Age of Empires III

I have now played two games of Age of Empires III, both as two-player games against Michelle, on 1 and 2 Dec 2007. Age of Empires III is one of the hot new games this year. Although licensed with the PC game of the same name (there is no Age of Empires or Age of Empires II boardgame), this game is a true Eurogame in gameplay. Many people say that it is just a rehash of mechanics used in other Eurogames - worker placement of Caylus (but Glenn Drover has already designed this mechanism before Caylus came out), area majority like El Grande, and special buildings like Puerto Rico. However I (and many others too) do not find this a problem, since the game is good. It is quite "Euro" indeed, but it doesn't feel so similar to another game that I feel it has nothing new to offer.

Age of Empires III is a game about discovery, colonisation, trade (in a more abstract way than other aspects), development, and a little warfare. You score victory points (yes, the staple in Eurogames...) from how many new lands you discover, how well you did in colonising the new lands, the earning power of your trade empire, and from special buildings that you construct. There are many things that you can do, but you are competing with your opponents to pick these actions, which are limited. You not only compete to do the actions, but also compete to be the first player to do the actions, because in most cases, being the first to do an action is advantageous. To choose to do an action, you place your colonist into the appropriate space on the board, i.e. "the worker placement" mechanism. Everyone takes turns to place colonists, and when that's done the actions are performed in a fixed order. That's basically how the game works.

The full game board. Spaces to choose your actions are on the right, and the colonies are on the left. I placed the trade goods and buildings in the middle.

Now, what actions to choose is the juicy part. You can spend people to discover new lands. You may or may not succeed, depending on whether your expedition force can overcome the (always hostile) natives. You can send people to colonise the already-discovered new lands. You can collect trade goods, which represent your trade empire, and are an important source of income. This is handled in a simple and abstract way, but it is fine for me. You try to collect sets of 3 or 4 trade goods. A set of 3 trade goods of different types gives you $1 per round, a set of 3 of the same type gives $3 per round, and a set of 4 of the same type gives $6 per round. There is an action which you can use to select a trade good from a group of four randomly revealed at the start of a round. When you are the first to establish a size-3 colony in the Americas (North, Central, South and the Caribbean too), you also collect the trade good from there, e.g. silver in Peru, fish in New England. You can also compete for the merchant ship (only one available per round), which is basically a joker.

The spaces for competing for the merchant ship (i.e. joker trade good) and to construct buildings. There is only one merchant ship available each round, and the player with the most people placed in this space wins the merchant ship. Ties are broken by turn order. There are five spaces for constructing buildings. The earlier to place a person, the more choices you have. But you have to make sure you have enough money to pay for the buildings.

You can pay to construct buildings. Buildings from the Age I and II usually give you special powers, e.g. giving you a free missionary every round, which may steer your strategy. Buildings from Age III are usually victory point earners, depending on a certain aspect of your empire, e.g. how many regions you have colonised. Obviously, turn order is important if you want to choose the good buildings, so turn order is also something that you can compete for.

Warfare is simple. You need to spend a person to declare a battle or a war against another player. Battles are free but occur only in one region. All soldiers belonging to you and your "target" opponent kill one enemy piece. Full stop. No dice rolling, no looking up reference tables, no card play. Wars are expensive. You pay $10, and battles occur in every region where you and your "target" opponent have people. In my two games against Michelle, there was no warfare. Almost had it, but didn't happen eventually.

The colonists are the basic "people" that you have. They carry wood on their shoulders. Michelle (red) has one soldier in this photo - the guy with the gun.

Before I played the game, I was a little skeptical whether I would find it boring, since I kept hearing that it was just a rehash of mechanics from other games. I heard a lot of good things about it too though, and I downloaded and read the rules. Eventually I decided to buy it. The game surprised me in that I enjoyed it more than I expected. I found it quite well balanced. My earlier worry about the luck factor in discovery turned out to be less an issue than I thought. When attempting a colonisation, you commit a number of men, and then flip over a tile (or card). If the number of natives is more than your men, you fail and lose all your men. If you succeed, you claim the discovery tile and put a colonist in the newly discovered region. The two possibilities of bad luck are (a) you commit many men, but discover a lousy region of only two natives, wasting many of your men, and (b) you commit many men, but discover a horrible region of too many natives, wasting all your men, and you get nothing in return. After playing the game, I found that discovery is just one aspect of the game, and the luck factor does not dominate. It can set you back, but it is all about risk and reward. The more men you commit, the less risk you have.

