Last night saw me staying up way past my bedtime playing boardgames! Oh what a naughty stop out I was.

Ok let me explain.

Now that for the foreseeable future I have gainful employment which requires me to start at 5am (or 7am on a Sunday). As you can imagine I go to sleep around 7pm (Nico and Loki permitting!). Which coincidentally was the start time of our gaming session last night. But careful planning meant I knew I didn’t have to be up before the crack of dawn, and in fact could sleep in.

All I had to worry about was not falling asleep at the gaming table. After all with Jonathan and Jeff my opponents for the evening who knows what they would have been egged on to do by Nathan.

Our game for the evening was Tinners’ Trail. And like every learning game and first plays we do, we threw caution to the wind, ignored common sense, good practice, and read the rulebook at the table for the very first time.

Look when we read the rulebook out loud at the table, this is no Friends Reunion table reading of an old episodes script. It’s a hard thing to do. You are reading aloud, possibly paraphrasing, trying to parse what you are reading, trying to listen to the others at the table, answer questions. You get the picture. It’s like a Jim Davidson comedy routine waiting to happen.

But sometimes this is the only way we can do it. We let people know in advance it’s a learning game and all that implies. It’s why usually it’s a separate session from a regular club night (although as you know that’s not always the case). Those of us attending accept this and any other caveats.

Onto the game itself Tinners’ Trail.

Basically the game is about mining enough resources to sell, and then with that money buy victory points. And you do that over four rounds.

But it’s how you get those resources and how much they are worth that’s the interesting bit.

I decided very successful to drain Jonathan and Jeff of their opening cash and action points during round one so that I could pick up mining areas cheaply, and boost my cash balance. So I used my cards to help bluff and put my plan into action. Another element of this plan was to push up the bidding so the winner spent more. It’s that push your luck element of knowing when to drop out before getting stung paying over the odds for a rubbish plot. Which Jonathan did fall into the trap of once or twice, as did Jeff.

By the end of the first round I had no cards left. It wasn’t a drawback for the later rounds. Or it was, or should have been but I wasn’t punished for it. This is quite an aggressive thing to do that could back fire. Luckily in this instance it didn’t.

I like how the price for the two resources is determined at the start of each round by rolling three d6 dice (although they were not proper numbered d6). Which means that it could possibly be more practical focusing on mining one resource over another because it’s worth lots more.

Recently games that have a fixed number of rounds like Lost Ruins of Arnak or even Wingspan have left me feeling I’d like one or two more rounds. But Tinners’ Trail felt just the right length.

What you do get left wanting more of each round is more action points to spend so you can do more. But I also like that whole you have ten action points, here are the actions you can do and the action point cost of each. It makes you focused and trying to work out the optimum order to do them in.

I also like how resources within an area you are mining are limited. So you have to manage when the optimum time to mine them is based on their market cost.

Naturally there were one or two misplays and/or mistakes. But that’s something you accept is going to happen in a learning game. After all it’s a learning game!

But the important thing is I won. Quite comfortably in the end.

Tinners’ Trail is an enjoyable game. I’d definitely play it again. Would I be as successful next time? Who knows.

And before we finish with the last bit of the post the photo by Jonathan from the evening. I’d like to say a big big thank you to our hosts The Luxe for being so splendid.