Wednesday 11 April 2012

I like Trucking and I like to Truck

So Paul finally made good on his long awaited promise of bringing his game to table this Tuesday. Previous weeks had been filled with intriguing comments like "Almost there", "Needs a few tweaks" and "I wish I had a colour printer" but now the teasing had stopped and I was presented with Cargo! (Intentional exclamation mark. See it as emphasis rather than surprise..).

So what is Cargo! you all chorus in prefect harmony. Well Cargo! is a game of freight transportation around Britain linking such nebulous hubs as Croydon, Bracknell and Eccles. Paul had cleverly spotted that lorries had been scandalously omitted from the games market and since trains had been done to death (And were quite expensive to buy) it was a natural theme to adopt (Plus Paul has a ton of beautifully crafted mini train containers). The central mechanic of the game is to create routes between the six depots via a route selected from your hand of cards to place next to your haulage companies lorries. The route cards have numbers at the bottom which in combination generate a number to be rolled (On two dice) to enable your cargo to be delivered. The depots hold all of the cargo and essentially you are removing one of a 20 or 40 foot container to be placed on your lorry complete with route to await delivery. When loads are delivered money is paid out for the size and type and where it was delivered.

Each player gets two actions per turn, whether that be buying or selling lorries, creating routes, obtaining cargo, rolling for delivery or replenishing your card hand. There are two scoring paths calculated at the games end. One is money you still have in your bank and the second is for route cards collected and totalled.

It didn't take us long to get into the swing of it and as with all home designed games getting it's first play, there were some rule changes on the fly. The most difficult bit to grasp, for both parties, was that due to limitations of the game components available to Paul, the container specific money colour didn't match the containers. Therefore we were constantly having to refer to the crib sheet for information.

Who is playing Cargo!? It's Paul!

Not that it detracted from a nice flowing game that saw me race up to 4 lorries in my fleet and amass a lovely pile of dosh. However, Paul had been able to make a lot more deliveries in the game in more locations and consequently scored more for his routes. There was a lovely moment when we had to decide who had won a particular route as Paul had one card for it but it was a minus 1, I didn't have any so technically a zero. Did having a minus number beat someone without a card? We decided the route wouldn't be scored as no cards meant no score and the minus cards were meant to be punitive. My money scoring couldn't quite make up the difference so Paul won the first play of his game…..

Paul 69
Chris 64

After the strenuous activity of delivering our loads I suggested we take on another new game, Mammut. After 10 minutes struggling with the rules and repeated glances at the clock it was put away again for another day and the more familiar Dominion was tabled. Even my desperate knocking beer all over the table couldn't prevent Paul from registering a comfy win.

Paul 50-odd
Chris 37

4 comments:

  1. ooh, when can we play Cargo! then? And do you stop for bacon butties and a cup of tea halfway through?

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  2. It sounds interesting! And it has dice! Is there an option to fall asleep at the wheel and jack-knife across the M25? Or fiddle your tacometer?
    Can you even play Mammut with two? It plays very well with three, I know that, but with two I think it might be a bit flat. Ooga!

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  3. Paul is very keen to have multiple players taken on Cargo! I think it will be at this years Septcon :)

    Mammut has a 2 player rule set, which confused us a bit more. It doesn't look a tough game it was that we were feeling a bit pushed for time....

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