Take Time

Take Time was an impulse purchase when I was at the Thailand Board Game Show. I had not heard of the game before the show and discovered it there. The first thing that attracted me was the classy art. There were two versions displayed, a standard version and a giant version. I played the giant version. So don’t let these photos I took give you the wrong impression. The normal game is not in this size. 

Take Time is an abstract cooperative game for two to four players. Players need to play cards around a disk, mostly face down, without any communication or coordination. There are restrictions that must be adhered to. After all cards are played, you reveal them all and check whether you win. Cards are played into six segments around the disk. Generally you win if the sums of the card sets are in ascending order. The game comes with 40 different challenges. 

The card deck consists of 24 cards. Half are sun cards and the other half are moon cards. Each set is numbered 1 to 12. The sun and moon cards have different backs, so when your fellow player plays a card face-down, you know which type the card is. You just don’t know the number. 

This is a puzzle game. You have some information and you need to work together with your friends to solve the puzzle. Most cards are played face down. However there are a few opportunities for cards to be played face up. Anyone can use this at any time, when you think it is important to convey some concrete information. You can make deductions from your friends’ actions. Anyone can be the start player in a game. When one player chooses to go first, it means something. When a player plays a card to the highest value or lowest value slot, that card is likely a very high or very low card. The card colours help you make deductions. 

That feeling of communicating through actions is surreal. It is satisfying when you devise a way to communicate something, and your friends understand what you are trying to convey. 

The 40 puzzles are replayable, because the next time you play you will draw different cards. The rules and restrictions are the same, but the situation will be different due to the card deal. 

I have only played the first puzzle. I’m looking forward to explore this game further. 

Living Forest Duel

Living Forest Duel is the two player version of Living Forest. I think two player Living Forest works pretty well. Living Forest Duel is a slightly different game. 

One key difference is instead of revealing cards one by one from your deck on your turn, now you and your opponent take turns revealing cards from a common deck. There is still deck building and push-your-luck. On your turn you can choose to reveal a card, or if you are happy with the number of icons revealed of a certain type, you can choose to use up that icon type to perform an action. You will often be a little torn between the number of icons not being attractive enough and the worry that if you reveal a strong card you will hand your opponent a windfall. 

You can perform at most two actions in a round. Once you have done both, you must pass. If you reveal a third nocturnal animal, you will lose an action. This part of push-your-luck is still in the game. 

Of the various things you can do in the game, they now help you towards four different winning conditions instead of three. You win by either putting out enough fires, planting enough trees, filling the market with animals of your season, or pushing the evil spirit far enough towards your opponent. 

Fires spread from where the evil spirit is, and if they are not controlled well, they will lead to bad cards being added to the common deck. This is the deck building part of the game, where bad cards will lead to players finding it hard to get things done. You need water icons to put out fires. 

You need tree icons to plant trees. You need to create a 3 x 3 grid to win. Tree cards have icons along their edges. When you match the icons, you gain some benefit.

There is a mechanism to push the evil spirit along a track towards your opponent. This is yet another way you can win the game.

A slightly more complicated one to explain is filling the market with animals of your season type. Initially the market has three summer and three winter animals. One player is summer and the other winter. The common deck starts with neutral cards, which can be used by both players. If you buy and add a card which matches your season, in the future, when it is drawn, its icons will only help you and not your opponent. Normally, you would want to buy animals which match your season. However, you are allowed to buy your opponent’s animals. They will not be useful to you when they are drawn in future. However, when you buy them, their slots in the market are replenished using your animals. If you manage to fill the market with your animals, you win immediately.  This way of winning requires that you do something bad to yourself. It is a little risky.

This is a game of making threats and forcing your opponent to react. There are four ways you can threaten to win. It might become a race, when the players decide to rush for two different conditions. However, most likely you won’t be able to resist trying to slow your opponent down. Pushing the evil spirit and filling the market with your animals are two things where your opponent can undo your progress. Planting trees and putting out fires are areas where your progress cannot be undone. If you are doing well, your opponent will have to try to overtake you or they have to try to be faster winning using another approach.

This is a tight game. You cannot go in expecting a nice family Euro style game where you can happily explore and everything gives you some points. You need to be deliberate about what you want to do and how you want to win. You need to be efficient and focused, else it is easy to fall behind and never recover. Some attacks are feints intended to waste your time defending. Yet you cannot completely ignore them in case that avenue becomes a viable winning condition for your opponent. 

