From: Allan Bell Subject: Lords of the Sierra Madre In the interest of encouraging more game reports.... We had our first group game of Lords of the Sierra Madre last night but it was a relatively tame affair as the others were coming up to speed on the rules and we didn't want to spend too long flipping through the rules during play. They quickly cottoned on the idea of bidding up items they didn't want just to make sure you paid a "market price". The favorite trick was to make sure everyone bought their common cards at inflated prices and so emptied their treasuries before calling an auction on your desired card. We managed to get one mine going but Danny and I had to share ownership of it. It paid off one lousy gold piece per turn later raised to 3 when the smelter became operational. The smelter owner made more out of it then we did as we had to split our profits. To complete the picture the fourth player owned the railroad which received one gold piece in shipping fees. This turned out to be advantageous as we all had a stake in these enterprises and burning down any one of them would have done damage to ourselves. A nice balancing feature of the game. Andrew did quite well out of his slave plantations. He picked up the local indian cards in the auctions quite cheaply, attacked them with his troops ("we were too stunned by the treachery to fight back!") and packed them off to grow Garbanza beans (whatever they are). Later Danny started a revolution just for the hell of it. He managed to get his leader to join up with the bandido in the mountains but with two groups of federales and one group of rurales chasing him into the mountains his actions were shortlived. He gained control of the slaves in the slave plantations but was unable to free them and their lives slipped back into misery. No real winner was declared. We were each earning about 20 gold pieces per year. I was little more financial then the others - ownership of the hospital concession helped when the troops were fixed up after the revolution. Stephen never got to play his red flag revolution which probably would have succeeded. He was keeping it as a threat to the local forces - "tax my smelter and the people will rise up!" ...and you thought it was all about freedom. Everyone has gone off to re-read the rules and understand the game better. The range of options is quite large and you are never sure what is the obvious move. Nonetheless the feedback was the game is "not bad" and we will play it again in a fortnight. This game has lots of colour. My favorite is the idea that if you run for office against the president of Mexico it is considered a crime so you can be shot on sight. That's my kind of game. ...and no. I didn't get to burn down someone's farm. ...but next time.... Allan