Age of Steam: India

I got lucky to play one of my new Age of Steam maps. This one is about India. There are a couple of changes to the rules (of course). The first is that a die is rolled to simulate monsoon rains. Depending on the roll (0:0, 1-5:1, 6:2), money must be payed for upkeep to your tracks. The killer part is that this happens *before* you collect income. How painful. Especially since I rolled a 6 for 5 times during the game. The second rules change is that no dice are rolled for goods production. Instead, goods come out when unique players connect to the corresponding city.

In this game, I struck off by myself. And was fortunate enough to be left alone. I was also able to secure the Engineer for first the three rounds. This allowed me to get my engine level up which I used to make long deliveries. I jumped out far ahead of the others and stayed that way for the entire game. There was one moment during the game where I was set up to make a couple of 5 long blue deliveries. The turn before Jon took Urbanization. I was worried that he might spot the Urbanization that would ruin these deliveries. But he didn’t. Phew. Then Marty gets first choice of actions selects an action and then takes it back to perform the harmful Urbanization. He was in last place and that Urbanization really didn’t help him. But it was a hurt the leader move. However, it really didn’t hurt me all that much. I was so far out in the lead and I was more worried at that time of finding other deliveries to make. Those were the last of the good deliveries in that area and I needed to branch out.