High Society

High Society is a Reiner Knizia game from 1995. I have heard of it so many times that I feel like I have played it before. This is one of the classics from Reiner Knizia that always comes back in print.  

This is an auction game. Everyone starts with the same set of money cards, each a different denomination, from $1 to $25. That’s all the money you will have in the game. A deck of properties will be auctioned off, one at a time. They have different point values. There are some special cards in the mix, some good and some bad. A good card can double your victory points. A bad one forces you to discard one property. Another bad one halves your victory points. Every round one card is revealed from the deck and auctioned off. One twist in the game is you don’t know exactly when the game will end. It ends immediately when the last of the double and half cards is drawn. The challenge the game presents is you don’t know how far you should preserve your money. If you use your money too quickly you won’t be able to compete when big cards show up. If you keep too much money and the game ends early, you would have missed the opportunities to buy valuable properties. 

Your money

Good card

Bad card

When you bid, you don’t make change. If you have placed a bid and you are overbid by someone else, you can only counter bid by adding more cards from your hand. This means sometimes you are forced to spend more than you wish. 

The most important twist is whoever has the least money when the game ends is automatically disqualified. You must keep some money to avoid being the poorest. 

When bad cards are being auctioned, it is done in a different manner. You bid to not take the card. The first player to pass takes the card. Everyone else who has placed a bid must pay up. Bad cards will usually force many people to spend money. Good cards only require the buyer to pay. 

This is a simple game that is full of difficult decisions. The special cards can have huge impacts. You are torn between keeping enough money to not get disqualified and winning enough properties to win the game. 

Skyrise

The Game

Skyrise is an auction game with a spatial element. It is a reimplementation of Metropolys, which was first published in 2008. I own Metropolys, and find it a fine game. Skyrise is a major facelift plus some additions to gameplay. 

The game board has two layers. The bottom layer is mostly just a backdrop. It has the score track around the edges and spaces for four sponsors. The real game board is those plastic platforms on top of the cardboard board. How many pieces to use depends on the number of players. The platforms vary in details, so you can mix and match and fiddle with their positions to create different game boards. 

The edges of the platforms are sculpted nicely in a steampunk style. This is not only for the sake of being pretty. This affects gameplay. Notice that bridge which spans the two platforms. This means those two specific districts are connected for gameplay purposes. 

The most beautiful part of the game is these player buildings. Every player has their own set of unique buildings. They are divided into three heights - tall, medium, low. One of the buildings for every player is a wonder. For the green player, the wonder is that statue at the top right. 

There are numbers at the bottom of the buildings. Higher number means stronger. These numbers are used in the bidding / auction mechanism. The game is divided into two halves, and those buildings with a dot below their numbers only come into play in the second half. 

None of the players' building numbers overlap, so there will not be ties during bidding. Wonders do not have a number. They are just marked with a W. 

During setup, every district on the game board is given a token at random. In Skyrise you construct buildings in the districts. Every district allows one building. When you build, you claim the token. The game ends after everyone has built all their buildings. There are many ways your buildings score points for you. Some scoring criteria are consistent for all players. However there are also quite a few criteria that will vary between players. So districts usually have different values to different players. 

The bidding mechanism is interesting. This is the core of the game. When a round starts, the start player places a building (number side showing) in an empty district. This is where she proposes to build her building. If no one objects, the project goes ahead and the round ends. If someone objects, that player must then place her own building in a neighbouring district, proposing her building (with a higher number) instead. This can go on and on, until eventually no one wants to outbid, or no one is able to outbid. The final, highest valued building gets constructed. All other proposed buildings are returned to their owners. The winning player starts the next round. 

This is the player board. When you collect tokens from the board, you place them here. In the game there are districts in four colours. When you collect a colour token, you place it in the corresponding row. This modifies the value of districts of that particular colour that you control. Districts have a base value of 2 points. They can go up to 6 points. If you look carefully at this player board, you will notice that if you collect the fourth token of a district colour, you are devaluing that district colour from 6pts to 4pts. There is a reason for this. If you collect the 5th token, every token from then on is worth 10pts. As you watch what tokens your opponents collect, you will know which districts they are more likely to want. 

This is another way of scoring points. Everyone gets a different secret mission. If you fulfil it by game end, you score points as indicated. This particular mission requires that I control four yellow districts by game end. 

