New players, fresh perspectives

My wife's nephew and niece stayed with us last week for a few days. Nicholas is 15, and Shelby 13(?), and of course I had to introduce them to some new games...

We played Alhamra, Railroad Tycoon, and Tigris and Euphrates card game once. Starfarers of Catan, we played three times.

Alhambra was excellent, I wish we had more time for it. A close game, we played with Grayson and everyone was riveted to each play. They took it really serious, and it showed in a tight game.

Railrooad Tycoon I played with Nick. and it was a blast. I lost by a single point, chosing the Northeast and building South and the West across the mountains to Pittsburgh, then Toledo and Chicago. Nick won in the SE and then out of Chicago and some key links in the South. He did a much better job claiming special victory point cards than I, and limited his borrowing to only one share to my three. Really enjoyed this one, looking forward to playing it with Kevin and our Northampton group.

Tigris and Euphrates was a bust I'd say, Nick was not to interested in the theme, we played it out but he didn't enjoy it and because of that neither did I. One problem with it that I see, is the space required equals that of the regular game! One of the advantages of any card game should be space reduction, this one requires a full table to set up 8 long columns of cards.

Starfarers was a bit of a surprise, as neither Nick or Shelby seem to have any love of sci-fi in their background - I thought the "garrish" bits and tacky theme would be a turn off. As it turns out, they went each of three different nights, Nick winning twice, and myself once. Grayson had a blast (so to speak) building maximum cannons on his ships, and Shelby and I generally raced to the different trade spots, and attempted to corner the market on the aliens. Nick cleverly snatched one from me to win the first game, and conquered the pirates and ice planets in the second (the first time I've seen anyone bother with these) for the extra VP's needed to win.

In third game, I finally figured out the necessity of getting to the aliens first, and then stealing one or two away from other players to come from behind. A balanced strategy, and playing for second place most of the game are strategies to often work in regular Settlers, and was the same here.

My big complaint with Starfarers are the pieces - I believe 3 of the 4 spaceship models all have their clips broken, so no boosters can be added. A fourth ship has it's top snapped off. For someone who takes good care of his games, this can be maddening!

While I am at it, it looks like I a missing a white building tile from Alhambra after our last Gathering (large groups are always hard on your games), and this will probably ruin it for me. :)