Rajas of the Ganges

  

Rajas of the Ganges is a 2017 game from Inka and Markus Brand, who made the Exit series. It was nominated for and won several awards. It was well received by gamers. I wasn't very interested to try it when it was hot, because it sounded like just another worker placement game, with dice. It was suggested at a recent game retreat, so I joined the game. It turned out to be much more enjoyable than I expected. 

This is a worker placement game, and the dice are a resource you often need to spend when placing workers. They come in different colours and they have different values. Some worker placement spots on the board require specific die colours or die values. Your dice are an important resource to manage. There are ways to gain dice, and you want to maintain a healthy number on hand so that you have more flexibility. You need to strike a balance between using dice to get various resources, and replenishing your dice. 

The main gameboard has many worker placement spots, and the score tracks. There are two score tracks, one to keep track of your money, and the other your fame. They go in opposite directions. Zero is at the bottom right. Money increases in an anti-clockwise manner, while fame increases in a clockwise manner. To win the game, you need to increase both your money and your fame so that your two markers meet each other. When I saw this I said hey that's Ark Nova! But Rajas of the Ganges was published earlier, so it had this mechanism first. It is clever. You can choose which aspect you want to focus more on. Actually there is a 2006 game called Gift Trap which has a very similar concept.

Those square tiles below the gameboard are terrain tiles you can place on your player board, which represents developing your own province. One action in the game lets you pick a tile to add to your province. 

When adding tiles to your province, the roads along the edges of the tiles must line up properly. When you are able to connect icons along the edges of your board to your capital (at the top), you gain bonuses, e.g. dice, money, or fame. Certain buildings in your province also help you gain fame or money. 

There is a river on the gameboard, and you can advance your ship along the river. Your ship only moves in one direction. When it stops, you gain the benefit of the space it is on. Ships block one another, and force other passing ships to leapfrog ahead. If you want to move fast, you can choose to leapfrog the others. By doing this, you will skip spaces and miss their benefits, but further down the river the benefits get better. So it is not necessarily a bad thing. 

I enjoy playing the game, but I struggle to articulate why. I think I overestimate how important innovation is in games. Rajas of the Ganges does not offer anything particularly new to me. No surprise, since this is a game from almost 10 years ago. I tell myself I shouldn't be enjoying it so much. I'm always looking for new ideas in games. They excite me. Rajas of the Ganges does not give me anything unusual, but it does give me a well put together package of mechanisms and play experiences. You need to pursue money and fame, and you compete to do so efficiently. There is some engine building to help you score fame and money more quickly by utilising buildings and strengths you have accumulated. There is a constant need to stay flexible. You want a healthy number of dice in hand, so that you have more options. You want to have some karma in hand too. Karma is something you can spend to flip a die to the opposite side. If you run out, you suddenly lose this flexibility. The game is tactical. You must stay alert for opportunities, for example new tiles that get revealed, or river spaces which your opponents vacate, or die values that you roll. There are opportunities for clever combos. Sometimes by performing one action, it gives you something which in turn triggers gaining something else, which then triggers yet another thing. These are satisfying. 

Turn order is important. I certainly felt the need to fight for it. The game gives you some mid term goals. When you reach a certain money, fame or river level, you get to unlock additional workers. Every worker means being able to do more in a round. Unlocking them is something you must deliberately plan for. 

One type of difficult decision I have to make is grabbing a windfall at the cost of losing flexibility for the next few turns. There is something very tempting on the board I can do, but if I do that, I will for example spend almost all my dice. I can get something now, but I know for the next few turns I have to painstakingly gather some new dice. Sometimes I go ahead and grab that windfall. Sometimes I pass. The beauty is I don't have an easy answer for situations like this. These are the juicy and difficult decisions you have to make in Rajas of the Ganges.

A big thank you to J&J! Jon (right) for recommending the game and Julian (left) for teaching the game. Julian completely destroyed us. He was highly intentional in building up fame, and he managed many powerful combos. He also advanced his ship far ahead of us. I had a lot of fun with this game. It's a joy to discover some good older games. 

boardgame shopping in Japan

I visited Kyushu, Japan on a family holiday. Needless to say, being a gamer, I looked up boardgame stores to visit well before the trip, and also took the opportunity to look for games at bookstores, 100 yen shops and such when I was there. I found some games at Don Quijote. Don Quijote is a discount store which sells lots and lots of different stuff. Most of the games I found seemed to be heavily language dependent. So I didn't buy anything. 

The Google Translate app on my phone has been tremendously helpful. I point my camera at the box, and Google Translate does the translation from Japanese to English for me. The translation is decent. I can get a rough idea of the games. This particular game above seems to be popular. It has grown into a series. 