One thing that also surprised me is that the game is good with two players. I had thought there would be too little competition. It turned out that we had enough competition for the game to be interesting. We did indeed have much more freedom to explore different strategies, but the competition level was not poor like I thought it would be.

I feel very comfortable playing the game. There are different approaches to try and to choose from. There are different types of actions to choose from, but the permutations are not as complex as Caylus. I guess you can say games of Age of Empires III will not vary as much as Caylus from game to game, but there are enough moving parts and different aspects of the game to keep things interesting. The game flows very smoothly, and you don't feel there is nothing useful you can do with your people. There is some luck in the game, in discovery, in what kind of trade goods get revealed at the start of a round, in the buildings that become available. I don't mind these too much. The buildings may be a significant factor in deciding who wins or loses, for players of equal skill, but in this situation I would use my usual argument - if the players played equally well, then they would have enjoyed the process of playing the game, of competing, of maneuvering and positioning themselves to make the most of the buildings that appear in Age III. So, if you lose because the building that you are hoping will appear does not appear, then just accept your poor luck gracefully, and congratulate your opponents for their better luck with good humour.

In my two games against Michelle, I mostly chose the colonisation and discovery paths. I got the buildings that gave me extra colonists or missionaries (who give you an extra colonist when they settle in the new world). I scored many points for my presence in the new world. Michelle pursued a trade goods path, building a very impressive trade empire. She had the benefit of more people, and going second, so it is risky for me to try to compete for the merchant ship (the joker trade good). If I placed a man there, she could immediately place one of hers there, and she could always outnumber me if she wanted to, because her turn was after mine, and she had more people to place than I did. So, I "let" her win many merchant ships cheaply, with just one man. In fact, I only dared to try to claim a merchant ship when I saw that she already had so many that she couldn't make use of another additional one.

My little trade empire. The gold coins represent $5, not $10. I was being a smart Alec and thinking that it was silly to use them as $10, I told Michelle we should use them as $5 instead. After our first game, I realised I was mistaken. It was indeed more suitable to use the gold coins as $10.

Michelle's very impressive trade empire. That pile of money is hers, and it's not the bank. The gold coins are $5 and not $10. This was our first game. But still, that's a lot of money.

Central and South America.

Michelle took some buildings that gave her extra soldiers. These buildings are quite good. Firstly having an extra person gives you more flexibility in placing your people. More choices. Soldiers who are used for discovery can earn you money, depending on whether there is much to plunder in the newly discovered region. Lastly, soldiers that you send to the colonies can be used for warfare, or as a deterrent. Michelle almost declared a battle on me. Thankfully in that round I built the Indian Allies "building", which allowed me to place two soldiers in the region where Michelle had originally planned to attack me. So, when it came to time for battle, she cancelled her plans (and wasted one man), because following through with the battle would have made things worse for her. I had two soldiers there when she only had one. That was an expensive way to prevent a battle and secure my dominance on just that one colony.

I won both games. The first one was quite close, and I only won because of the accumulated victory points from my dominance in the colonies. The second one the score was further apart. Michelle's trade empire didn't work out as well as her first one.

Nightmare Before Christmas TCG, Neuroshima Hex

Two other games which I played for the first time on 30 Nov 2007, in addition to Hannibal: Rome vs Carthage, are Nightmare Before Christmas TCG (trading card game) and Neuroshima Hex.

Nightmare Before Christmas TCG is a Nightmare Before Christmas-themed card game. I do not know the movie well, so I can't relate to it much. The game is played over 12 rounds, and at the end of the game your score based on the character cards and treasure cards (I think) that you have played. There are generally 3 types of cards - location cards, character cards and treasure cards. The currency in the game is interesting - pumpkins. But you are not given toy pumpkins. You are given a card with pumpkins on them and you hide / reveal the pumpkins with another card to indicate how many you have. Han and I just used poker chips instead.

