Hiew's Boardgame Blog

Ninjato

2012-01-29T17:19:00.001+08:00

Plays: 3Px1.

The Game

Ninjato is a worker placement game. Players are ninjas trying to win the most honour (i.e. victory points / VP) for their clans. A game consists of 7 rounds and every player has 3 actions per round. The worker placement mechanism here is non-blocking, i.e. if you have placed your shuriken (the "worker" in this game) at one location, others can still use that location. Most locations have a few items available, so getting there first means a better chance of getting the one you want.

Small shurikens (throwing stars) printed on the game board are places where you can place your "workers", which are large wooden shurikens, much larger than their counterparts printed on the board.

Things you can do include gaining skill cards, learning special techniques, using these to rob or steal treasures, and then cashing in these treasures, i.e. gaining VP's, while also gaining envoy cards or rumour cards which are used during intermediate scoring and game-end scoring. The cashing in of treasures is to ensure they earn you their true worth. If not cashed in, they'll only be worth 1VP each at game end. The envoy and rumour cards are also important sources of VP's.

Envoy scoring, which is done 3 times, has a stock manipulation aspect to it. Each envoy card is from one of three noble clans. Players compete to collect the most envoys in each clan, for the intermediate scorings. Each if the 5 houses (where ninjas go treasure hunting) belong to one of the three noble clans and has an honour value which is scored during intermediate scoring. If in a round a house is completely depleted of treasures, the ninja who did it gets to change the house ownership and honour value. So you need to manage both gaining majority and manipulating the value of the majority.

Envoy cards. To claim one, you need to pay the specific combination of treasures on the card. Those treasures will score you points according to the treasure values. I love the artwork of these cards. I think the artwork of the game is fantastic.

The rumour card scoring is done at game-end only, and is based on matching rumour cards with other items collected. E.g. if you have collected many rumour cards for defeating elite guards, and you have also defeated many elite guards, you'll get good multipliers and score lots of points.

When attacking a house, you can choose to use strength or stealth. Strength means defeating guards by playing skill cards with bigger numbers, and stealth means the opposite. So big or small numbers do not mean good or bad. After defeating a guard, you can decide whether to press your attack to try to gain more treasures. However the next guard is randomly drawn so it's a gamble whether you have the right card to defeat him. If you defeat all guards, you not only get to claim all treasures, you also get to change the house ownership and honour value. However sometimes the number of treasures and guards can unexpectedly increase making it harder to clear out a house. Elite guards which are tougher to beat may also turn up. There's a push-your-luck element here. If at any time you decide to withdraw after winning a fight, you keep all treasures won thus far. If you attempt the next guard but lose you only get to escape with one treasure.

A house by default has three treasures, one guard (which you know the strength of), and a noble clan marker (which is green with a value of 5 here). There are two shuriken icons, i.e. two spots where you can place your shuriken. You place it on the left side if you want to attack by strength (i.e. rob). You place it on the right side if you want to attack by stealth (i.e. steal).

The Play

Allen, Han and I did a three-player game. I found that 3 actions per round really is not a lot. You need to plan ahead and make the most of every action. In our game I concentrated on green envoys, while both Allen and Han competed for red envoys. That was unfortunate for me, because while they competed for red envoys, they both had incentive to convert the houses to the red noble clan. Since they had no interest in the green noble clan, removing the green clan's control over houses became a default preference. That's baaad for me.

Attacking houses was fun. No matter how well prepared you are, there is no guaranteed success. Sometimes a house simply has too many hidden guards behind its walls and you don't have enough cards to beat them all. It's quite exciting.

Learning special techniques from the sensei can be a tough decision. A technique learnt early can be used many times, but sometimes it's tempting to grab those treasures and envoys early to get a good lead over your opponents. There is also jostling to manipulate turn order for the next round, which gives another aspect to fight over.

These two tiles are special techniques which can be learnt from the sensei. You need to pay a specific skill card to gain a special technique, but the special technique can be used once every round from then on.

It's tempting to grab a shuriken from the board and throw it at someone.

Allen scored many points from red envoys because the red noble clan controlled many houses and all were high valued. He had a huge lead by mid game and Han and I never managed to catch up.

The Thoughts

Ninjato is squarely a Euro design. It uses worker placement. It's a mid-weight game. There are a few different ways to score points and players can put different emphasis on how they want to score. The game is quite interactive, because you are always trying to grab good stuff before your opponents take them, and you keep manipulating the noble clan values to help yourself and hurt your opponents. I like the press-your-luck excitement in invading the houses to rob / steal treasures. You can plan, but there's always a little luck factor to keep things exciting.

I feel a little multiple-ways-of-scoring fatigue, because some of these multiple ways feel a little like they exist for the sake of balance and creating choices and not for thematic reasons. In particular the rumour scoring feels a little artificial. Treasure scoring and envoy scoring are much better integrated.

Buy from Noble Knight Games. Status: in stock (at time of this post).

The Ares Project

2012-01-26T14:51:00.001+08:00

Plays: 3Px1.

The Game

The idea behind The Ares Project is based on real-time strategy (RTS) games on the computer, like Starcraft, Age of Empires and Warcraft. Players start with a base and some basic units. They harvest resources, construct buildings, use those buildings to build new and better units, upgrade units, and then fight to the death. Usually there are different factions for players to choose from, and each has its own strengths, weaknesses and unique aspects.

The Ares Project implements all these using a clean overall structure. Every player has his own deck of cards. On your turn, you just play one card. If played face-down, it's a resource that you can use to construct a building or train a unit. If played face-up you use what's on the card, which can be a building or some special improvement. All this is done behind a screen so your opponents can't see what you're doing. There are some special battle cards, and when played face-up, you attack an opponent.

Other than the players' bases which are not adjacent to one another, there is one other location called the frontier, which is adjacent to everyone's base. Normally you can only attack the frontier from your base, and only after you control the frontier, you can attack others' bases. If you conquer an opponent's base, he is eliminated. You win if you are the last man standing. The game also ends if everyone runs out of cards. In this case victory is determined by the number of battle cards held and control of the frontier. Whenever a battle card is played, it is usually claimed by the player who is holding the frontier at that moment. Thus the importance of controlling the frontier although it makes you more vulnerable to attacks.

Only during battle are player screens removed, so that you can see what your opponent has built. Units are placed in a battle line, and a number of combat rounds are conducted using dice. There are four types of units, infantry, armour, air and buildings. Every unit has different attack abilities against the four unit types, so it's important to position your units well at the battle line.

Every turn a card is played into your own playing area behind a screen. You have a hand of 3 cards, and whenever you play a card, you have to decide between using it as a resource, or using the ability on its face (usually a building type). Buildings which can train new units have two halves, each for a different unit type, and when constructing them, you have to decide which half to use, and play the card with that half pointing forward.

When it is time for battle, the screen is removed, and both combatants get to see what buildings and units each other has built. Only at this point resources (i.e. cards played face-down) are converted to actual unit tokens.

The Play

Allen, Han and I did a 3-player game. I played the Terrans and Allen the Kahoum (a wizard-like human faction). These two are "normal" factions. Han played an insect-like race called the Xenos, which works rather differently. We were mostly conservative and did much build-up before committing to battle. I was first to claim the frontier, and Han was first to attack me. I managed to fend off his attack, but this battle left both of us weaker, while Allen preserved his strength and built powerful buildings and units. Later when Allen attacked me, I conceded the frontier to him. He attacked me again, this time targeting my base, so it was a battle for survival for me.

Allen's units were expensive and he didn't have many, but he had very powerful obelisks, a unique Kahoum building that support his units during battle. One of them gave instant kills by expending power, and it destroyed a full battalion of my armour units (four of them). I lost the battle and was eliminated. I had collected the most battle cards (equivalent to victory points) up to that point, but they now went to Allen.

Han's only chance of winning was to eliminate Allen, since he didn't have that many battle cards. When he attacked the frontier, Allen conceded it to him. Before his deck ran out, Han launched a final attack at Allen's base. To maximise his odds, he brought along his queen, which is the most powerful single unit in the game. Unfortunately for him he couldn't overcome Allen's defenses. Even his queen got killed. So Allen was the final victor.

The small red square board is the frontier. Whoever controls it places his faction marker on it. The orange player screen is for the Xenos faction, blue for Colossus (but Allen was actually playing the Kahoum) and green for Terran.

The final battle between Han and Allen. Units are arranged in a battle line like this. Green squares are infantry-type units, red circles are armour units, blue triangles are air units, and grey pentagons are buildings. When you attack an opponent's base, you can get your units to attempt to destroy vacant buildings instead of shooting at enemy units. You do so by attacking the Base cards, which are placed at two ends of the battle line on the defender's side.

The Thoughts

I wonder whether this should primarily be a two player game. With three or more players, it seems the first two to get involved in a battle are making themselves vulnerable to the other players. I have only tried one game so I can't say for sure. It's just a gut feel. In our game we did a lot of build-up before the first battle so it was a big one with much losses inflicted on both sides. If players attacked earlier and more frequently, this situation I worry about may not occur much.

The basic turn structure is very simple, which I like. Player turns are quick. The game is most rich in the unique faction abilities and characteristics. They all require different styles of play. You need to invest time to understand their strengths and weaknesses to fully appreciate the intricacies of the game.

I found the battle resolution procedure a little tedious. How the various unit abilities and faction abilities come into play is interesting, but there's no avoiding the actual execution. The game has the rock-paper-scissors concept of units being effective against some unit types but not others, but I didn't find the implementation particularly interesting.

In summary, I like the high-level design, didn't fancy the detailed implementation, and still need to explore much more of the faction intricacies to get a deeper understanding of the game.

Buy from Noble Knight Games. Status: in stock (at time of this post).

Risk Legacy

2012-01-25T07:00:00.001+08:00

Plays: 3Px7.

In the interest of not revealing spoilers to those who don't want to read them, I'm doing things a little differently with this post. I'll do the overview, then share my thoughts, and only after that share my experience with Risk Legacy.

The Game

Risk Legacy is an enhanced version of Risk, the main new concept being that the game and game components will change permanently as games are played, some being modified by the players, like marking the board and adding new elements to it, some being revealed bit by bit as certain conditions are met and players are instructed to open some sealed envelopes. Risk is a mass market game, so I won't describe the basics. Risk Legacy uses the basic earth map. Its winning condition is based on victory points, i.e. controlling headquarters, completing missions and trading in resource cards. There are different factions in the game each starting with different special abilities, and additional special abilities can be introduced as the game is played. The game is expected to stabilise after 15 games, i.e. no further modifications to rules and game components.

When you open the game box, you will see six envelopes sealed off, with instructions on when to open them. Inside them you'll find narratives about how your world has developed, and you'll get new rules and new game components.

Preparing for the first game. Naturally I picked green, my favourite colour. Before your first game you already get to choose one from two special abilities (that green sticker already attached to the faction board). The unchosen ability is forever lost. You are asked to destroy that sticker. The four cards are resource cards. Each card has one coin value by default, and before the first game, everyone gets to pick four cards to increase the coin value to two. I picked Indonesia because my home state of Sabah (which is in Malaysia, not Indonesia) is depicted here. The game pieces are HQ (star shape), 3 armies piece (wolf rider) and 1 army piece (warrior). Scar cards have stickers which you can add to the board.

This is another faction. They are desert dwellers. The sculpts are different for each faction.

I was fooling around with game pieces. No, in Risk Legacy your armies do not walk on water.

This was our first game, so the game board was still very "clean".

The Thoughts

The concept of letting players modify the game permanently is a novelty, a gimmick, but it is fun. Aspects of the game being gradually revealed is fun. There are new rules, changes to rules, and new gameplay elements. Cities will get added, territory properties will be modified (e.g. becoming harder, or easier to defend), faction abilities will change, continents will be named. There is a story line developing through the series of 15 games being played, which is aligned with the rules changes. However you need to keep in mind that this is still Risk, just with some improvements. It is still about breaking one another's control of continents over and over, accumulating many resource cards to exchange for troops to make big attacks, and dice luck being able to spoil the best laid plans. But it is also about waiting for the right moment to strike - after you have enough resource cards to swap for many armies and before your opponent strikes a fatal blow. It is also about trying to appear weaker than you are, and persuading others to fight. For players who are familiar with the game, there is careful manoeuvring and positioning before launching a major attack. It can be tense.

Allen's HQ (red) was in Great Britain, and had been conquered by me (green). Han's HQ (beige) was in Argentina, and was also under my control. My own HQ (green) was in Indonesia and was captured by Han (beige). What a mess. Allen's faction (red) had been wiped out, but since there was at least one unoccupied territory, he could reenter the game.

The purple faction had cool tanks (3 armies piece).

In the foreground you can see spaces for writing the names of the winners. Han won the first two games.

One concern I have with the game is it seems to encourage players to start from the same locations, which might make each game feel similar. At the end of a game, you get to add some good stuff to the map. Very good stuff if you win, moderately good stuff if you lose but are not eliminated. Once you add a city, in future games, only you may place your HQ in this city. So there is incentive to start here, and in subsequent games you are somewhat encouraged to add more good stuff in that general area, which compounds the problem. I'm not sure whether this is commonly experienced. It happened in the campaign I played, and I intentionally did weird stuff, even some not beneficial to "my" starting area, hoping to mix things up a bit and prevent the games from becoming scripted or static.

Risk Legacy has been a fun journey of discovery so far. There were some stale moments, e.g. some games got into long stalemates with nobody being able to control any continent, but those tend to be earlier in the campaign when the game was still quite bare. As more elements were added, this happened less. Our games were all 3-player games, and they reminded me of Romance of the Three Kingdoms, where the three kingdoms maintained a delicate balance of power, always keeping one another in check. There was much cajoling, pleading and convincing others to fight. We were all sneaky. Sometimes A intentionally refrained from attacking C to conserve his armies, forcing B to do it on his turn which is just before C's turn, because otherwise C would receive a big continent bonus. Alliances formed quickly, when the third person threatened to win, and also dissolved quickly, when one ally found a convenient time and location to launch an attack. All in a day's work.

Risk Legacy is suitable for casual gamers, because it is not that different from regular Risk. For gamers, it is still fun as long as you set your expectations that it is not really that different from regular Risk.

SPOILER ALERT

The Play

I realise I have already described what it feels like when playing the game, so this will be just the spoiler section with more photos.

Fortress Europe. Both Northern Europe and Southern Europe had fortresses built. Allen had also added a minor city in Great Britain. We made a mistake in our first two games. When placing the initial troops, they must all be placed in one territory together with your HQ. We thought we could take turns placing one army into any territory. That's why you see some of my purple armies in Africa and some in South East Asia, and they are disconnected.

We were keen to open new envelopes, and sometimes intentionally took actions that lead to meeting the conditions required, even though some of them were against our best interests in winning the particular game we were playing. In one particular game, I (red) amassed a huge army group and invaded Alaska from Asia. I intended to fight my way through North America and South America to eventually reach Han's capital at the southern tip of Argentina. However when fighting in Western United States, we had the opportunity to have 3 missiles used in the same battle, so we did it. It wasn't that critical a time to need to use missiles (which convert die rolls to 6's), but we wanted to see what surprises the game had in store for us. And the surprise turned out to be this - the nuclear fallout sticker now applied to Western United States on the game board. The nuclear explosion wiped out half my troops, stunting my progress. Western United States became a danger zone, with the fallout sometimes killing nearby troops, unless you play the newly introduced faction - the mutants.

Because of the nuclear fallout, the Western United States resource card had to be destroyed. It was lost forever. Oh what a feeling to tear up a game component.

The mutant faction that appears mid way through the campaign. They have special abilities which are quite different from other factions. There are four grey patches on the right covering additional special abilities. Only one of them will eventually be scratched off to have that special ability come into play, when the appropriate event cards are drawn and acted upon.

When this event card appears, the mutant faction gets to decide how it wants to mutate.

I named the South East Asian continent after my wife. In future games, whenever I controlled Michellia, I would gain 3 bonus armies instead of 2. That new connection between Madagascar and Western Australia was created by me, because I completed a special mission that allowed me to do so. South East Asia (oops, I mean Michellia) has always been the easiest to defend continent, having one single choke point in Indonesia. By creating another route, I hoped to shake things up a little.

I named a major city after my elder daughter.

I named a minor city after my younger daughter.

More and more cities have sprung up (blue stickers). Typically my starting area is South East Asia, Allen's is Europe and Han's South America. This game they started in their usual locations, but I (orange) chose to start in Japan, just to be different. I had a major city in Japan. Han (beige) became lord of the southern hemisphere, expanding his empire eastwards to Africa and then to South East Asia, the route to South East Asia made much easier because of the new sea connection. Allen had control of Europe, and was poised to wreak havoc in Han's territories by having just placed a huge army group in the Middle East. I controlled neither Asia nor North America. It was a strategy to appear weak, but it turned out to be so effective that I became rather weak for real.

When we opened the last sealed area on the game tray, we were pleasantly surprised and greatly amused to find --- Aliens (white)! This game is crazy. It was the green faction, the supposedly most primitive faction, who collaborated with the aliens and brought them into the game. In this particular game they were treated as one faction, but from the next game onwards they will be separate factions that players can choose. Aliens have their own unique abilities, and they love attacking cities.

Zoneplex on Kickstarter

2012-01-24T08:49:00.003+08:00

The designers of Zoneplex contacted me about their game which is now on Kickstarter. Looks like a mid-weight Eurogame. It is for 3 - 5 players, plays in 60 minutes and is for age 11+. Check it out if you are interested.

You construct the pyramid as the game progresses.

I love the artwork.

Meeples Cafe - Captain Clueless, Pack & Stack, Kids of Catan

2012-01-22T15:16:00.003+08:00

I visited Meeples Cafe again on their members day, this time bringing the family. I was there to buy games too of course, taking advantage of the good discount on that day. It was a family outing for us, to try some children games and children-friendly games. The staff at Meeples Cafe was very helpful and friendly. It was a hectic day for them. The place was crowded with people taking numbers to pay for their game purchases. Thankfully I had made a reservation. I had also listed games to try, read their rules and prepared rules summaries, so we could jump in to play without delay.

We were customers number 21 to 24 that day, but I don't think the numbers go in sequence strictly.

Captain Clueless

This is a team game needing at least two per team. The game board is a map if the Caribbean. To win, your team needs to start from your home port, visit 3 ports (randomly picked), and then return to port. You do this by drawing your route using a whiteboard marker (can be erased after every game). What's interesting is the captain doing the drawing is blindfolded, and the crew (teammates) are limited to giving a few words as hints during the sailing. Whenever the ship crashes your turn ends and on your next turn you start from where you crashed. First team to complete its journey wins.

We played at easy level, 5 words allowed to be given as hints per turn. I teamed up with Shee Yun (6) and Michelle with Chen Rui (5). In the first game the children played the captains, which I thought would be fun for them. They certainly have not played anything like this. Sometimes they drew too quickly and crashed before we could stop them. We didn't even manage to fully utilise 5 words.

For the second game Michelle and I played the captains and the children gave hints. It turned out to be hilarious. When you have a 5 word limit, hearing panicky hints like "Oh no!" (2 wasted words), "left a bit" (3 words when 1 would do), "Not there!" (2 words which are rather useless to someone blindfolded) makes you want to laugh and at the same time makes you feel so helpless.

Michelle and Chen Rui playing Captain Clueless, with Chen Rui being the captain.

Chen Rui was quite pleased with the results - her team (red) won.

Some of the port cards.

I think Captain Clueless is primarily a children's game. Not really suitable as a party game if played with only adults, because I suspect it would become more serious and skill-based than it should be. It may be different matter if you are a littly tipsy though.

Pack & Stack

Now Pack & Stack can be played as a party game with only adults. It is based on a simple and clever idea. Every round everyone gets a random distribution of small wooden blocks, with sizes varying from one cube (the basic unit in the game) to five cubes long. These represent furniture you need to pack onto a lorry. Lorries come in many varieties. They have different storage area base shapes (not all are rectangles), and they allow different stacking heights, ranging from 1 to 4. After getting your set of furniture, a number of lorries are revealed at the same time, and players race to pick the one they want. Whoever is last has no choice and must randomly draw a lorry from the lorry deck. After that everyone tries to fit his furniture onto his lorry. You lose points for furniture you are unable to load, and also for wasted space on the lorry. That means it's very hard to get a perfect score of 0. Everyone starts the game with 75pts, and the game ends when someone runs out of points. One catch is the player who loses the fewest points every round gains a bonus 10pts. So even if you are behind, it is still possible to turn the table.

There is not a lot to the game, but it is exciting to grab your ideal lorry quickly, and somehow the game manages to make moving house fun. I never imagined something like packing too much luggage into a too-small car boot (trunk) can be fun.

Pack & Stack. Furniture has been loaded onto the lorry. The number 1 on the lorry means furniture cannot be stacked (only 1 level allowed). The dice are used to determine the furniture you get for a round. The round tokens are scores tokens.

The lorry allows 3 levels.

Kids of Catan

I hadn't planned to play Kids of Catan with my children. It was older daughter Shee Yun (6) who picked it. I wonder whether the "Kids of" on the cover attracted her, or the cover itself did. The game doesn't have much decision making, so I wasn't keen. The game has a rotating disk in the middle, and player pawns are placed on the edges of this disk. Right outside the disk are slots for the resources (wood, brick, grain). The active player rolls a die (which only has values 1, 2 and 3) and rotates the disk by that many notches. If anyone's pawn stops next to a resource slot which has a resource, she collects it, i.e. this can be done by players other than the active player. You can only collect one of each type of resource. Once you have all three, you construct one of the three buildings you are assigned at the start of the game, and return the resources to empty resource slots. After you build all three buildings, you can build the special city hall building to win the game.

Chen Rui playing Kids of Catan.

The pawns with the outstretched arms are the player pawns (blue, red, orange and white). The centre of the disk is the area for constructing buildings. Some have already been built.

Chen Rui was quite pleased with winning the game.

The building with the green roof is the city hall.

So this is a basically a fancier roll-and-move game, where the most frequent decision is where to return your resources when you construct a building. Well, you want to put them where you are most likely to collect them, so it's not even really a true decision. I thought both my children (6 and 5) have outgrown this type of game, but to my surprise they enjoyed the game. I guess I'm biased, because I'm looking at the matter from a gamer's perspective. Well, Kids of Catan still has many merits as a children's game. It teaches taking turns. It teaches set collection. It also introduces the interesting concept of being able to do something on someone else's turn. It teaches anticipation - knowing what you'd need to roll to get that brick resource, and knowing what you mustn't roll to avoid the robber who would steal a resource. The components are wonderful.

Visit Meeples Cafe, Petaling Jaya, Malaysia.
Buy Kids of Catan from Noble Knight Games. Status: in stock (at time of this post).
Buy Pack & Stack from Noble Knight Games. Status: in stock (at time of this post).

Happy Year of the Dragon 2012

2012-01-21T21:53:00.002+08:00

Here's wishing everyone good health and joy in the new year. May all your rolls be 1's in Axis & Allies, and 6's in Risk.

Spot It

2012-01-19T19:00:00.000+08:00

Plays: 3Px4, 2Px8.

After two very long blog posts which took much time and energy to write, I need to write something shorter and lighter.

The Game

Spot It is a simple speed game. Every card shows 8 items, and between every pair of cards in the deck, there is exactly one item that will appear on both. In every variation of the game, players race to find the matches between two cards.

What appears in both these cards?

There are five different ways to play.

The Well. The well at the centre starts with one card. Everyone else gets the same number of cards. When the game starts, you try to look for matches between your card and the well card. Once you do so, you place your card into the well, covering the well card. This means you'll reveal the next card in your deck. It also means the other players now need to find a match between their top cards and the new card that you have just added to the well. Whoever exhausts his deck first wins.

The Tower. Everyone starts with a single card. The tower starts with the rest of the cards. Players race to find a match between their cards and the tower card. Whoever does it first claims to tower card and places it onto his deck. Repeat until the tower deck is exhausted. Whoever has the most cards wins.

Triplet. Find an item that appears on three cards, and claim those three cards. Three new cards are drawn to fill in the blanks, then repeat. When the draw deck is exhausted, whoever has the most cards wins.

The Play

I played Spot It with my wife and my kids, and it was quite fun. The game is simple, but also exciting because of the real-time element. Sometimes it's weird that even after looking for a long time, I can't find the matching items. It is as if I have a blind spot in my mind. Yet sometimes the matching items just jump out at me immediately. It's quite funny when sometimes one player simply has an amazing streak, claiming (or giving away) card after card with only a few seconds in between, while the others get very annoyed because they have barely started looking for matches when the centre card is changed yet again.

Naturally Michelle and I do much better than the children. However sometimes they do have those power streaks that leave us stunned. I sometimes let the children win. When Michelle and I are in the same game and we play the variants which are multiplayer free-for-alls, we will target each other first, giving the children better chances to win a round.

The Thoughts

Light and fast real-time game suitable for playing with children and casual gamers. Suitable as a party game too, because it's very quick to explain and to start playing.

Nice-looking metal container, but in practice, round cards are a pain to shuffle.

Buy from Noble Knight Games. Status: in stock (at time of this post).

my 2011

2012-01-17T16:30:00.002+08:00

Similar to previous years, let's start with the fancy stats. This year, I recorded an additional aspect of my boardgaming - whether a particular game played was a computer version played against AI's. That means I now have some additional stats.

