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I. Ron Dragon
Woooooooooooooooooooo!
Brian and I finally got some people together to play Iron Dragon! I went out to Microsoft, building 50's cafeteria thingy because they do TEBG there. Drew came, as did one of Brian's coworkers, Tom. We broke out my set of Iron Dragon, which I have had for 2-3 years and had never opened. So, we explained the rules, and got down to playing. I started out with some pretty crappy contracts and never really caught up. Tom, who had never played before, got a ton of great Olde World contracts and so he pulled ahead on money early, but Brian was pretty close on his heels. Oddly, when I finally connected 7 cities, I was ahead on money at the time, but I had no decent contracts going on, so bleh. I finished the game with 206 money, and a contact for 49, but it would have taken me a boat and riding Drew's tracks to fill it, so bleh. Tom won pretty soundly. And, as usual, the BOARD TOTALLY SCREWED ME OVER. I swear. I have *proof*!
Drew and Brian and I adjourned to get dinner and play some more games. Well, kinda. We went to the Celtic Bayou, but they had a private party going on... so we decided to go to Claim Jumper. We brought in Ricochet Robot, and played it through ordering, and through eating dinner, and through dessert, and oddly nobody tried to stop us, infact a waiter came over and asked us about how the game works and stuff.
Good stuff.
Oh sigh. I have stayed up too late talking to people online again. This is not a good way to start the week.
I want to see Ocean's Twelve, and soon.
Brian and I finally got some people together to play Iron Dragon! I went out to Microsoft, building 50's cafeteria thingy because they do TEBG there. Drew came, as did one of Brian's coworkers, Tom. We broke out my set of Iron Dragon, which I have had for 2-3 years and had never opened. So, we explained the rules, and got down to playing. I started out with some pretty crappy contracts and never really caught up. Tom, who had never played before, got a ton of great Olde World contracts and so he pulled ahead on money early, but Brian was pretty close on his heels. Oddly, when I finally connected 7 cities, I was ahead on money at the time, but I had no decent contracts going on, so bleh. I finished the game with 206 money, and a contact for 49, but it would have taken me a boat and riding Drew's tracks to fill it, so bleh. Tom won pretty soundly. And, as usual, the BOARD TOTALLY SCREWED ME OVER. I swear. I have *proof*!
Drew and Brian and I adjourned to get dinner and play some more games. Well, kinda. We went to the Celtic Bayou, but they had a private party going on... so we decided to go to Claim Jumper. We brought in Ricochet Robot, and played it through ordering, and through eating dinner, and through dessert, and oddly nobody tried to stop us, infact a waiter came over and asked us about how the game works and stuff.
Good stuff.
Oh sigh. I have stayed up too late talking to people online again. This is not a good way to start the week.
I want to see Ocean's Twelve, and soon.
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- Taking boats is useless. You spend way too much money and time doing it, and you don't get any track out of the bargain. In turn, this makes the Wee Folk worth nothing as a foreman, makes ports worth nothing for the most part, and makes areas like the northeast islands of the board not worth going to. We had some ideas to fix it (don't wait a turn either on embarking or disembarking and make the boats cost less to take) but this brings up a host of other issues with game balance. Suffice it to say that the concept is neat but still needs a lot of work.
- Speaking of useless foreman, most of the foremen in the game are useless except the dwarf and the elf. The catman has a use every long once in a while (if you really want that ivory in the jungle or the regular route to the southeast gets crowded in a 5-6 player game), as does the troll (for blasting through rock in a crowded Underground), but usually most players sit on the dwarf and the elf all game, making switching foremen mostly pointless. It's even worse than that, actually, because if you switch foremen at all in a 5-6 player game you risk losing your elf or dwarf to someone that doesn't have one. Again, a good idea that needs some serious rebalancing.
- There's biases in contract distribution that become obvious after many games, and they're not at all equally distributed. This makes certain cities and routes worth less to experienced players, and hampers long-term replayability. In particular, taking the overland route to Kola or starting in Eaglehawk is almost guaranteed to make you lose against experienced players. In turn, this tends to crowd the Underground (which is the most efficient 7-city-connecting route track-length-wise) and makes Eaglehawk-area resources scarce. An extra set or two of contract cards would be grand to randomly choose from, but they're a real pain to construct for the hobby player.