I like the original a little more, but it might be because I played it first.  Living Forest Duel delivers a slightly different experience. Like the predecessor, I like how you need to be constantly thinking about the four different winning conditions. There is always a sense of urgency.

Chinese Flower Card

Chinese Flower Card is a Malaysian designed game from Specky Studio. It is based on the 24 solar terms and the 72 pentads in Chinese tradition. Before I wrote this post I did not know these English words "solar terms" and "pentads". I only know the original Chinese terms 二十四节气 and 七十二候. One pentad is 5 days in the Chinese calendar, and one solar term is three pentads. The Chinese calendar is neatly divided as such, and every solar term has its own name. Some of them mark the solstices and equinoxes. There are various traditions associated with them. The game is also partly inspired by Japanese hanafuda cards. This is a set collection game. The cards have various point values, and when you collect cards of the same month, you score bonus points. 

The basic cards in the game score 1 point each. Cards with animals, insects, relics, special sceneries and farmers are worth more points, ranging from 2 to 5. Cards are grouped into 12 months, and there are six cards for each month. As soon as you start collecting the second card of a month, you score bonus points. If you collect all six cards of a month, you will score a whopping 15 points.

Every round, twelve cards are drawn from the deck and laid out in a 4x3 grid like this. Each player has three butterflies in their colour, and you take turns placing them along the edges of the grid. Only one butterfly can be placed in a segment, so if somebody has placed a butterfly, you cannot use the same spot. However, each row and column has two ends. If only one end is occupied, the other end is still available. When you place your second and third butterflies, you get to claim cards at the intersections marked by your butterflies. Make sure you mark 2 columns and 1 row or 1 column and 2 rows, never 3 columns or 3 rows. That would be pretty dumb. Normally you will claim two cards per round.

The core mechanism is very simple. The game is for two to six players, but the play experience can be quite different at different player counts. With two or three players, the game is quite chill, and this is the exact word one of the designers Buddhima uses to describe the game. Most of the time you will be able to get valuable cards. With five or six players, the game is more challenging. Not only will you find it harder to get what you want, sometimes you might not even get two cards.

Specky Studio specialises in educational games. The concepts in Chinese Flower Card are all based on the Chinese calendar and Chinese tradition. You get a glimpse into Chinese culture and history. Every card is a painting, and the elements in the paintings have meaning behind them. If you look closely at the cards, you will find tigers mating, because that particular card indeed represents mating season. If you are a teacher familiar with Chinese culture, this game offers many opportunities for you to tell stories and share knowledge. Since this is a simple game, non-gamers and even primary school children can easily pick it up and enjoy it. One story which Buddhima shared with me was how this game became a shared pastime between a grandfather and a grandchild. It created moments of conversation and passing knowledge to the next generation. Yes, games are just games, and at the same time they are also our heritage and shared memories. 

Ultimate Railroads

Ultimate Railroads is a collection of games in the Russian Railroads series. The series includes variants of the original Russian Railroads, built on the same core engine, a worker placement engine. This is for fans who want more of the same. So far I have played German Railroads and Asian Railroads. Both contain tweaks to the original, while retaining most of the original mechanisms. 

This is all familiar

One new element in German Railroads is customisable tracks. There are several track sections in dotted lines which are blank. When you first have a track piece enter such a section, you get to choose a section tile to place on that section. You have several options, and you can pick one which helps you most in your strategy. These section tiles are first come first served. Players will end up with different railroads. 

There are many options for those customisable sections (first three rows)

One more new thing in German Railroads is how there is a split in the Munich line (the middle one). When you get to the fork you have to make a choice. Depending on the branch you choose, you will have different rewards to work towards. 

Allen recruited many engineers (tiles on the right)

Han spent much effort on upgrading the middle track

Asian Railroads is more different. The biggest one being the shared industry board. Player boards no longer have the industry track. Industrialisation is all done on the same shared board. There are some optional detours which let you perform specific actions. Like the base game, you can only advance past certain positions if you have placed a factory to link up the path. Here the board is shared, which means if your opponent has placed such a factory, you can say thank you and use it.  