CHARTS

The 2011h column means humans-only data. There are some boardgames which I have only played the computer versions of in 2011. Last year I played a crazy number of games of Dominion and Race for the Galaxy against the computer, which explains the drop in the raw numbers this year. I still played many games of 7 Wonders against the computer, but not as many as those games played last year.

All lines use the axis on the left except for Total Plays which uses the right axis. My number of distinct games played continues to rise. Similarly for new to me games. Total plays dropped significantly, but I suspect it is more because of the distortion caused by the 613 vs-computer plays of Dominion and Race for the Galaxy in 2010 than because I have been playing games less in 2011.

Same chart, but using the human-only numbers for 2011.

This chart shows 2011 and 2011h numbers together, which can be a little confusing. In either case, total distinct games played has increased.

This is the percentage view. I'm happy that the yellow section has increased, which means there are more games that I managed to play 2 to 4 times. I've always felt that one needs to play a game a few times to fully appreciate it and enjoy it (unless it's a simple game).

This is counting every play. The biggest contributors to the red section for the 2011 bar are 7 Wonders and Brawl. Many of these plays are vs-computer, and that's why the red section of the 2011h bar is much shorter.

Percentage view.

For the first time in 6 years I managed to acquire no more than 20 games. I am going to set a humble target of 18 in 2012.

GAMES PLAYED

Numbers in brackets are plays against the computer.

	Game	Plays	Remarks
	Dimes
1.	7 Wonders	175(167)
7 Wonders
2.	Brawl	78(78)	It was free on the iPhone, and I'm happy to have discovered this little gem.
Brawl on the iPhone
3.	Race for the Galaxy	38(20)	One of my favourite games, and still holding on to a respectable number of plays. I'm looking forward to the next expansion which will be under a new story arc, i.e. cannot be mixed with the previous expansions.
4.	Uno	25	A lot of fun with the kids (6 and 4).
5.	Ra	21(20)
6.	Halli Galli	16	Played with my children.
7.	Risk	13(13)	This was played on the iPhone, using a Risk clone called Dominion. Yeah, it's confusing...
8.	Innovation	11	I wish I had played more. I like this.
	Fives
9.	Power Grid	9
10.	51st State	8
11.	Hive	8
12.	Spot It	8
13.	At the Gates of Loyang	7	I played this more with my 6-year-old daughter (using simplified rules) than with my wife.
14.	Blue Moon	7(5)
15.	Nightfall	7
16.	Roll Through The Ages	7(4)
17.	Famiglia	6
18.	Mamma Mia	6
19.	Taluva	6
20.	The Message: Emissary Crisis	6	6 games (or so) in one game session. Addictive and fun.
21.	Chicago Express	5(5)
22.	Ubongo	5
	Others
23.	A la carte	4
24.	Dawn Under	4
25.	Evolution	4
26.	Fast Flowing Forest Fellers	4
27.	Maori	4
28.	Maria	4
29.	Merchants and Marauders	4
30.	Money	4(4)
31.	Omen: A Reign of War	4
32.	Rabbit Hunt	4
33.	Sid Meier's Civilization	4
34.	The Kids of Carcassonne	4
35.	Through the Ages	4
36.	10 days in Asia	3
37.	Agricola	3
38.	Blokus 3D	3
39.	Dominant Species	3
40.	Dominion	3(3)	Wow... how far this has fallen since last year (273 plays).
41.	Earth Reborn	3
42.	Endeavor	3
43.	FITS	3
44.	Gheos	3
45.	Gulo Gulo	3
46.	Indonesian Finger Game	3
47.	Irondale	3
48.	Jab	3
49.	Kakerlaken-Poker	3
50.	Kingdoms of Crusaders	3
51.	Loopin' Louie	3
52.	Viva Topo!	3
53.	Wasabi	3
54.	6 Nimmt	2
55.	A Few Acres of Snow	2
56.	Castle Ravenloft	2
57.	Chicken Cha Cha Cha	2
58.	Downfall of Pompeii	2
59.	Factory Manager	2
60.	First Train to Nuremberg	2
61.	Galaxy Trucker	2
62.	Haggis	2
63.	Hansa Teutonica	2
64.	Inca Empire	2
65.	Jaipur	2
66.	Keltis	2
67.	Le Havre	2
68.	Liberte	2
69.	LOTR Confrontation	2
70.	Memory	2
71.	Navegador	2
72.	Pandemic	2
73.	Stronghold	2
74.	The Speicherstadt	2
75.	Ticket to Ride	2
76.	TTR Nordic Countries	2
77.	Twister	2
78.	Villa Paletti	2
79.	Wars of the Roses	2
80.	18TN	1
81.	20th Century	1
82.	Airlines Europe	1
83.	Animal Upon Animal	1
84.	Antiquity	1
85.	Ark	1
86.	Attika	1
87.	Automobile	1
88.	Battle Line	1
89.	Battlestar Galactica	1
90.	Blokus Duo	1
91.	Carc H&G	1
92.	Chaos in the Old World	1
93.	Checkers	1
94.	Coloretto	1
95.	Commands & Colors Napoleonics	1
96.	Cyclades	1
97.	Dancing Eggs	1
98.	Diamant	1
99.	Dragon Diego Dart	1
100.	Dungeon Petz	1
101.	Factory Fun	1
102.	Genoa	1
103.	Get That Toy	1
104.	Giants	1
105.	Giro d'Italia	1
106.	Glory to Rome	1
107.	Hacienda	1
108.	Havoc	1
109.	Here I Stand	1
110.	Ice Flow	1
111.	Illuminati	1
112.	In the Year of the Dragon	1
113.	Ingenious	1
114.	K2	1
115.	Kingsburg	1
116.	Labyrinth: The War on Terror	1
117.	Leaping Lemmings	1
118.	Lobo 77	1
119.	Metropolys	1
120.	Mexica	1
121.	Minnie's Garden Game	1
122.	Monopoly	1(1)
123.	MR1: Jack the Ripper	1
124.	On the Underground	1
125.	Pacific Typhoon	1
126.	Perikles	1
127.	Piece o' Cake	1
128.	Power Grid: The First Sparks	1
129.	Puerto Rico	1
130.	R-Eco	1
131.	Resident Evil	1
132.	Samurai Swords	1
133.	San Juan	1
134.	Santy Anno	1
135.	Scrabble	1
136.	Struggle of Empires	1
137.	Successors	1
138.	Tammany Hall	1
139.	The Adventurers	1
140.	The Bottle Imp	1
141.	The Great Fire of London 1666	1
142.	The Magic Labyrinth	1
143.	Thebes	1
144.	Through the Desert	1
145.	Tigris & Euphrates	1
146.	Tikal II	1
147.	Tinners' Trail	1
148.	Tobago	1
149.	Troyes	1
150.	TTR Switzerland	1
151.	Twilight Struggle	1
152.	Vikings	1
153.	Wan voting prototype	1
154.	Washington's War	1
155.	Zooloretto	1(1)

That's a total of 706 plays of 155 unique games. If I exclude the vs-computer games, I have 385 human-only plays, i.e. from my total of 706 plays in 2011, 321 were vs-computer plays. There are 7 games which I have only played against the computer in 2011.

NEW TO ME

18TN - Finally I got to experience an 18XX game. I tend to feel uneasy with stock-holding games, because they feel counter-intuitive to me, but at the moment I am cautiously optimistic about how I will further enjoy 18XX system.
20th Century - I liked Shipyard (same designer), but 20th Century felt so-so. Will I like Last Will?
51st State - I like it well enough, but not enough to replace it with The New Era. Version 1 is good enough for me.
7 Wonders - I like it very much. This is a wide-appeal game, although it may not be a Top 10 game for many.
A Few Acres of Snow - Keen to explore more, using the updated rules.
A Few Acres of Snow
Airlines Europe - Stock-holding, so, not really my thing.
Animal Upon Animal
Antiquity - Crawl out of quicksand while thinking of how to win and doing it faster than your opponents. Planning to get this.
Antiquity
Brawl - I prefer this over Jab despite being more abstract, because it feels more fast-and-furious.
Castle Ravenloft
Chaos in the Old World
Commands & Colors Napoleonics
Dancing Eggs
Dominant Species - I like it but only moderately, because of the area majority aspect.
Dragon Diego Dart
Dungeon Petz - Ordered. I like it more than Dungeon Lords, which I found just okay. The double-guessing in Dungeon Lords felt more random than I could accept. I feel there is a bit more control in Dungeon Petz.
Earth Reborn - Still halfway through the learning scenarios, but so far so good. Rich background story. I just worry about replayability of the scenarios, despite how interesting the stories are. I have not tried scenario building though.
Evolution - Simple, fun, thematic card game from Russia.
Factory Fun
Famiglia - Quite a clever card game that requires some long-term planning and has hard decisions to make.
Fast Flowing Forest Fellers - Race games are not my thing. This one is OK.
First Train to Nuremberg - Like, but on the second play it starts feeling less novel. I hope I will be able to get more than a handful of plays from this.
Genoa
Gheos
Giants
Giro d'Italia
Haggis - Climbing card game that works for 2 too.
Havoc - Poker with longer term strategy. Too bad this is out-of-print.
Here I Stand - Learn one semester's worth of history about the religious reformation in Europe in 9 hours. Love this.
Illuminati
Inca Empire - Good game. Beautiful second edition.
Indonesian Finger Game - No components. Just use your hands. Wait... that sounds... not quite right.
Irondale - Didn't like, felt too tactical / short-term.
Jab - More pattern recognition under time pressure than releasing your inner wild animal.
Jaipur
K2 - I'm impressed with how thematic this felt.
Kingdoms of Crusaders - Lost Cities with less maths.
Kingsburg - It seems the interesting-use-of-dice games tend to be misses for me, e.g. Troyes, Macao. But then I like Yspahan and Alien Frontiers.
Labyrinth: The War on Terror - It's hard being a terrorist. It's hard being the world's sole superpower too.
Leaping Lemmings - Should be light and fun but I didn't find it light and fun.
Liberte
Lobo 77
Maori - Appears light but can be challenging when adding all the optional rules.
Maria - Tense manoeuvring before battles, and tense battles.
Merchants and Marauders - I like a lot. I prefer to increase the target Glory points so that I get a fuller experience, else the game seems to end just when it starts getting interesting.
Money
Navegador
Nightfall - Deck-building game that feels significantly different from Dominion. It's a multiplayer conflict game, so diplomacy is important and it is easy to get ganged up upon.
Omen: A Reign of War - Good 2P card game with excellent artwork.
Pacific Typhoon - Essentially an abstract card game with lots of flavour. Also a negotiation game with shifting alliances.
Piece o' Cake - Elegant design. Has one clever mechanism. Minimalistic. Didn't click.
Power Grid: The First Sparks - Seems to be more suitable for people who don't like Power Grid. If you already love Power Grid, this feels like a diluted version.
Resident Evil - Didn't feel different enough from the elephant in the room (Dominion).
Santy Anno
Sid Meier's Civilization (Fantasy Flight Games) - I like it, but to me it's a sprint and not a marathon.
Spot It
Stronghold
Successors - Good multiplayer wargame. Card driven game.
Tammany Hall
The Adventurers - Excellent production but game didn't click at all.
The Bottle Imp
The Great Fire of London 1666
The Kids of Carcassonne
The Magic Labyrinth
The Message: Emissary Crisis - Great fun with a big group. A pleasant surprise. The English rulebook is poorly written, and needs an English-to-English translation.
Playing The Message: Emissary Crisis
The Speicherstadt - Didn't like. One clever mechanism does not guarantee a good game.
Tikal II - Found it so-so. Feels unfocused.
Tinners' Trail - Low granularity (but not simple) Martin Wallace game.
Tobago
Troyes - Some interesting mechanisms, but I didn't find the game captivating.
Vikings - A pleasant build-your-own-play-area game.
Wan voting prototype
Wars of the Roses - It has double-guessing and area majority, both of which I usually don't quite like, but I like this game. I like how loyalty and betrayals of your subjects are implemented.
Washington's War

GAMES ACQUIRED

Finally, in 2011 I was able to not exceed my self-imposed quota of 20 new games per year. I was only up to 18. If I twist my definitions, the number will be even smaller.

The Kids of Carcassonne - The first three are for the children, not for me.
A la carte
Spot It
--------
The Message: Emissary Crisis - These are review copies or gifts.
Power Grid Promo Cards
The Kingdoms of Crusaders
Evolution
--------
Agricola: Gamer's Deck - These are expansions of games I already like.
Power Grid Brazil / Iberia
Power Grid China/Korea
Power Grid Japan/Russia
--------
51st State - These are surprise findings, discovered due to Han and Allen respectively buying them.
Famiglia
--------
Endeavor - These are try-before-buys.
First Train to Nuremberg
7 Wonders
--------
Maori - These were added to my collection after doing research and knowing what to expect.
Haggis - I self-made a copy using regular playing cards. This self-made copy only have four suits, so it can only be used for 2-player games. The original game supports 2 to 3 players.

So, it's reasonable to say that I only have 7 new games right? (#12 to #18)

OTHER THOUGHTS ON GAMES

Favourite new-to-me-in-2011 games: The only one I'm sure about is Merchants & Marauders. Tentative ones are Antiquity, A Few Acres of Snow and Here I Stand, which need more play before I can really be sure. Getting Here I Stand to the table won't be easy though.
Merchants & Marauders
Other games that I quite like: Sid Meier's Civilization, K2, 18TV, 51st State, 7 Wonders, Dungeon Petz, Earth Reborn, Famiglia, Evolution, Haggis, First Train to Nuremberg, Maori, Maria, Successors, The Message: Emissary Crisis, War of the Roses. Wow... 16 of them.
Pleasant surprises: Famiglia, Brawl, Omen: A Reign of War, The Message: Emissary Crisis, Vikings.
Some favourites that I regret not playing in 2011: Princes of Florence, Die Macher, Lord of the Rings, Axis & Allies games.

LOOKING BACK AT 2011

In 2011, my wife Michelle had 149 plays, 48 distinct games. Most played games are Uno (30), Race for the Galaxy (18), Power Grid (8). Older daughter Shee Yun (6 years old) had 126 plays, 31 distinct games, most played games are Uno (30), Halli Galli (16), Spot It (8). Younger daughter Chen Rui (5 years old) had 84 plays, 28 distinct games, most played games are Uno (27), Halli Galli (7), Ubongo (5). From the numbers, it looks like we all love Uno.
My family and Uno
Han, Allen and I have more or less settled into a comfortable routine in organising game sessions. Most often it's just the three of us playing.
One thing that I feel we have been doing well is doing repeat plays, which allowed us to gain more insight in these games, and allowed us to appreciate them more. E.g. plays of Sid Meier's Civilization, Merchants & Marauders, Dominant Species, Maria.
Maria
I realised how I got to know my friends (and myself) better through boardgames.
Jeff of Boardgamecafe.net has a new location for his more-or-less regular open gaming sessions on Friday nights. Memorable sessions there include plays of 18TN and Antiquity.
OTK in Cheras, Kuala Lumpur.
Here I Stand was certainly another memorable session, and also The Message: Emissary Crisis.
Here I Stand
I managed to bring an old favourite back to the table - Samurai Swords (latest version is called Ikusa).
I thought Witch House, the boardgame cafe in Taipei where I started my boardgame hobby in 2003, was going to close down, but they eventually managed to stay open.
I was in the media, interviewed by The Star newspaper, and also in an awkward way, in a series of videos.
This blog was blocked at my work place.
I have been maintaining dual boardgame blogs for more than a year now, my Chinese blog being started in Dec 2010. It has been demanding. The toughest moments are always when I have completed a post for one blog, and have to steel myself to start writing the same post for the other blog. It feels like dreaming about waking up, brushing your teeth, changing, eating breakfast and driving to work, only to then really wake up and discover you have to do all that all over again. Yet, it has been fulfilling, and I hope I can continue this.

I don't have many big achievements in 2011 in terms of gaming or blogging about it. I'm just happy that I have good games to play, and good friends to play them with.

Here I Stand

2012-01-13T22:08:00.005+08:00

Plays: 3Px1.

My first game of Here I Stand took 9 hours, but I barely felt the time pass, or my hunger, until we forced ourselves to take a break to eat. I was ravenous when I noticed my hunger, and ate two servings. It was something cooked by Allen himself, so his wife would probably be shocked to learn that I had braved two servings. This is how absorbing the game is. Even afterwards I kept thinking about it.

The Game

Here I Stand is about the religious reformation in Europe, the rise of the Protestants. It is a Card Driven Game (CDG) and a wargame, designed for 6-players, and has the many aspects of multi-player conflict games - diplomacy, alliances, negotiations etc. The six factions are the Protestants, the Papacy, the English, the French, the Hapsburgs and the Ottomans. There are various non-player minor powers in the game, like Scotland, Venice, Austria-Hungary and Genoa. The main ways to win are gaining victory points (VP's) and conquering major cities (called keys). The six factions have very different ways of earning victory points.

The Protestants and the Papacy gain VP based on the religious beliefs of the locations on the map. Every city has two characteristics - what the main religion is and who has political control of the city - and they are independent of each other. E.g. technically Rome can convert to Protestanism while still under Papal rule. The Protestants gain VP for controlling Holy Roman Emperor (HRE) elector cities (all German), for Bible translation, and for disgracing Catholic debaters in religious debates. The Papacy can gain VP by building St Peter's Basilica and burning Protestant debaters as heretics. England gains VP by producing heirs, and by converting their cities to Protestanism. The game models King Henry VIII's progress from one wife to the next, each time hoping she will produce a healthy male heir. How's that for unusual? France builds art galleries for VP. The Ottomans do pirating for VP. The colonial powers (Hapsburgs, French, English) can do exploration, colonisation, and conquests to gain VP. Most powers also gain VP by conquering keys.

Game setup. The colours of the cities indicate the initial controlling power. Yellow is Hapsburgs, red is English, dark blue is French, dark green is Ottoman and purple is the Papacy. Grey is independent cities, i.e. they are up for grabs. Light blue is Scotland, pink is Genoa, orange is Venice, light green is Austria-Hungary. Squares are important cities, called keys, which are worth victory points. Circles are normal cities. 8-pointed stars are fortresses. The colour zones are language zones. Yellow is Spanish, blue is French, red is English, faded greyish brown is German, purple is Italian, natural coloured is other languages.

Components for the English player. Is this overwhelming or what. Later I discovered that some of these markers actually belong to the Protestant player, e.g. the English-speaking debaters in the top row (white square markers with a red strip on top).

The player mat for England summarises the actions available to the English player and the action costs. The starting monarch is Henry VIII, and he can be replaced by new monarchs. The marital status track shows that he is currently married to his first wife. All the pink counters are his potential future wives. The square markers are used for marking keys controlled by the English player. At this moment the English already controls four keys, so four markers have been placed on the map. When a fifth key is conquered, the next marker will be moved to the board, revealing the space on the mat, which may give more VP and 1 more card draw.

There is a separate sheet for recording the Protestant vs Papacy struggle. These counters are debaters. Papal debaters have a purple stripe and they are multi-lingual. Protestant debaters speak either German (brown), English (red, and I only have one now), or French (none yet). The partially shown Protestant Spaces Track below is for marking the number of Protestant cities. It indicates how many VP's the Protestants and the Papacy get.

Things that the factions can do differ and reflect history. Events on the cards, some mandatory, guide the game to develop in a generally historically plausible direction. They also force important historical events to occur, although sequence and timing may deviate from history, e.g. new monarchs, and the creation of a Protestant state (actually an alliance of German cities).

This being a CDG, on your turn you always play a card, to either use the number on it (ops value) to do actions your faction can do, or trigger the event on the card. Some events impact only one or a few factions. When you get something that doesn't impact you, you can still use it for negotiation, either threatening to unleash a bad card, or fishing for a good deal using a good card.

The Play

First, sorry Afif, I had planned to rope you in for a game, but this session was arranged quite last minute, and I decided to be less ambitious and stick to a 3-player game and not try to shoot for 6 players. The game is playable 3 to 6, but is recommended for 3 or 6.

Han, Allen and I played this at Allen's place. As Allen and I started the setup, his father-in-law looked for a while, and gently commented, "This is a game for professionals" before leaving us to our crazy endeavour. Han played the Ottomans and the French, Allen the Hapsburgs and the Papacy, and I the English and the Protestants. We made quite a lot of rules mistakes, discovering and correcting some during the game, and realising some only after the game. But we did get a good feel of the game. Well, after spending 9 hours on it, there is no excuse for not doing so.

As King Henry VIII of the English, in the early game I tried to focus my energy on, ahem, producing a healthy heir. By default the English is headed for disaster, in having Queen Mary I as the next ruler. She is a devout Catholic and supports the Papacy, and if she comes into power, the English will suffer many disadvantages, including difficulties in converting to Protestanism, which is one of the ways the English earns VP. To steer the English away from this fate, I needed to be "productive". If I was half successful, I would at least get Queen Elizabeth I to succeed Queen Mary I and try to undo the damage. In the best case, I'd get a healthy King Edward VI, and Queen Mary I would never come to the throne. I managed to persuade the Papacy (Allen) to grant me a divorce with my first wife, which helped speed things up a little in my progression to subsequent wives and thus attempts at a good heir. I eventually succeeded in achieving the best result with wife #4. So no wife #5 or #6 as per history. Staying focused on switching wives was no easy feat, because this required using a very powerful Home Card (a permanent card held by a faction), which could otherwise be used for many other things. It was worth 5 ops points. While making babies, I had a modest secondary goal of subduing Scotland. I managed to strike a deal with the French (Han) to not interfere. It required me to declare war on the Hapsburgs (Allen), but I thought since I was protected by the English Channel, I would be quite safe. Unfortunately my campaign into Scotland was much more costly and took much longer than I had expected, mostly due to Allen playing the Unsanitary Camp card on me. A third of my troops died of diarrhea. Owww...! Allen managed to draw this Unsanitary Camp card 5 out of 6 game turns that we played! Han and I took turns to suffer diarrhea. Baaad...

How many games can boast a Henry's Wives' Pregnancy Chart? You roll a die every time Henry VIII marries a new wife, hoping to get a big number. Once you achieve the best result (healthy baby boy), Henry VIII remarries no more, which is the case in this photo.

The Henry's Marital Status marker will progress no further. Since I have conquered Edinburgh, a key, the fifth key space is revealed because I have moved the square marker onto Edinburgh.

The English did not do much other fighting. Partly because of diarrhea, and partly because later on they focused on converting to Protestanism. Since my other faction was the Protestants, the English proactively doing conversion also helped me. Playing as the Protestants, I had no country and no political control markers on the board at the start of the game. I could gain troops by converting HRE elector cities, but they couldn't move or attack or be attacked. My starting area, Germany, was all Hapsburgs-controlled politically. I knew that there was a Schmalkaldic League event that would establish a Protestant country sooner or later, which would create a state of war between me and both the Hapsburgs and the Papacy, so I tried to delay this event by being less aggressive in converting cities to Protestanism. The event required at least 12 Protestant cities, so I tried to stay just below that. I kept myself busy with Bible translation work, and with converting the 6 elector cities. Bible translation was slow, but whenever the New Testament was fully translated, or the Full Bible was translated, the Protestants gained a bunch of conversion attempts. I managed to delay the Schmalkaldic League event until the last possible moment, buying myself much time to prepare for it. However once the Protestant country was born, the Hapsburgs (Allen) came knocking. I did not have many troops and had a tough time holding them back. Now I realise it's partly because I had forgotten to add two army generals that should have come with this event.

The Protestants have converted all six HRE elector cities to Protestanism. Once converted, they gain some soldiers. The Reformation starts in Wittenberg, which is where Martin Luther (brown counter) is. Cities which have converted to Protestanism get their marker flipped to the white-centre side, e.g. Lubeck, Magdeburg, Leipzig and Worms in this photo.

The Schmalkaldic League event has occurred, and the Protestants have a state now. We played one rule wrong here. German cities that are still Catholic (e.g. Regensburg and Salzburg) should have stayed under political control of the Hapsburgs and not switched to Protestant political control.

The Hapburgs (Allen), French (Han) and Ottomans (Han) did much fighting. Han was aggressive in conquering keys. Using the Ottomans he also did piracy. The Hapsburgs were rich (had many cards), and were good at colonising and conquering, but the challenge for them was fighting multi-front wars. The French (Han) harassed them at the French-Spanish border and along the French-German-Belgian borders. After the Ottomans (Han) defeated Austria-Hungary, the Hapsburgs automatically intervened and had to fight that front too to protect their second capital Vienna. All-in-all, the Hapsburgs were kept rather busy.

The Ottomans are the only power which can build corsairs and can conduct piracy.

A big battle in south eastern France between the French and the Hapsburgs. Units in silhouettes are mercenaries. They are cheaper to recruit, but many event cards affect them, so it is more risky to use them.

The Papacy (Allen) spent time building St Peter's Basilica, and was particularly fond of initiating theological debates with me. I, as the Protestants, could not ignore the challenge and initiated some debates myself. Debates were risky business and the rewards were often not much, unless the victory was so overwhelming that the Catholic debater burned the Protestant debater as a heretic, or the Protestant debater disgraced the Catholic debater into retirement. Then the victor would earn VP. In the early game the Protestant debaters were overall smarter, and only in the later game the Papacy gained more debaters and the two sides became more equally matched. In total Allen managed to burn 3 of my debaters, leveraging his advantage that his Catholic debaters were multi-lingual, whereas my Protestant debaters were split into 3 language groups - German, French and English. I only managed to disgrace one Catholic debater. The Papacy could raise armies, but did not do much militarily. Allen focused on the religious battle against me.