Back of the box

This one has sold 300,000 copies! 

Something to do with marriage proposals

50,000 copies sold! Not as impressive as 300K, but still very impressive.

A game about nasty LINE messages maybe?

This is not a boardgame. This is a map showing merchant ship routes approaching the port of Nagasaki. This is displayed at a museum. When I saw this I immediately wondered whether this could be turned into a boardgame. 

I visited Sunny Bird boardgame cafe and shop in Nagasaki. It was a 4-minute walk from where I stayed in Nagasaki. I did not sit down to play, but I did take a look at the cafe section. They have a huge library. One title that caught my eye was the early edition of Power Grid, when it was still called only Funkenschlag. This was the 2001 edition. The play area is cosy, not big. The cafe is in the city area, so I imagine rent must be expensive. Space is a premium. It's nice to have a boardgame cafe and shop so conveniently located. 

The shop section was not very big, but there was plenty for me to browse. I think there were more Japanese designed titles than foreign designed titles. That was perfect for me. I mainly wanted to look for Japanese designed games. I can find international titles easily in Malaysia. The shopkeeper was friendly and helpful. He recommended me several titles. It took me a while to browse, since I needed the assistance of Google Translate. 

I found a copy of the latest Japanese edition of Ra. I already own one, but Benz had asked me to find a copy for him. Mission accomplished. This edition comes in a pretty small box. It is compact and the price point is low. JPY 2200 is about MYR 55 or USD 13.50. 

These were the games I bought at Sunny Bird. Loop is by a designer from Nagasaki itself, so this is a meaningful souvenir. I bought it not only because of that. The gameplay did intrigue me. Let's see how it plays. I have not played it yet. The third game here is not by a Japanese designer, but the gameplay description is interesting enough that I decided to buy it. 

At one of the malls I visited, I saw this shop selling lots of TCG (trading card game) cards. There were tables for gamers to play. 

The cards were arranged in shelves like this. This might be the norm everywhere around the world, just that I am not a TCG player so I'm not familiar with this sight. 

At a bookstore I visited, I did not find boardgames or card games, but I saw many tarot card sets. I think people use these for fortune-telling or self-help. 

There were sample copies provided to allow shoppers to browse the content. 

Tarot cards is a whole new world I know very little about. 

One Piece version of UNO. I saw UNO with many other IP's attached. 

I saw a shop in Canal City Mall, Fukuoka selling a Gundam TCG

These are starter sets. JPY 1650 (around MYR 42 / USD 10) for one pack. That's quite cheap. I'm assuming one set is sufficient for one player to play. 

These starter sets come with three figurines. 

Player mat for the Gundam TCG

There were people playing another TCG. I wanted to take photos, but I didn't want to interrupt them or make things awkward. I took these quick shots while walking past. That's why the photos are poorly framed. Many players brought their own playmats. The play tables had player guides printed on them. 

We visited several cities in northern Kyushu, and our last stop was Fukuoka. I was pretty happy with the few games I bought in Nagasaki. Although I knew there was a Jelly Jelly Games cafe and a Yellow Submarine shop in Fukuoka, I listed them as optional destinations. If I had time I would go. By the last day, I almost decided not to go. I only changed my mind the evening before we flew back to Malaysia. It was late afternoon. We didn't have plans for the evening. The next morning we would be heading to the airport at 5:30am. Although I was tired, I decided to visit Yellow Submarine. They were still open. 

They are on the third floor of a commercial building. If you don't know about them, you would not discover them by chance. They are a destination store, not a shop you will chance to walk past at a shopping mall. More than half the shop is dedicated to TCG's. They have play tables. However they have a boardgame section too, and for me there is a lot to browse. They too have many Japanese designs, not just foreign designs. 

This is a weird one. It is a game about investigating the colour and pattern of a lady's underwear. I guess this is humour in Japan, slightly risque. In many other countries and cultures this would be inappropriate. 

Love Letter is one of my favourite games. It has a legacy version! Unfortunately this seems to be pretty language heavy. I did not buy this. I wonder whether there will be an English version. 

Back of the box

Trendy is an older game from Reiner Knizia. I have played it many years ago. I absolutely love the cover of the Japanese edition. It looks like a fashion magazine cover. I'm already starting to regret not buying this. I remember the game was just okay. That was why I didn't buy the game. Now that I think about it, this would have been a nice souvenir or memento, even if I don't buy it for the gameplay. 

Back of the box

This is another game I almost bought but didn't. I like the art direction. I looked up reviews on BGG, and most people think it is just so so. 

I find that many games come with English rules. 