Here are some scoring criteria that are common across players. These cards are randomly drawn at game start. The scoring conditions here are: (1) The player with the most and highest buildings on each platform scores 5pts. (2) Players who surround blimps score 3pts per blimp surrounded. (3) Districts with windmills are worth 2pts more. 

There are four sponsors in the game, A, B, C and D. Their tokens are scattered around the board and you can collect them. However the values of the tokens are initially unknown. The values are on those face-down tiles next to each of the sponsors. Only when you collect a token, you get to check its value. 

The core mechanism of the game is straight-forward. The various scoring criteria create uneven values for the players. Everyone has the same number of buildings and will eventually place them all. Your job is to maximise the points you get from your building placement. 

The Play

The version I played was the deluxe version, so the experience was amazing. The core mechanism in the game was the same as Metropolys, so the game was immediately familiar to me. This simple core mechanism creates many interesting tactical plays. The first building proposal is often outbid, and the eventual building being constructed can be pretty far away due to the chain of proposals as players outbid one another. When you place a proposal, it might not be a district you want. You may be hoping to lead the chain of proposals to somewhere you truly want. Sometimes if you know your opponent is keen on a particular district, you can place a high valued building proposal next to it, and force her to spend her own even higher valued building. Sometimes if the surrounding districts are poor and you think no one else will be interested, you can use a low valued building to claim a district, because chances are everyone else will be willing to let you win. Dead ends are an interesting tactical consideration. As more and more districts are claimed, there will be more dead ends. Dead ends allow you to win a district using a low valued building, simply because there are no other available neighbouring districts for others to outbid you with. 

There are many ways to score points, so evaluating a particular district is tricky. You have to consider how much it is worth to you and also how much it is worth to each of your opponents. You want to score more points. You also want to prevent your opponents from doing so. 

The wonder mechanism is something new which did not exist in Metropolys. Wonders can only be used in the second half. At the start of the game, you get three wonder powers. At mid game, you must discard two and declare the power you are left with. When you build your wonder, you apply this power. Wonders give instant wins. The only restriction is you may not start a round with a wonder. It can only be used to outbid someone else's building. The moment you place a wonder, you win that round immediately and the wonder gets built. Wonder powers are all related to scoring points based on a specific criteria. You want to set up the board situation as best you can to maximise the power of your wonder. 

These stunningly beautiful pieces are score markers. 

At game end, the first player to construct all buildings gets 10pts, and the second gets 4pts. Talk about being overproduced! 

Every building of every player is unique. Much time, money and effort has been spent on making this game breathtakingly beautiful. 

The Thoughts

Skyrise may appear complicated but it's actually an accessible mid-weight game. The core mechanism is solid and provides an interesting play experience. Skyrise is a bit more complex than Metropolys, not in terms of the core mechanism, but in terms of the various scoring criteria. There are more than I'd like. I think it could have been somewhat simplified. However, comparing the two, I like Skyrise better. This is purely comparing gameplay, without considering the components and artwork. The scoring criteria in Metropolys are not varied enough, I feel. So I welcome the additional mechanisms in Skyrise. 

I would describe the deluxe version as overproduced. The game certainly doesn't need to be that pretty. But I'm not complaining. The standard version looks decent. However if you compare the two, it looks boring. Aaah we are all spoiled by these deluxified boardgames. 

When Metropolys was first released, many complained about how ugly the board was. It was functional, but ugly. The board in Skyrise is gentler to the eyes. My only complaint is the white and the yellow districts look quite similar. The white is a lighter yellow. I made a wrong play because I confused the two colours. 

Priests of Ra

The Game

Priests of Ra is essentially a variant of the Reiner Knizia classic auction game Ra. Not really a version 2.0 or improved version. The core auction mechanism is exactly the same, but the tiles you collect and how they score are all different from Ra. It also introduces a twist - double-sided tiles. 

The game is played over three epochs. Within each epoch every player has 3 or 4 suns which can be used to win sets of tiles via auction. Tiles gradually accumulate on the board. You want to collect them and they score points in different ways. Auctions can be triggered voluntarily by players. They are also triggered if anyone draws a Ra tile from the bag. During auction, you bid and pay with one of your suns. If you win, you claim all the tiles on the board, and your payment (the sun used) goes to the board. The next auction winner will take your sun. You will have also claimed a previous sun from the board. This is turned face-down to remind you that you can only use it in the next epoch. You flip it face-up only at the start of the next epoch. 