Another new element is the wagons. These are your pieces which can be placed on the industrialisation board. Sometimes you get to place these next to factories. On your turn, instead of placing a worker you can exhaust a wagon to perform the action associated with it. 

The three train routes have some train slots which are initially locked. You need to make progress to certain positions before you can unlock these slots. When you have the opportunity to unlock, you have to consider carefully which route will need that additional train slot. 

Stonespine Architects

Stonespine Architects is a game about building your own dungeon. It is a drafting game. You start a round with a selection of tiles. You pick one to add to your dungeon, and pass the rest to your neighbour. You receive tiles from your other neighbour to choose your next tile. 

Your dungeon is a 4x4 grid and you build it row by row over four rounds. Tiles have various features and they help you score points. Every tile has a pathway. Ideally you want all your tiles to be connected. Along the top edge of your player board you have your dungeon entrance. Along the bottom you have your exit. You want your entrance and exit to be connected to as many tiles as possible, and to each other as well. This is basic for any architect, but in this game this is not easy to do. 

Tiles you pick have different gold values. You collect this gold, and at the end of each round you can spend it to buy features from the market (top right corner in the screenshot above). This is not done in turn order. It is always the richest person who buys next, until everyone passes. You buy stuff from a common pool, so if there is something you desperately need, you’d better try to be rich. When you eventually pass, you get to pick a scoring condition card which will be evaluated at game end (those challenge cards along the top in the screenshot above). You will score points if your dungeon fulfils the condition on the card.

Everyone has a blueprint (top right in the screenshot above). Think of it as the user requirements. This can be in the form of specific features at specific positions of your dungeon, or the tile type at specific positions (earth or stone). The more requirements you fulfil at game end, the more points you will score for your blueprint. This gives you some direction when you choose tiles. You can also buy features to help you with the blueprint. 

I am very close to connecting my entrance and exit

The theme might be fantasy and dungeons and monsters, but this is very much a Euro-style tile-laying game. You are always puzzling out how best to build your dungeon, to fulfil the various scoring conditions. You are torn in different directions and it's rare to find that perfect tile. You often need to prioritise. Pick the tile type which fulfils your blueprint, but its pathway may suck. Pick the tile with the goblin which will fulfil a challenge card, but its gold value may be low, or the tile itself  may even come with a point penalty. 

You should watch your opponents. You can see their blueprints so you know what tiles they want. You can also see the challenge cards they have picked. You should deny them tiles which help them. The same principle applies when buying features. So there is some player interaction, although it's not direct. 

Drones vs Seagulls

Drones vs Seagulls is a two player card game about fighting for dominance over the beach. You and your opponent sit on opposite sides of the table, with a long stretch of beach between you divided into 7 segments. You both start with a same hand of numbered cards. The numbers are between 1 and 5. You take turns playing a card to one segment of the beach. If that segment belongs to your opponent and you now wrest control from him by having a higher strength total, you get to trigger the power of that segment. This is the most interesting part of the game. It is the various segment powers which let you do all sorts of nifty stuff. 

You play best out of three rounds. To win a round, you need to control more segments after one player runs out of cards. The other player still gets to play one last turn. You can win a sudden death if you manage to control all seven segments. That’s hard, but highly satisfying if you manage it. 

Segment powers can be randomised every game, creating replayability. One power lets you move one of your cards to another segment. One power lets you move your opponent’s card. One power lets you move two cards. You must use it on groups of at least two, and you cannot choose to move just one card. Powers are mandatory. If you win a segment, you must apply the power. Sometimes that's a bad thing. One power lets you discard an opponent card. One power lets you steal an opponent card and make it yours. One power flips an opponent card face down making its strength 1. As you can see, many of these powers can result in you winning another segment. When you win an additional segment, you get to use its power too. This becomes a chain reaction. This is where the fun is. 

One interesting power is having an advantage in the case of ties. You can imagine if you are currently winning several segments using this advantage, the moment your opponent wrests this power from you, you will suddenly lose several other segments. 

I really enjoy the clever plays you can make in this game. One thing I realise is the game doesn’t even use positional powers. There is no power which applies to adjacent segments. Yet there are already enough powers to make the game interesting. As you play more, one more thing you will realise is that sometimes you don’t want to win those segments with strong powers. The problem with controlling them is you become vulnerable to your opponent’s attack. Being in control of a segment doesn’t let you use its power. You only get to use the power the moment you capture it. 

