gaming in photos

18 Sep 2009. We played a 4-player game of Byzantium. I have played this twice before, but only as 2-player games against Han. A 4-player game is quite tight. Much fewer opportunities for easy points, and we found that we often had to choose the civil war action, because otherwise we'd quickly run out of people to attack. Unfortunately I had an emergency and had to leave when still playing the first round (of three).

21 Sep 2009. Another 2-player game (variant) of Automobile. Michelle tends to beat me at this game more often than not. Her explanation? "Howard" (the guy who helps you sell two cars). She won this game.

Three of the characters: Ford allows you to build an extra factory on a space where you already have factories, and you will be first in turn order if you choose him. Kettering gives 3 R&D cubes. Sloan halves your loss points.

The other three characters, Howard, Durant and Chrysler.

22 Sep 2009. I taught Chong Sean Le Havre. I didn't know he hadn't played it before. Luckily I happened to have brought the game back to KK on that trip. He still felt the strategies weren't clear yet at the end of his first game. Indeed I think the large number of resource types and the buildings take a while to get familiar with.

23 Sep 2009. Scotland Yard. This is the board used by Mr. X to record his location secretly and to show the mode of transportation used. The wider spaces are where Mr. X must reveal his location to the detectives. Mr. X has two "2x" tokens which allow him to move twice, thus making it harder for the detectives to catch him.

In this version of Scotland Yard, there are always 5 detectives in play, regardless of the number of players. I wanted to try being Mr. X, so Michelle played all 5 detectives.

Location 128: Elephant and Castle. Michelle used to live near this place.

In my previous game where I played as Mr. X, I did very poorly and got caught very early in the game. This time I had learnt my lesson and did much better, eventually winning the game. I had learnt that it is good to use taxis. You won't travel far, but because there are so many possible taxi routes, it is hard for the detectives to catch you, and you can slip through their closing web. The other thing I had learnt is you need to plan your move at least up to the next time you will need to reveal your location. You need to make sure once you reveal, you have many routes of escape.