a business.  Matthew wouldn't be ready for it yet, but I think Jacob would enjoy it if he's in the right state of mind.

I'm running a weekly morning gaming class for kids at Archer Glen Elementary.  On this page you can find a list of games we'll be playing this year as well as links to Funagain Games where you can purchase most of the games.  Another local option for finding these games is the wonderful Rainy Day Games store in Aloha.  The SimplyFun games listed at the bottom can be purchased through my friend and SimplyFun consultant Mike Deans.  This is a page I expect to update from time to time, so I'll keep a permanent link on the home page.

From SimplyFun games:

I broke down and purchased the newest Ragnar Brothers game Canal Mania after reading the Counter review and seeing some positive buzz online.  Seeing that folks were comparing it to games like Volldampf and Ticket to Ride really piqued my interest so I took a chance.

The components are very high quality and I suspect better than any game Ragnar has done to date.  The board is thick with a linen finish and I found it fairly usable.  The main complaint is that it is hard to read the city names when you have barges and goods cubes on them.  Set in the late 18th / early 19th century, the game is about the frenzy of canal building that happened in England before trains took over.  But at its heart this really is "just another train game".

Each player randomly assumes the role of one of five different engineers that grant special abilities - these roles will change (view them as consultants working for your business and expect them to be hired away by the competition).  The basic idea of the game is to build canals between cities according to contracts granted by parliament (e.g., build a canal from Leeds to Liverpool).  Points are scored for using special kinds of canal tiles (locks, aqueducts, and tunnels) but not for the basic "stretch" tiles that are plain jane canals.  The catch is that you can never place two of the same kind of tile in a row along a canal.

You build canals by playing cards from your hand that can be drafted during your turn.  Similar to Ticket to Ride, the general idea is that you can draft cards or build canals but not both on a given turn.  So... the basic way to score points is to pick up contracts (you must always be working on at least one contract, but you can hold no more than two)and build canals to finish the contracts.  Contracts don't score points directly, but there's a nice bonus at the end (depends on the number of players) for completing the most.

The other way you can score points is by transporting goods.  At the end of your turn you can transport a good between two towns.  The last link followed by the good must be one of your own, but it can pass through others' towns along the way.  The restriction is that a good can only go through each color once, including the start and end town (I believe there are six different colors).

Instead of doing an action in a phase, you can always choose to draw a card from the top of the face-down build deck.  So if there are no goods to transport, you can always take a free card.

I played with KC, Rita, and Carey, and KC stomped us.  He mostly raced ahead through shipping goods, taking advantage of the replenishment rules that keep bringing goods back to towns that are connected to canals.  I didn't really think that through and left some goods around in my towns, wanting to wait until the routes got juicier and would score more points.  I didn't take into consideration that it would be fairly easy to get goods back (goods replenishment is triggered by picking up build cards with a goods symbol on them) into those towns, so I probably wasted 3-4 turns about about 6-12 points being cautious.

I'm pleased with the game overall and think the team did a good job with development - it is fairly streamlined and easy to play once you get past a few of the special rules.  I would put it in between Age of Steam and Ticket to Ride in complexity, and probably closer to the Ticket to Ride side of the spectrum.

Chris Palermo does an amazing job with INDEPTH, the free PDF gaming magazine from the Long Island Boardgamers.  I worked with Chris on setting up an RSS feed for the magazine, and it is up and working.  If your feed reader supports auto-downloading of enclosures you can aggregate the PDF files right onto your desktop.