There seems to be a tendency to want to play small cards in the early round and then gradually play higher cards. Early on you can win segments even with small cards, so it is wise to conserve your resources. However sometimes a well played high card can help protect a crucial segment, or at least deter your opponent by making it costly to attack. How you play depends on the powers present in the game. If the power which turns an opponent card to strength 1 is in play, you will be extra careful about playing your high cards. 

Drones vs Seagulls is a joy to play. Short and sweet and it makes you feel clever. You can think several steps ahead, and you should. You must not only plan for your own chain reaction of wins, you must also think about how the board situation will be and what opportunities you are opening up for your opponent. I heartily recommend this game. 

Revolver Noir

Revolver Noir is a two-player 18-card game from ButtonShy Games. It’s an action thriller movie of a game, about two gunmen in a dark house trying to kill each other. To win the game, you must injure your opponent twice. 

Each player holds a stack of 9 cards in his hand. One of the cards is a map of the house. The rest are individual rooms. You don’t show your stack to your opponent. The top card in your stack is your location in the house. When the game starts you get to choose which room you want to be in. Once the game starts, you have two action points per turn. The house is dark so you don't know where your opponent is. The most important action in the game is to listen. When you perform the listen action, your opponent must tell you one room he is connected to. This helps you narrow down the possibilities of where he might be. You will be doing a lot of listening. 

You can move to a connected room. Every room card specifies the connected rooms. The map gives you a summary. You can shoot, which costs 2 actions points. Every room card also specifies where you can shoot at. You can always shoot at the same room you are in. You can shoot at other rooms which you have line of sight to. When you shoot, you must announce the room you are in and the room you are shooting at. If your opponent is located in the target room, he must announce that he is shot. 

Notice that by shooting, you are also exposing your location. So this is something risky. When I played this with Jon, I was first to get shot. My first thought was since I knew where he was, I could just shoot back at him. However, that wouldn’t be the right move, because he would just shoot me for a second time on his turn, and win the game. This meant I had to run away and the only way for me to win was to try to hurt him with a trap first. 

Setting traps is another thing you can do in this game. You can activate your trap on a future turn, and if your opponent is in the same room as the trap, you injure him. 

Some rooms have special abilities. You can use them if you are there. One room lets you flood the basement, and if your opponent is there, he gets hurt. The foyer lets you know the exact location of your opponent if he is on the second floor. If you start your turn in the kitchen, you get an extra action point. 

There is a lot of mind games in this portable little game. You are always on the move, trying to avoid letting your opponent know where you are, while at the same time trying to figure out where he is. Sometimes you take a gamble and hope you guess right. I played this at the airport while waiting for my flight. It's a clever little game. It's amazing how creative some of these ButtonShy games are! 

Skull King

Skull King is a trick-taking card game which is pretty conventional compared to many others I have played. Most of the familiar elements are there. So this is something easy to get into if you are already familiar with the genre. It is also easy to teach new gamers. Many non-gamers have some idea of trick-taking games, and Skull King will be somewhat familiar to them. Just say it's a bit like Hearts. 

You play 10 rounds, and each round you draw a number of cards equal to the round number. At the start of a round, you must predict how many tricks you will win. You score points if you get it right, and you lose points otherwise. If you are right, you score 20 points per trick won. There is incentive to win more tricks. If you are wrong, you lose 10 points per trick difference, whether you overestimate or underestimate. You score some bonus points when you manage to beat some specific cards with some other specific cards, and when you manage to win certain cards.  

There are four suits in the game. This is a follow suit trick-taking game. You generally have to follow suit if you have a card in the lead suit. There is a trump suit - the Jolly Roger. There are several special cards. The escape card always loses. This can be helpful to avoid winning too many tricks. The pirate, mermaid and pirate king cards can be played ignoring the lead suit rule. They beat all normal cards. Mermaids are beaten by pirates, pirates are beaten by the pirate king (there is only one pirate king), and the pirate king is in turn beaten by mermaids. 

The game is not that complicated. The powers are simple. Skull King does not offer any wild innovation, but it is solid and it will scratch that trick-taking itch. The biggest focus is making the right predictions. If you can do that well, weak hands won't stop you from winning. In the late game, if you predict zero and you get it right, you score 10 times the round number, which can be a lot. The special cards are fun. They are certainly powerful, but there is always some anxiety when you play them, because someone else just might have that other special card which will beat yours. 