On your turn, you only have 2 options - draw a tile from the bag, or invoke Ra (i.e. trigger an auction). If you draw a tile, you are usually adding to the pool of tiles on the board, making it more valuable. However if you draw a Ra tile, an auction will be triggered. There is a Ra track on the board which will gradually get filled up by these Ra tiles. When it is full, the epoch ends immediately. This is a countdown timer which creates urgency for the players. If you still have unused suns by then, it is your loss. Normally you would want to make use of all your suns to win some tiles before the epoch ends. 

When an auction is triggered, the player triggering it will be the last to bid in a single-round auction. Bidding starts with the player to his left. The sun values in the game are all different, so there will be no ties in an auction. 

The tiles you win need to be arranged neatly in front of you. Scoring is done at the end of every epoch. Some tiles are scored every epoch, some only in the last epoch. Some tiles are discarded after being scored, while others are kept until the end of the game. 

The game structure is very simple. Play three epochs, in which you collect tiles and score points with them. 

These are all the tile types in the game. The twelve at the bottom are double sided tiles. Yellow is always on the back of blue, and red is always on the back of green. Whenever you draw such a tile, you immediately decide which side to use. This can greatly effect scoring. One side may be much more valuable to a player than the other side. Let's take a citizen tile as an example. The green citizen is a farmer. When an epoch ends, whoever has the most farmers scores 5pts. If someone is competing for the most farmers, choosing the farmer side makes the set of tiles attractive to him. However if he is not competing for soldiers (the red side), then choosing the soldier side makes this tile worthless to him. Often you will choose the side which is helpful to you, but it is not always a straight-forward decision. If there is someone else wanting that side too, and he has a higher sun than you do, you may want to choose the bad side. Basically "if I can't have it, no one else can have it". 

The purple citizens are the priests, and they are a special class. When you claim a priest, you can use him to flip a tile in your play area. This ability can be very powerful. In addition to that, if you have three of more priests at the end of an epoch, you can even remove a plague tile. Plagues are the only tiles which deduct points. The first one deducts 1pt, the second one 2pts, and so on. The max is a 20pt penalty, when you have 6 or more plague tiles. 

Citizens, buildings and pyramids are the three main categories of the tiles you collect. Citizens are discarded at the end of every epoch after scoring is done. Buildings are scored every epoch, but are not discarded. Pyramids are kept and are scored only after the third epoch. Some pyramids have coloured chambers. If you have three or four in the same colour, you score extra. 

These are your suns, used for bidding. During game setup, they are organised into predetermined sets, and everyone randomly takes a set. Once the game starts, it will be a free-for-all for the suns. Who gets which sun by the second and third epoch is entirely up to the players. During auctions, you must consider the value of the sun at the centre of the table. Sometimes it's worth spending your low #1 sun to get the #16 sun even when there are no tiles to be claimed. Even by the third epoch you need to consider the value of the suns you will win, because at game end you will score based on total sun values. The player with the highest total gains 5pts, and whoever is lowest loses 5pts. 

The Play

It is a little difficult for me to discuss Priests of Ra. I have known and played Ra for so long that it is hard to approach Priests of Ra like I'm a new player. I'll just highlight some interesting moments in the game. 

Watching the pool of tiles grow on the board is like watching a stock market bubble. The value keeps going up, unless someone draws a plague. What's interesting is these tiles will often be valued differently by different players. As players collect different combinations of tiles, they will have different directions and needs. When you see that no one else really wants those tiles on the board except for you, it is probably okay to let the pool grow a little bit more before initiating an auction. However, it is also possible that a tile extremely important to someone else is added, suddenly making the tile set very valuable to him. You will then need to compete with this other player. 

When your suns are low and others have higher suns, you would want to trigger auctions more frequently, while there aren't many tiles on the board yet. When there are many tiles on the board, the player with highest sun will have an advantage because he can decide whether he wants them. So you need to force his hand. If the tile set value is neither here nor there, this will be a dilemma for the high sun players. Maybe there's one important tile they really want, but they'd prefer to wait until there are more tiles so that they can get more at one go. If you trigger an auction, you will force them to spend their high suns. Even if they don't take the bait, there is no big loss for you since you are spending small suns only. 