The Ottomans (Han) were militaristic and this suited Han's style well. The Hapsburgs' (Allen) committed defense of Vienna halted his advance, so he switched his efforts to piracy in the Mediterranean and sending Suleiman (his Sultan and an exceptional general) to battle in Spain and Italy. The Ottomans even managed to conquer Barcelona, a key. The French under Han's control turned out to be less civilised than their historical version, never building any art galleries and instead went about fighting wars, expanding their borders. They conquered Genoa (a minor power), and even invaded Italy. The Papacy (Allen) did not excommunicate the French king. I think Allen just forgot, since he was so busy with his Hapsburgs. But he did remember to excommunicate my English King Henry VIII, the moment that London converted to Protestanism. Grumble grumble. I guess to the Papacy the religious war was more important than lowly earthly wars.

Enemy at the gates. Sultan Suleiman of the Ottomans is knocking at Vienna's door, but Charles V of the Hapsburgs have come to its defense.

The French (blue) invaded Italy to grab some of the keys (Milan and Florence).

The diplomatic status display. So many wars in progress now. The numbers in the table are ops points costs to declare war, which depend on who the two parties are. E.g. it is very costly for the Papacy and the Hapsburgs to declare war on each other because they have a close relationship.

The Ottomans have conquered Barcelona, and are now attacking Seville. The French are also advancing into Spain from the north.

By game turn 6, the Protestants approached 25VP, which was one of the winning criteria. With the English (me) performing conversion in English speaking cities, while the Protestants (also me) did conversion in French and German speaking cities, I was able to push beyond 25VP, so that even if the Papacy managed to Counter-Reform some of the cities, at worst I would fall back to 25VP at the end of this game turn. The other faction approaching victory was the Ottomans, but it was a different victory condition that Han was shooting for. If he could conquer just one more key, he would achieve an instant military victory. That last key he needed was Rome itself, the capital of the Papacy! It all came down to one final dice throw... and boom! Rome fell to Sultan Suleiman, a much more impressive victory than capturing Vienna, which in history the Ottomans tried but failed.

Protestanism has spread in England and eastern France. The Ottoman army was beaten back from Spain, but they still had a token force holding Barcelona. The main Ottoman army is now invading Italy. The French have conquered Genoa (pink square now with a blue square marker on it). A Hapsburg army is now attacking the weakly defended Protestant cities in Germany. Edinburgh in Scotland has been conquered by the English.

The Papacy has taken Florence and driven out the French, but the Ottomans have landed in Ravenna, and conquered it from the Papacy.

The Ottomans preparing to attack Rome.

Rome falls to the Ottomans.

The VP chart when the game ended. Hapsburgs 14, Papacy 16, English 21, French 22, Ottomans 23, Protestants 25.

The Thoughts

Here I Stand is a very engrossing game. It is an ambitious design, and its scope is wide. It takes much time investment, not just in playing the game, but also in reading the rules beforehand. I don't think this is a game that you can teach someone else. Whoever wants to play must read the rules himself. There are many rules, but none is very complicated. It's just that there are so many rules you shouldn't expect to remember all. Just keep the rulebook handy when you play. The player aids are not just helpful reminders. They are necessities. One good tip to learn the game and to gain a clear overview is to read the 20-minutes overview article which can be found at www.boardgamegeek.com.

Playing Here I Stand made me think of a number of things. Do I play games for the fun experience or for the intellectual competition? How much luck is acceptable in a complex game? How much luck is tolerable in a 9-hour long game? In Here I Stand there is luck in the card draw (e.g. the Unsanitary Camp that Allen unleashed on Han and I turn after turn) and there is luck in die rolls. Many important events and battles hinge on drawing the right card or getting the required die roll. There are many events throughout the game so you can say that the luck in both card draws and die rolls evens out eventually, but I still feel that despite your best preparations, there is always a luck factor that you are dependent on. To my own surprise, I still enjoyed the game immensely, despite the diarrhea my soldiers suffered. There are still many decisions you need to make, and there is much you can do to work towards victory and to improve your chances of success. There is a Chinese saying, that it is for man to plan, but for heavens to grant success (谋事在人，成事在天).

We did a 3-player game, but I can see that the 6-player game would be the most interesting, because there would be more negotiations and interactions among players, and there won't be pairs of factions automatically being allied to each other. The English would have a dilemma when converting to Protestanism, because by doing so they would be helping the Protestants. In our game we intentionally avoided some actions which would not make sense thematically, although not forbidden by the rules, e.g. the French making an attack for the sake of helping the Ottomans on their next turn. However the 6-player game will likely take longer because of the increased negotiations, especially if players want to make secret discussions away from the table, which the rules allow.

Here I Stand is immersive and rewarding. Due to the width it is trying to cover, not all aspects can be presented in detail and some are more abstracted than others, e.g. the exploration, colonisation and conquest aspect. Some aspects are abstracted into a single event card, e.g. a revolt in Egypt. This means sometimes the outcome of an event comes down to a die roll. This is something you need to be ready to accept, knowing that in the wider scheme of things, a few bad rolls will not completely kill you, and there is still the multiplayer diplomacy aspect that you need to use to your advantage, e.g. allying with others to get your enemy off your back. In this sense multiplayer games are self-balancing. Everyone can try to work together to drag down an obvious leader.

The exploration, colonisation and conquests in the new world are more abstracted. The English (red) has explored the Mississippi River. The Hapsburgs (yellow) have explored St. Lawrence River and conquered the Inca. The French (blue) has circumnavigated the globe.

The Revolt in Egypt card is an abstraction of an off-board event impacting the Ottoman. The Ottomans are forced to commit soldiers to this card until the revolt is put down.

The CDG system works very well here. When you get your hand of cards, how do you make the most of the event cards, and how do you make the most of the ops points that you get. Do you use the event or the ops points? You have plenty of choices and also plenty of hard decisions. Even declaring war is no simple matter. It costs ops points, and you can only do it during a diplomacy phase, not any time you like. No sneaky betrayals.

I am reminded of a PC game that I used to play, Europa Universalis II. The PC games covers an even longer period, and also has events which make the game very rich in historical detail. Now I am tempted to boot up this old game again.

Buy from Noble Knight Games. Status: in stock (at time of this post).

collection snapshot Dec 2011

2012-01-08T19:41:00.000+08:00

Once in a while I take photos of my boardgame shelves (May 2005 to Jan 2008, Apr 2009, Sep 2010). Browsing this history of my boardgame shelves is like browsing old photos of my own children, I let out a contented sigh. Oh how much you have grown. As I compare this set of photos taken in December 2011 against the previous set taken in September 2010, I find that my collection hasn't changed much. It's partly because of my self-imposed annual quota of acquring games, and also because I'm too lazy and too sentimental to sell / trade / give away my games. One notable change is my home has become a holding location for some of Han's and Allen's games. Our default place to play is my home, and we play quite regularly, so it's convenient to keep at my home games that we intend to play.

My boardgame library is the upstairs foyer of my two-storey home. My wife and I do keep other things here too, like my comic book collection (mostly Chinese versions of Japanese manga), our novels, photo albums (from the days before we started using a digital camera), empty cardboard boxes (kept just in case they will be useful one day), and the massage chair, which we sometimes call the electric chair.

This is the frontal shot

This is taken at an angle from the left side. You can see household supplies like toilet paper and shampoo in the lower right corner.

From the other angle on the right. Right in the middle you can barely see a standing lamp, shyly hiding in the narrow space between the two shelves. It lights up the room with a warm orange light if we turn off the flourescent ceiling light. On the left you can see my overflowing manga collection. I don't buy much nowadays, but since I never trim it it will only grow, albiet slowly in short spurts.

For the zoom-in's, let's go from left to right. You can match these against the "big pictures" above.

This is not the children section. It is the playable-with-young-children section. Admittedly some games are more for them (6 and 5) to "play with" rather than "play", e.g. Scrabble (although they do make words out of the tiles), DVONN. There are other games they play (some needing rules simplification) but are not here, e.g. At the Gates of Loyang, 10 Days in Asia, Wasabi!.

The white box is my first ever boardgame review copy ColorMonsters, so although I find the game poor, I will always keep it. My sister lugged Civilization: The Boardgame (Eagle Games version) all the way back from Melbourne, so even if the game is poor, I will not get rid of it. Advanced Third Reich was bought more than 10 years ago and never played. I was not a hobbyist yet then, and had thought it was something like Axis & Allies. Same theme right?!! How hard could it be?! At the time I could not even finish one third of the rules. Maybe it's time I try again. Wilderness War was bought a few years after Advanced Third Reich, just as I started becoming a hobbyist. It is still unplayed, but I think I will be able to handle it now. Uberplay, publisher of China and Hansa was a good publisher. They went out of business. I still miss them sometimes, and am glad I have my copy of China, which I like a lot.

Undermining and Jab on the lower right are Allen's games, which I have read the rules for but have yet to teach him.

Aaaah... my 1980's releases of Samurai Swords (previous version was Shogun, recently published version is Ikusa) and Axis & Allies. Newer purchases are usually put at the lowest shelf in this photo, so that they are more visible and I will play them more. 2011 acquisitions include First Train to Nuremberg, Endeavor, 7 Wonders, Maori, 51st State.

The lower two shelves contain Han's and Allen's games. Some are my homework (to read rules). I realise that my Axis & Allies games are rather scattered. Maybe I should do something about it. Hmm... I realise I have nine Axis & Allies games. I think it's the box size differences that's making me not shelf them together. The Galaxy Trucker box at the bottom actually contains Allen's copy of 18AL.

Civilization (Gibson Games edition, a much less expensive edition on eBay) at the top right was my first ever eBay purchase, but I still have not played my own copy after that purchase. I think I actually like it more than Sid Meier's Civilization: The Boardgame (Fantasy Flight Games edition), although it is quite long, because it tries to do less and I feel it is more successful in creating an epic empires-rising-and-falling feel. I do like the FFG version, but I find it more like a sprint than a marathon. Ranking civ games I've played, I'd go Through the Ages, Civilization, Sid Meier's Civilization: The Boardgame (FFG), Sid Meier's Civilization: The Boardgame (Eagle Games).

Should I add the new Ticket to Ride maps to my collection? My wife likes the series. However for both the map expansions, only one side will be useful to me, because one side of the Asia expansion is for 4 players and I usually only do 2P games with Michelle, and one side of the India expansion is the Switzerland map which I already have.

The Lord of the Rings box contains both Friends & Foes and Battlefields expansions. The Dominion box contains Seaside. I have quite a number of home-made games on the top right.

Other than the four children's games on the top left, the rest are Han's and Allen's games.

Planet Steam is getting good visibility because of its unwieldy box size.

why we keep buying boardgames

2012-01-07T22:33:00.003+08:00

Oh I like this article at the Superfly Circus very much. It's about buying games. The points discussed remind me of the game taster post that I wrote in 2010, where I decided that I can tell myself it's OK to be a game taster, that it is okay to buy, learn and then play a game only a few times, or even just once. Self-acceptance is a wonderful thing.

A Few Acres of Snow

2012-01-07T15:30:00.001+08:00

Plays: 2Px2.

The Game

Martin Wallace uses the deck-building mechanism (from Dominion) in this game about the French and Indian War (that's what the Americans call it, but others have different names), which is part of a global Seven Years' War between the British and the French. In A Few Acres of Snow, the combatants fight for superiority in North America. Both sides start with some settlements, and a deck of cards. Almost all actions in the game are executed by playing cards. You start with a pre-constructed deck, and will add cards to it to customise it. The game ends if a capital is successfully sieged, or if one side uses up all village pieces or all town pieces. In the latter case, victory points (VP's) are calculated based on locations settled and successful attacks.

There are two types of cards - location cards and empire cards. Empire cards are similar to action cards in Dominion. Both the British and the French have their own pool of empire cards from which they can buy cards, and there is also a small common pool of empire cards. Money is in the form of physical coins and are not treasure cards in your deck like Dominion. Location cards are added to your deck whenever you settle a location. A location card can be used as long as you still control that location and it is not besieged. In case you lose that location, the card becomes useless but still stays in your deck, clogging it up.

The starting setup. The French is blue, the British red. Only one third of the board is really needed for the game pieces, the other two thirds are just space for cards. The three green-border cards on the left are the common pool. At the bottom left and top right corners of the board are the player-specific pools of cards.

Some of the British cards. These are 0 cost cards, but you must also consider the non-financial cost of diluting your deck with more cards.

Every turn you have two actions. If you spend cards for your actions and end up with fewer than five, you always draw back up to five, without discarding any card. This means you can hold on to cards that you want to save for the right opportunity to use them. In fact, there is also a Reserve pool where you can save cards, so that they don't take up space in your hand, but it costs $1 to reclaim a card from the Reserve.

The longer box is the Reserve box, where you can place up to 5 cards. You can bring them into your hand with at any time with no action cost, but with a financial cost of $1 per card. I have nothing in my Reserve box at this moment.

The types of actions can be overwhelming at first. There are money-earning actions, and money is mainly used for buying empire cards. You can settle empty spaces on the board, and upgrade them to towns (which give double points). You can fight. There are two ways to fight. Some cards let you raid nearby enemy settlements, and if your opponent doesn't have cards to stop you, you destroy and claim his settlement piece (which is worth victory points). Some cards let you siege an enemy settlement. Sieges are a tug of war affair. When you commit to a siege, the cards committed are set aside, and both sides try to play military cards to try to win. You win when you have achieved a significant enough strength difference, and your opponent is unable to reduce the gap. A siege can be a very long stalemate, which means cards can be committed and stuck for a long time. It can be good or bad. Good because you thin your deck making it more effective, assuming you don't desperately need those tied-up cards; bad because you do desperately need those tied-up cards.

Discs are towns, cubes are villages. The mother-and-baby icon is a settler icon, and such locations require a settler card to be played if you want to build a village. Purple hexagons show the VP value, which is doubled if by upgrading your village to a town. Modes of transportation between locations include sea, river, road (between Fort Halifax and Kennebec, on the right) and Indian tracks (dotted lines, which can only be used for raiding).

The deck-building in A Few Acres of Snow creates delay and uncertainty in when you draw the cards you need and have bought. Like Dominion, you are restricted by what you draw, but you are not forced to discard your hand at the end of every turn. In fact, you can't simply discard any cards you want. You spend an action to discard a useless card. Managing useless cards, i.e. keeping your deck effective, is an important aspect of the game. When you settle a location, you must take the corresponding location card. You will need it to further expand from there, but once your borders have pushed further forward, you may find that this location card becomes effectively useless. The Governor card can help to remove cards from your deck, but the more important consideration may be whether you want to settle this location in the first place. Too-quick expansion leads to ineffective decks.

Like many Martin Wallace games, there are multiple ways to end the game - by using up your village pieces, using up your town pieces, or capturing the enemy capital. Going the village route means low quality expansion (towns are worth more VP's), and the town route means much effort required in upgrading. Military aggressiveness can impact these, because players would be capturing each other's pieces. Capturing the capital is harder to do, but is a valid strategy.

The Play

Han and I played two games back-to-back. I picked the British because I remembered it being easier to play. In the first game we both played slow-and-steady, gently exploring the game. I settled Halifax on my right flank, because it was worth victory points, but was quickly beaten back, and I never dared venture into that region afterwards. The slow and steady approach seemed to favour the British, which had more settler icons on cards and could settle and upgrade settlements more quickly. Although I lost some battles, I managed to force the game end by upgrading my settlements to towns. We thought I would win by a wide margin, but it turned out I only won by four points. I think it was because although Han's French did not have many towns, the towns were worth many points.

The black disc under Albany is a fortification. It prevents raids, and also provides a defensive bonus if the settlement comes under siege.

The French settlements are approaching Albany, which I have upgraded to a town. I need to be prepare to defend it against attacks.

I find that conducting sieges is a long and grueling exercise. If you want a swift victory, you need to have accumulated many cards with military power. However that's risky too because if your opponent plays an ambush card, you will need to remove a military card from your deck (and military cards are often expensive). There are some cards that you can use to cancel ambushes, but then keeping them in your hand means they are occupying space.

The two sides play very differently. The French start with slightly more cards, giving the ability to do more things. They also start with an infantry unit while the British start with none. However the British start with more money and a thinner deck. That means they have options in deciding how to initially customise their deck, and also a thinner deck means a more nimble and more predictable deck. Even when the same location is settled, the benefits gained are different depending on whether it is being settled by the French or the British. The empire cards available to the two sides are different, both in card availability and card count. The French tend to have better relationships with the Red Indians, they can do pirating, and they tend to do better in fur trading. The British tend to settle better, and are usually better at making money.

In the second game that Han and I played, we played the same combatants. This time Han's French started very aggressively, focusing much on the military aspects. He dictated the pace and I had to keep buying infantry to be able to keep up. Thankfully I was able keep him at bay. However I was mostly reactive in the early game. Later on he started expanding aggressively towards Detroit, a high VP location. He managed to settle Detroit, but the problem was all those location cards he gained en route clogged up his deck. I had some success with raiding and claimed some of his village pieces. That caused a big problem for him. He could end the game easily by placing his last village piece, but at that point his VP's were less than mine. He could not build another village to get closer to me to make it easier to raid my settlements. He would need to upgrade a village to release a village piece back to his pool first. So he was quite stuck. In contrast with history, I was the one successful in raids. Also in contrast with history, Han's French was making money like they own a mint - they were indecently rich. Unfortunately for the French, they were never quite able to draw the right cards at the right time, and they had few military successes. In the late game I was able to launch an attack on Port Royal, an originally French village, and conquered it. The game ended with a British victory again, this time by a larger margin.

This was the second game we played. Han (French, blue) had expanded all the way to the left. On the right, I had conquered one of his start locations Port Royal (red cube on blue box).

The Thoughts

The deck-building mechanism is a very appropriate tool to represent the French and Indian War. The delayed effects, the uncertainties, the challenge in organising anything coherent, and also the inefficiencies when over-stretching oneself are implemented well. Despite the many possible actions in the game, on your turn you don't really need to consider all of them. Just taking a look at your cards and your board position will help you rule out many actions that you can't take yet anyway. So again the deck-building mechanism shows its usefulness - reducing choices and speeding up the game. Many aspects of the war are represented in the game, and the two sides play very differently. I really feel the theme in this game. Now I'm tempted to bring out my unplayed copy of Wilderness War, a Card Driven Game and wargame about the same war.

One worry that I have is how replayable the game is, since the starting condition is always the same, and there are probably a few general broad strategies that both sides can pursue. At the moment I still feel there is much to explore. So far there has been no attempt at capital conquering. Also I think the randomness in the card draw will force players to adapt to the situation, as opposed to strictly following a formula. There is one almost unbeatable British strategy that experienced players have found. The designer may introduce rule changes to address it. I only read about it after playing two games. My temporary solution is simply to not use that strategy.

To summarise using a bunch of keywords and phrases: tense, thematic, asymmetric, excellent artwork by Peter Dennis (one of my favourites), deck-building not for the sake of deck-building.

Buy from Noble Knight Games. Status: restocking (at time of this post).

boardgaming in photos

2012-01-05T13:25:00.004+08:00

20 Nov 2011. The Bottle Imp, which many call the best 3-player trick-taking game. I have only played one hand, i.e. not even a complete game, so I won't write much about it yet. So far I can see that it is indeed very clever. Every hand everyone will score points except for one player who will score negative points. So it's about carefully winning tricks worth points and avoiding being the big loser of a hand. It reminds me of the feeling when playing Sticheln, which, come to think of it, is an excellent card game that I have not played for so long.

10 Dec 2011. Han and I were planning to play War of the Ring, but unfortunately due to a last-minute change he couldn't make it. The last time I played this was a very long time ago, and upon bringing it onto the table again, I was amazed at how well-produced it was. A new edition just came out I think. I hope they maintain the quality.
This photo is the Fellowship of the Ring. 8 pieces instead of 9, because Sam is always with Frodo, so they are the same piece.

The bad guys. The plastic used is sturdier than that used in Middle-Earth Quest, a more recently published game also based on Lord of the Rings. That one came with quite a number of broken bits.

The bad guys are marching in.

The box is very full.

This box size is very justifiable. This is not the double-sized box (double of the commonly found Ticket to Ride / Dominion square box). It is actually shorter than the square box, and only about one third wider.

24 Dec 2011. It has been quite a while since I brought out this home-made copy of R-Eco. I played it with Wan and Shan. Clever little card game.

First Train to Nuremberg. I liked it the first time I played it, and delayed buying it for about 6 months. Only when I was sure I wouldn't hit my 2011 game acquisition quota I ordered the game.
This is the most fiddly part of the game. The game pieces are quite small, and you have to fiddle with them quite frequently.

This time we (Wan, Shan, Han and I) played the Last Train to Wensleydale side of the board. This side seems to be more restrictive. Two thirds of the map are valleys with few goods to deliver. I was blue, and at this point had already sold off 4 tracks to the green company, thus coverting my blue tracks to green ones.

On the board, green is flat land, brown is hills, yellow is valleys.

Near the end of the game. Wan was black, Shan orange, Han purple, I blue.

Han, Shan, and Wan deliberating who to outbid.

One thing that I like a lot, in addition to the gameplay, is the graphic design of these periphery game boards. The one on the right showing trains is very nice too. And the main game board is definitely an improvement over the previous version which some call a dissected kidney.

25 Dec 2011. Famiglia. Every gangster is unique.

Successors (3rd edition)

2012-01-04T16:34:00.003+08:00

Plays: 3Px1.

The Game

Successors is a card-driven wargame (CDG) in its third edition, which means it must have done something right. It is about how Alexander the Great's generals fought among themselves after he died without naming an heir to his vast empire. The game is primarily designed for 4 players, with slight changes required for playing with 2 or 3. The game is played over at most 5 game turns. To win, you need to reach a certain number of victory points (mainly from provinces controlled, and also from a few other sources) or to reach a certain number of legitimacy points, or to have the highest total of these while controlling an heir when he comes of age. These translate to (a) becoming the most powerful general so that you take over Alexander's empire, (b) doing enough deeds and commanding enough support from the royal family to be considered a legitimate successor, and (c) becoming regent when one of Alexander's sons takes the throne.

The battling part of the game is not so different from other CDG's like Hannibal: Rome vs Carthage and Washington's War. You need generals to move armies. You can intercept enemy armies. You can attempt to avoid battle. You siege. You can travel by sea. Also similar to these two games, there is a concept of controlling a city by placing your marker on it. And all of these actions are driven by cards, which can be used to trigger events on them, or used for the operation points printed on them. Every action you do is driven by a card play.

What's special about Successors is the back story, which I think the game brings to life quite well, via a few unique details, starting with Alexander's dead body. Alexander died in Babylon, and the generals fight for his corpse, wanting to be the one to bury it and to be the one controlling the burial site. If you can bring the corpse all the way back to Macedonia for burial before it rots, you gain a huge boost to your legitimacy, for being such a sweet soul. There are various royal family members that you fight to control. If you, ahem, persuade them to support your cause, they increase your legitimacy. Legitimacy may not win you the game though, if you can't go high enough. If push comes to shove and noone can meet any instant win condition during the game, victory is decided by victory points (VP's) only at the end of game turn 5.

So you still need to fight for VP's, which means controlling cities and provinces. That too comes with disadvantages. Every game turn the player with the most VP's get labelled the Usurper. Everyone starts the game as a Champion, i.e. you (at least on the surface) support one of Alexander's sons to become the next king and have no selfish ambitions. You shall not attack any other Champion (there are barbarians and independent cities you can attack), lest you reveal your true nature as an aspiring Successor. Being Champion is worth legitimacy points, so there is incentive to stay one as long as possible. However the Usurper guy is a special case. He may still be officially a Champion, but because he is so greedy, you can attack him without losing your Champion status. Everyone likes to see the big guy fall from grace.

Green markers are not player markers. They are barbarians and independent cities. That green square at the bottom centre is a barbarian army, which can enter the game and move/attack by play of event cards.

There are many spaces without control markers because we did a 3-player game with each player controlling only 2 generals. Usually each general controls one province.

The numbers in yellow squares on the board are victory point values of the provinces.

At the start of the game every player is randomly assigned at least two generals and their provinces (depending on the number of players and variants used), so games can vary depending on the initial general card distribution. Some generals appear mid-game based on cards drawn. I think the game will be best with four, because there will be no vacant provinces and there will be more interaction among players.

The Play

This is one very rare game that I tried to and could not summarise into one sheet of A4-sized paper, even when using font size 9. I needed one and a third page. Reading through the rules was a bit of a struggle, since I have not really played that many CDG's. However playing the game turned out to be much less stressful. I think I have actually been more stressed about squeezing everything into one sheet of paper than learning the game.

Han, Allen and I did a basic 3-player game, each starting with 2 generals. In the early game, Allen drew two more generals, and Han one more, so the number of generals suddenly became rather lopsided. I guess I didn't shuffle the cards as well as I had thought I did. Generals are important because armies can only move when lead by one. Everyone has 4 generic minor generals in addition to the major generals, so you are not completely dependent on your major generals. These major generals can get killed in battle. Major generals, of course, usually do better in battles. You can't simply raise troops any time you want. Every game turn (and there are only five) you get 2 mercenaries in the worst case, but not much better even in the best case. You get 1 Macedonian unit if you control Macedonia or if you have the highest legitimacy. You get 2 more mercenaries if you have the most VP. All in all, not much. You need to be careful not to waste your troops.