- As the foregoing comment implies, cards mean a lot. I'd say maybe half of games are strongly influenced by contract distribution, meaning that bad contracts can make it difficult (or impossible) for you to win solely based on contract distribution. In particular, Rainbow Bridge can make or break a game for players, and is by far the most important card in the deck. Some cards have little effect, too, and should be reworked (volcano eruption and War Tax, to name two).
- There are a small number of ambiguities with coastal mileposts. A few coastal segments look like you might be able build track across them without getting charged extra for crossing the inlet, but it's hard to tell for sure.
- Charging 5 to build into any major city is stupid, because you can build out from any major city. Except in the very rare case that you have already built out from 2 major cities that turn, the fee should never be charged to smart players.
- Having the turn order progess circularly gives the first 2 players an undue advantage in setup in 5 and 6 player games. We fixed this by bouncing the turn order back at the last and first players for rounds 2 and 3, but it really should have been in the rules to begin with.
Despite all these qualms, I still love the game and have played it more than most games of comparable time length. I criticize only because I'm sad about what could have been with some more playtesting and foresight.
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Not exactly true. It's been a long time since I've played, but I think that if an early player could build enough segments from each city on turn one, they could lock down some of the best routes for themselves.
Of course, one could combat this specifically when it came up, but I remember having that thought at some point.
In any case, I agree with the rest of your points. That said, I don't view that ignoring boats is a bad thing, anyway.
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It's not really worth it to lock down good routes most of the time anyway. I think we more or less fully explored building routes to block players, and in all but a handful of cases it's more expensive to the person blocking than to the person doing the blocking. You have to leave certain numbers of routes open anyway, as specified in the rules.
Locking down good routes is nice too, of course, but there's only a few that are really contested enough that you might want to do that. (The middle of the board, the southeast corridor of the main continent, and the underground pretty much cover it.)
The thing that stinks about ignoring boats is that it's one of the few things that's not in the other crayon rails games, and could've made Iron Dragon stand out more. Without them it becomes a lot more like the other crayon rail games, and makes part of the board next to worthless to boot.
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Anyway -- I disagree with you on a few points.
1) It costs 5 to build into a major city because of the Alpine posts. Otherwise, you could get away with not paying 5 to build through them, if you were clever.
2) Boats are not useless. I don't think you spend too much money, for one -- you know you only pay for the TRIP, not per turn, of using the boat? Also, we were playing with the 1.5 speed rule (all trains go 1.5 their listed speed, so a Teapot goes 15 and an Iron Dragon goes 24) and it applied to boats too. So most reasonable boat trips could be made in 2 turns. I do agree that the Weefolk are useless.
3) Rainbow bridge would be better with the old "Only lasts one turn" rule.
4) Starting in Eaglehawk is bad because you'll be fighting for Bluefeld territory later. However, having a track to Eaglehawk early on can be good, because people will pay you to use it rather than build it themselves at that point, especially if you're playing 1.5 or 2 speed trains.
Cards DO mean a lot, though. I've wondered sometimes if I don't win these games because I get bad contracts, or because I don't optimize my cards/contracts properly. This past game, I just know that Tom got MUCH better contract cards than anyone else, straight out.
I mean, I love Iron Dragon. I wish people would play it more. Most of my friends that used to love it are just totally burned out on it now.
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Currently downloading Ocean's Twelve as well. Despite a less-than-stellar IMDB rating, I've heard many good things, so I want to see it anyway.
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Contracts can totally suck, but I think everyone takes a beating from them on average. Tom also had nice profits from his track through the underworld, like mine to Nordecassle.
As for the complaint about boats, I agree that either reducing the embark / disembark time or increase their speed. These help different parts, like not taking turns to embark, etc speeds up short trips. Maybe counting the boat / trains movement against the total that turn; for example: boat moves 8 and docks, then you can move the teapot two more.
I'd also like to see Ocean's Twelve at some point.
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You think you want to see it. And even after me telling you that it was really bad, you'll still see it I'm sure (I saw it even though I heard it wasn't good). But yeah. After you see it, you'll think you wasted your time even though you knew there was no way you weren't going to see it no matter what people said.
At least it was somewhat funny. But I saw it hoping for a neat plotline again. Plotline premise sucked. They also committed what I sort of count as a faux pas in movies. That made it lame.
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I know how staying up late is. I have the same problem, staying up late chatting, then realizing I still need to do the dishes and laundry before bed.
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I've never heard of any of the games you mentioned! hehehe
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You should go bug