AAR by Richard

Thanks for playing today. It turned out to be a very exciting photo

finish. It was neck and neck between Jeff and I for a while and then

Mark made a big move late game getting the delivery bonus for Duluth to

shoot into contention with the final turn to come. Everyone was tightly

clustered for most of the game except for Simon who lagged behind. But

there was a cunning plan in play which no-one saw coming.

Well done to Simon for almost pulling off a miraculous literally come

from behind victory scoring 24 points in the final calculations for

completing 3 Major Lines.

This game was good in that it showed the importance of the Major Lines,

which hadn't been pursued by anyone in the last game. So another thing

to keep in mind other than just deliveries.

Whilst negative play can sometimes be counter productive, there is

certainly a place for some careful blocking particularly if someone is

trying to complete a major line. Some of us might well have thought

about the value of blocking Simon and his quest for a major line (with

the benefit of hindsight), but Simon did it very well though with being

so far back, no-one was really paying much attention to him and he

nearly pulled it off.

Speaking of negative play, I was pleased to finally not be the Villain

for once, with Mark taking over that mantle for this game when he

brutally shut down Jeff for a couple of turns. Did he really need to be

that aggressive on turn 1? I think we can call him the Robber Baron, for

this game at least.

With a lot of other maps (Western USA, Mexico, Canada, Australia and the

associated special rules and features for those maps) and possibly

playing the Trans-Continental scenario, there is more to explore with

this series. Something to look forward to in the future.

One Sided Miniature Wargaming Discourse