Eurorails on Eurorails!

We just came back from a trip to Europe with the kids. What do you do with inveterate board gamer kids in the hotel when they're tired of tourist attractions? You play board games! Which you bring without the box in order to fit them in the suitcase. You can get a surprisingly large number of games in a small space if you leave optional bits at home. Who needs the score board for Carcassonne? We took Dominion, including Intrigue, all 700 cards or whatever it is. Not this trip but a previous trip we brought Settlers. San Juan packs up really small. It's tricky, but we managed to play Dominion and San Juan on the airplane tray tables.

Our crowning glory this time was to bring Eurorails. We couldn't resist, because we were traveling twice on the rails, once from London to Paris, and once from Paris to Geneva. (Too bad Geneva isn't on the Eurorails board.) We photocopied the board and taped it together. Meant we could only play once, but that was enough for hack value. All we took was the route cards; the commodities and money we left at home and just kept score on a sheet of paper, crossing out commodities as they were delivered. We didn't keep track of whether we might run out of a commodity, but in a 3 player game that doesn't happen all that often, so we just ignored the possibility.

We even played a while on the train, but this turned out to be too boisterous for our fellow passengers and we had to fold up the game and do quieter activities.

It was a very close game. At one point, my son and I were both in Spain, both with $92, and both delivering cars and picking up oranges! Later, we both had about $180, he had $80 of commodities on his train ready for delivery, while I had only $55. So he looked the favorite to win. And then we drew Taxes, which made him need another delivery and I lucked out and drew a $40 delivery which I was able to make before he made his.

It was a great trip in addition to the great gaming. A less geeky travelogue is at http://www.olum.org/yduj/europe/index.html