So, you have locations, which are revealed one per turn for the first six turns, and can be added to your Halloweentown (i.e. your row of location cards) in any way you like (either to the left or to the right). Locations have special powers which you can use, if you have enough characters with enough values (I mean the numbers on the character cards and not family values or anything like that) at the location you want to use. You can use the power of only one location at the start of your turn. Then you have characters. You play character cards to locations by paying pumpkins. Characters usually have special powers too. Lastly, you also have treasure cards, which you play to score points and also to make use of their special powers. With so many special powers for the various types of cards, there is quite a lot of text to read through, especially when you are still learning the game and are not familiar with the cards yet.

The row of cards in the middle are the locations. Those below are the characters, and those above are the treasures.

The basic things that you can do are: draw cards, gain pumpkins (which you must use within your current turn, or they are thrown away), move your characters, and play cards (introducing characters or treasures). You pay pumpkins to play cards. The powers of the locations are mostly related to these actions, e.g. letting you collect a certain number of pumpkins, or make a certain number of moves. Since you score based on the values of the character and treasure cards that you play, this game is a lot about making the most out of your resources. You try to make use of the special powers of your locations, character cards and treasures, to let you "make more with less". E.g. with the deck that I am playing, there are three characters called Lock, Shock and Barrel. If I can get all three of them played at the same location, when I move Shock, the other two can move with her for free. This saves me some move actions. There are also treasures which you can play at a discount, if you fulfill another condition. So, this game is a lot about knowing your deck well and making good use of the characteristics of your deck.

Oh, and there are different decks of cards. Each deck contains different locations, characters and treasures. So each deck has different characteristics.

One thing that I find is the game feels a little solitaire. The player interaction is limited and it feels like you are mostly trying to optimise your own moves. At the start of every turn, the start player can choose a common action that everyone can take - drawing cards, moving characters or collecting pumpkins, at the cost of one card. The player who fulfills a certain criteria can take the action for free, e.g. a player who has the most character cards in play, or the least number of cards. So, naturally if you are the start player, you will prefer to choose the action which you can do for free, or if not, at least an action that your opponent cannot do for free. But it seems this is the main way of player interaction.

In our game, Han went through his deck of cards very quickly, taking the opportunity to draw cards as much as possible. He developed his Halloweentown more efficiently. I struggled with reading the text and formulating a strategy. By the time I kind of had a feel for it, I was quite behind in terms of going through my deck, and at the second half of the game, I was getting repeat cards, i.e. cards I had already played, which I could not play again. I did not manage to make use of many of the card powers which are dependent on other cards, and lost the game decisively. But I was happy that I got Lock, Shock and Barrel out together, so that when I moved Shock, I could conveniently move Lock and Barrel with her. That was a mini achievement for me. It was handly to move them to another location, so that I could use the power of that location in the next round.

The three good friends (I assume), Lock, Shock and Barrel.

Neuroshima Hex is a science fiction themed game set in an apocalyptic future (I think). However, it is actually quite an abstract game at the same time. It can be played by 2 to 4 players. Han and I played two two-player games, using different factions in the game.

You get a board with a play area in the middle made up of 19 hexes. You get a set of tiles representing the faction you are playing. You have an HQ, you have your soldiers, your modules (which enhance the abilities of your soldiers), and you also have some special action tiles in the mix. The objective of the game is to destroy, or damage as much as possible, your opponent's HQ. At the start of the game, you and your opponent place your HQ on the board. Every turn, you draw 3 tiles randomly, and must play two of them. You can play soldiers and modules onto the board, or you can play special action tiles, e.g. some allow you to move a tile, some allow you to trigger a battle, some allow you to throw a grenade to kill a soldier/module and all those next to him/it. Soldiers have different abilities, e.g. shoot (from long range), hand-to-hand fighting, block bullets, neutralise an enemy etc. They also have a number to indicate the order of battle resolution. Soldiers with number 3 (symbolising speed, I guess) attack first, before soldiers with number 2 (and eventually 1) can do so. So, for most of the game, you are playing tiles and setting up for the next battle. Battles occur when a battle tile is played, or when the board fills up. When this happens, you resolve the attacks step by step, with the number 3 characters first, then 2, 1 and finally 0 (the HQ's are 0 and they attack enemies in adjacent spaces).