Battles are often risky business. The battle loser loses all mercenaries and elephants, and the Macedonian troops are out of action for the rest of the game turn. Battles are quick though, only two rolls of the dice required, one for each side. One interesting aspect is the Royal Macedonian troops. They are picky and won't fight any opponent general who has higher legitimacy than their general. They just stand aside and watch. So legitimacy can sometimes be crucial.

A battle between Han (yellow) and Allen (red). The units with purple stripes are Royal Armies, and they stood aside because the opponent general had higher legitimacy than their own general.

Event cards add some flavour and surprise to the game. If you want Cleopatra to support your cause, you need one specific card which makes her marry. Until someone wins her heart, she stays put in a specific city and does not lend legitimacy to anyone.

In the game we played, Han was aggressive with his armies and managed to control the Hellespont strait (the strait leading to the Black Sea), securing some extra VP's. One of his generals started the game controlling Alexander's dead body, but in order to deliver it all the way back to Macedonia for burial, he would have to pass through Allen's and my territories. It was a daunting task. After much delay, he eventually decided to bury Alexander in Babylon. Allen spent the most effort subjugating barbarians and sieging independent cities, eventually growing his holdings to a massive patch of red. He also built up some big armies. I gradually retreated because my armies were no match for his, eventually even vacating one of my start provinces. I switched to focus on coastal provinces and islands, many of which provided navies. I had the largest fleet and noone dared to travel by sea anywhere near my coasts.

Allen's (red) and my (blue) armies are theateningly close.

At this stage I (blue) had retreated to the islands, relying on my strong navy to protect me from Allen's huge armies. Conquering the island cities also gave me some victory points.

We did not manage to finish the game. I had the most victory points at the time we stopped, but since my armies were much weaker than Allen's, it was not likely that I could reach the required VP's for the instant win before he snatched away my coastal provinces. So at that point Allen was the most likely winner if we had continued. Han and I would likely need to form a temporary alliance to stop him.

This is where we stopped. Allen's (red) domain was growing and neither Han nor I could contain him. Only Han's general on the left was holding back Allen's general. Other generals were all trying to avoid Allen's generals.

The Thoughts

I was surprised the not-even-completed game took so long. It was partly because it was our first game and we still needed to refer to the rules frequently. I like the low density of soldiers. You have few troops and need to be very careful with how you use them. Battles are almost always risky, unless you greatly outnumber your opponent. Even when you do, your leader may still die in a victorious battle, or your opponent may have some card up his sleeve to turn the battle around. Every battle is tense, and yet the battle resolution is very quick and clean. There are combat resolution tables (CRT's) to refer to, but I don't find them troublesome. All the CRT's you need are on one reference card or on the game board itself.

I like the "extra bits" that make Successors different from other CDG's - the legitimacy concept, the Champion / Usurper / Successor status, Alexander's funeral cart, killing off Alexander's heirs in your custody if they don't favour you to become the regent (I'm serious). All these bits, although being additional rules to learn, create an interesting context. Even Alexander's mum is in the game.

This is still a wargame, so be prepared for lots of rules to digest and rules mistakes to be made if you are not familiar with CDG's.

I am thankful that Han has quite different tastes from mine when it comes to buying games, else I would have missed many good games. I normally don't pay much attention to Ameritrash games or wargames. The next time we play, if we only have three players, we intend to play with 3 generals each, which I think will be more interesting, with no power vacuum provinces and with a more equal number of generals.

Buy from Noble Knight Games. Status: in stock (at time of this post).

Meeples Cafe Members Day Sale (Sun 8 Jan 2012)

2012-01-03T08:34:00.005+08:00

If you live in the Kuala Lumpur area, you may be interested in Meeples Cafe's members day sale this coming Sunday, 8 Jan 2012. Games are 30% off. You can sign-up as a member on the day itself. Here are some soon-to-arrive games that you can pre-purchase at the 30% discount in case they don't arrive in time. If they arrive before Sunday, they will be available at the sale.

I don't exactly live near Meeples Cafe, and I usually play at home or nearby - Allen's home or OTK (www.boardgamecafe.net). I wouldn't know what to do with the RM50 worth of vouchers if I sign-off for the RM60 annual membership, but I'm quite tempted by the availability of Dungeon Petz, Power Grid: The Robot, and Ora et Labora. Decisions, decisions...

Jab

2012-01-02T09:55:00.001+08:00

Plays: 2Px3.

The Game

Jab is a real-time card game about boxing. There aren't many real-time boardgames or cardgames. Off the top of my head I can think of Space Alert, Brawl, Galaxy Trucker (the ship-building part), Mondo and Wok Star (I have not tried the last two). Coincidentally I played Brawl quite recently, which is also a two-player-only and fighting-themed game like Jab.

In Jab, you win by either knocking out (KO) your opponent, i.e. instant win, or by accumulating 3 round victories by judge scoring. When a round starts, there are many things you can do to either earn points or injure your opponent or both. On your side of the play area you have your boxer, represented by three cards - head, left-side body and right-side body, and your two stacks of face-up Punch cards. Not the factory worker punch-in / punch-out cards, but the punch-opponent-in-face type of punch cards. Punch cards come in 5 colours and 5 types (e.g. Jab, Hook, Haymaker). The most basic thing you do in the game is to Punch your opponent, by taking the top-most Punch card from either left hand deck or right hand deck, and playing it on one of your opponent's body parts (head, left or right). This scores you points at the end of the round. The other basic thing you do is to Block, by playing cards onto your own body parts, with the condition that the card played must match colour or type of the top-most card. Blocks neutralise your opponent's Punches when it comes to round-end scoring.

This is how the game is set up before a round starts. We are in the middle of a game, and I have won one round victory (i.e. by judge scoring), and have also injured my opponent (I have more health tokens).

You can make Combos. There is a stack of face-up Combo cards, and if you see that the punch types on it match the punches on your opponent, you can quickly claim the top-most combo card, which is worth points. You can do Counter-punches. There is a stack of face-up Counter-punch cards with specific colours, and if you spot that both you and your opponent have cards of this colour on your bodies, you can claim the top-most Counter-punch card, which is worth points and also injures your opponent. The other action that injures your opponent is Stagger, which you do by first Punching with a Haymaker card and then following up with any other Punch card of the same colour.

Both boxers start with 5 health tokens. Whenever you injure your opponent, you take his health tokens, i.e. you actually become "healthier". Once your opponent runs out of health tokens, he is In Danger, and if you can deal another damage point in this situation, you knock him out and win instantly. If there is no KO, a round ends either when both boxers run out of Punch cards, or when one boxer runs out and forces an early end (which comes with a penalty). Judge scoring is then done, and whoever has earned more points wins that round.

The round-end scoring for Punches landed is quite clever. You only score one body part pile of your opponent and not all three piles. Your opponent takes away one pile first (and usually he will try to take away the pile where you have landed the most Punches and/or he has put the fewest Blocks). You then pick one pile from the remaining two. This means you need to have some idea of which stacks have more Punches and Blocks.

If you win a round, you take a health token from your opponent, flip it, and make it a round victory token. So your opponent has less health next round. As the boxing match progresses, the total number of health tokens decreases, making the likelihood of knock-outs higher and higher.

The Play

I tried this with my wife Michelle. She doesn't like the fighting theme, but she still managed to knock me out. Our games mostly ended with knock-outs. Although this is a real-time game, this is not a speed game at all. It is more important to play smart. You need to watch out for many things at the same time. You watch for the Combos you can make, Counter-punches you can take. You try to find opportunities to Stagger your opponent. Ideally you want to keep a rough count of Punches and Blocks that both you and your opponent are making, so that if it comes to round-end scoring, you have some idea which piles are more "valuable". There are many things you need to keep track of and watch out for at the same time. I find that during play, it takes quite some time before I can decide where to lay my Punches, because there is so much to evaluate. If I have a green Haymaker Punch in my left hand, do I quickly play my right hand Punches randomly onto my opponent's body so that I can find a green Punch card and then make a Stagger? Have I played many green cards and would I still have any remaining in my right hand deck?

During play, you do not just stay alert for opportunities, you also create your own luck. Since you can see the top-most Counter-Punch and Combo cards, you know what kinds of Punches you need to play to achieve them. You also need to watch your opponent and prevent him from doing the same. If you see your opponent holding a Haymaker card, you better to prepared to Block it so that you don't get Staggered.

In addition to all this real-time analysis and evaluation, you also need to consider the longer term - whether to go for a 3-round scoring win or for the knock-out. These determine your short-term goals.

Eventually Michelle and I decided to arrange our cards this way, which makes it easier to manage our cards during play. Now our boxers look like monsters with the heads growing from their stomachs. In this particular match I won two round tokens, but Michelle injured me badly (see how many health tokens she had) and eventually knocked me out to win the match.
I have no photos of a game in play. It's quite impossible to hold a camera and take photos with boxing gloves on.

The Thoughts

Jab can be overwhelming, because of the many things you need to think of and watch for concurrently in real-time. I suspect it is very hard to really play at an expert level. 5 Punch colours and 5 Punch types mean it is close to impossible to keep track of everything. You will need to at least partly rely on gut feel in remembering cards that have been played. Being able to spot opportunities is probably still manageable once you are used to it, but I think the memory part will be rather difficult. It's very hard to keep track of which cards have appeared and where they have been played.

One aspect of the boxing theme is implemented quite well - how the health tokens total decreases, and how the tension builds as it becomes more and more likely for a knock-out to happen. The game also gives much freedom to players to play their own style of boxing. Do you Punch aggressively? Block frequently? Focus attacks only on certain body parts? Go for points or go for KO? Do you watch your opponent's moves more or try to make combos yourself more?

The feeling when playing Jab was not what I had expected - something fast and furious, something visceral. The feeling I had was more of speed analysis and quick pattern recognition. So instead of aggressively and relentlessly attacking your opponent, you are mostly circling him, making small jabs, and waiting for or creating the right moments to unleash powerful attack sequences.

Buy from Noble Knight Games. Status: in stock (at time of this post).

Famiglia

2011-12-27T19:00:00.000+08:00

Plays: 2Px6.

Famiglia is a card game in a very small box. It is by Friedemann Friese (Power Grid, Factory Manager, Fearsome Floors). I already have enough simple card games in my collection, so Famiglia never caught my interest. However Allen had bought a copy, and assigned homework to me - to read the rules so that I could teach him to play afterwards. After reading the rules, it seemed a little quirky, relatively simple, and nothing too surprising. However, upon playing the game, I was pleasantly surprised.

The Game

Famiglia is a 2-player-only game, where the players compete to collect as many gangsters (cards) as possible, with each gangster being worth a number of points. There are four suits, each representing a different gangster family, and each having a special ability. Gangsters are numbered from 0 to 4. There is a Street, which is a common pool from which both players can recruit gangsters. The basic way of recruiting a gangster is to show two gangsters of the same gang of value one less than this gangster. E.g. show two Green 1's from your hand to claim Green 2 from the Street. One of the Green 1's will become exhausted, i.e. played into your own playing area and unusable unless you are able to take it back into your hand. So, to claim the higher valued gangsters, you will need to work your way up the hierarchy. You'd need five 0's to get four 1's, which can in turn be used to get three 2's, which can then get two 3's, and finally the single 4 of that family. This sounds ridiculously hard, needing to get every card in the family to be able to reach the big boss number 4. This is where the family powers come in.

The Mercenary (green) family gangsters can be used as jokers, e.g. a Mercenary 2 can be treated as an Accountant 1, and thus paired with a real Accountant 1 to claim an Accountant 2. The Accountant (blue) family gangsters can be used to swap cards between hand (unused) and play area (exhausted), e.g. by playing an Accountant 2, you swap two hand cards with two already played cards. This means some good cards can be reused. Brute (yellow) family gangsters reduce the values of other gangsters, e.g. by playing a Brute 2, a Mercenary 4 gangster can be treated as a Mercenary 2 gangster, and thus becomes much easier to claim. Famiglia (red) family gangsters have no special power, but they are worth more victory points compared to their counterparts in other families.

0-value gangsters can always be recruited for free, and when there are no such gangsters on the Street, a gangster can be discarded to bring new gangsters onto the Street. This is how gangsters enter the Street, and how they are discarded. The deck is played through twice, and then the game ends. Players score for all their gangsters, whether already played in front of them or still in hand.

That's "toilet" written on the forehead of the Green 1 guy.

Game in progress. Used or exhausted cards are laid in front of you. At this moment, there is only one card on the Street, the Red 1 guy. The Street is the card pool at the centre from which players can recruit gangsters.

The Play

What surprises me about this game is it has more depth than I expected. I underestimated it. The family powers are tempting, because they are quite handy. However, every time you use a Brute power or an Accountant power, you are playing one gangster into your play area, and thus reducing the number of gangsters you have in hand. This can be dangerous if you do it too much. You'll be short of cards to use for recruiting. Also you really need to plan your path into the gangster families. In some games where I hadn't planned properly, I ended up with gangsters (in hand) that could not be paired to claim any gangster on the Street. I was stuck and could only hope to end the game as soon as possible to minimise my opponent's chances to recruit more gangsters. So long-term planning is important. Don't walk into a dead end.

There is also the consideration of which families to go for. This partly depends on which gangsters are available on the Street. You have to play by ear and grab opportunities that come up. Working up a gangster family tree takes planning and commitment. You also need to meddle with your opponent's plans, e.g. taking gangsters that he wants, or discarding them, thus disrupting his plans or simply denying him victory points.

Some aspects of the game are quite tactical; short-term opportunities oriented. However working up a family tree is a long-term commitment that you need to plan for and keep in view. You often need to react to what your opponent is doing, so the game is quite interactive.

I didn't notice my daughter taking this photo when my wife and I were playing. The numbers at the bottom of the cards are the point values.

The Thoughts

Famiglia is a fast and clever card game, and has some depth that is not immediately apparent. It is tactical, but also has some longer-term strategy. It is quite interactive. I enjoy working out clever uses of cards, especially combinations of card plays that result in big moves. I have now bought the game. I have not yet reached my self-imposed quota of 20 new games per year, but I didn't buying Famiglia just because I didn't want to waste a slot. I do like it enough to want a copy for myself.

Buy from Noble Knight Games. Status: in stock (at time of this post).

new concise ref sheets

2011-12-25T22:16:00.000+08:00

New reference sheets for games released. Download here. New / updated games are:

Airlines Europe
Antiquity
The Bottle Imp
Coney Island
Dungeon Petz
Famiglia
Jab
Manoeuvre (correction done)
Mondo
Power Grid: The First Sparks
Successors (3rd edition)
Undermining
Urban Sprawl

Full list of games is here.

Merry Christmas!

2011-12-23T12:27:00.002+08:00

Don't arrest the wrong guy...

fun with Uno

2011-12-21T19:00:00.002+08:00

You probably don't expect to read about Uno at a boardgame hobbyist's blog. It is such a common game that there is not much to talk about; and to us gamers, it is much inferior to the kind of games that we play. But you can still have a lot of fun with Uno. On a whim, I brought it on a family trip, along with a number of other games. I introduced it to my children (6 and 4), using very slightly simplified rules, and we had a blast. It is simple enough for my 4-year-old to play, and the luck factor is big enough for her to win a fair share of games. She can't even fan her cards properly yet, and holds them in a stack, then flips through them one by one to see whether there is any card she can play. My wife and I prefer to play Draw Two's and Draw Four's on each other and not the children, and we blatantly encourage our children to play such cards on the other parent. Catching people forgetting to say "Uno" is fun. The simple "take-that" elements are fun. I don't think I want to play Uno with a group of adults, but the games with the family were a lot of fun. It is about enjoying the simple things in life, and the togetherness.

My hand of cards.

My family. 4 years old, none-of-your-business years old and 6 years old.

Uno was the most played game over that weekend.

Antiquity

2011-12-15T20:53:00.003+08:00

Plays: 4Px1.

Antiquity, published by Splotter Spellen (publisher of Indonesia, the game in my current blog header), was first released in 2004, reprinted in 2006, then went out-of-print, and in 2011 it was reprinted again. Prior to this 2011 reprint, prices for a copy were ridiculously high. I thought although I would probably like the game, I wouldn't be paying this kind of price for a boardgame. When I learned of the 2011 reprint, I decided to try-before-buy. It is still expensive, recommended retail price being EUR80 (around USD105 / MYR335), but if I like it enough, I will pull the trigger. Jeff has a copy, so I read the rules, and found a Friday to visit OTK to try the game.

The Game

The theme of Antiquity is developing cities in medieval Italy, but I find the actual mechanisms very relevant to the modern world. The game board is made of hexes representing different types of terrain. Each player starts with one city on the map, and has a 7x7 grid off the board which represents the space available in that city to construct buildings. You can construct buildings in your city (and later, cities) as well as in the countryside, i.e. the main game board. You start with building houses, each of which give you a worker. Most buildings need a worker to operate. You build countryside buildings to gain resources, e.g. woodcutters' huts, fisheries, farms. You build city buildings for various functions, e.g. stores to keep your resources, cart shops to allow you to build countryside buildings, harbours to allow you to access water spaces. So far, everything sounds fine. It sounds like a pleasant city-building or civilisation-building game. But Antiquity is not "pleasant" at all.

First, you get famine. Every round there is a general famine level which keeps going up. Some incidents cause it to increase more quickly, some cause it to drop slightly. If you do not have enough food in store, or buildings which help reduce famine effects, you get starvation, and you are "awarded" graves which you must put in your city, occupying precious space. Sometimes you are even forced to put graves on your buildings, rendering them unusable. Like Age of Steam, you start the game on a slippery slope. You need to plan to get yourself out of that hole and not get caught in the downward spiral. Second, you have pollution. When you farm, or fish, or mine, the plot of land you use is exhausted and becomes polluted. As you exploit the lands around your cities, you gradually deplete usable land. You need to expand your zone of control (normally two steps out from your cities and inns) to gain more land, and this is the main competition in the game - racing to use land before your opponents do so. Every city you own produces pollution every round (think of it as rubbish), and you need to dump this pollution somewhere in your zone of control. So pollution will grow and grow, and this is the other quicksand pit that you need to climb out of before you drown.

On the main game board, that big piece at the back is my city. I have a woodcutter's hut on the right. When building it, you first place grassland tiles on the forest spaces, then wood resources on them. Finally you place a worker on the (imaginary) hut itself, which is the centre of the woodcutting area. Every round, you harvest one wood resource, leaving behind grassland. Once all the wood resources are collected, your worker returns to the city and can be used for other jobs. The fishery in the foreground works in a similar way. When building it, you first place pollution markers on the water spaces, and then fish resouces on top of them. This means once you harvest the fish, you leave behind a polluted water space.

To win, you need to be first to achieve one of the five victory conditions. In addition to struggling against the game system, you also need to race against your opponents. During the game, when you build a cathedral, you must pick a patron saint, who gives you some special abilities, and also determines your victory condition. Victory conditions include building all 20 houses, constructing all available buildings in the game, having 3 each of all food and luxury resource types, and spreading your zone of control to completely cover the zone of control of another player. If two or more players achieve their victory conditions at the same time, tiebreaker is unpolluted space in your zone of control.

The Play

I did a 4-player game with Jeff, Dennis and Kevin. Jeff has played before, the rest of us were new. I have read the rules so I taught Dennis and Kevin with Jeff filling in the gaps. Our game had a tough start. All four of us did Explore, and all four of us found food resources, which caused the famine level to shoot up. Starvation aplenty! I sent out a farmer and a woodcutter out early, to ensure I had a stable supply of food and wood for the first few rounds. Jeff was first to start working on a luxury resource (gold), and it gave him some flexibility. The rest of us were not as ambitious and hadn't planned that far. Managing famine and pollution was tough. From the start I felt like I was in the red and trying to claw my way back to the break even point. Goods spoilt every round and without a manned store they would be wasted. This was yet another challenge. I built a big store to manage this. However I later regretted it, because I selected the patron saint that allowed me to store an unlimited amount of resources in my cathedral. My big 3x2 store became a waste.

My city had many water tiles nearby, so I made good use of the harbour, which allowed me to increase my zone of control to these lakes and their coasts. I was also active in building inns, which let me further expand my zone of control to more and more lakes. These helped me a lot. I had access to more lakes to fish / dive for pearls / harvest dye. I had access to more farmland and mines too. Also very importantly, I had access to garbage dumping ground. Dennis and Jeff quickly built dumps which prevented me from dumping on spaces within their zone of control. That protected "their" lands somewhat, but thankfully I still had plenty of "dumpable" space.

This was how I started my first city in the first round.

My first city soon getting rather congested.

The patron saint I selected required me to collect 3 each of 8 types of resources (food and luxury). That meant I needed much space to farm and to collect resources. So expanding my zone of control was important. I only built up to two cities. Dennis, Kevin and I all struggled with building our second city. We had not planned ahead far enough, and before we were ready to build our second city, our first city had started filling up and our growth was stalled. Jeff had planned better, and still had much space in his first city when he built his second. Although each additional city produced more pollution, he built a dump and fountains to neutralise that. Jeff went for the patron saint which required all building types to be constructed. He later built a 3rd city. The additional pollution was scary, but he needed the city space.

I was yellow, Dennis blue, Jeff black. We all had two cities at this point. I used my inns aggressively. They are the small squares with yellow emblems. Look at all those pollution markers (skulls on red background). Scary!

In a 4-player game, 8 game board pieces are used to construct the main game board. At this point, Kevin (red) had not built his second city, and things were getting tough for him. Jeff was now planning his third city. That's his hand looking for a suitable spot.

Dennis and Kevin were disadvantaged in the early game because they had built only one cart shop each, as opposed to Jeff and I who had built two. Cart shops were important to ensure resource gatherers (e.g. farmers, miners) could be sent out to work, and countryside buildings could be constructed. Later Dennis was crippled by the lack of a wood supply. He had no wood, and thus could not even build a woodcutter's hut to secure a supply of wood. Kevin was hampered by graves. Due to his first city running out of space, and the famine level, he had to place new graves on his buildings, disabling them, and thus further hurting him. This is not a "pleasant" game at all! At time things looked so bleak that the victory conditions simply felt too distant. We had to worry about survival first.

Later in the game, I managed to reach a kind of equilibrium. My patron saint gave me Doraemon's pocket (infinite storage), letting me stockpile lots of food and thus I feared famines no more. I built a dump and two fountains, neutralising the 6 pollution every round from my 2 cities. I had a hospital which let me remove graves now and then, and a faculty of alchemy which let me clean up pollution. Woohoo! Sustainable development!

Eventually it was Jeff who won by constructing all building types. I had been working towards my victory condition too, but unfortunately I was just one resource short. In that final round, I used the Forced Labour building, which I had previously thought was not very useful. It makes you collect three resources instead of one from all your resource locations, but you must discard the first resource collected from each location. So it will waste your resources and deplete your land more quickly. However in my situation this was exactly what I needed to boost my production for that round. Too bad I was just one olive short of achieving my victory condition. If Jeff and I tied, tiebreaker would be the number of unpolluted spaces in our zones of control.

I had almost achieved my victory condition of 3 each of the 8 food and luxury resources. I was only short of one olive (top right).

My two cities at game end.

The Thoughts

I like Antiquity a lot. I like the cruelty of the famines and the pollution, and how the game challenges you to stay afloat. You need to plan ahead, not only to survive, but also to try to win. There are five different ways to win, and you don't need to decide up front which one to go for. Do you decide early so that you can start using the patron saint ability, or decide later so that you are not committed too early and have more flexibility? Antiquity is not just another development game or engine building game. The challenges it throws at you make it more than that. Player interaction is in the form of racing to gain access to more plots of land and to use them. You don't raise armies or send arsonists, but digging your neighbour's gold and dumping garbage at your neighbour's doorstep can be just as nasty. There are many game board pieces that can be used to build the game board, and they are double-sided. This provides some replayability because your strategy can be very different depending on the terrain near your first city.

The game we played took 3.5 hours, but I can see the time going down now that we know the game and have some ideas about what works and what doesn't. Many actions can be done simultaneously, so there isn't much waiting time. The game looks complex, but is not really that complex. I find it more straight-forward than Die Macher, for example. In Die Macher, things that you do have implications which are not immediately appreciated, but in Antiquity you can see the big picture more easily. The game is fiddly, as in there are many small components you need to handle, but I don't find it too bad. It's less fiddly than the shipping that you do in Indonesia (another Splotter game that I like a lot). I plan to get a copy of Antiquity and hope to convince my wife to try it. It should work well for two, unlike Indonesia which doesn't.

The game is unforgiving, especially to new players, so you should heed the strategy tips in the rulebook. However we didn't follow the suggestion of first timers playing without famine or pollution. I think that would make the game a little pointless.

Cubes on the main game board are resource collectors - farmers, fishermen, miners etc.

K2

2011-12-07T19:00:00.001+08:00

Plays: 4Px1.

The Game

K2 is a mountain-climbing game. You have two mountaineers, and within a fixed number of rounds, you try to get them to climb as high as possible. You score based on how high each of them gets, but only if they remain alive by game end.

Actions in the game are driven by cards. Every player has his own deck of cards, and the decks are all the same. You have a hand of 6 cards, and must play 3 every round. Throughout the game you will cycle through your deck quite a number of times. The deck is small enough that you will have some idea of what cards have come out and what are coming. Cards are used for two things, movement and acclimatisation.