The tail end of an epoch is often an exciting time. When there is only one player with any sun left, he goes into solo mode. Ideally he wants to completely fill the board (i.e. 8 tiles) before using his sun to claim them all. However, if there is only one space left on the Ra track, the epoch may end at any time. If he tries his luck, he may end the epoch and lose all those tiles on the board so far. At such moments, greed can kill, and cowardice can also lead to lost opportunities. 

This set of tiles is a little tricky to evaluate, because there's a plague. There are citizens in three different colours, which is a good thing. In each epoch when you have citizens in 3 or 4 different colours, you will gain ankhs. Ankhs are scored at game end. 

When competing for citizens, whoever has the most in a colour scores 5pts. However you must have at least two citizens of that colour. Every pair of buildings scores 2pts. If you have pairs in 3 or 4 colours, you will score a bonus. Pyramid tiles need to be stacked like a pyramid. You will score points for your pyramid if it has at least two levels (i.e. 3 pyramid tiles). 

When there are 8 tiles on the board, i.e. the spaces are completely filled, the player with the highest sun will be the happiest person in the room. 

I searched for player boards on BoardGameGeek.com. I found some but were not entirely satisfied, so I made my own. A player board like this helps tremendously in teaching the game, an addition to making gameplay smoother. It is a reference sheet at the same time. 

The game board does list how the different tiles score, but the font is tiny and hard to read. 

This was Chen Rui's player board. She completely slaughtered Michelle and I, scoring 140+. 

These are the tiles discarded after every epoch - Ra and citizens. 

The Thoughts

What surprised me about Priests of Ra was it holds up well in comparison to Ra. From reading the rules, I had expected an inferior game, because it is missing some elements from Ra which I think are very thematic. E.g. the pharaohs, the river Nile and the various disasters. It's a game about Egypt after all. The new tiles in Priests of Ra seemed to be less thematic and more mechanical and abstract. After actually playing the game, I found that it still gives much to chew on and does not feel lacking. It's  different, but not simplified or dumbed down. Ra is nostalgia for me, and Priests of Ra won't be able to replace it. Priests of Ra is a fun variant when I feel like playing something which is the same yet different. 

Playing Priests of Ra made me appreciate the clever auction mechanism in Ra all over again. It is genius and I preach it. 

The double-sided tiles and the priests flipping tiles are the most striking change in Priests of Ra. This affects all three major scoring methods - citizens, buildings and pyramids. In this sense, there is some connectedness among the three areas. The game still has that tricky balance between short-term and long-term goals. Even within the citizens aspect there are both short- and long-term considerations. Going deep is short-term for winning in the current epoch. Going wide is long-term because of the ankhs which will only be scored at game end. 

Unboxing: Priests of Ra vs Ra

 

That's Priests of Ra (published 2009) on the left and the first version of Ra (1999) on the right. Ra is a game with special meaning to me. It is one of the games I played when I first got into the hobby. At the time it was out of print. I read about it, read the rules, and was so intrigued that I hand-made a copy. Now that I think back about it, it was a crazy undertaking. So many tiles to cut one by one. I no longer have the stomach to do something like this now. My Taiwanese friends and I loved Ra and we played it many times using my ugly home-manufactured copy. They later secretly found a second hand copy on eBay Germany, and bought it for me as a birthday present. That day when we played Ra, they insisted that I be start player. I didn't suspect anything then. When I drew the first tile from the bag, I was stunned. Why is there colour on this tile? We were playing a real copy of the game! They had borrowed the game from me about a week earlier, and secretly swapped the tiles to surprise me. That's why Ra would be high on the to-save list if my house ever catches fire. 

Priests of Ra is also designed by Reiner Knizia. The bidding mechanism is exactly the same as Ra. However the tiles you win and how they score are very different. Since my copy of Ra is a second hand copy, I never saw the tiles fresh in their sprues. My copy of Priests of Ra is new. I was thrilled to see the fresh tiles, even though I've seen fresh tiles hundreds of times before. I don't usually do unboxing posts. This time I can't resist. 