One thing I probably should not be doing is playing this on BoardGameArena.com with 5 players. The game takes a long time to play in asynchronous mode, because there are many turns. Turns are very short, so this game will be better if played in person, or played live online. 

Duo Quest

Rizal's 1+1 Studio is a computer game development studio. Developing a computer game is a long project, and while his team is working on their first game title, they went on a side quest and turned it into a physical board game. That was how Duo Quest was born. Rizal joined our ranks of local Malaysian indie game publishers this year, and has been going to many of the same fairs and events as us. Duo Quest always does well, and his table is always one of the most happening. He has explained the game to me before, but I never had the chance to sit down to play, because I was busy with my own booth. Only when we went to the Thailand Board Game Show together that I had a chance to try the game myself. Neither of us spoke Thai and we had to depend on our local assistants to teach our games. Because of that we had more free time. 

Duo Quest is a cooperative game. Despite the fantasy theme, this is actually a party game. The box says two players, but it works well with three or four. This is a game which tests how well you know your friends. Or it can be a game that helps new friends get to know one another better. Quickly, and with some depth. 

Since this is fantasy, you will have to fight a monster. The monster has life points, and so does your team. The goal is to defeat the enemy by reducing its life points to zero. Every round you take the top card from the monster deck to place in the active area. This will be the monster's action for the round. You also take cards from the player deck. These are your possible options. The active player picks two cards, reads them, and decides which action to attempt. You can tell the action type and card value from the card back, but you don't know the question on the front. The higher the card value, the harder the question. 

To be able to execute the selected action, everyone must be able to write down the same answer (of course, without any discussion). The question is posed to the active player, and he must answer it by writing it down and not showing anyone. The other players must then guess what that answer is, simultaneously writing down their answers. If everyone guesses correctly, this action will be executed. However, if anyone gets it wrong, then this action will become the monster's action. Things can go south very quickly. You might be planning to deal the killing blow, but if you fail to execute the action, the monster will hit you hard instead. 

The game system has a basic card deck and many themed decks. Questions in the basic deck are more general, for example, are you an introvert or extrovert? Which is more important, art or science? Do you like children? The themed decks will have more specific questions, for example about love and relationships. There is even one deck which requires some physical exertion. All these questions will test how well you know your friends. If it is a new friend, the game reveals how you perceive them. 

After the players have chosen their actions, it is the monster's turn to pose a question. If everyone is able to write down the same answer to the monster's question, its action strength is reduced. Getting this right can be crucial. After all questions have been dealt with, you execute all the actions. Defences block part or all of the attacks. Anything which gets through deals damage. Potions heal. I only tried the basic game. In the more advanced decks there are other card powers and the advanced monsters have more fanciful abilities too. 

Now I can appreciate why Duo Quest triggers so much laughter. This game sparks much discussion. It gives you that feeling of "so you're that kind of person".  This is a simple game which non-gamers can easily get into and enjoy. I find this is a great game for chasing girls (or boys) too! 

boardgaming in photos: City of the Big Shoulders, Pax Pamir, Russian Railroads, Tokaido, Barrage

City of the Big Shoulders is a shareholding game. The best known shareholding game series is probably the 18XX games. I have never been comfortable with shareholding games because I feel there is a disjoint. You don't own a company. You own shares of a company. It is not your company. Of course, this is the whole point of shareholding games. So it's not a problem of the game mechanism. It's my personal preference. I am uncomfortable that I can't call this my company, and someone may manipulate me out of my own company, the company I founded! Companies are just tools for making money. You can and should destroy "your" company if it hurts your opponents more than you. In City of the Big Shoulders I think the chances of companies switching majority shareholder are small. Yes you can invest into your opponents' companies, and you can manipulate the share value through buying and selling shares, but mostly you are still managing the companies you founded, and generally you want them to do well. So compared to other shareholding games, City of the Big Shoulders doesn't make me anxious as much. 

This game is very much like an entrepreneurship simulation. You are starting companies, attracting investors, recruiting employees, buying raw materials, producing goods, and selling them. This sounds like work! This is running a business. I like declaring dividends, because as the majority shareholder of my companies (ok, "my" companies) I earn the most. As you can see I can't quite get away from the "my" company mindset. I probably should explore alternative strategies like intentionally damaging a company just to make others lose money too. 