Let's talk about acclimatisation first, which I tend to think of as health, so I will just call it "health". Both your climbers start with health 1. If health drops to 0, your climber dies. You need to build up your health before you try to go further up. Some lower locations increase your health, some cards too. Higher locations reduce your health, and poor weather conditions as well. You need to always manage your health, because a dead climber, even if he has reached the peak, scores no points. Movement is simple. You need one movement point per step. Some locations, especially at higher altitudes, cost more movement points. Weather conditions may also increase movement costs.

Every player has two climbers of different shapes, and each climber has a tent matching his shape. This player board records the acclimatisation level of the two climbers. At first I equated acclimatisation to health, and placed the marker on 10, i.e. full health. The correct way is to start with 1pt of acclimatisation. Numbers beyond 6 have a darker background, which means you can't "store" any acclimatisation more than 6. If at the end of a round you have more than 6, you set your value to 6.

The cards are nice. Numbers in a blue circle are acclimatisation ("health") points, and numbers in green are movement points. The rightmost card is worth different number of points depending on whether you use it to move upwards or downwards.

The implementation of weather conditions is clever. It is integrated with the round countdown. Weather conditions differ every round, sometimes there is increased movement costs, sometimes there is a health penalty, and usually these apply to specific altitudes. Naturally, bad things tend to happen at higher altitudes. Because of this, players often need to plan where they land, to avoid bad weather. You will get weather forecasts at least three rounds ahead, which lets you plan your next moves.

There is a space limit for each location, which depends on the number of players and the altitude. Players will often experience traffic jams near the peak, due to limited space. Turn order is important. When you are the start player for a round, you can plan your card play with certainty. Cards are selected secretly and simultaneously by all players every round, but executed in player order. If you are late in turn order, you may find your way blocked.

That on the top left is the start player marker for a round. It passes to the next clockwise player every round. Every player has his own draw deck and discard pile.

The game board. The right side of the game board (i.e. bottow of this photo) has boxes to record the highest altitude each climber achieves (which is his score). The game board is two-sided. I think this is the easier side.

Every climber has the chance to build one tent, which reduces the health penalty by one. Once built, it cannot be moved, so this is an important decision. Good use of a tent can be a life-saver.

After 18 rounds, players add up the scores for climbers who are still alive, based on how high they have climbed, and the highest scorer wins.

The Play

John taught Allen, Chee Seng and I the game, and he is the only one who has played it before. The rules are simple and thematic, but mountain climbing is quite challenging. It takes much forward planning. You need to pay attention to the weather forecast, you need to watch which routes your opponents are taking, you need to pay attention to player order, and at the same time you are subject to the card draws. Since you have a hand of 6 and you play 3 per round, there is some forward planning you can do, keeping good cards for the right moment.

Chee Seng always kept his two climbers together, triggering some jokes about Brokeback Mountain. We kept telling him this was mountain-climbing, and this was not the time for any romantic hanky-panky. Two climbers were definitely not allowed to share the same tent. As his climbers approached the peak, space limitation forced them to split up eventually, which triggered another round of jokes. John was first to have one of his climbers reach the top. He focused on getting one climber up, while the other stayed behind. This is probably the best strategy. It is very difficult to manage the health levels of two climbers being at high altitudes at the same time.

Look at Chee Seng's two blue climbers... sheesh...

John (yellow) was first to reach the top. A number of tents have been set up near the peak.

I was first to have one of my climbers killed. Aarrgghh!! I had miscalculated the health penalties, and missed by just 1 health point. That was painful. Later Chee Seng also lost one of his climbers, which triggered yet another Brokeback Mountain joke. Allen was the only one who managed to get both his climbers to reach the top, so he won the game with full marks (20pts). John was second, and of course Chee Seng and I were far behind. We tied for last.

The dead. Blue is Chee Seng's, green is mine.

Game end. The two boards on the right side of this photo are the weather boards. Each board covers 3 rounds, and has the corresponding weather conditions.

The Thoughts

The feeling I get when playing the game is very much like facing an insurmountable feat. Health penalties and movement costs get worse and worse, and sometimes the card draws are just not ideal. There is much you can plan ahead for, and you must catch the right opportunity and coordinate the timing to shoot for the peak. I think the game is very much about good preparation, and striking at the right moment. You are wasting time if you charge, but don't quite get there, then fall back a little, and try to reorganise and strike out again. It is better to be precise in your preparation and get it done in one perfect shot. Of course, that's easier said than done, when you are dependent on cards you draw and you also need to compete for limited space.

Close-up.

I quite enjoyed K2. It is thematic. Every part of the game works well together. Everything ties back to health and movement points, so the game is easy to teach and easy to understand. It's a medium weight game suitable for families and gamers. It certainly is a different experience from the average Eurogame. This is a game where the mechanisms really produce the feeling of the subject matter, as opposed to being tools invented or collated to construct a game based on a rare topic. This is what I admire most about this game.

I actually have not watched Brokeback Mountain. Maybe I should.

Airlines Europe

2011-12-04T12:24:00.002+08:00

Plays: 4Px1.

The Game

Airlines Europe is a game about investing in airlines, growing them, and making money from your investments. It is played on a map of Europe, with many cities depicted and many routes betweens, each having some spots that airlines can claim. There are many airline companies, and at the start of the game, each of them only has one starting airport, and their share values are low. During the game, players spend money to expand the airlines' networks by claiming routes, growing outwards from their starting airport. As these airline networks grow, the share value of the airlines also increase, and the payouts will increase too. Players also collect airline shares, and during the three payout rounds, they earn victory points (VP's) based on shareholding majority. Collecting and owning shares is a two-step process. There is an action for taking a share from a common pool (Ticket to Ride style) into your hand, and another action to play shares into your playing area. The shares need to be in play before they are considered being own by you. As the game progresses, you compete in shareholding in the various companies, and yet also cooperate in growing companies which you and some opponents have invested in together.

Shares in hand are not shares owned. You need to play them onto your playing area first. The number on the share card indicates the numbers of shares of that airline.

Front: my share holdings. Middle: The share market always has 5 cards for players to pick from. If you don't want any of them, you can blind draw from the draw deck.

One weird company works differently from others - Abacus. It doesn't have an airport and doesn't claim routes. You have to use an action to trade shares in your hand for Abacus shares. During the three payout rounds, Abacus pays out pre-determined VP's. So this is yet another company which the players compete in, albeit in a slightly different manner.

The game ends after the third payout round.

The Play

BGG says Airlines Europe is best with four, and we had four players - Allen, John, Chee Seng and I. All were new to the game. The game starts with some every player having some shares, which makes the starting positions slightly different. All of us were quite diversified in our investments. Only Chee Seng and John bothered with Abacus. Allen and I only put in token effort to gain 3rd place VP's. Money was very tight, and we often had to take the Take Money action, or Play Card action which also gave money. The Expand Airline action is tricky. For one action you can do one or two expansions. During the game I realised that it is not always better to do two expansions. Whether you do one or two expansions, you only get to take one share. Each expansion costs money, so if you do two expansions, you will soon run out of money and need to take some money-earning action. If you do single expansions, you don't get to expand airlines as quickly, but you will be able to collect more shares because of using fewer money-earning actions. This is an interesting balance.

The game board. Some cities have coloured markers, which are the airline headquarters. When expanding (claiming routes), airlines must start from their headquarters. Allen was the majority shareholder for the blue airline from the start, and he spent much effort growing it. The track around the board is for recording the share value. At this moment green and white were leading.

The orange tile is a bonus tile, which only four companies have. If the orange airline expands its routes to reach London, its share value gets a boost of 6.

This being an investment game, we had to constantly watch the share-holdings of other players, and also the shares available in the common pool. This common pool restricted our options somewhat, and prevented the game from becoming very open. You can't claim any share you want. I think this is good. The game is less absolute and less calculable. There was fighting for majority shareholding within each airline. There was also the mentality of "why don't you do the hard work since you also own shares in the company". Smaller shareholders tried to leech off the efforts of the bigger shareholders. Vested interests were very intertwined so it was very hard to not indirectly help others. The game is about how to help yourself most, how to piggy-back on others' efforts, and how to invest wisely. The payout rounds are semi-random, so you won't know exactly when they will happen. Sometimes you need to gamble a bit and hope they happen at a good time, e.g. right after you wrest majority in some airlines.

VP's were hidden so during the game I didn't have much idea who was leading and who was trailing. By game end, our scores were not far apart. Allen won, I was second, Chee Seng and John had the same score, but John won by tiebreaker - Abacus shares. Before game end I was thinking whether Chee Seng and John would win because they were the only ones taking Abacus seriously, while Allen and I didn't spend much effort. Abacus did pay out well, but I think investing in it was costly for both Chee Seng and John, because they had to fight hard for it, sacrificing shares they could have owned in other airlines. So Abacus is a clever mechanism that spices things up a little.

The Thoughts

Airlines Europe is an investment game, and investment games are generally not my cup of tea. So it didn't do much for me. I think it is well-designed and well-balanced. That is not surprising since this is a refined version of Alan Moon's previous games, e.g. Union Pacific. Airlines Europe, being an investment game, has this aspect of multiple entities (airlines) that multiple players have vested interests in. There is jostling for position in the shareholding. While the airlines compete with each other, the players have to manipulate this competition such that they as the players are the ones benefiting, and not any particular airline(s). After the game, I realised that the payouts are good for 1st and 2nd place shareholders, but drop significantly for 3rd place onwards, so there is incentive to fight for the first two spots within an airline, as opposed to simply diversifying everywhere. The way that we played may not have been the best way.

Buy from Noble Knight Games. Status: in stock (at time of this post).

good Eurogames and good movies

2011-12-01T19:23:00.001+08:00

A random thoughts post...

Good movies

I have a love-hate relationship with good drama movies. I usually like this kind of movies (e.g. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Shawshank Redemption, The King's Speech), but somehow I often find myself resisting to watch them. Maybe it's because I find it hard to commit the time and to invest the emotional commitment to watch such movies. I don't experience such dilemmas with comedies. It's strange how I often don't give such movies a chance. I still have not watched Slumdog Millionaire.

I notice that there is a similarity with how I treat typical Eurogames, not really a parallel, just partial similarity. I tend to feel that they lack creativity and they can't break out of a mould, and I rarely give them any chance, even though I started the hobby with these games. Nowadays I tend to prefer heavy Eurogames. I recently read Michael Schacht's new game Coney Island described as a potential classic like Web of Power / China. Coney Island never interested me, simply because it's a light-to-medium weight Eurogame (sorry Michael). But China is a game that I like and admire very much. So, I probably should not be dismissing new games based on such unfair criteria. The challenge for a boardgame hobbyist nowadays is how to filter through the overwhelming number games being published every year to find the games he likes. I rely on snippets I read from various online sources - boardgame blogs and www.boardgamegeek.com rankings and news, and I tend to just browse quickly, only delving deeper when something really catches my interest. Because of this, I think many good games slip through. Unfortunate, but inevitable.

Hey, that's our song!

I entered the hobby in 2003 / 2004. Games that I bought and played heavily during that period (the formation years) would always have a special place in my heart, just like pop songs during one's teenage years. For me, "our songs" are games like The Princes of Florence, Carcassonne, and Mystery Rummy: Jack the Ripper. There are newer games which have similarities with these games, some may even be better designs, but they will always be inferior to "our songs". If I want to play games with similar depth, or using similar mechanisms, I would just turn to "our songs". There is no need to buy a newer game unless it is significantly different or provides something that I don't have yet.

Newer boardgamers will have their own newer "our songs", and we old farts may frown upon them, just like the even older farts frown upon our "our songs". Noone is right and noone is wrong.

And then there are some classics that most people can agree on. Can I compare Acquire to When I Fall in Love?

Mystery Rummy: Jack the Ripper

Carcassonne

Cooperative Ark

My 6-year-old daughter Shee Yun wanted to play Ark after reading a book about Noah's Ark. It's a bit too much for a 6-year-old, so I created a cooperative version. Players have a hand of 4 cards, and take turns adding one animal to the ark. Weights of animals and tilt of the ark are played. Restrictions on carnivores, herbivores, and food apply. Room temperatures apply. Room size applies. Special animal rules (exclamation marks), animal categories (fast animals, shy animals, heavy animals etc), and payment for new rooms don't apply. There is no scoring. We just worked together to place all the animals onto the ark, in as few rooms as we could. It was quite pointless, but she enjoyed it.

Brawl

2011-11-30T19:00:00.001+08:00

Plays: more than 50 games vs AI.

Brawl is a game I discovered by accident when browsing www.boardgamegeek.com. An iPhone version was recently released and I downloaded it to give it a try since it is free (it comes with 3 characters, and there are 3 more you can buy). The artwork isn't quite my kind of thing, and I didn't really expect much from it. However it turned out to be a pleasant surprise. I later found out that the designer is James Ernest, who also designed Kill Doctor Lucky and Lords of Vegas, and is the guy behind Cheapass Games.

The Game

Brawl is a 2-player real-time card game which can be played in 45 seconds. Really. The setting is one-on-one fights, and the execution is done using one pre-set deck of cards for each player. There are quite many characters in the Brawl game system, and each is represented by a deck of cards. The card mix of a character determines his (or her) strengths and weaknesses, and makes him unique. The objective of the game is to win the bases (there can be up to three of them) at the centre of the playing area. Once all bases are frozen, the game ends, and whoever wins more bases wins the game. The game is tied if both players win one base each.

Two of the characters available for free in the iPhone game.

The game starts with two base cards at the centre, each portraying one of the fighters. The character on the base is a tiebreaker - if both players have the same strength played onto a base, the character on the base wins this base. During the game bases can be added (player's decks contain bases) and cleared (by Clear cards). Each player start with his deck face-down in front of him. There are no turns and everything is done in real-time. You can play as fast or as slow as you want. At any one time you only have two choices - draw the top card from the deck and place it on top of your face-up pile, or play the topmost card of your face-up pile. This means that other cards in the face-up pile are not accessible, until you use the card(s) above them. So it can be tricky to decide whether you want to cover a good card which you can't use yet. Do you wait until the right moment comes, or do you cover it now, hoping that later enough cards will be used so that this good card becomes accessible again? Often there will be cards that you need to give up on.

The most basic card type is Hit cards. They come in three colours. You play them next to your side of a base card to fight for the base card. Once you commit a colour to a base card, you can only add cards of the same colour to that base. Then there are Block cards, which also come in three colours, and they are usually played on your opponent's side of a base card to stop him from playing more Hit cards.

Clear cards let you remove a base and all cards attached to it from the game. Usually you clear bases that you are losing. You can only clear outer bases, so if there happens to be three bases, the centre base cannot be cleared. This is one consideration when you decide to play a base card (when there are fewer than three bases in play). You want to position it such that a base you are winning is protected, or that a base you are losing remains vulnerable. Playing your base card is usually good, because it being your base card (having your character on it) means you win ties. When playing your base card, you also need to consider whether to play it on the left or right.

There can be up to three base cards in play. At this moment, my opponent (Hale) is leading in all three bases. For the two bases at the sides, our strengths are the same, but the base cards themselves are his, so he wins ties.

There are Smash cards which are Hits x 2. There are always three Freeze cards at the bottom of the deck. You play a Freeze card to freeze a base, preferably one you are winning. By the time you reach the Freeze cards, you know you are at the end of your deck, and usually there is not much else you can do if you are already losing. If you are winning, you want to quickly freeze the bases you are winning to secure your overall win.

These are the cards in the three basic character decks. There are more types of cards, some with the three other characters in the iPhone game, and some with other expansion characters in the physical game.

The Play

So far I have played against the Normal AI and the Hard AI. My win rate is quite average with the Normal AI, and is downright pathetic against the Hard AI (which is only the second of three levels). It is very challenging. I'm not sure whether the AI cheats by being luckier with its card draws. So far it does not seem so. The Hard AI appears to play both quicker and smarter. It applies some tricks that I have not seen at Normal level. I am still working hard to become competitive against the Hard AI.

The game is very quick, and being a real-time game, you really need to focus. My games usually take less than the 45 seconds advertised. Sometimes luck is a big factor, but you do often have to make quick decisions and tricky decisions. You need to watch the cards that your opponent is drawing. Sometimes you need to pause to see what he does, e.g. if he has a blue Block and you have a blue Hit, you shouldn't blindly commit that blue Hit because he would happily block the base you commit it to. Do you wait for him to draw another card which would make inaccessible his blue Block? Do you draw another card yourself, potentially wasting your blue Hit? Sometimes you can plan for a big reverse run, e.g. if you know you have a string of Hit cards of the same colour in your face-up pile, you can wait for the right moment to free up the cards above them, to allow you to make a big attack.

One thing that I find is often you are trying to force a tie, when things look bad. Sometimes even being able to achieve a tie is satisfying.

Despite the simple rules, you are constantly pressed to decide whether to draw a new card or not. You do need to get familiar with the decks in order to be able to make good decisions. Card counting certainly helps, but I have not really bothered with it much. This is meant to be a fast and furious game.

The characters are all unique and are suited for different strategies. To play well you need to know thy enemy, know thyself.

End of a game. I win both bases and thus win the game.

The Thoughts

Brawl has simple rules, but has more depth than I expected. There is emergent gameplay that is not apparent at first. You do need to play quite a number of games to pick up the tactics. You should also check out the card distribution of the decks. These aspects remind me of Blue Moon. Brawl takes time to appreciate. The game is condensed. It definitely is a filler, but it is one that you can enjoy for a long time (over many games, not a single 45 second game).

The interface of the iPhone version is well done. The AI's are challenging (or I am a very lousy player). I am still playing with the basic three characters that come with the game, and have not bought any of the other three. I hope in future they will release more characters which have been available in physical form.

Dungeon Petz

2011-11-28T10:42:00.001+08:00

Plays: 4Px1.

Dungeon Petz is one of the new Essen 2011 game fair releases that I am interested to try, the others being Power Grid: The First Sparks, Power Grid: The Robot (probably a good addition to the 2-player Power Grid games that Michelle and I play), Pret-a-Porter and Eclipse. In my recent visit to Meeples Cafe, in addition to First Sparks, I also played Dungeon Petz.

The Game

Dungeon Petz is a sequel of sorts to Vlaada Chvatil's Dungeon Lords. Now instead of playing a dungeon lord building up his dungeon and protecting it from the intrusion of those self-righteous heroes, you play a family of imps managing a pet shop. The pets are, of course, not your regular type of pets. Some would call them monsters, which is not very nice of them, but you know better. You equip your pet shop, you buy young pets and take care of their daily needs and see them grow up, you show them off at pet shows, and when the price is right, you sell them to dungeon lords who appreciate them. At the end of a fixed number of rounds, whoever's pet shop has the highest reputation wins.

Dungeon Petz is a worker placement game, but the theme is so rich that it doesn't feel like "yet another worker placement game" to me. At the start of every round everyone secretly groups their imps and coins into groups of different sizes. Once these groupings are revealed, players take turns to place their groups onto the game board, priority being given to the bigger groups. This means if you make big groups, you will likely get higher priority, but then you won't be able to make many groups. The spaces on the board do all sorts of things related to running your pet business. You buy baby pets, you buy cages, you buy enhancements to cages, you buy pet food, you visit the immigration office to "import" relatives to help run your business, you bribe pet show judges, and so on. You don't need to assign all your imps to tasks on the board. You can keep some behind for other off-board tasks which are done later, e.g. playing with pets (they can die of boredom) and cleaning poop.

The player board looks like a T-shirt. The top part is the screen which can be used to hide the tunnels section of the board when players are secretly grouping their imps and coins. The screen has a lot of useful reference information, but until you understand the game, they will appear very daunting. The lower left section is for tracking whether food in storage has rot. I'm not sure what the other sections are for. We just used them generic storage.

The main board looks quite busy. It captures much important information and I find it very practical. Three baby monsters are waiting to be purchased (egg shaped pieces).

One key aspect of the game is handling the different needs of your pets. This is implemented using Need cards. Depending on the sizes and characteristics of your pets, you must draw Needs cards and assign them to every pet under your care. The are four Need cards colours - purple cards are usually (half the time) the need to expend magic power, red to vent anger, yellow to play, green to eat. However sometimes a Need card shows a Need icon that is different, e.g. a green Need card (which usually shows an icon for the need to eat) may show an icon for the need to poop instead. Sometimes a usually playful pet gets angry. Sometimes a pet falls sick. So the characteristics of a pet give some idea of how it usually behaves, but sometimes it behaves unexpectedly, so you need to be prepared to handle the various possibilities.

If a pet wants to play but you have no available imp to play with it, it suffers. The same thing happens if you can't feed it when it's hungry, and when it falls very sick because it's cage is too dirty (poop not cleaned away). Suffer too much, and a pet will die, and your reputation will be damaged. If a pet gets angry it will try to escape, and you can only hold it back if the cage is strong enough, or you have available imps to stop it. If a pet's magic powers get out of control, it will mutate. Mutate twice, and it will fall into an alternate dimension, and your reputation will suffer too.

In addition to managing your pets, you also bring them to pet shows and sell them to buyers. Both of these are important for increasing your reputation. Judging criteria for pet shows are announced two rounds beforehand, so that you have time to buy the right pets to prepare for them. Buyers' preferences are made known three rounds beforehand. The judging criteria and customer requirements can vary greatly, so you have to plan ahead which ones to try to compete in or to fulfill. At game end, there are two competitions held to compare how well-run the pet shops are, and some additional reputation is awarded. Whoever has accumulated the most reputation by game end wins.

The Play

I taught this game to Han, Log and Nicky (not exactly sure of name). The explanation took longer than expected. There are quite many details to explain, even though the game board and player boards do a very good job in showing important information. Most rules are logical and intuitive. Despite the many rules details and how long it took to go through them, the game pace was relatively quick. Everyone had some idea what he needed to do every round, and when it was his turn, it was just placing his group of imps and executing the action. Some activities could be done simultaneously, e.g. managing the needs of your own pets. Only occasionally when an action one player needed was taken by another, then the former needed to take a bit of time to work out a Plan B. I think we also played a little by gut feel. When there was a lot of food available, someone was bound to be unable to resist taking it (Agricola syndrome). Artifacts generally seem quite useful, so unless we had specific urgent actions we needed, collecting articfacts seemed a good action.

Being the rules reader, I was more familiar with the game details, and had a good lead up to the second last round. I didn't have many pets, but somehow my pets always did well in the pet shows, partly because I often bribed the judges. Bribery was a very powerful action. However I didn't do so well in buying baby pets. I had more cages and other equipment than I really needed. Overkill. Han had the most pets. He was aggressive in buying baby pets, and this paid off very well in the last round. The judging criteria and buyer preferences in the last round also suited his pets well. He overtook me to win the game. And he did that with only his initial 6 imps. He never managed to visit the immigration office to arrange for his imp relatives to come work for him. By game end he still had four cousins stuck in China complaining about him and causing him to lose reputation points. I was the one who did that to him, because I took the immigration action in the last round to bring in two more of my relatives before he could do the same. It was +4pts for me and -8pts for him, a 12pts difference, but it wasn't enough to keep him from winning.

We didn't have any pet escaping in rage or dying from suffering. I think there was only one case of mutation. So we seemed to be managing our pets well enough. I might have been a little timid in buying baby pets. It seemed we were over-prepared to take care of our pets, which was inefficient.

The Thoughts

I quite enjoyed this first game of Dungeon Petz. I'm not yet sure it is a "To Buy" game yet, but the tilt is yes now. The whole package of running a pet store is very entertaining. I prefer this to Dungeon Lords because the core action selection mechanism in Dungeon Lords sometimes makes me feel I am penalised because of unlucky guesses. In Dungeon Petz I feel I have a bit more control. It is more forgiving too, although being more or less forgiving is not good or bad. It is up to personal taste.

I enjoy how you are juggling many balls when running a pet shop. All actions have their uses. You need to coordinate many aspects to make sure you can take good care of the pets. Running your own pet shop may sound like solitaire, but you are forced to compete with others due to the worker placement mechanism, and also via the pet shows. The pet shows award points based on relative positions of the players and not based on how well each is doing, so it is not important whether your pets are doing well or not, they just need to do better than the other players' pets. Although the buyers buy pets from every player, they too offer competition because players would try to rear pets and manage their behaviour so that they match the buyers' tastes best.

I am guessing that 4 players is the best way to play the game, because there is most competition. I have not tried 2- or 3-player games, so I am just guessing. Like Dungeon Lords, they require some changes in rules, but here I think they are less troublesome and they feel less artificial / forced. So hopefully the 2- or 3-player games are not far off from the full 4-player game.

Power Grid: The First Sparks

2011-11-25T19:00:00.000+08:00

Plays: 2Px1.

Meeples Cafe in Subang Jaya offered me a free game session to play some of the latest Essen 2010 boardgame releases. They visited Essen and brought back quite many new games, and they offered some free gaming sessions (drinks not included) to their members on specific days in November. I rarely visit boardgame cafes nowadays, because in my regular gaming group there are already more than enough games for us to play. However I couldn't pass up this opportunity to try some of the games that I was interested in, so I booked a Wednesday evening to visit them.

Meeples Cafe reminded me a lot of the Settlers Cafe in Singapore (although the last time I was there was a number of years ago). Many helpful staff. Gaming hours and drinks prices are good. Most importantly, game selection is very good. Log (the boss) told me they are nowadays usually full on Fridays and Saturdays, but when I was there on a Wednesday, it was full too. Good thing I made a reservation.

