I. Ron Dragon

[dr4b]

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.

Comments

[somnium-lux.livejournal.com]

Note that the rule says "build into", not "build out of". The rule is separate from the "only build out of three major cites a turn" rule; they only interact when you want to build out of big city but can't because you built out of three of them already.

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.

[rmitz.livejournal.com]

That sounds right. I guessed there was a reason I had dismissed it before. :)

[somnium-lux.livejournal.com]

Oops, my bad. It should read "I think we more or less fully explored building routes to block players, and in a but a handful of cases it's more expensive to the person blocking than to the person being blocked." Sorry about that. :)