Last couple weeks have been spent relaxing and playing other games in my spare time.  I haven't done too much development on  any computer games and job #1 has been keeping me busy enough that I haven't had the urge to code when I get home.

Over the weekend, I chanced upon a copy of StreetCar from Mayfair Games.  I didn't realize it was a mid '90's game.  I had been looking at it for a while, but I didn't want to plop down $30 for it.  This time in the gaming shop, however, it was marked half off so it came back with me.

I took it home and played it (wrong) with my 6-year-old later that night.  The bits are a bit flimsy and tend to move too much if you are doing upgrades on the board.  The rules are fairly well written, although there are a couple places they could have been cleaned up.  The examples were helpful.

In terms of mechanics, it strikes me as a cross between 1830's track laying (with squares and no bonuses) paired up with the baron-returning-home round of Rail Baron - Essentially, the two gimmicks I can't stand the most in two games I have great respect for.  

So we began, my kid and I.  We played it so that you started from one of your terminals to two of your destinations and then had to come back home again - no need to go across the board.  That didn't take too long.  It was fun.  She went and got cleaned up for the night and I realized after that game that we were supposed to end up on the other side of the board.  

So, we agreed to play again, this time with the requirement of going across the board.  Our game took damn near an hour to finish and she was frustrated because the track layout ended up being extremely complex and hard to trace.  

There is definitely an element of screwage and I can't imagine playing this game with more than three people.  I'm anxious to have my wife try it out, as she is a Tulane alumnus and has fond memories of her old town.  We'll see if this one works for her.  

In terms of strategy, it's similar to Carcasonne and other tile playing games.  You get what you get.  In Carcasonne, you can at least play bits down for points later - this is absent in StreetCar, but to be fair, Carcasonne came out years later.  Basically, you're trying to see who can sneak across the board and you hope that you can remain flexible enough to figure out some sort of convoluted path to victory.  In short, it's light, but that's okay, particularly for a $15 game.  

My rating, three stars [***] with variants and provisos out of five.  It will get played because I like trains and this is a game I can convince members of my family to play, but we'll see if it holds up.