Fish Eat Fish, Ra, Auf Achse - Session Report

Our Thanksgiving weekend included Friday gaming with friends Tom and Dana, and the first game to hit the table was 1987's Spiel des Jahres winner Auf Achse (which translates to On the Move), a game about using your truck efficiently to make deliveries.

In Auf Achse, players start with three contracts and bid on new ones as the game progresses. Each contract includes a start city (where you pick up goods) and an end city (where you drop them off). You can have more than one order loaded in your truck if there's room -- up to six goods fit into your base truck, and trailers can be purchased.

When you complete a contract, you get paid. The winner is the player with the most money when all of the contracts have been auctioned and one player has completed all of his contracts.

Tom's strategy was to be very picky about which contracts he acquired, and it almost paid off for him. Beth was a little less choosy, but managed to drop off a load in the same city she picked up a new load on several occasions. In the end, Beth edged out Tom, $17,700 to $17,000. Dana ($12,400) and I ($13,600) both had planned too far into the future and were stuck with numerous unfilled contracts.

Beth volunteered to pick up pizza for dinner, so Tom, Dana and I snuck in a quick game of Fish Eat Fish, a new game from Out of the Box Publishing and designed by Reiner Knizia.

The review linked to above covers the basic rules, so I'll just say two things. One, this is a fast-paced, clever game that continues to grow on me. Two, Tom and I spent too much time attacking each other. Dana won with a catch of nine fish; I caught four and Tom caught two.

Our last full game of the day was Ra, another game designed by Knizia and one of my favorite auction games (although it's not on that list because it already had two Knizia auction games, Traumfabrik and Modern Art, on it!).

Players turn over tiles and lay them on the auction track until either someone decides to declare "Ra" and start an auction, or a Ra tile is turned over and forces an auction to start. Tiles come in various categories -- gods, gold, civilization, river, pharaohs, and monuments.

Some tiles have only short-term benefit (e.g. gold) while others only have long-term benefit (e.g. monuments). Most have a bit of both. River tiles, for example, score one point each at the end of every round -- but only if the player has at least one flood tile in his set. Flood tiles are discarded at the end of each round, but the river tiles are kept.

Beth walked away with this game, scoring 49 points. She took an early lead in pharaohs and kept it throughout, also managing to win back most of the high-value auction blocks. Dana finished with 26; me, 25; Tom, 17.