I joined up with the Madison Board Gamers this afternoon for some cardboard amusements. Only Todd was there when I showed up, and someone had just gone to lunch, so we played Jambo, a medium-length game for two players. You are both Swahili traders, trying to make 60 gold by buying low and selling high. There were a lot of things going on, and to play well, you would need to read all the cards. You buy and sell goods from a common store, and players can interact by playing special cards that make you discard, or earn you gold for cards, break the rules, etc. I need to play it a few more times to see if I like it, but it didn't initially strike me as a new favorite.

Once everyone returned, we began the second game, Russian Rails, my first crayon train game with pickup and deliver mechanics. You use Crayola crayons to connect the dots on the board and make your tracks, then pick up goods from certain cities and drop them off in others. There is some nice tension about what to focus on with the demands you get, but there's enormous downtime, and when you get your plan set, you feel like you're on auto-pilot for two or three moves. I never really felt worried that I wouldn't make my delivery, as I often do trying to complete tickets in Ticket to Ride. Also, the game took over three hours (I had to cut out about 1/3 of the way through the game, so they might still be playing...) I might be willing to play this again, but I definitely won't buy it; I find my tastes run more toward low and medium complexity games, clocking in at around an hour, two at the most.

I ran in to Brett there, another Madison Board Game Designer, and we're going to try and have a playtest session next weekend, and get some outside feedback on our designs. He also has Reef Encounter, which Laura and I are dying to play.

Later this evening, after a full meal of beans and rice (it's another bean week at the Goadriches...) Laura and I played our first games of Tom Tube, a space-themed tile-laying connection game, which was a gift from my brother and sister-in-law. You are an astronaut who's trying to pick up two solar counters and return home before the other player, but you are building travelling routes as you go, and every tile has both yours and your opponents colors on it. It was fun to create a maze and then try to run through it the fastest, gathering points as we go. Laura is on a streak with this game, winning two in a row; I'm sure it will hit the table more often this month.