boardgaming in photos

10 Jul 2011. Han examining his card powers in Innovation. This was a particularly low-scoring game. Most of us were slow in accumulating scores, so the scoring achievements were claimed rather slowly. In the early game I did better in scoring, and claimed some scoring achievements. However I did very poorly in overall development of my civilisation. You can see how few cards I had compared to the others. Allen's approach in this game was to keep jumping ahead in technology. He had some cards which let him draw cards from higher numbered stacks, so he advanced quickly, and indirectly that also helped us to advance quickly. Eventually the advanced technologies let Allen catch up and win.

I always enjoy Innovation because there is a lot of variety and a lot of possibilities. I always feel there are many opportunities present and I need to try to make the most of what I get. There is luck in the game, but because I am so absorbed in trying to find something that works out of the many possibilities, I barely notice the luck element.

An expansion has come out, but I'm in no hurry to get it, because I feel there are still many plays I can get out of the base game.

Merchants and Marauders. It has been a while since Han, Allen and I last played this game, which we all like. This time we decided to play to 13 Glory points instead of 10, and to have a limit of converting 50 Gold to Glory points (10 Gold per Glory). We added a variant of drawing two captain cards and then picking one, because I was desperate to be a pirate and wanted to have a better chance of drawing a suitable pirate captain. It turned out that the captains that we picked were all French! There are only 3 French captains in the game. What a coincidence. In this photo you can see all three ships starting at French ports.

My captain had excellent seamanship (of 4). I finally fulfilled my dream of becoming a pirate. Here you can see I have two Spanish bounties, and one each of Dutch and English bounties. Pirating was a lot of fun. I got to attack merchant ships, which gave me both gold and goods, and I could sell the goods for more gold. I did have to repair my ship frequently because of all that fighting, and being wanted by so many nations could be a little inconvenient - their ports didn't welcome me, and all navies hunted me.

Near game end Allen and I suddenly realised a huge rule mistake. We had been treating the enter port action as one and the same as the port action. Entering port should be a move action and the port action is a separate action. No wonder the two of us had been so effective in accumulating points, while Han wondered what he did wrong to lag so far behind.

Playing to 13 Glory points felt about right. There was enough time to develop some narrative and overall it felt more satisfying.

Two-player Pandemic with Michelle, using the expansion (virulent strain variant on hard difficulty). We lost the first game but won the second. It has been some time since I last played Pandemic, but it's always good to bring it out again. It's like catching up with an old friend.

24 Jul 2011. I finally had the chance to teach Allen to play Gheos. This was a game he was planning to sell, because he never had a chance to play it since buying it. Hmm... not sure whether he's planning to keep it now that he has played it.

In this particular game, the Epoch tiles came out very quickly, and the game ended very early. It was a low-scoring game. I won at 55pts. I remember in my previous games (also 2-player), the scores were close to 100pts.

I also taught Allen Omen: A Reign of War, and we played two games. In one of the games I ended the game by completing 5 feats, which I had not done before. This seems a good way to quickly end the game if you are leading. In this photo I had oracles and soldiers in all 3 cities, which meant 2 feats completed. In these two games that we played, the oracles were not very lucky and we didn't get much bonus from flipping cards. Thankfully they still gave some benefits every turn that didn't require flipping the right cards.

Allen playing one of his favourite games, Innovation. This was one very lopsided game in which I won 6-0. This is not common, but is entirely possible in Innovation. Every card in the game has a different ability, so there is a lot of variability in the game - what cards you draw, what cards your opponents draw, as well as what cards you and your opponents decide to use. Everyone tries to make the most of opportunities that present themselves amid the chaos.