When investing in others' companies, you do have to survey the board situation. What product is it producing and how is the demand? Is there competition? Do the competitors have a stronger brand? You can get a sense of how well the company will do. Of course, it is still subject to whether the majority shareholder decides to take good care of the company. An older and better established company may not be more attractive than a young startup. The startup probably has cheaper shares and also more room for growth. In the end it is all about return on investment. You want to be the richest individual. It is not about owning the biggest companies. 

I have played Pax Pamir several times now, but I am still not entirely sure I know how to play it properly. This time I did a three player game with Han and Jon. Both Jon and I decided to support the Russians. Han supported the British. This became a tough game for Han because it was two vs one. 

I got into an awkward situation. I did not plan my card purchases well, and got stuck with a maximum tableau size of three for most of the game. I had a huge hand size though. Unfortunately that wasn't very helpful. I worked hard on playing my discs. Discs represent player influence. Many of my discs were on player cards, both mine and my opponents', as spies. I had three discs used for marking gifts purchased. This was a huge sum invested. I was a little stuck. If I were to switch allegiance to another faction, I would lose these three discs. 

Russia was much stronger than Britain, and Jon's score and mine were soon much higher than Han's. So my main competitor was now Jon, technically an ally. I did not have much influence on the game board itself. I did have many spies, and I could do assassinations and dirty work like that. While holding the lead in the number of discs deployed, I triggered a dominance check to initiate scoring. This gave me more points than Jon, putting me 4 points ahead. That allowed me to win the game. At that point I had no discs at all on the game board. I did not control any region. 

This was the end of our game. To be honest, I am still not entirely sure I know how to play the game. I feel most of the time you have to analyse what cards are available in the market and you just make the most out of the situation. It is about surviving the chaos and grabbing opportunities that come along. You can't do much deliberate planning. 

I have a physical copy of Russian Railroads. It was a birthday present from my wife. This is a worker placement game and a development game. In this particular game, my main strategy was to develop the main Trans-Siberian railway, to upgrade the tracks and to score points from that. I completely abandoned industrialisation (the purple track at the bottom). 

Jon's player board

Han's player board

I'd say Russian Railroads is yet another typical heavy Eurogame. There is a lot you can do, but you have to choose to focus on only a few areas so that you can score points efficiently. I often complain about these heavy Eurogames being of a similar mould, but I enjoy Russian Railroads. It is familiar and comfortable. I also like it because of the theme and the art. The game mechanism is a little different from other Eurogames. Hey, at least you don't have the resource collection and contract fulfilment. But yes, you do have the track progression thing. I like the development game element. I guess it is human nature to be happy when you make progress and you build something that makes you proud. 

It is nice to play Tokaido on BoardGameArena.com. This is a very pretty game. I've never found the game mechanism particularly captivating, but I must say it is a beautiful game. 

On BGA all the cards you collect are laid out neatly. Those panorama cards which form a picture look fantastic. They make you want to complete the picture. 

I played with the expansion too. In the top row above, those sakura (cherry blossom) trees are from the expansion, and the bathhouses on the right too. When you visit a scenery area, instead of taking a scenery card of the corresponding type, you can choose to take a sakura tree. When collecting scenery cards, the earlier ones aren't worth much. It is the later ones which will be worth a lot. So if you have no intention of collecting cards for a particular scenery type, it is probably better to just take a sakura tree, because it gives 2 points and 1 money. It's nice to have a choice. You feel you have a bit more control. However I don't find this expansion very important. It's just a nice-to-have. In fact I think it is good that sometimes you are forced to take a low value scenery card because you want to deny your opponent. I like games which give you decision angst, and not games which treat you with kiddie gloves. 

Bathhouses are also a new choice you get. When you visit an onsen (hot spring), normally the onsen card you draw will be either 2 or 3 points. If you are willing to pay 1 money, you take a bathhouse card instead, which is a guaranteed 4 points. 

I played Barrage online. I have played a physical copy before. I did not do a proper rule revision before playing online. I relied on my not-that-great memory of the game. That meant a fair bit of stumbling around. This is a complex game, and stumbling around means you won't do very well.