Cambourne*

Railway Rivals game 8—Turn 12 and Game End

Previous turns: Turn 11 Turn 10 Turn 9 Turn 8 Turn 7 Turn 6 Turn 5 Turn 4 Turn 3 Turn 2 Turn 1 Start-up

Races

JACOBAHN nearly catches THURB, but just falls short. The others score, but don’t change their positions.

Race	From	To	THURB	LATGALE	BLUE	JACOBAHN	BALTIC
36	14	64				10JR	10JR
37	11	46				20-5+6	10-6+5
38	21	32				10	20
39	22	41		0+7	20-1	0+1	10-7
40	33	54	10	0+3	0-3	20
41	52	S4	20
42	66	S5	0	0+2	10-2	20
TOTAL			30	12	24	82	42

Builds

Player A
The Heavily Underfunded Railway Business (THURB) - Jonathan Palfrey (GREEN)
Start: Daugavpils
Score: 309 +30 = 339

Player B
Locomotive Latgale - Emrys Hopkins (RED)
Start: Riga
Score: 224 +12 = 236

Player C
Blue Mountain Railways - Gerald Udowiczenko (BLUE)
Start: Zilupe
Score: 119 +24 = 143

Player D
Jacobahn – Mark Cowper (BLACK)
Start: Liepaja
Score: 242 +82 = 324

Player E
Baltic Rail – Paul Evans (BROWN)
Start: Ventspils
Score: 168 +42 = 210

Game end statements

Blue Mountain Railways (Blue): Gerald Udowiczenko, 5th

I took over a network that had gone off in strange directions, and then Mike has a special die he uses for me.

Baltic Rail (Brown): Paul Evans, 4th

Not a lot I can say about this as I inherited the network and just ran the races. The Baltic Rail network must have suffered from missing a turn’s builds, but I thought it was decent enough.

In the event, having a direct east-west route seems to be a good idea. Having said that, THURB did best by concentrating on the eastern two-thirds of the map. Congratulations to Jonathan for a fine win.

Latgale (Red): Emrys Hopkins, 3rd

I’d like to congratulate Jonathan for his comfortable victory.

Starting in Riga my plan was to build a central “spine” and benefit from joint runs to destinations I’d not reached. I wasn’t expecting Colin/Paul and Mark C to get as far east as they did, for Mark W/Gerald to get that far west nor for Jonathan to completely ignore the “1~” and “2~” destinations by stopping his westward expansion once he’d reached Riga, yet still manage to rack up quite so many victories in races. As the final totals show only too clearly, mine was not the correct strategy for this map!

Jacobahn (Black): Mark Cowper, 2nd

Firstly, congratulations to Thurb on winning. I started in the worst place (IMO) at Liepaja, with very few towns in easy reach. As Baltic Rail took the northern towns in the Western corner, I concentrated on the taking the Southern towns to try and reach Riga, only to find my route north via Riga to Estonia blocked by Latgale. So I decided to change plans and travel south of the big river that cuts the country in half (E-W) and join to Russia, before curving north to Estonia, establishing an East-West link. This seems to have worked OK, though I missed the rule of entering more than 3 races early on (Turns 7 and 8) and missed a few more points. If Blue Mountain Railways had stayed the course, I might have been closer.

Thurb (Green): Jonathan Palfrey, 1st

I thought this a rather unpromising map: almost flat, and covered with unfamiliar names. However, the game turned out quite interesting anyway; thanks to Mike and the other players! The flat map isn’t as dull as I expected: on a hilly map, the hills often force your choice of route, but without the hills there are more route options.

In game 7, I tried to cover the whole map as best I could, and wasn’t displeased with my network, but I came third out of four. The winner, Ben Brown, concentrated on getting good coverage of the more densely-populated half of the map, and ignored the other half (roughly); so in game 8 I decided to learn from that experience, and resolved to ignore Latvia west of Riga, enabling me to concentrate on the eastern side. It seemed to work fairly well, even though my network isn’t ideal and I don’t feel satisfied with it.

I thought that starting at Riga would be a significant advantage, and initially expected Emrys to win for that reason. His network is wide-ranging and looks good, but maybe he spread himself out too much; and it seems a pity not to have grabbed the Riga-Jurmala route in the first turn.

Mark started on the less-populated western edge (a disadvantage, I think) and then spread himself out dangerously; but he’s scored well, so congratulations to him.

GM Comments

Quite a hard map to read, and I’m grateful to Jonathan for working one up in a package. Thanks to Paul and Gerald for stepping in and supplying orders to the finish of the game. I thought Riga, while central, would find his network cut up by late comers and not get to the corners, but I thought the east side of the map had better prospects than the west. Latgale was unfortunate in some of the races, but in the end THURB’s predictions were wrong and he won a narrow victory.

For the next game, I think I want a map with names I recognise… Chilterns maybe? No, I’ll go for Scotland: lots of hills and the names are all familiar.

* Trains do not stop at Cambourne on Wednesdays.