Reporting on two game sessions that went on for the last two days at Toybox where I wasn't a participant except for one game. Came too late to join the other games.
14/07
When I arrived, 4 gamers were already in the midst of a busy Ra session. Even from outside, I can hear people shouting "RA!". This was possibly the third or fourth bidding game that I have already seen and it seems to be one of the better ways to eliminate the "lucky" dice roll element of board games.
The game is played over a period of 3 kingdoms of ancient Egypt and once the final Ra tile is placed, the tiles are wiped from the board. Each kingdom period also ends when all players have finished up their bidding coins. There were certainly a lot of strategy in play and one of the strategy that was immediately identified was the "chicken" method where you just play out to be the last guy remaining on the board and hope to sweep a lot of good tiles.
After that, we adjourn to dinner before returning to the shop. As there 6 of us by now, we decided to split the group into two. One group went on to play Railroad Tycoon brought by Marcus while the other group (includes me) went on to try out another Egyptian game, Amun Re.
Amun Re was another bidding game but this time we had to make sacrifices to Amun Re to generate our money. The game was split into two kingdom - Old Kingdom and New Kingdom. It was certainly mind grappling to see what strategies we can employ. Do we build everything in the Old Kingdom or do we start building on our points in the New Kingdom after everyone has developed some of the provinces up for grabs. I went ahead and tried to garner as much points in the first round of scoring (which is after the Old Kingdom) and try to just sustain myself in the New Kingdom with a few "power" cards that gave me bonuses. That worked out well as my lead was too huge to be overtaken by the end of the New Kingdom. I felt that this game was better than Ra and all of us have agreed to take on the game on another day.
After that, I walked over to the Railroad Tycoon table and "WOW!". The board was massive and I was pretty much awe-struck. I felt like I was Lex Luthor in the Superman movie except it is not really 3D terrain and there were no moving trains. I was not there at the start of the game so I can't comment much but the feedback I got was that Railroad Tycoon is a very, very interesting game. I am tempted to buy one and put it at the shop

15/07
Was busy WoWing (World of Warcraft online) at home so I stepped into the shop late. By then, we already had 5 gamers in the middle of Amun Re. Looks like there were more Egyptian voodoo going on that time at Toybox. 5-player definitely was more interesting than 3-player that we had the previous night. As this time, most of the provinces were developed and players were trying to get to the best pieces while trying to fulfill the requirements of "power" cards to give them more points in the end. The winner was finally Hong, who followed the same strategy as I did yesterday - amassing more points in the Old Kingdom.
After this game, I was told that another group tried Fury of Dracula earlier in the day. Was not sure how that went but I won't be surprised if they have been bitten

After Amun Re, some of them decided to leave for Saturday night plans while 5 of us stayed behind to play somemore games. 3 of them was going to try Caribbean and Amazonas so I opted out just to teach them how to play the games. Caribbean was fun at the start but it kinda went into a draggy mode in the end. That was one of the comment as they find that they were almost bidding for the same ships at the end. I did point out a few different strategies they could have tried which would not have paid off anyway because someone moved another ship away

They were happier with Amazonas and the 18 rounds flew by pretty quickly. Some of them forgot about their secret mission cards but luckily they still managed to complete them right before the game ended.
All in all, it was another two great days of gaming and we might just drop by again tomorrow for one more session.