Just like what I used to do in Taiwan when visiting Witch House boardgame cafe, I read rules beforehand and made rules summaries, so that I could jump straight into the games, the first one being Power Grid: The First Sparks.

The Game

If you have played Power Grid, then I'll describe First Sparks as a streamlined and quicker version, simplifying the calculations required, and yet still preserving all the key elements of Power Grid.

Players are clans of hunters and gatherers in pre-historic times. They hunt for food and learn to farm, and with the food gathered they feed and grow their clan, spreading clan members across the board. Food is the currency in the game, and is also used to "buy" better tools and to gain knowledge, which will in turn help the clans hunt and farm more efficiently. The game ends when one clan reaches the size of 13 clan members, and whoever has the biggest clan wins.

There are four types of food that the players can hunt (or fish, or gather) on the board - mammoths, boars, fish and berries. All of them require the right tools, and are worth different amounts of food units. The abundance of these natural resources fluctuates during the game, depending on how heavily each is being hunted. If everyone hunts boars, then of course the number of boars will drop. So there is some competition for the same types of food sources, and it is usually good to go for food sources that others are ignoring.

The storage board for storing the available natural resources. The cardboard pieces with numbers on them are a handy reminder for how many resource pieces to replenish at the end of a round.

Players can also learn to farm, and this does not depend on positioning on the board or the abundance of wild animals / vegetation. You secure a regular supply of food.

Like Power Grid, turn order plays an important role in the game. The leading player (whoever has the biggest clan) is usually penalised. He is first to pick a tool or knowledge card to buy, and everyone else, starting from the last player, has the right to buy it before he does. He only gets to buy it if noone else wants the card. This is a different form of auction. The first player is also last to harvest food from the common pool, so by the time it is his turn, there is less to harvest from. He is last to expand his clan, so he may find that others have occupied spaces that he had intended to expand to, and thus will need to spend more food to expand.

The cards in the game are either tools (for hunting or farming) or knowledge. You can have at most 3 tools at any one time, but knowledge cards are not limited. Knowledge cards have special abilities, e.g. your food doesn't rot, or you pay less when expanding to spaces already settled by other clans.

The starting cards in the card market for a 2-player game. Tool cards have an icon showing the type of food they can be used to harvest. E.g. the bottom right card is a Spear tool card and it is for hunting mammoths. For this particular tool, if there are between 1 and 7 mammoths in the common resource pool, you can harvest one mammoth. If there are 8 or more, you harvest two. Technology cards have text describing their abilities. The Fire card on the top right is a technology card.
The number on the top left of a card is the "size" of the card, for comparison of which card is "better" and thus their ordering in the card market. The number on the top right is the (fixed) cost in food units.

The Play

I did a 2-player game with Han. The 2-player game requires a dummy third player. The game pace was very brisk. In fact it was so quick that we played more than half a game before realising that we had completely forgotten about playing the dummy third player. So we restarted the game. Food seemed to be sufficient all the time, as long as we were careful not to over-extend ourselves. Maybe we were too conservative in expanding. We didn't really need to compete much in the same types of food. There was only two of us, but four types of hunted (or gathered) food, plus farming was also an option. The game didn't seem very interesting with 2 players.

Our incorrectly played 2-player game. We got this far without realising that we had completely forgotten about the dummy 3rd player.

Game in progress. Each tile is made of two hexes, and each hex has 3 spaces. There is no limit in the number of clan members in a space, as long as they are from different clans. However it is more expensive to settle in a space that already has other players' clan members. Also it is more expensive to expand through mountains (the rocks).

The knowledge of Fire seemed to be a big factor. The player who has Fire doesn't lose one third of his food every round. In a two player game, there is only one Fire card, and whoever doesn't get it seems to be at a significant disadvantage throughout the game. We have yet to figure out how to overcome that advantage. The tool and knowledge card costs are fixed, so there is no bidding up the prices. Unlike Power Grid, you can't force an opponent to pay more for a good card. In the first halfway-abandoned game, I had Fire and did well all along while Han struggled a little. In the second properly-played game Han had Fire. I thought I managed my food and expansion well, but I didn't notice that he had been stockpiling a lot of food. When he reached the clan size of about 8, he suddenly grew his clan straight to 13 members to end the game, using his huge stockpile of food. I didn't see that coming, and I was nowhere near 13.

The Thoughts

I quite like Power Grid and don't mind its fiddly aspects. So I didn't find streamlining it (which is what First Sparks does) necessary. First Sparks is attractive and quick, and does retain all the key elements of Power Grid. For me personally, it feels a little unsatisfying, since I'm quite comfortable with Power Grid. First Sparks seems to be more suitable for people who don't like Power Grid (e.g. the maths involved, the fiddly rules). I'm already a fan of Power Grid. Comparing First Sparks against Power Grid:

No bidding up the power plant (tools / knowledge) prices in the auctions.
No need to decide whether to buy resources (or how much to buy) to run your power plants. In First Sparks you will always want to harvest food with all your tools.
In First Sparks your network won't be walled off as badly as in Power Grid. The cost increase to settle in crowded spaces is not as brutal.

I suspect First Sparks is better with 4 or more players. My 2-player game experience was not as interesting as Power Grid 2-player games that I have played.

7 Wonders 2-player game

2011-11-19T23:21:00.000+08:00

Plays (2-player variant): 2.

One reason that I bought 7 Wonders was I read that it was good even as a 2-player game. The 2-player game is a variant, and the rulebook says that this should only be attempted by experienced players. There are additional rules. There is a dummy 3rd player that both players take turns to manage. It is a little different from the standard game, which I have written about here.

The 2-player game is set up like a 3-player game. The dummy player's cards form a draw deck. The human players take turns to play for the dummy player. If it is your turn to do so, you draw a card from the dummy player's draw deck (so that your hand size will be one more than normal), and you pick one card each for both yourself and the dummy player. Once a turn is completed, the human players swap their hands.

Controlling the dummy player is very handy. You can use it to build / discard / bury cards that your opponent wants. You can make it buy stuff from you and pay you lots of money. You can make it militarily stronger than your opponent to penalise him. Naturally, your opponent will try to do the same to you. With this variant, there is more to think about and to consider, and the game slows down a little because of it. The game becomes more complex. There are more things you can manipulate.

The rightmost card in my hand is the dummy player reminder card. Whoever is holding the card must pick two cards, one for himself and one for the dummy player. In the background you can see a card with the Great Wall of China on it. This is for remembering which player should start with the dummy player card in each Age.

I personally prefer to play with more players, because I enjoy playing 7 Wonders at a quicker pace, and I find that having to manage the dummy player's civilisations is a little distracting. So 7 Wonders probably won't be a game I'll pick when I play with my wife. The 2-player game adds another layer of strategy and the game does work. So it's worth a try if you like the game, but it will be easier if you have already played a 3+ player game. Michelle didn't want to bother with a 3+ player learning game and jumped straight in. She actually beat me in our first game. So the game is not hard, just not as brisk as the normal game.

Buy from Noble Knight Games. Status: in stock (at time of this post).

boardgaming in photos

2011-11-18T23:20:00.006+08:00

23 Oct 2011. Playing Automobile with Han, Allen, Wan and Shan. I like this game a lot but have not played it for quite a while. My recent revisiting of my 2009 games eagerness ranking prompted me to bring out this game again.

I positioned myself well in the first round, grabbing the newest model (at the time) of mid-range cars. However this also became my undoing later. I invested heavily in it, building a third factory and also a parts factory. By late game, it was too costly to shut them down. Many others have built mid-range car factories, making mine very very obsolete and costly to maintain. I can only blame myself. I got myself into this hole. I had underestimated how stiff the competition would be in mid-range cars.

In contrast the competition among distributors was not as fierce as I thought it would be. Although many of us had placed distributers, most of the time the types of cars we wanted our distributors to sell were different, so most of the time they were able to sell cars and not get fired for non-performance. I should have placed maybe one more distributor.

30 Oct 2011. 5-player game of Perikles (didn't realise I have always pronounced it wrong until Wan mentioned it; it should be "Peri-cleese") with Han, Allen, Wan and Shan. This is a Martin Wallace design which I have played once before, a few years ago. There are only three rounds, but the length of "only three rounds" in a Martin Wallace game must not be underestimated. The first half of a round is about fighting for political control in the six Greek city states, and in the second half you lead armies of cities you control to war.
Cubes here represent political influence or politicians.

Every round, 7 battles will be fought, and players can send their armies to fight as the attacker (left, purple side) or defender (right, white side). Every battle is worth a number of points, and is claimed by the winner.

I had a successful first round, but that also meant I became ganged up upon afterwards. My politicians tended to be the victims of assassinations. When the game ended, I was in last position. Well, it's also partly due to bad luck. In the last battle of the game (i.e. the 21st battle), it was me against Allen. I had invested much military power in this, and unless the die rolls were unusually unlucky, I should win comfortably. And it turned out that my die rolls did suck. Allen would still have won the game even if he lost that battle, but at least I would not have come last.

Perikles has Martin Wallace's unique style all over it - Euro-ish yet rich and complex, abstracted yet thematic.

I have played 7 Wonders more than 100 times, mostly on the computer. This was the first time I played my own copy after finally buying it. Mine is the second edition, i.e. cardboard coins instead of wooden coins.

6 Nov 2011. Han, Allen and I played our fourth and so far most exciting game of Maria. Han played Prussia/Pragmatic Army (blue / grey), Allen played Austria (white), and I played France (red). This was the same configuration as our third game. We wanted to do it again because that game ended prematurely due to a rule mistake.
Here Austria (white) was already surrounded by the wolves - France (red) and Bavaria (orange) attacking from the west, Prussia (blue) and Saxony (green) attacking from the north. We were all very careful in this game, manoeuvring our armies and supply trains and accumulating cards before committing to battle. However once the battles started, many of them were big ones. Here's the first battle fought between Han's Prussian army and Allen's Austrian army.

Card play was fast and furious.

More and more cards were played, each one-upping the other. So much was committed that there was no backing down now.

The number of cards played was shocking! And of course as the bystander I was cheering them on gleefully. Them spending lots of cards meant I would likely have an easier time when I needed to fight them.

This was the site of the battle. It was in Silesia, which belonged to Austria. Silesia was Prussia's first military objective.
In this game that we played, battles were few, but many were big and crucial. Unfortunately for me (France), I lost two very important battles, and my plans were all out the window. In one of them I was quite confident, and had left my supply train in a slightly risky but convenient (for further advances) location. If I won the battle, I would force the Austrian army to retreat and my supply train would be in no danger. Unfortunately I lost that battle, and my supply train was subsequently destroyed. Allen had to fight many tough battles on his homeground, and lost many armies. However he not only managed to destroy my French supply train. He also managed to destroy my Bavarian supply train, and Han's Prussian supply train. So our advances would be severely set back, and he would have time to recover.

The only invading army with a supply train left was the Saxony army. The green cube is the supply train. What's funny is soon after this an event card caused Saxony to become neutral. It became controlled by Allen, and its army returned to within the borders of Saxony. So there were no more hostile supply trains in Austria.
Since everyone's armies were badly depleted, it would take some time for us to rebuild our strength. Now it was a race to grab the remaining victory points (i.e. place the remaining victory markers onto the board). Maria encourages offensive play, because conquering an enemy's fortress gives you points and defending your own only prevents your enemy from gaining points. We were all down to just a few victory markers. Eventually it was Han's Pragmatic Army which won him the game. My French army, could not stop him. Allen's Austria suffered many losses, but fought well and had a decent chance of winning. We all have been secretly rooting for Austria, because Austria is the protagonist in Maria and the Austria player is the only one who has not win yet. Now that I think of it, although the Prussia/Pragmatic Army player has won, on both occasions the Pragmatic Army was the winning nation.
Afterwards we discovered one rule mistake - it should have been easier for Saxony to shift its allegiance towards Austria. If Prussia loses a battle against Austria, Saxony's allegiance marker will shift. No wonder it has been so tough to play Austria. It's embarassing that we still made rules mistakes in our fourth game.

7 Nov 2011. Power Grid on the Korean map. Coal in the North Korean market was completely sold out. Michelle and I played this because our 6-year-old daughter Shee Yun said she wanted to be the banker.

It felt great to be able to buy that super power plant on the right. It could power 9 cities! But I still lost the game to Michelle...

Maori

2011-11-14T21:27:00.000+08:00

Plays: 2Px4.

The Game

Maori is a tile placement game and a build-up-your-own-play-area game. The theme is about discovering islands, but it's pretty thin. I ordered this game a long time ago after reading some favourable reviews. I thought it might be suitable as a 2-player game with my wife Michelle. Something quick, easy to set up, but not too light. Now that I have played it, it turned out to be trickier than I had expected. And Michelle completely slaughtered me. And this is not even an accountant game like Power Grid or Factory Manager, so she doesn't have a professional advantage over me. I have yet to make my first win.

In Maori there is a ship sailing around a 4x4 grid of tiles. On your turn you must move the ship and then you can claim the tile next to the ship, or another one in the same column if you are willing to pay. You place these tiles on your player board, and when one player's board fills up, the game ends, and you score based on how well you have assembled your island nation. Sounds simple?

The 4x4 grid at the centre of the table, from which players pick up tiles to add to their player boards. I arrange the tiles so that all palm trees point at the same direction, so that it's easier to read.

What's tricky is the various restrictions on how you can place the tiles. The game comes with a number of variants, and each of them introduces additional rules, restrictions or scoring opportunities. We started with the basic game, and with each subsequent game, we introduced new advanced rules. In the base game, palm trees must point north. Islands stretch either north-south or east-west. The available spaces on your player board is itself a restriction, because to fill it up you need to get the right tiles. Single tile islands and ship tiles, although often not high-scoring, are attractive because they are convenient. You don't need to worry about finding a matching island tile to complete the island. When you add the first variant, you gain your own ship on your own board, which you can move around, but on your next turn you must place your new tile next to your ship. With the second variant, you can't move your ship anywhere you want. You must always move it to the most recently placed tile. These additional rules force you to plan well ahead how to construct and complete your board.

Ship icons allow you to move the common ship at the 4x4 grid further, giving more flexibility in picking tiles you want. Shells have various uses, e.g. picking tiles not directly adjacent to the common ship, moving the common ship further, moving your personal ship etc. Both also score bonus points at game end, but only if you have the most.

My player board. The game has ended, so I will have to remove the two tiles on the bottom right because the island is incomplete. Scoring methods are summarised on the right side of the player board.

Game components: common ship, shell, tile back, volcano tile (a special tile which cannot be picked by players, and blocks players from picking tiles beyond it), a regular tile with 3 palm trees.

The Play

In the first few games that I played, I might have been too ambitious and also too liberal in my spending of shells. In the end I couldn't complete some big islands before Michelle ended the game, and I had to discard those half-done islands. So instead of scoring big, I was penalised for the empty spaces on my board. Michelle had been thrifty with her shells, and had also been careful in collecting ship icons. These gave her many points at game end. I lost by a mile.

As we added more and more advanced rules, the game became more and more interesting. It plays as quick as a filler, but the long-term planning of how to move your personal ship, the denying your opponent of tiles she wants, the push to end the game before your opponent is ready, the positioning of the common ship to help your next turn, all make the experience very fulfilling and challenging. This game is not as easy as it looks. Well, at least not when playing with all the advanced rules. This is not Carcassonne-like at all. It is tighter and tougher. It is just different; they should not be compared.

I still have not been able to beat Michelle. I came close, and really thought I could win, but alas, it was not enough. Rematch!

Michelle's completed player board. She even has a completed flower circle, which is worth 10pts (which is a lot).

My player board, using the advanced rules (that's why you see my green personal ship). This is a big improvement compared to my first few games, but I still lost to Michelle.

The Thoughts

Maori looks pleasant enough, but is actually quite tricky. I guess you can play in a more relaxed way by only playing the basic game, but I prefer to have the advanced rules added, at least the first two variants. It becomes a game with lots of tactical opportunities and lots to think about, and yet is still quick. I wouldn't call this a filler game though, or recommend it to be played as one, unless you stick to the basic game.

Buy from Noble Knight Games. Status: in stock (at time of this post).

2010 games eagerness ranking

2011-11-12T02:35:00.001+08:00

Here are the games published in 2010 that I have played, and ranked according to how eager I am to play them now. Nothing very scientific. One game being above another doesn't mean it's "better" (whatever that means). It just means I'm probably more likely to pick it to play. It's an interesting exercise to try to rank these games. Maybe you'll find it interesting too. I exclude expansions, but I'll talk a little about some of them further down.

Keen to play

Axis & Allies Europe 1940 - I actually have not played this game even once, so I'm keen to play it. I've only played Axis & Allies Global 1940, which combines the Europe 1940 and Pacific 1940 games. It feels a bit too long for the enjoyment I get out of it, so I suspect I will like the theatre-specific games being played by themselves.
Innovation - I'm getting comfortable with this game. The expansion Echoes of the Past adds some interesting elements, but I am quite happy with the base game and am in no hurry to expand it. Allen has bought the expansion and we have played a few times.
Merchants & Marauders - The game feels very open, much like the PC game Sid Meier's Pirates. I prefer to play to a higher number of Glory points than the standard game. It gives a fuller experience.
First Train to Nuremberg - I think I am going to break down and buy this. Managing the game components is a little tedious, but I like how the game requires careful planning, and there is a certain story arc to it, where you try to earn fast money and then eventually you need to plan to sell off your rail network to suckers.
7 Wonders - There is luck. There is set collection. There is no particular innovation. There is a mesh of familiar mechanisms. But somehow this game is a lot of fun. It's an adjustable-depth game - you can think a lot and plan a lot and calculate a lot, but you can also play by gut feel (and still win).
Axis & Allies Europe 1940. I really need to play this.

First Train to Nuremberg

Happy to play
51st State - Not much player interaction, but I like how you need to constantly plan for replacing cards already played because the points-generating cards have limited capacity and quickly get used up.
Sid Meier's Civilization: The Board Game - Lots of civ elements, which is fun. But this game is a sprint and not a marathon. In the early game you can explore various paths, but by around mid game you'll need to decide on which victory condition to go for, maybe with one back-up plan if Plan A doesn't work out. You don't really experience the rise-and-fall feeling like in Civilization and Through the Ages. But still, a pretty good game.
Earth Reborn - Interesting scenarios and rich story. I have only done half of the learning scenarios, so I don't know the full game yet.
Inca Empire - Network building, blocking, and playing good and bad event cards that always affect two players.
Alien Frontiers - Complexity level feels like The Settlers of Catan. You develop and colonise. An impressive effort from a new designer and publisher team.
Haggis - Climbing card game (like Big Two) that works with 2 or 3. I have only played with 2. Surprisingly that session was very funny. Learning the tricks and exploring the strategies in the game were fun.
Zombie State: Diplomacy of the Dead - More an experience game than a strategy game, but it's fun to try to survive a zombie apocalypse and to direct your nation at a strategic level.
Labyrinth: The War on Terror, 2001-? - Long game. Hard decisions. Long-term planning and patience is required to achieve anything significant. The two sides are very asymmetrical. Actions are completely different, it's not just about having different strengths and weaknesses.
Washington's War - Relatively quick CDG.
Evolution: The Origin of Species - The formula of focusing on one super specie seems the best strategy. If I'm right about this then the game becomes rather one-dimensional strategy-wise. This is a light card game, the fun being in creating species with interesting combinations of abilities, the ongoing struggle between hunter and prey, and the game of survival when food is scarce.
51st State

Lukewarm
Merchants of the Middle Ages (I played Die Handler, the earlier version) - Requires negotiation and cooperation. Overall a well-crafted game.
Dominant Species - The big hit which was not as big a hit for me personally. The game is interesting, there are big moves to be made and devastating disasters to try to survive through. The area majority mechanism is not quite my thing.
Wars of the Roses: Lancaster vs. York - Good implementation of managing loyalties and betrayals. There's double guessing but I didn't mind it too much here. Deciding whether to be defensive (cheap, but you may be wasting your money) or offensive (expensive, and it's hard for your victim to protect everything, but if you fail, you will waste a lot of money) is interesting. You need to pick where to fight and where to concede. But there's area majority too.
Nuns on the Run - Fun and exciting to play a novice. I have not played the nun side yet.
Commands & Colors: Napoleonics - I never was a big fan of the Commands & Colors series (Memoir '44, Battlelore, Commands & Colors: Ancients). Don't quite like the cards restricting flank thing.
Catacombs - I enjoy it for the novelty.
London - Quirky card game that I couldn't quite grasp. I guess I can't really conclude until I try again and understand it better.
Dungeons & Dragons: Castle Ravenloft Board Game - Easy to learn cooperative dungeon crawl game without the need for a dungeon master. I'm not a particular fan of the fantasy / role-playing genre, so the theme dosen't do much for me.
Navegador - The key seems to be to focus on areas with least competition. Admittedly I have only played two games and there is much space for improvement for my tactics and strategies. I get a feeling I've seen most of what's there to be seen, and the urge to dig deeper is low.
The Great Fire of London 1666 - Interesting enough theme, and mechanisms do match the theme, but the mechanisms aren't very interesting to me.
Troyes - Feels familiar, a little "been there, done that". And this is despite the not-seen-before dice mechanism.
Space Hulk: Death Angel - The Card Game - Not knowing your mission until you reach the last room rubs me the wrong way. Feels like I'm just trying to passively survive and last until the last room, as opposed to going in with an objective and a plan.
Wars of the Roses: Lancaster vs. York . Hmm... who among my opponents' followers should I bribe? Which city should I attack?

Rather not play
20th Century - I like the positive message of reducing garbage and pollution. I feel like I've seen most of what's there to be seen.
Horus Heresy - I feel quite restricted in what I can do and how much I can move my troops or get them to fight. The game tells a great story though.
Tikal II: The Lost Temple - Feels like too many paths to victory that don't quite mesh together thematically. Game is very attractive and production quality is superb.
Grimoire - I didn't like the double-guessing.
Irondale - I didn't find this construct-buildings-in-a-grid card game interesting.
Resident Evil Deck Building Game - It didn't feel very different from Dominion, so my interest is low.
Leaping Lemmings - Rules and gameplay require more effort than the light theme suggests.
The Speicherstadt - One nifty mechanism wrapped around an uninteresting game.

Expansions

These are not ranked. Just a simple list of what I've played among expansions released in 2010.

Dominion: Prosperity - Played on the computer. I like this expansion which expands the strategic possibilities.
Dominion: Alchemy - Also played on the computer. This is just OK. Going for cards requiring potions feels like a "Do or Do Not" thing (Yoda), so going down that path feels like taking a different route, as opposed to the base strategies being expanded.
Race for the Galaxy: The Brink of War - I'm a big fan of Race for the Galaxy. I enjoy the additional scope, but the deck is getting rather unwieldy.
Power Grid: Russia & Japan - More variety for Power Grid.
Agricola: Gamers' Deck - I like that the cards are not crazy and are not just a novelty. They feel like they are well thought out and well balanced. Subtle.
Hansa Teutonica: East Expansion - I think I have only played it once, Allen's copy. I don't feel I have played the base game enough, so I have not decided to buy the expansion. I find that I feel this way about many expansions. I have not played the base game enough, so even if I like the base game a lot, I feel no urgency to buy the expansion. E.g. Innovation and Echoes of the Past, 51st State and The New Era. Well, The New Era is technically a standalone game, a kind of 51st State v2.0, but I'm enjoying v1.0 well enough and don't love it that much to want to spend money to replace it with v2.0.

Race for the Galaxy: The Brink of War. We call the 1 Prestige "cherry" and the 5 Prestige "flower".

Not Played

When I browsed www.boardgamegeek.com to do this section, I was quite shocked that there were so many games published in 2010. This list is by no means complete. It's just some of the better known games that I have heard of.

Runewars
Dixit 2 - I have played Dixit. It's fun and lets you be creative.
Cosmic Encounter: Cosmic Incursion
Battlestar Galactica: Exodus Expansion
Fresco
Defenders of the Realm - Low interest. Some say it's Pandemic with a fantasy setting.
Vinhos
Age of Industry - I'm content with Brass.
Glen More - Some interest to try.
Battles of Westeros
Luna - Low interest, because most Stefan Feld games don't click with me.
Forbidden Island - I'm content with Pandemic and don't really need a similar but more family-friendly game.
Ascension: Chronicle of the Godslayer - Low interest in trying deck-building games.
K2
Mr. Jack Pocket
Julius Caesar
Lords of Vegas
Founding Fathers
Puzzle Strike
Merkator - Uwe Rosenberg game, but it seems to be doing poorly compared to Agricola and Le Havre.
Rattus
De Vulgari Eloquentia - Allen has it and I have read the rules. Still in the (long) queue to be played.
Gosu - I had some interest in this, but it sounds quite confrontational so I doubt my wife will be willing to play.
Conflict of Heroes: Price of Honour - Poland 1939 - Sometimes I am tempted to try war games, but I never work up the courage.
High Frontier
Asara - I like many Wolfgang Kramer designs. In recent years my gaming tastes have shifted to heavier games, so his new releases don't interest me as much as before, but I still like many of his classics, especially The Princes of Florence.
Onirim
Samarkand: Routes to Riches - If this is similar to Chicago Express, low interest.
Settlers of America: Trails to Rails
Invasion from Outer Space: The Martian Game
Key Market
Constantinopolis
Poseidon - I enjoy the complexity of 18XX games, so if this is 18XX simplified, low interest.
Famiglia
The Rivals for Catan - I have the older Catan card game, which I have not played for a very long time.
Magnum Sal
Hanabi & Ikebana
Grand Cru
Norenberc
Isla Dorada - I think Bruno Faidutti is a wonderful guy - good presence on the internet, friendly and responsive; but somehow his games don't click with me. But I like Castle, which is much less famous than Citadels.
Olympus
Mystery Express
Dust Tactics
Dragonheart
Mousquetaires du Roy
The Mines of Zavandor
Antics! - Limited print run, so this is hard to buy. It sounds interesting.
Wok Star - Interested to try this real-time cooperative game.
Sun, Sea & Sand
Keltis: Das Orakel - They say it's the most strategic of the Keltis family, but I don't play the others enough to justify getting this.
Black Friday
Mord im Arosa - You need to listen to cubes falling and guess where they land. Interested to at least try.
Junta: Viva el Presidente! - Interested to try. You get to negotiate, beg, bluff, threaten and lie.
1880: China - I only recently dipped my toes into 18XX games, but this one sounds daunting. Not so soon I think.
Prêt-à-Porter - The English version is published this year and it seems to be doing well. Interested to try.
The Hobbit - Reiner Knizia cooperative game. Similar to Wolfgang Kramer games, nowadays I tend to be less interested in Reiner Knizia's new games, despite still enjoying many of his older games.
Show Business - I followed this game a little because it has rock stars.

