This proved to be very enjoyable and superficially like, for example, Ticket to Ride.
"It's not a train game" insisted Crabro as he placed a game end trigger marker with a picture of Stephenson's "Rocket" on the score track.
While I grasped the rules and enjoyed the mechanics something about strategy had clearly eluded me as I was a very distant last at the end of the evening. I have to admit to not being very happy about that as, despite being a good (and frequent) loser, I don't like being uncompetitive. I am perfectly happy to enjoy a game without being the victor but I do like to feel that I am giving my opponent(s) some sort of a run for his/their money.
Perhaps this was in my mind when I requested that my other friends play their copy of Canal Mania with me on Saturday night. In fact it was my turn to supply the games but because of a last minute change of plans necessitated by a call for assistance by my historian stepmother, I would have had to lug a lot of games around all day on bus and train.
Instead I carried a few fillers and after a magnificent meal as usual there, we settled to canal building.
It was immediately obvious that there were considerable differences between this version and Crabro's and subsequently we discovered that the Saturday game was 1st edition while the Thursday gamers used the 2nd edition. There are some cosmetic changes to the board graphics, more copies of the player aid and the boats have become less like tugs and a little more like a canal boat...or a Clyde puffer maybe. There are also some deeper changes including the removal of a route and colour changes to towns, the addition of length-two "wild card" contracts for each player as well as changes to the scoring.
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| Final positions with this blogger as green |
Whether these changes or experience or simply less tiredness were factors I don't know, but I felt more confident during the Saturday game and while one of my hosts had a good lead in the early stages I hauled them in and ended up a fairly convincing winner. "It's Ticket to Ride on water" was the verdict of Paultro in contrast to Crabro's opinion. I would be happy to play it again but my hosts considered that it was too long and imagine it will be some time before it hits the table there again.
My good fortune didn't continue on to the filler as we then had two games of Diamant and I didn't win either.
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