I think the prettiest tile of all is the Ra tile (top). 

These are the citizen tiles. They are double-sided. I've only taken photos of one side. 

The purple tiles are the priests. They have special abilities and work differently from regular citizens. 

These are ankhs. You may collect up to four of them, and they score points. 

This is the Priests of Ra board. Compared to Ra (below), it is more colourful. It lists all the scoring methods too. The text is rather small though, and not easy to read. The background is a papyrus pattern, and that makes the small text harder to read. Although at first sight this newer board looks more attractive, after a while I feel it looks busy. Maybe I'm being a stubborn old-timer who can't let go of old stuff. 

The Ra track is colourful. At first I thought that is bad. In the older board below, it is not coloured. When you place the Ra tiles (which are coloured) on the track, the visual experience is pleasant because you can easily see the progress. Also there is this feeling of filling up a colouring book. However the Ra track in the newer board has a green background, while the Ra tiles have an orange background. So it will still be easy to see the progress. 

In contrast, the Ra board looks a little plain. 

I found the bag that comes with Priests of Ra rather small. After putting all the tiles in, it is about two thirds full. It is hard to shuffle the tiles. So I found a bigger bag. 

I got this blue bag at a friends gathering three years ago. I think this was the bag for a whiskey bottle. We drank the whiskey and nobody cared about the bag. So I kept it, knowing sooner or later it would be of use with some board game. So here we are three years later. 

These are all the tile types in Priests of Ra. The tablets at the top are the victory points. The tiles in the first row are single-sided, or to be more accurate, both sides are the same. The rest of the tiles are all double-sided. Yellow is always on the other side of blue, red always on the other side of green. Whenever you draw a double-sided tile, you immediately decide which side to use. Whenever you claim a priest tile, you may use it to flip one tile in your play area. The double-sided tiles is a new mechanism introduced in Priests of Ra. 

The game components on the left are from Priests of Ra, while those on the right are from Ra. At a glance, the Priests of Ra components do look more colourful and attractive. The Ra tiles in both versions (falcon head with a sun on top) work the same way. The priests (purple tiles) in Priests of Ra is roughly equivalent to the gods (yellow tiles) in Ra. They both have special powers. The priests can be used to flip double-sided tiles and also to remove plagues. Gods are used to directly claim a tile on the board without initiating any auction. 

The plague tile in Priests of Ra looks similar to the funeral tile in Ra, but they work differently. Plagues simply deduct points. Every additional plague tile costs you more points. Funeral tiles only target your pharaohs. You lose two pharaohs that you have collected. 

The citizen tiles in Priests of Ra give you points if you have more of them than other players, but you need at least two. All four types of citizens work the same way. In Ra, there are five types of civilisation tiles. If you have none, you lose points. If you have three or more types, you gain points. You don't need to compare with others though. The one thing that's common between citizen tiles and civilisation tiles is they are discarded after being scored at the end of an epoch. Next epoch you start collecting all over again. 

In Priests of Ra you have buildings and you also get to build a stepped pyramid. These are not lost at the end of each epoch like the citizens. The rough equivalent in Ra is the monuments, which are only scored at the end of the game. In Ra there are a few other tile types which cannot be found in Priests of Ra - coins, pharaohs, the River Nile and disasters. Disasters in Ra all target specific tile types you have collected. You are forced to discard them. The only disaster type in Priests of Ra is the plague. 

The numbered suns (used for bidding) and the Ra token in Priests of Ra are the same as the first edition of Ra. That's great news. They look good. In later editions of Ra, these components were not as good as the first edition. 

Keyflower

I played Keyflower for the first time during the COVID-19 Movement Control Order period in Malaysia. It is not a new game. It's just that I never found a time to try it out. Since we couldn't go out to meet people for boardgame sessions, Allen, Han and I arranged to play online using BoardGameArena.

The Game

A big part of the game is the bidding mechanism. The game is played over 4 rounds, and the first half of a round is bidding for (mostly) tiles. Your currency is workers, and they come in four different colours. Red, yellow and blue are regular workers. Green is rare workers which you can only get under special circumstances.