Tobago

2011-10-29T16:32:00.002+08:00

Plays: 4Px1.

The Game

When Tobago first came out many predicted it would win the Spiel des Jahres. It didn't. I don't think it even made the shortlist. But still, it is a good family game, and it has very good-looking components. Tobago is a game about treasure hunting on a mysterious island. Players put together clues to determine the locations of buried treasure. Once a location is determined, the first player to reach that spot can raise the treasure, which will then be split among those who had contributed towards finding it. The game ends when the deck of treasure cards run out, and players sum up the coins on their treasure cards to determine the winner.

The key mechanism in the game is how players construct the treasure map by playing clue cards on one of the four treasures being hunted. Clue cards are restrictions which narrow down the possible locations of the treasures, e.g. a clue card may state that the treasure is within two spaces of a river, or that the treasure is not in a forest, or the treasure is next to the ocean. Every player has a hand of such clue cards, and he can choose to play one on his turn. Each contribution entitles the contributor to a share when the treasure is raised. When the treasure is raised, every contributor draws and looks at a number of treasure cards according to his number of contributions (raising the treasure is treated as one contribution too). All these cards, plus one extra card which noone has seen, are then shuffled, and the loot splitting begins. The shuffled treasure cards are revealed one by one. Each treasure card is offered to one contributor after another, priority being given to those who contributed most recently, until it is accepted, and that contributor removes his contribution marker. Treasure cards have 2 to 6 coins, so when presented with this take-it-or-pass-it-on decision, you need to decide whether to be contented with the card offered, or to hope for a better one later.

The four piles of cubes represent the four possible treasures that can be found. The clue cards played narrow down the possible locations of the treasure. When the number of possible locations are few enough, the cubes are marked on the board to make it easier for the players to quickly see these remaining possible locations. A player marker is placed on each clue card when it is played. Looking at the 3rd column, the clue cards mean: within two spaces of a hut, next to a beach, not next to a river, next to a hut, within two spaces of a statue, and in the largest mountain range.

One twist is the curse cards. If one turns up during loot splitting, the loot splitting ends prematurely and all contributors who are still waiting to claim treasures are penalised by having to discard their highest valued treasure card. Those who had contributed and had already collected their share of the loot do not suffer from this penalty, so some people may settle for less because of the fear of curse cards. One way to protect yourself from curse cards is to pick up amulets. These mysteriously appear every time a treasure is raised. They can be used for other purposes too, e.g. taking an extra action.

Amulets (that one in the foreground) wash up to shore where the mysterious statues are facing every time a treasure is raised. The statues then rotate to face a different direction.

Every player has a jeep (called an ATV - All Terrain Vehicle - in the game), and to raise a treasure or to collect an amulet you need to drive to the right spot to do so. Every turn you are normally either piecing together treasure maps to narrow down possible locations, or driving your jeep around the island to where the treasures or amulets are.

The game ends when the treasure deck runs out. You total up your treasure cards to see who wins.

The Play

I played a full four-player game with Allen, Dennis and Heng. Both Allen and Dennis had played before, but only online. Dennis confidently declared this a 30-minute filler. It turned out to be a one-hour (or so) game. Playing on the computer made things much faster because the computer handles all the rules details. In fact Dennis and Allen realised that they didn't really know the rules, since when they played, the computer did all the hard work of determining legal placements and movements. Heng and I were both new to the game.

Most of the time we were adding clue cards to one of the four treasures, trying to contribute as much as we could, so that we could share the treasure when it was raised. Some treasures took many cards to determine their final location, some just four or five. Due to the game rules, the more clues required, the bigger the treasure. It was always good to have a monopoly or near-monopoly of a treasure, because it meant you'd see a large number of treasure cards when it came to loot splitting. As we played clue cards, we tried to narrow down the locations to where our jeeps were, to give ourselves better chances of raising the treasures. I found that the cards that you draw can restrict your choices quite a fair bit, so the option of spending a turn to discard all cards and redraw is important. There are quite a number of things you can do. Play clues to "book a seat" to share treasures, go digging, go collecting amulets, and use the amulets in various ways.

The game board is made of three pieces, each of which are double-sided, and thus provide different setups.

Cubes mark the possible locations of treasures.

My cards were not very good, and I didn't manage to contribute to as many treasure maps as I wanted. However I was luckier than average when it came to loot splitting. The fear of the curse cards played an important role. All of us were cautious and remembered to pick up amulets just in case. Eventually most of us were indeed struck by a curse, and all had an amulet to ward it off, except for Dennis, who had unfortunately gambled on not getting hit, and had spent his amulet on something else.

The end game was quite exciting for us. At any one time there are always four possible treasures to be discovered. Towards game end when the treasure card deck is running low, you'll know there will only be one of two more treasures that can be dug up before the deck is exhausted. This is when things get interesting, when players race to "complete" the treasures that they have bigger stakes in.

When our game ended, Heng the first timer and non-rule-reader-and-teacher (which would be me) won the game at 35pts, 5pts ahead of the second place. He had contributed much to the treasure maps and thus had many treasure cards.

The Thoughts

Tobago is very much a family game, but probably not for completely-non-gamer families. It's far from as accessible as Ticket to Ride is, but I can see why most gamers feel it is simple. It is simple, to gamers. Components are excellent. Gameplay is interesting and refreshing. There is a fair bit of luck in the game, but you do feel like you can always do something to improve your position. There are opportunities for clever play, and that is satisfying. It gives you a little light mental exercise.

I didn't expect Tobago to be something I'd be a fan of. I was keen to try it to see whether it's something I can buy for my 6-year old daughter. Now that I have played it, I think it's a little beyond her. Maybe one or two years more.

Buy from Noble Knight Games. Status: in stock (at time of this post).

concise reference sheets v14

2011-10-28T19:00:00.003+08:00

I reached a milestone of having done 200 concise reference sheets. Visit this link to download the latest set. Updates are as follows.

51st State (new)
Cavum (new)
Commands and Colors Napoleonics (new)
De Vulgari Eloquentia (new)
Evolution (new)
First Train to Nuremberg (corrected)
Great Fire of London 1666 (new)
Illuminati (new)
Labyrinth: the War on Terror (corrected)
Manoeuvre (new)
Maori (new)
Maria (new)
Nightfall (& Martial Law expansion) (new)
Pacific Typhoon (new)
Shipyard (corrected)
Tinners’ Trail (corrected)
Tobago (new)

Pacific Typhoon

2011-10-27T19:26:00.000+08:00

Plays: 5Px1.

The Game

Pacific Typhoon is a card game using the Pacific War during World War II as the setting. The players do not belong to the Japanese side or the Allied side, and instead every round they can pick which side they want to be on. At the start of a round the start player (which rotates) reveals two battle cards and chooses one to be fought over. Then every player has one chance to play force cards to participate in the battle on one side or the other. Force cards contribute strength, and the side with the higher strength total wins the battle. The battle card itself and the force cards of the losing side become the spoils of war. They are distributed among the players of the winning side by the player who contributed the most strength. What's interesting is this player is only required to distribute the number of cards as evenly as possible, regardless of the point value of the cards. E.g. if I have five spoils cards of values 5, 4, 2, 1, 1 that I need to split among 3 players, I'd probably give myself 5+4, and give the others 2 and 1+1.

The game can involve much negotiation, cooperation, bluffing and even betrayal. Players can persuade one another to work together to be on the winning side. They can gang up on the leader. Since noone is tied to being on the Japanese or the Allied side, it's pretty much every man for himself, and alliances will likely be shifting all the time.

The above is the high-level overview. Going into details, there are rules around card characteristics and restrictions on playing cards. When the start player of a round picks a battle card, he decides whether to fight a day or night battle, whether to fight an air, surface, submarine or combined battle. These restrict the force cards that can be played that round. Every battle card has a year of battle, which also restricts the force cards that can be played. Normally each player can only play one force card, but there are some special force cards - bonus cards and event cards - which are not limited. They have various special abilities. Some basic force cards also have special abilities, e.g. being able to immediately destroy another force card, or getting double strength when fighting a particular battle. All these details are based on historical events, so the game does have many historical details.

The game ends when the battle card deck runs out. The player with the most points on the spoils cards captured wins.

There are many variants that come with the game, e.g. a variant where players belong to one specific side of the war, and one where battles are resolved following the historical timeline. I have not tried these variants.

The Play

I did a 5-player game, since this game seems to be best with 5 or 6. Han, Allen, Wan, Shan and I played. I found that the start player's choice of battle can give himself much advantage, especially when the restriction is high and he has just the right card to play, or when he has a very powerful card or card combination that meets the battle type he declares. However, there is also a disadvantage because playing your force card(s) first means you are already committed and others can decide how they want to play based on the force cards already committed on the table. This means that the last player of the round has the biggest advantage in terms of having information available to him, and can often decide the outcome of the battle.

From the early game I jumped into a big lead, and somehow despite the others working together to stop me, I continued to lead. My early victories let me increase my hand size, so I had more flexibility. I also drew good cards, and I was lucky with my die rolls. Some cards require die rolls, but not many. I was quite amazed at my lucky streak. I thought I'd have to bribe and cajole to get some of my opponents to help me or at least victimise me less, however my cards were so good that a few big wins put me even further in the lead.

We didn't manage to finish the game. We played about half the battle deck. It was enough to understand the game. Initially the restrictions and symbols took a while to internalise.

Game in progress. In each round there will be a battle card in the centre, and each player can play a card(s) to fight for it. So far three players have sided the Japanese (red) and only one the Allied (blue). The fifth player has played a white event card and has not yet committed to any side.

The spoils of war that I have won. The top three are battle cards which are kept face up. Force cards won and kept face down in a stack. The numbers in the yellow circles are the victory points. The full green card and half green card icons are resource icons, which increases your hand size. I have a full resource and two half resources, which means my hand size is increased by two.

The Thoughts

Despite the many details and restrictions surrounding the card play, all of which are relevant to the Pacific War theme, the game didn't feel like refighting the war at all. It is a numbers game, trying to squeeze out as much strength as you can from your cards and thus winning spoils which are worth victory points. I think this is the first time I see so much historical flavour in a game (the photos, the specific rules, the ships and planes represented, the events represented) and yet the feeling of the gameplay is nothing like the setting. I get a strong feeling of "pasted-on theme", but I don't believe this is a mechanism-before-theme game. Too many individual rules are directly related to the theme.

I see Pacific Typhoon as a card game good for 4 to 6 players who like some negotiation, some bluffing, and shifting alliances. In fact, for each battle there is probably more competition among the players on the winning side trying to be the top contributor. In each round it can feel like there is one winning player as opposed to one winning side with multiple players, unless the players on the winning side negotiate and agree on the spoils distribution beforehand. The historical elements are a nice touch and is quite educational, just don't expect to feel like you're fighting a war much. You'll feel more like some diety nudging the battle outcomes one way or the other.

Game mechanism-wise I don't find the game outstanding, but if you enjoy the Pacific War theme, you will like the rich details here.

Buy from Noble Knight Games. Status: in stock (at time of this post).

Washington's War

2011-10-25T19:00:00.001+08:00

Plays: 2Px1.

The Game

Washington's War is a game about the War of Independence of USA. It is a redesign of We the People, the first Card Driven Game (CDG), which preceded the well-known Hannibal: Rome vs Carthage. This is a 2-player-only wargame, with one side playing the British and the other the Americans. To win, you need to eliminate all enemy armies, or control a certain number of states when the game ends. The game is played over a number of years, and game end is variable and may even change from time to time, depending on the card draw. So players need to be on their toes and need to be prepared in case the game ends sooner (or later) than expected.

One round in the game corresponds to one year. Both players draw cards and then take turns playing them. You play cards to recruit troops, to activate generals (move them and possibly attack enemies), to boost your strength during battles, to place political control markers on the board, and to trigger events on the cards. Unlike Twilight Struggle, where every card has an event and an ops value, here a card is either an ops card or an event card. I had thought this would make things much less interesting, but it turned out to be not so at all.

Both sides have a number of generals with different abilities. The American generals are much easier to activate. Some can be activated by any ops card, some can be activated by value 2 or 3 ops cards. In contrast the British generals are much harder to activate, needing value 2 or 3 ops cards, and even only value 3 ops cards. However, all American generals suffer from winter attrition because many soldiers go home for winter, except for Washington who can keep his troops if he is in winter quarters (fortresses). The British don't suffer from winter attrition as long as they find winter quarters, and if they are in the south where winters are gentler, no attrition at all. The Americans can raise troops quite freely and have two opportunities to do so every round. The British only have one chance to bring in reinforcements every round, and they follow a pre-set schedule, generally alternating between big and small numbers. Also the British reinforcements can only land at a port.

Battles are quick and simple and only take a few die rolls. Both sides calculate their strengths, which depends on a number of factors, e.g. number of troops, ability of general, battle cards played, and control of the state where the battle is taking place, which are then added to their respective die rolls. Washington has a special ability of adding +2 strength if he attacks just before winter, i.e. using the last card in the American player's hand. Once the victor is decided, regardless of the final strength difference, the loser will lose one to three units, depending on a die roll, and the winner will lose none or just one unit, also depending on a die roll.

Ultimately, generals, armies and battles are but a means to an end, which is political control of the states. It is relatively easy to place political control markers on empty spaces, but quite hard to flip over those already placed to your side. You will need the presence of an army to be able to flip them. The 13 states have different numbers of cities, some as many as eleven, some as few as two or three, even some with just one. This is an interesting aspect to plan around. There are rules which remove isolated political markers, e.g. those completely surrounded by enemy markers and not supported by any friendly army. This is another consideration to take note of and to make use of.

As part of the game setup, the American and British armies are already right next to each other and ready for battle. The American generals are in blue, and the British in red.

This is the start of the game. Most cities do not have political control markers yet. Square cities are fortresses, which are important for wintering. Round ones are just regular cities.

The Play

Han played the Americans and I played the British. I had quite a good hand in the first round, allowing me to mobilise my British armies quite easily. Unfortunately that made me underestimate the difficulty in mobilising my armies. In subsequent rounds, I gradually found myself stuck with little mobility. I hadn't planned for that. The British should be planning for few but big moves, unlike the Americans who can engage in guerilla warfare. I had some early victories, but soon Han was winning battle after battle, making good use of Washington's strength, mobility and pre-winter attack power. Things on the battle front looked bleak, so I decided to give up on that front and just be defensive. I had a strong general squatting with ten units on a city which is the only city of a state. At least that guaranteed one state on my side. Only at that point I started spending more effort on political control. I couldn't do much with my generals and armies anyway. It was then I realised the importance of the political aspect. That was the real objective of the game.

Han didn't have American generals in the south, but I had one British general there. So I started placing more and more political markers there. Han had more generals in the north, and spent effort on using them to flip existing markers to his side. This was a slower process because his generals would need to move onto my markers first before he could flip them. Gradually he tried to secure the northern states to try to cut me off. If he could secure the port cities, it would be difficult for me to directly send in reinforcements.

Unfortunately we did not have enough time to finish the game. We had played about 80% through. Han had won many battles and controlled more states than I did at that point. I wasn't too far behind. If I could reach 6 states (I think I had 5 at the time) and hold on to them until game end, I would win. A rematch is in order. The game will be much quicker now that we are more familiar with it.

Towards the later part of the game, many cities had political control markers. Han and I had two armies facing off each other at the centre, neither daring to attack because it would be very risky. I had one army in the south (left side of this photo) working on converting American political markers to British ones, and Han had an army in the north doing the opposite.

The top left number on the general is the activation number, the smaller the better, i.e. easier to activate. The top right number is the leadership value, which increases army strength during battles. The number in the circle is mobility, which determines the ease of interception and retreat.

The Thoughts

Washington's War is a relatively simple wargame, but it is still a wargame, so there is a fair bit of details in the rules, like how generals can intercept, and the various factors in calculating battle strength. The big picture is not hard to grasp, and the game is smooth to play once you get past the initial hump and can see the big picture. The two sides are quite asymmetrical, which is interesting. There is much historical flavour in the game, which makes it fun and thematic. The cards that you draw do restrict what you can do, more so than say Twilight Struggle where cards have more uses. Depending on what you draw, you need to plan out how you can make the most out of them in the current round.

I enjoy the two layers in the game - the armies and battles, and political control. The game reminds me a lot of Hannibal: Rome vs Carthage which also has these two layers.

I wonder when I will play my copy of Wilderness War (also a CDG), which I bought about 8 years ago and still have not played.

Buy from Noble Knight Games. Status: in stock (at time of this post).

blocked

2011-10-23T21:20:00.003+08:00

Recently I discovered that this blog has been blocked at work. All this while I had no problems accessing any Blogspot websites from the office (not that I browse blogs at work all the time *ahem*), so this was unexpected. So this means my blog is popular enough to catch the attention of the firewall guys right? Ooh... *stride proudly feeling important*

Normal view.

Connecting from work.

Maria rematches, iPhone Civilization Revolution

2011-10-20T19:00:00.003+08:00

2 Oct 2011. Maria. This was the second game that I played with Han and Allen, this time Han was France, Allen was Prussia / Pragmatic Army and I was Austria. This is a photo of me using my hussar unit (thin white disc) to disrupt the supply of the Bavarian (orange) army.
In the early game Han and Allen declared a temporary truce between France and Pragmatic Army, which allowed the Pragmatic Army to build up, and also allowed France to focus on attacking me (Austria). Things didn't look good for me. There were many times during battles that I played cards in such a way that allowed me to retreat while taking minor losses. In hindsight, maybe I should have simply avoided those battles in the first place. Small losses do add up. I spent many cards on events, which also made me weaker in battle. I did manage to make Saxony neutral. It was initially an ally of Prussia, and was attacking me from the north. Later it even became my ally, and started threatening Prussia.

Prussia (Allen, blue) advanced steadily from the north, and my general (white) advanced to engage. Prussia did not capture these Silesian fortresses as quickly as the first game that we played, but I am not sure whether it was a good idea for me to engage so early. I eventually paid heavily for this decision. I lost my armies one after another, being defeated by Prussia, France and Bavaria, eventually losing all five armies on the main (Bohemian) map. I had almost become a non-factor. It was up to Han and Allen to see who was quicker in capturing enough of my fortresses to win. However, I still harboured a little hope. In this game we were mostly aggressive in capturing opponents' fortresses, so that we could place our victory markers. We didn't put much effort into recapturing our own fortresses to remove our opponents' victory markers. So I still had most of my victory markers on the board, and only had a few more to place to win, despite the shortage of generals and being very defenseless. My general on the French map could still capture fortresses, and the Saxon army was on my side by that time. I just needed two more fortresses or major victories in battle.

At the border between France (red) and Netherlands (grey). By this time the truce between France and the Pragmatic Army had expired, and Allen (Pragmatic Army, grey) was well prepared to start his offensive into France. Austria (white, me) was allied to the Pragmatic Army and they couldn't attack each other, but they could race to capture French fortresses.

My last general (white) on the Bohemian map before he too was defeated. One good thing he did was to destroy the French and Bavarian supply trains (red and orange cubes). This slowed down the French and Bavarian armies somewhat. Eventually it was Han who managed to beat Allen in conquering enough Austrian fortresses to win the game. A victory for France.

Family portrait of Losers (with a capital L) - the Austrian generals.

Allen, Han and I later did a third game of Maria, this time with Allen playing Austria, Han playing Prussia + Pragmatic Army, and me playing France. This was so that each of us had the opportunity to try all three factions. However this third game ended so abruptly that I didn't manage to take any photo. We were all cautious in the early game, accumulating cards and not battling much. As France I quickly grabbed a few Austrian fortresses. Every round France was first to take actions so there is an advantage if France is close in the race against other nations to place all victory markers. In the first round of the second year, i.e. 4th of 12 rounds, my single Bavarian army engaged an Austrian army and won a major victory, eliminating it. I was lucky to have some big cards (an 8 and a 10) in hand. I killed 7 units, which let me place two victory markers in the recent victory slots. Then in the same round I attacked and captured more Austrian fortresses on the western map, and placed my remaining victory markers. The Austrian general on the western map was out of position and could not protect the fortresses. So France won again, a surprisingly swift victory (even to me). Han was all ready to launch a major offensive, having accumulated many cards for his Pragmatic Army.

Later we realised that we had misplayed a rule. The Pragmatic Army general could protect Austrian fortresses, so I should not have captured those last few fortresses even though the Austrian general was too far away to protect them. The outcome of the game might have been very different. Things were just about to get interesting. We vowed to have a rematch with the same player configuration.

14 Oct 2011. Civilization Revolution on the iPhone. I have been a fan of the Sid Meier's Civilization computer games since Civ II. I recently bought the iPhone app for USD0.99. Unfortunately only the Chinese version is available in Malaysia. I have no idea why the English version is not available here. The game is much simplified compared to Civ V, the latest version in the PC game series (I think it is closer to Civ IV). However still it is quite fun to play.
The screenshot above is the victory screen from my first game as Rome. I won a cultural victory, by having 20 great people or wonders, and then building the United Nations wonder.

My second game as Greece (green). I was very cultured at this point, and my borders were pushing against two English (red) cities. Eventually both of them decided to overthrow English rule and join my civilisation.
This iPhone game reminds me of the boardgame version of Sid Meier's Civilization published by Fantasy Flight Games, which I also like. Some things are simplified compared to the PC game, but gameplay is still interesting.

I won my first two games comfortably, and decided to go for the hardest difficulty level. It turned out to be too difficult for me. The AI's seemed to be able to produce tons of units, and all of them kept declaring war on me. Eventually I gave up after losing 3 of my 6 cities, and the attackers still wouldn't stop coming. I switched to the second hardest level, and found the right challenge for myself. Some AI's did better than me; not all AI's were aggressive all the time. I had to work hard for the win, and had to switch strategy too.

I got all the way up to the modern age. I was the Indians (brown). The Romans (purple) were my neighbours and built a super city out of Rome with many wonders of the world and great people. They had so much culture they almost made my border city flip to join their civilisation. See how their border was pushing against my city. I couldn't keep up in technology, in wonders or in great people, and eventually had to attempt an economic win.

The Indian economic victory. The Chinese translation was obviously done from English and some were done rather directly and awkwardly. They should have just rephrased some of the sentences completely.

Buy Maria from Noble Knight Games. Status (at time of this post): in stock

revisiting the 2009 games eagerness ranking

2011-10-17T22:32:00.001+08:00

In Nov 2010 I ranked games published in 2009 that I have played based on how eager I am to play them. It was a fun exercise and I planned to make this an annual thing, around the end of the year, assessing games published in the previous year, i.e. giving myself about a year to experience as many games published in the year being assessed as possible. As I prepared to write about the 2010 games, I realised that it was interesting (at least for me) to look at what I wrote for 2009. There are some games which I feel a little differently about now. There are some games which I hadn't been able to play and assess last year, but I have now played six of them and can rank them. So here's revisiting the 2009 games. Major changes and additions are underlined and in italics.

Keen to play

Automobile - Tight and thematic. There seems to be not many things you can do, but every decision is important in this game.
Axis & Allies Pacific 1940 - Have only played half a game. Japan seems overpowered at the moment, even without attacking in Round 1. There is a variant where Japan is not allowed to attack (except China) in Round 1, to balance the game. Need to play again. I still have not managed to play this again. The designer has been working on improving the rules and game setup, and is up to version ALPHA 3 now. I have not yet played with any of these improved versions.
Hansa Teutonica - Very interactive. Simple actions, but a wide-range of strategies. The many scoring options can be overwhelming.
Endeavor - Quick, and you have the feeling you are just a few actions short of executing your perfect strategy. Some say a bit too polished and too streamlined, but I don't think it was overdone. I like it so much that I'm actually proud I could resist buying it. Umm... I have now bought the game
Factory Manager - Previously undecided. Now I'm keen to play it again because I still feel I have not explored it enough.
Shipyard - A pleasant surprise. I had expected something overly complicated, and the rondel mechanism itself isn't something I drool over. It turned out to be a nice build-things-and-feel-proud game, and the rondel mechanism just fades into the background. It's a seamless part of the game, but it is not the game.
Automobile, still my favourite among the 2009 batch.