I ended up buying 7 games from Yellow Submarine, more than I expected. I didn't go to Jelly Jelly Games after that, because it was getting late, and I was already feeling a little guilty for having gone on a splurge. Ukiyo-e is a design by Michael Schacht. I like his games. This game is originally called Crazy Chicken, later published as Drive. Ukiyo-e is the Japanese edition, and it has a very Japanese theme - Japanese art. This is definitely a good souvenir for gamers visiting Japan. 

There is a game called New Old in the photo above. It looks like two boxes, one new and one old, but this is actually one game. The cover design is done this way intentionally to make this look like two games placed side by side, a worn out copy next to a new copy. 

Later I discovered that Cat Poker is actually Panda Panda. I already own Panda Panda. I didn't know Cat Poker is the original Japanese version. Rikka (六華) - the black box - is by Hashimoto Atsushi, who designed Tiger & Dragon. That was what made me buy it. I really admire Tiger & Dragon. 

By looking at the box cover and the box back of Ult: Coldburning, it seems this is mostly played with numbered cards in different suits. There are some cards with some text, probably scenario cards or something along those lines. I thought this should not be too much work so I decided to buy a copy. 

After opening the game, I realised how wrong I was. This game is fully packed with cards. It has two huge stacks. And guess what, almost half the cards are text cards! See that stack below on the right. I'm going to spend a lot of time translating all those cards. 

If I sleeve these cards there is no way they can still fit in the box. 

Sai Beppu is a superstar in the Japanese boardgame industry. So many games are illustrated by her, and she has such a wide range of styles. I also notice how prolific Kaya Miyano is. He is best known for Trio / Nana.  

I bought three decks of poker cards from various 100 yen stores. I bought one deck because during the trip I had an idea for a game design, and I wanted to playtest my idea with my family. I bought the second and third decks because they looked nice and they were cheap. 100 yen is MYR 2.50 or USD 0.60. The Sanrio deck is cute, and the fruit one too. 

Dirty Work

Dirty Work is a party game from Thailand. This is a simultaneous action selection game, and it is very much about guessing your opponents’ intentions. You are all miners mining gold, contributing to a stash of gold, one nugget at a time. Sooner or later someone will be tempted to steal from the stash. However such thieves can be caught by miners who decide to play guard. So these are the three roles you must choose from every round, miner, thief or guard. 

The game is played over multiple days, until someone has 24 gold and wins. Each day will have multiple rounds, and ends with either the stash getting stolen, or only one miner remains and takes the stash. Each round is just players simultaneously choosing a role and then all roles are revealed at the same time. First, miners work and each adds 1 gold to the stash. Now if there are thieves but no guards, the thieves take and share the stash, and the day ends. If there are thieves and guards, the stash is protected. The guard earn a small wage of 1 gold. Here’s the important rule which I find genius. A thief who is caught surrenders all his money to the guard catching him. That’s including all the money accumulated from previous days. If the game has been going on for a while, this can be a huge sum. It will be painful for the thief, but a boon for the guard. Another important rule is once you play guard, you will stop work for the day. You sit out any remaining rounds. If you play guard when there are no thieves, you earn a measly 1 gold and you’ve just wasted opportunities for the rest of the day. Choosing to guard is not a light decision. 

Being a simple miner doing honest work sounds dull. However it can be lucrative. If everyone else drops out due to playing guard or playing thief and getting caught, you earn the whole stash for yourself. 

There is one special situation. If you steal and get caught, but you have no money to pay the fine, you are temporarily on a watchlist and you cannot steal. That is a bad situation to be in. Your opponents know you only have two options and they don’t need to worry about you stealing. 

This may seem like a complicated version of rock paper scissors. You only have three options, and most of the time each of them can be the right play. Let’s say there are only two players still active for the day. The other guy has much money. You might think he wouldn’t steal because that’s risking his hard earned money, so maybe you should not guard. However he might just do it because it is out of your expectation. People may play safe and keep on mining (working). The risk of stealing is getting caught. The risk of guarding is catching no one and being forced to drop out. Yet as the stash builds up, it becomes harder and harder to resist the temptation to steal, and also to attempt to catch others whom you suspect might steal. That’s tension! I like that you do have much information and basis for deciding which role to play, yet this information does not guarantee you will make the right choice. It still depends on the psychology of your opponents. 

Playing with role cards is optional. They give you slight advantages.

This might be the Thai signature - party games which elicit much laughter. There are many types of games designed by Thai designers and published by Thai publishers, many more than made by Malaysian designers and publishers. Thai designs should not be pigeonholed. However this style of game seems to be the most successful for their market. I find Dirty Work a great design. There is much table talk, sometimes even cooperation, and of course betrayals too.