The first person who bids on an item decides which colour will be used. Subsequent bidders trying to outbid him must use workers of the same colour. This makes green workers very powerful and valuable. When you use green, others may not have enough green workers to outbid you, or may not think it worthwhile.

Tiles that you win through the bidding are added to your village, which starts with one village centre tile. You also bid for player order. At the top left you can see three ships with workers and tools. These are resources which will enter the game next round. Based on player order, you will pick which set of resources to claim next round.

At the bottom are our villages. We had just started growing them. The tiles have various powers, e.g. producing resources, converting resources. To use the power of a tile, you just need to place a worker (or more) on it. You may already start using the power of a tile that is still in the common pool and not yet claimed by anyone. You may also use a tile already in another player's village, just that the worker you place there will become his next round.

The tiles are double-sided. You may upgrade them to the more powerful side by spending resources. Also you gain victory points when upgrading a tile to the other side. To do this upgrade, you need to not only have the necessary resources, you also need to deliver them to that tile. Some tiles generate resources. Sometimes you gain resources at your village centre. You need to perform deliveries to transport resources to the desired destinations. Deliveries are simply one type of tile power. The village centre has such a power, but it is not strong. You usually need more tiles with delivery powers if you want to be competitive.

Some tiles are for end-game scoring. Everyone gets three such scoring tiles at the start of the game, and they are kept secret from other players. You get to plan ahead based on these tiles. In the screenshot above, this scoring tile gives me 10pts for every set of three different tools. At the start of Round 4, everyone must pick at least one scoring tile from his hand to be added to the bidding pool. You have had time to plan to fulfill the scoring criteria, so usually you will be aiming for those tiles you add to the pool. However it is not guaranteed that you will get these tiles. You still need to win them through the bidding process. Usually you'll try to release tiles which are helpful to you but not to your opponents. This way they are less motivated to fight you for these tiles. However if some tiles are too good for you, your opponents may be forced to compete just to deny you, even if the tiles don't help them much.

After winning some tiles, your next problem will be where to place them. This stage of a round is a little like Carcassonne. The sides of the tiles must match up. Road with road, river with river, field with field. You want your village to be compact to minimise delivery distances. You want to be efficient. Sometimes tile placement affects scoring. Ideally even when bidding you should already plan where you'll be placing the tiles you will potentially win.

The village in the centre is Allen's. At one point he messed up his planning, and his village expanded in an unwieldy fashion.

This particular scoring tile gives you 12pts straight, without needing to fulfill any criteria.

I had added to the pool one scoring tile which was particularly important to me - the tile which would give me 10pts per set of 3 different tools. I had been saving up my tools for it. Unfortunately Allen competed for it and won it. That tile would probably have given me 30pts, and that would be about half my total score. When I bid for the tile, I was stingy and tried to win it with a low bid. Allen knew it was important to me, and he outbid me. I did not have enough workers to continue the fight. I lost the forest because I went cheap on one tree. Aarrgghh! Priorities!!

The Play

The bidding aspect in Keyflower reminds me of trick-taking games. Once anyone starts bidding for an item, the colour (or suit) for that item is locked. You may not have many workers in every colour, but if you are quick, you can protect your bid for a particular item by using your strongest suit or others' weakest suits. Managing your currency (workers) is an important tactical element.

From the beginning of the game you already have 3 scoring criteria in hand, and you can prepare to fulfill them as much as possible throughout the game. This is the long-term strategy aspect of the game. You do long-term planning. You develop your village based on some general goals. It is satisfying to grow and improve your settlement. There is a fair bit of optimisation. Min-maxing. You want to plan carefully and play efficiently, minimising delivery distances, fully utilising the delivery action, producing just enough resources for what you need.

There is also a worker placement aspect to the game, though not a "hard" one. During the bidding stage of a round, you can already decide to place workers to use tile powers. Being first to use a tile does not prevent others from using it. You just make it more expensive. Being first to bid for a tile does not prevent others from outbidding you, just that if you do your first bid well, you can make it expensive and undesirable for others to outbid you. The decision between bidding for a tile and using a tile is often a difficult one to make. There are many things you want to do, but you can only pick one on your turn. You watch your opponents and try to guess what they will likely go for.

The Thoughts

Player interaction is high. Complexity is medium to high. This is quite an involved strategy game that will give you a good mental exercise.