Skip navigation

Tag Archives: Rolling Freight

Of Firefly, Trains, and Trucks

Over the last couple of months we’ve played lots of games. Ben is still running us through a Savage Worlds 50 Fathoms game, but we’ve also played a lot of board games. Here’s the “catch-up” version of what we’ve been up to.

Firefly: The Game
We enjoyed this game, although don’t believe the playing time on the box. It says two hours, but it took us three evening of about three hours each to finish the game. Granted, it was out first game and I do have to play with Mike, Ben, and Owen who all fret over making a mistake and thus can take a long time working out their optimum move.

Firefly: Out to the Black
This is a Firefly cooperative card game. We played it a couple time because we lost the first game. We don’t like to lose cooperative games. While we liked the game, we didn’t think it was great. More of a ho-hum Firefly card game. We may play it again…and maybe not.

Great Heartland Hauling Co.
This is a card game that includes wooden trucks and cubes. You basically try to make the most money buying, hauling, and selling goods. We like this game. It is fun, doesn’t take too long to play, and has a good amount of strategy involved. We’ll worth the price.

Railways of England and Wales
This is one of our favorites in the “Railways” series of games. It’s also near and dear to the heart of Ben and Owen who both hail from England. Strangely I like it because I somehow know England’s geography better than the US. This is because I’ve learned all of my geography from games.

Rolling Freight
This is another cube moving train game like the “Railways” games, but plays completely different. In the “Railways” game, the initial distribution of the cubes plays hugely into how the game will go and what cities will be popular. In Rolling Freight, I think which board you use plays a much bigger part in your strategy. We used a different board this time. It wasn’t until it was too late that I realized my strategy from the other board was completely wrong for this board. Oh well.

I’m now all caught up. But you didn’t mention… Shut up.

Below are some pictures from our games.

Great Heartland Hauling Co.

Great Heartland Hauling Co.

Railways of England and Wales

Railways of England and Wales

Rolling Freight 1

Rolling Freight 1

Rolling Freight 2

Rolling Freight 2

 

Rolling Freight

rolling freight
We got together and played another game of Rolling Freight. Mike had never played it, so we quickly explained the rules to him. Ben also offered lots of advice on the best strategy for the game. Of course, Ben didn’t follow any of his own advice. (He never seems too.) Ben. Owen, and I have played the game 1.3 times before. Here’s a link to the earlier games. (I never get tired of reading it.)

Our game started out pretty normally except that Ben was really slow to earn any victory points. Usually this is Owen. But just like Owen, Ben caught up and soon was leading (or at least a contender for the lead.) Towards the end of the game, Owen started falling behind and Ben started closing the gap on the leader, me. I think had the game gone much longer, Ben would have pasted me and won. As it was though, I was able to hold him off and win the game. I am currently undefeated after 2.3 games.

I’ve figure out my secret to winning…or at least doing well in the game. Yep, I didn’t realize what I was doing up to now. That should be no surprise to the rest of the guys. I noticed at the end of this game that I did one thing similarly in all of the games. I think that “one thing” is the landmark “thing” one should do to win the game. And I plan on doing that “thing” again, if we play again.

Chaos Steve

Rolling Freight

rolling freight
We met at Ben’s to play another new train game called Rolling Freight. We replace Evil Mike (who was on vacation) with Mike Byrd. A good trade in any dimension.

The board to this game just looks weird…and maybe complicated. Thankfully, once you understand the rules, it all becomes clear. (Ok, so maybe that’s true with all games, but just look at the board!) One cool thing is the game has its own colorful dice and lots of them. Gamers like dice and bright, flashy objects…er, colors.

We played two games, sort of. I’m going to capitalize this next sentence because I’ll never get to write it again. WE STOPPED THE FIRST GAME OF ROLLING FREIGHT BECAUSE I WAS SO FAR AHEAD. Yes, you read that right. I was so far ahead that it completely demoralized the other guys. (They hate losing to me.) Apparently I picked up on how to score points—and lots of them—pretty quickly. Or I was incredibly lucky. You decide.

So we started again. The game has three phases. After the third phase the game ends. Due to time constraints on my part, we had to stop after phase two. Just as phase two was ending I managed to get a bunch of points by building new track. This is how the game differs from the other train game we play. In this game there are a lot of points to be had just by building track. After scoring, I had a substantial lead. I left and then Ben and Owen finished their final turns. Ben said he’d tell me how the game ended. His email stated “Steve won.” That’s it. No embellishment. No scores. In the end, that’s all I needed to hear anyway. :)

Chaos Steve