Axis & Allies Pacific 1940. I've always liked the Axis & Allies series but I never get enough plays of them.

Happy to play
Cyclades - Clean, streamlined, multi-player conflict game. Feels like The Settlers of Catan in complexity.
Maria - Previously not listed. A game designed for 3. Much historical flavour. Battles are few but crucial, with much positioning and planning before engaging.
Power Struggle - The corporate politics theme did not annoy as I feared. In fact it helps to tie the many moving parts together.
Chaos in the Old World - Previously not listed. I'm happy to play, but I insist on the full 4-player game.
Roll Through the Ages - I really should play this more. I'll probably like it more if I play it more. There are many different techs and combinations of techs that I haven't explored. And this is a short game. This has gone up a little. Despite being short, there is some strategy, and you do need to pay attention to what your opponents are doing.
Bonnie & Clyde - 5th in the Mystery Rummy series, which I've always enjoyed. I don't think any rummy game can ever replace Mystery Rummy: Jack the Ripper as my favourite rummy game, but Bonnie & Clyde is quite decent, and unique too.
Campaign Manager 2008 - Thematic card game for 2 players. Normal game (i.e. with card drafting) is much better than the beginner's game.
At the Gates of Loyang - Not bad as a 2P game. I've only played with two (against my wife), but I can imagine how it can drag with more. This has dropped from Keen category to Happy category. It feels too much like a solitaire puzzle.
Dungeon Lords - Given such a complex game, the double-guessing part turned me off a little.
Summoner Wars - Well-balanced battle game.
Stronghold - Previously not listed. Quite thematic and tense. I don't have a good grasp of the game yet, despite having played it twice.
Jaipur - Previously not listed. Quick and clever 2P card game with interesting decisions and tricky plays.
Vasco Da Gama - I think I missed the big picture in my first play, and was too tactical. Pang won decisively by one big move which he had planned for for some time, and none of us saw it coming (or at least didn't really try to stop him).
Lukewarm
Waterloo - The combat resolution is a little convoluted and takes time to digest. I will have to relearn it when I play again because I've forgotten it all by now. Dropped from Happy to Lukewarm. Over the past year there have been more other war / battle games that I'd rather play.
Carson City - Construct buildings, earn money, fight when necessary / profitable, then plan to convert what you build into victory points. Didn't feel very new or different, despite the gunfight mechanism.
Macao - it felt JASE (Just Another Soulless Euro) to me (sorry), despite the never-seen-before windrose mechanism. There are multiple paths to victory, but they feel like mechanisms looking for a theme, and the mechanisms aren't very interesting to me.
Homesteaders - 10 rounds of auctions, but there is a lot of thought you need to put into every auction decision - which tile to bid for, how much to bid for, when to pass etc. It's a lot about getting good combinations of buildings.
Dominion: Intrigue - Previously not listed. This is more or less my general keenness to play the Dominion family of games.
BoardGameGeek Game - It's mostly about collecting sets. Although it's fun to see so many boardgames and elements of boardgames in one single game, the gameplay didn't really grab me.
Middle Earth Quest - The game is fine, and I did enjoy my play. It's only the genre that deters me. I'm not very into the fantasy theme or Role Playing Games-like boardgames.
Ra the dice game - Nothing wrong. Just unnecessary. Because Ra is better.
Rabbit Hunt - It was a pleasant surprise when I first played it. It certainly is quite unique. You need to keep a poker face as you hide your rabbits, and you need to try to read your opponents. I'm not sure why my enthusiasm dropped very quickly. Maybe I just don't like games with bluffing, although mechanism-wise I think the game concept is interesting.
Greed Incorporated - I'm biased by my very poor performance in the only game that I played. This game is brutal. Boohoo... I'm scarred for life... Now that I have played 18XX games, this game is not as scary as before. But I'm still uncomfortable with how brutal and unforgiving it can be. Every round only two awards are given, so even if you are only $1 behind 2nd place, you get nothing. I'm uncomfortable with the winner gets everything, losers get nothing approach, which I guess matches the theme well. You can easily fall into a downward spiral and have no hope of winning. At least in 18XX games I feel that I am continuously earning money and jostling for the win (unless I have made a very bad move or have been victim of a particularly ingenious attack).

I'm still not yet cured of my phobia of Greed Incorporated.

Other more popular 2009 games that I still have not played. Additional comments underlined and in italics.

Steam - I'm happy enough with Age of Steam (Keen To Play), so trying Steam is low priority.
Small World - I've played Vinci, and it'd be a Happy To Play. No real urge to try Small World.
Imperial 2030 - Have not tried the original Imperial either.
Warhammer: Invasion
Claustrophobia - likely not my cup of tea.
Space Hulk (3rd edition) - I've played 1st edition with Han a few times. This would be a low Keen To Play or high Happy To Play game.
Conflict of Heroes: Storms of Steel! Kursk 1943
Egizia
Thunderstone - I'm contented with Dominion being the only deck-building game I play. Well, now I have tried Resident Evil, which I found just okay, and Nightfall, which I found quite different from Dominion.
Tales of the Arabian Nights - I think of this as a much older release. I have played it. It's very different, and eagerness to play will depend very much on who I'm playing with. At the moment, I'm probably Lukewarm, but I hope when my children are older we can play this together.
Railways of the World - I have played Railroad Tycoon. I think it's quite similar to Age of Steam. I'm happy enough with Age of Steam. I actually prefer the more spartan artwork of Age of Steam.
Tobago - interested to try at least once.
Mr. Jack in New York - Played the original Mr Jack and thought it was just okay.
Rise of Empires
Finca
Last Train to Wensleydale - I have now played First Train to Nuremberg, which contains this game. However I did play the Nuremberg side of the board, so this should count as a 2010 game. But I'll say this was a pleasant surprise. Quite tempted to buy. Quirky train game where you are making some quick money and then trying to sell off unprofitable parts of your rail network. Tight economics with four different currencies to manage.
Richard III: The Wars of the Roses - No big urge to try this since I have Hammer of the Scots. I hear it's cleaner, more streamlined. I don't mind some of the rough edges in Hammer of the Scots, and enjoy the very asymmetrical sides.
Peloponnes
Maori - interested to try. Ordered, still waiting.
Axis & Allies Spring 1942 - I wonder how much quicker this is compared to Axis & Allies Anniversary Edition (AA50). If it is significantly shorter, I may actually prefer to play it over AA50. It uses the new concepts introduced in AA50, which had improved the game.

The Kids of Carcassonne

2011-10-12T19:00:00.001+08:00

Plays: 3Px1, 4Px1, 3Px2.

It was by chance that I happened to play The Kids of Carcassonne. Nowadays I don't actively seek out new children's games to play with my daughters (who are 6 and 4). They already have many games at home, and I have also starting teaching them "grown-up games". Some of these grown-up games need to be simplified, some even need rules to be reinvented, but they are able to play some simpler games using the grown-up rules. We were at OTK when I saw a copy of The Kids of Carcassonne lying around. I have heard of it before but never read up about it. I took a look at the rules. They seemed easy enough. Since we were waiting anyway, I asked Michelle and the children to sit down for a game. I liked the game instantly and decided to get one.

The Game

Similar to Carcassonne, The Kids of Carcassonne has no board. Instead, every turn you draw a square tile and add it to the playing area, thus building a mosaic. Your tile must connect to an existing tile. One difference from Carcassonne is that every edge of a tile has a road, so any edge of a tile can connect to any edge of any other tile. I road extending from the edge may run to another edge, or may reach a dead end. Some roads have children on them, wearing one of the four player colours. If you lay a tile such that a road is terminated at both ends, that road is completed, and players can now place their pawns (of matching colours) onto the children on that road. This means it is possible to place your pawn even on other players' turns. It depends on the road being completed. The objective of the game is to place all 8 of your pawns.

The artwork is nice. Only the roads and the children are relevant to gameplay. The buildings, trees, animals and ponds are only decorations.

The Play

The rules are simple and gameplay is quick - about 10 to 15 minutes. Despite being much simplified, there is still some strategy. You need to think about how to increase the chances of completing roads with your children (children in your colour), and also need to try not to help others do so. There are some opportunities for cooperation. E.g. if you add your child to a road which already has children belonging to another player, then both of you can work together to complete the road. Also you can add an opponent's child to a road with your children, to intice him to help you to complete the road.

The rules are simple so the game can be played quickly. Since all edges can match up, there is no need to worry about how to fit the tiles. Younger children may not fully grasp the strategies, but they can still enjoy the game. They may not see the best locations to place their tiles and the best ways to orientate the tiles, but they can still place the tiles easily, and they will still enjoy placing their pawns whenever a road is completed.

It may not be apparent in this photo. The tiles are actually much bigger (and also thicker) than Carcassonne tiles.

The Thoughts

I like that The Kids of Carcassonne still retains some strategy, especially the cooperation part, despite being much simplified. I am impressed. It still retains the Carcassonne feel. This is not a mindless luck-based game. It's not something that an adult gamers group would find interesting, not even as a filler, but it's a game that adults can enjoy playing with children. It works with children of different skill levels, and it encourages thinking and interaction.

Buy from Noble Knight Games. Status: in stock (at time of this post).

18TN

2011-10-11T19:00:00.000+08:00

Plays: 5Px1.

Many OTK old-timers are fans of 18XX games, and recently the Weiqi Boardgamers have been very much into it too. I have always been a little reluctant to try this family of games, because stock-holding games have never been quite my thing. I had one painful experience with Greed Incorporated (well, it's probably more my fault than that of the game). Chicago Express is clever but ultimately didn't quite click with me. I enjoyed Gheos well enough, but probably more for the timing aspect and the dramatic changes. The stock-holding aspect is not that big an element. I guess I've always felt uncomfortable about the two layers of play in stock-holding games. You are invested in some entities (train companies, nations, etc), but they are not really yours. You are using them to help you win, and you need to isolate how well players are doing and how well entities are doing. You can't get too attached to the entities, especially in games where ownership is very fluid. I am comfortable with Age of Steam, because you own your own train company. There is no stock-holding element.

The recent flurry of activities triggered me to decide to finally give 18XX a try, at least to satisfy my curiousity of whether I'd like it.

The Game

18TN is a game about the development of train companies in Tennessee. Like all 18XX games, players are investors starting with an amount of money. They start train companies by investing in them. Train companies lay tracks, buy trains, build stations and operate routes to earn money. Earnings can be paid to investors as dividends, or retained for future expansion. This is decided by the president, i.e. the biggest shareholder. During the game shares can be bought and sold, and company presidencies (I am reluctant to use the term "ownerships") can change.

There is a fixed number of train companies that be started, and they have pre-determined starting locations. This makes every 18XX game unique. As more and more advanced trains are bought, older trains become obsolete and must be discarded. So train companies need to be on their toes and need to be prepared to buy new, more advanced trains. Newer trains can run longer routes, thus earning more money. As more advanced trains become available, more advanced track tiles also become available, allowing more routes on the board, giving more space for building stations, and also increasing the income of routes. Stations are used to lock a city for a company, guaranteeing the company access to that city. If a city is fully occupied by stations of other companies, your company will not be able to run a route past that city.

Each train company needs to work hard to expand to earn money for its shareholders. It needs to work hard even to continue to exist. Obsoleted trains can severely set back a company.

From the player's perspective, the end goal is simply to be the richest. This is basically cash on hand plus share value at game end. The game ends when the bank runs out of money. It can also end if one player bankrupts. The player needs to always remember that the ultimate goal is to make money, from dividends, and also from having high share values for the shares being held. Many things impact the share price. It increases whenever the company pays dividends, and decreases whenever the company retains its earnings. If the shares are fully subscribed (i.e. none in the open market and none still with the underwriting bank), the price will go up. If anyone sells shares, the price drops for each share sold (ouch!). The price does not go up when shares are bought though.

The upper part is for marking share prices. Various actions in the game cause the positions of the markers to move. Moving up or right are good (price goes up), and moving down or left are bad. If the share price hits the yellow or green zones, things will be so bad that some restrictions related to share holding will be lifted.
The lower half is just for marking the dividends paid per share. The Open Market section on the right is just for placing shares that have been sold by players to the open market. They are available to be purchased by other players.

The company sheet. I was the largest shareholder of GM&O, so I was the president and I held this company sheet, which meant I was responsible for running the company. Each company has a number of tokens (GM&O had two left at this point) which can be used to build a station in a city. Stations secure the company's access to the city, and also block other companies from running routes past that city, unless they have their own station. At this moment GM&O owned two Level-2 trains. That table on the lower right is a convenient reference for rules that apply for different stages of the game. From left to right: (1) The phase colour indicates what coloured tiles can be placed on the board. The more advanced tiles have more station slots, give more income, have more branches and links, allowing more complex and more profitable networks. (2) Train limit is how many trains a company can own. (3) Train cost. (4) Number of trains of that level in the game. (5) What trains become obsolete.

From a player perspective (as opposed to that of a company), this is what I owned. I had cash, a private company (lower left) which was purchased in the early game, shares certificates in the GM&O company. The marker in the top right is just a start player marker for the next share round. It goes to the earliest player who passed in the previous share round. It is often important to manipulate who holds this marker. It can make a big difference.

There are some tricky manoeuvres in the game. I think in my first game I have been mostly learning from the sharks how not to lose disastrously as opposed to learning how to win. The sharks have been talking about Hot Sun all the time, a codeword for something very bad happening in 18XX games, but none were willing to elaborate further prior to the game. As we played and I witnessed one nasty thing after another happening, I asked, "So this is Hot Sun?", and I kept getting replies like "Not yet", "Not even close". One bad thing is your business partner dumping the shares of your company, sending the share price tumbling. It is a slow uphill battle to increase share price, and a sudden big drop is always painful to watch. But that's not Hot Sun. Another bad thing is trains getting obsoleted and the company not having any trains to operate. The company is forced to purchase a train, and if it doesn't have enough funds, the president must top up from his own wallet. A little unthematic here maybe? Aren't these limited liability companies? But this is still not Hot Sun. Yet another bad thing is one player who owns two companies does some hanky-panky with them, selling soon-obsolete trains from one to the other at high prices, then dumping all his shares in that about-to-be-ruined company, and then forcing you, the second biggest shareholder, to become president. There is a limit to the number of shares that can be sold to the open market, so you can't even sell your shares in order to "disown" the company. Soon, the trains become obsolete, and the company does not have enough funds to buy a new train, and you have to top up from your own bank account. That, ladies and gentlemen, is Hot Sun. I'm just thankful I didn't have to experience it first-hand in my first game.

The Play

We did a 5-player game, Jeff, Henry, Heng, Ang and I, and I was the only newbie to 18XX games. The game took more than 3 hours, excluding rules explanation, and this is an introductory 18XX game suitable for teaching new players. I was quite conservative and didn't game the share-holding aspect much, mostly because I didn't know how to. But I watched others dumping shares to raise cash to start new companies, and I watched how share prices were sent tumbling by mass selling. I mostly focused on one company, GM&O, and played it like it was "my" company (i.e. like how I would play Age of Steam). I did buy some shares of "other's" companies, mostly L&N which appeared safest to me (i.e. Henry the president at the time didn't seem to intend to ruin it - he seemed more trustworthy than the other company presidents), and also some I&C (after I felt more sure Jeff wasn't going to ruin it either). I think in this first game I have been focusing on not losing spectacularly rather than trying to look for efficient ways to earn more money. That's how it is swimming with the sharks.

There was some cooperation in the game, e.g. companies building and upgrading tracks which benefited both. Given that it was a 5-player game, often at least 2 players need to pool money together to get a company started.

And then there was the Hot Sun manoeuvre. It was pulled by Jeff on Ang. I think Heng did warn Ang about it, but at the time Ang was heavily invested in both companies that Jeff was president of. Ang was expecting Jeff to ruin the other one, but since Jeff controlled both companies, he could do whatever hanky-panky he wanted with them. Thus my first sighting of Hot Sun.

Everyone was careful about train obsolesence, and none were hurt too badly (well, except for the Hot Sunned Ang). The train companies had been retaining earnings in preparation for buying those new expensive trains that would soon become available.

Unfortunately I couldn't stay till game end and had to leave about 2:15 hrs into the game. At that time the most advanced trains had appeared and we were entering the game end stage. It was a pity I couldn't witness the end game. The final positions were Jeff, Heng, me, Henry, Ang. So I survived OK I guess. Here's Jeff's perspective of the game (up to game end). You need to scroll down to the middle of the page.

In the early game, two companies were started, GM&O in the south west, and L&N in the north. The starting cities of each company are marked on the board. That little table on the lower right is for marking the par values of the shares, i.e. at what values the shares started.

Two more companies had started, IC in the north west, which was enjoying some tracks already built by GM&O, and TC in the centre, making good use of tracks built by L&N. Green tiles had become available now that we had advanced in technology.

All six companies were operating now. The newest companies, NCSL and SR both started in the south east quadrant. The two initial isolated networks now connected. Brown tiles had become available.

This was the time that I had to leave. NCSL was the company that Jeff Hotsunned Ang with, and its share price was in the green zone. L&N was in the yellow zone, because it had been withholding earnings to prepare for trains becoming obsolete and for having to buy new (and very expensive) trains. The Level-8 in the centre is the most advanced train in this game. Many shares had been sold to the open market at this point.

Ang, Heng, Henry and Jeff. They all take the game quite seriously, including seating order. We drew cards to determine seating order. This reminds me of hardcore Puerto Rico players. But then, did Jeff win because his turn was just after mine (the newbie)? And Ang lost because he was before me? *spooky X-Files music*

I understand the rules now, but am still not familiar with all the strategies, in particular the ways to game with the share holdings, and also generally how to be efficient in making money. Now that I have experienced my first 18XX game, I am definitely keen to explore the system more. The stock holding aspect was not as scary as I had worried about. The company operations part of the game is interesting, but it would not have been able to stand on its own. The stock holding aspect is an integral part of the game.

The Thoughts

I like the game for sure, but I'm not certain yet whether I will love it. This is not a simple game, and some actions have many implications that you need to consider. I like this depth. You need to be constantly on your toes and watch out for dangers. You need to plan ahead. You need to make wise investments that bring the most profit. That means analysing the board and the potentials of the companies. You need to watch your opponents - which companies they are invested in, how their cash flow is. There are times to cooperate, and times to abandon your business partners.

I don't have a strong grasp yet on how to make money efficiently. This is a game that seems easy to lose and hard to win. The game is long compared to typical Eurogames, and I hear the short 18XX games are 3-hour games, and the long ones can take more than 8 hours. I like how there can be dramatic twists in the game, and how you can plan for such big moves. The game is fully open information, so over-analysis can drag the game.

Labyrinth: The War on Terror

2011-10-03T23:49:00.001+08:00

Plays: 2Px1.

The Game

This is one game that Han has deposited at my place for quite some time. It's a 2-player only game, but we usually have three. Allen couldn't make it to one of our recent sessions, so we brought out Labyrinth.

Labyrinth is about the ongoing war on terror, a topic rarely seen in games. One player plays USA, the other Muslim extremists. There are rules for solo gaming, with the player controlling USA. This is a card-driven game (CDG), where players play cards as events or to do stuff on the board. There are a few ways for both sides to win. Generally USA wants Muslim countries to have good governance, and the jihadist wants them to have poor governance, even Islamist rule. The jihadist also wins by nuking USA (OK, technically it's called resolving a Weapon of Mass Destruction plot in USA). USA can also win by eliminating all terrorist cells.

The things that both sides can do are very different. USA can try to ally with Muslim countries and then try to improve their governance by fighting the war of ideas. It can deploy troops to destroy terrorist cells, even to overthrow Islamist governments. The jihadist can recruit cells, attempt to have cells travel, attempt plots, start jihads to worsen governance and even establish Islamist rule.

The game board. The green countries are the Muslim countries that USA and the jihadists are trying to influence. The government type of these countries can change during the game. Blue and yellow countries are those with good and fair governance respectively. Do you agree?

The cards. Some have USA events, some have jihadist events, some have neutral events.

Every non-Muslim country has a posture, hard or soft, in the fight against the jihadists, with a tendency towards soft. USA's posture and whether it aligns with the world posture impacts many events and actions. This is something USA must manage. USA also needs to manage its prestige. High prestige makes convincing others easier. Prestige can be lost when USA forcefully overthrows a government, and also when bad things happen in a country despite the US troops present. This is another aspect USA must manage. A third thing to manage is troops on the board. The more there are, the fewer cards USA will draw. So it's important to use troops efficiently.

The jihadist needs to manage funding level, mostly by trying to resolve plots in rich countries, thus gaining supporters. Every turn funding will drop, so the jihadist needs to be diligent. Funding determines the number of cells that can be recruited.

USA seems to have more things to worry about. However some of the USA actions are deterministic, as opposed to the jihadist actions, most of which depend on die rolls. An unlucky jihadist may waste many cards for nothing.

The game has a thick deck of cards. Players agree beforehand whether to play through it once, twice or three times. If no instant win is achieved by then, the tiebreaker is that USA win only if the resources controlled by Muslim countries with good governance is more than double of that controlled by Islamist rule countries.

The Play

Han and I set aside 4 hours for our first game. Having played Twilight Struggle, I thought we'd be able to play through two runs of the deck. Han was more conservative, and he was right. We only did one run. Despite also being a CDG, the mechanisms in this game are very different and we had to refer to the rules many times.

We played the scenario which starts right after 911. One of the first things I did as USA was to overthrow the Taliban government in Afghanistan. It was the only Islamist rule country, and such countries damage US prestige. I encouraged some good governance in the middle east. However, once I overthrew the Taliban, my prestige dropped to rock bottom due to poor die rolls. I had to spend a lot of effort to bring it back up, so that I could continue my war of ideas effectively.

In the early game I quickly overthrew the Islamist government (i.e. the Taliban) in Afghanistan, but sending 6 troops.

For Han, life was tough as the jihadist. Many things depended on die rolls, so it was hard to get things done. He tried to get as many countries tested as possible. Being tested is the concept where a Muslim country's governance or a non-Muslim country's posture is randomly decided when it is first involved in the war on terror, e.g. when cells travel there. There is a 66% chance to get soft posture (my USA posture was hard) or poor governance, so Han made use of that. Many of the Muslim countries were found to have poor governance. Overall world posture fluctuated but eventually leaned towards hard, helped by event cards.

I played a lot of whack-a-mole with Han. Wherever he recruited cells, I sent in troops to stamp them out. They were hard to fully eliminate though. I kept doing this because having a hard posture meant I gained prestige whenever I disrupted cells.

I planned to work towards high prestige, and then work on getting a few resource-rich countries to good governance to win instantly, or at least by tiebreaker. Unfortunately one critical card played by Han ruined my plans. One formerly good-governance country (which would have made improving governance of its neighbours easier) dropped to poor governance, and set me back severely. Han had also been meticulously planning major jihads. At first I thwarted some by sending troops, but later I focused my effort on improving governance in middle-east instead. Eventually a major jihad in Central Asia succeeded, creating an Islamist state. It later spread to Afghanistan. Time ran out for me (i.e. deck exhausted). I was too far away from reaching enough good-governance resources, and it was too late to try to overthrow both the Islamist regimes, especially when my troops were tied up in Iraq after the WMD incident. Han the jihadist won the game.

The Gulf States used to have good governance, and I had hoped to use that as a launch pad for my campaigning for good governance in the Middle East. Unfortunately one critical card play by Han made the governance poor, ruining my plans.

Han tried to initiate a major jihad in Somalia, which needed terrorist cells to be more than US troops by five. I sent troops here to stop him.

Central Asia was an ally. The governance marker, although Poor, was on the leftmost space. Now Han triggered a major jihad, attempting to overthrow the government. All the terrorist cells were turned face-up to show the moon and star, which meant they were now active.

The major jihad succeeded, making Central Asia an Islamist rule region and also an enemy of USA.

After the success in Central Asia, the jihadists moved to Afghanistan. There was no risk in traveling since it was only next door. In other situations, there was a risk of the cells being caught and eliminated when trying to travel.

Afghanistan was now under Islamist rule too. In Iraq, I had just invaded and overthrown the government, using WMD as the pretext (or due to suspected WMD, depending on your view), so I had many troops stationed there.

Game end.

These tracks are for tracking how close both sides are to the instant win conditions. Yellow for USA, green for jihadist, purple for solo play.

The Thoughts

This is quite a detailed game portraying the war on terror. The rules are unusual and take time to get used to. Like Twilight Struggle, using your opponent's card for ops points triggers his event. However, many events depend on certain conditions, so you are not as frequently forced to trigger your opponent's events.

The game is a constant struggle for both sides. It is simply hard to get things done. You need to plan and focus on following through to get things done. You need patience and perseverance. I think the game portrays the difficulties faced by USA and by the jihadists well. It is interesting to see recent world events in a game. Note that the perspective of the game is mostly from that of the western world. Some may not fully agree with that world view.

I like how asymmetrical the two sides are. I also like seeing real-life events unfolding in the game. The game is a little complex, so it's not for everyone. It takes some effort and time investment to learn and to play. There is much dice-rolling, so be prepared for the luck factor. I didn't feel it was too severe.

I recently became an affiliate of Noble Knight Games. Let's see how this works out. Here's a link to their product page, but at the moment they are out of stock.