The green and red factions. Sorry I don't remember their names. The tile at the top is the red HQ, and the one near the bottom right is my green HQ. On the soldier tiles, the longish triangles mean ranged attack, and the short triangles are melee attack. Some attack in multiple directions, some cause double damage (double triangles), some attack twice (e.g. with both speed 2 & 1). Some have double health (the plus sign), i.e. need to be hit twice before being killed. The red tile with a circle just below the red HQ is a module. This module is giving the three adjacent soldiers an additional ranged attack.

Yellow and blue factions. The two HQ's are next to each other!

The game has a lot of calculations, not as in mathematics, but as in "if I place this soldier here, then when a battle occurs he will kill that soldier, but will in turn be killed by this other soldier, and then this space will be vacant and that enemy soldier in that far corner will be able to shoot at my HQ". So there is quite a bit to study, like a logic puzzle. However, at the same time, your choices are limited by the 3 tiles that you draw. So you just try to do the best that you can with whichever two of the tiles that you (must) choose to play. To some extent, you are dependent on luck in drawing the right tiles in a timely manner. If you are always unlucky with your tile draws and keep drawing the wrong tiles at the wrong times, then it will be hard for you. However, everyone has a finite set of tiles (like in Samurai), which will usually be used up or almost used up. So, weak tiles now mean stronger tiles later. This mitigates the luck factor somewhat.

The factions are colourful (not literally). Each faction has its own strengths and weaknesses, and its own characteristics, which matches the back story well. Each faction will need to be played differently to be effective. In this, the design is done well to match with the theme.

I lost both games. In both games neither HQ were destroyed (reduced from 20 health points to zero), but mine was damaged more severely. In the second game I had a good start, drawing many good soldiers early on. However the balancing factor came into play, as in the second half of the game I did not have many good soldiers to draw anymore, and the tide turned. So Han came back from behind to win the second game. This is one game where I should not always insist on playing green, because green is but one of the four factions, and since each faction is unique, one should try them all.

Hannibal: Rome vs Carthage

On 30 Nov 2007, I finally got to try the highly regarded and long out-of-print but recently reprinted Hannibal: Rome vs Carthage. Most people only know the Hannibal played by Anthony Hopkins in the movie Silence of the Lambs (and the sequels and prequels). But Hannibal is also a famous Carthaginian general in history who fought many battles against the Romans, before Rome became the dominant power in the Mediterranean.

Hannibal: Rome vs Carthage is a card-driven wargame, like Wilderness War (which I own since 2003 but still have not played). I can probably count this as the first pure card-driven wargame that I have played. Other card-driven wargames that I have played are Twilight Struggle (about Russia and USA trying to exert their influence around the globe during the Cold War), Hammer of the Scots and Crusader Rex. Twilight Struggle is card-driven, but is not quite like the typical card-driven wargame. It is actually quite difficult to classify this game. It has a bit of a Euro feel, because of the area-majority mechanism, and how the pieces represent an abstract concept of influence instead of actual armies. Hammer of the Scots and Crusader Rex, although being card-driven, are mainly block wargames. Most of their cards are generic 1 / 2 / 3 numbered cards, and only a few are events, unlike a typical card-driven wargame where each card has a number and an event or special power. So, to me, and my opponent (who else but) Han, this is a new foray.

Han played the Romans while I played the Carthaginians

The game is played over nine rounds. A number of cards are dealt to each player at the start of each round, and the players take turns to play their cards. All possible actions are determined by what cards you have. You use your cards to exert political influence, to activate your generals (who are needed to lead armies into battle), and to trigger special events. When activating your generals, you are constrained by how good your generals are. A good general like Hannibal can be activated using any card. A so-so general needs a value 2 or value 3 card to be activated. A lousy general must be activated using a value 3 card. There are a few possible ways to win (or lose) the game, but primarily you win by having more political influence around the Mediterranean than your opponent, or you conquer his capital.

At the start of the game, the Carthaginians start with all 5 of their generals. Rome only has 2 mediocre ones. Both players have about equal influence. Carthage controls North Africa and Spain. Rome controls Italy and the islands. Hannibal is in Spain. Usually Hannibal comes terrorising the Italian Peninsula. Carthage is initially strong, so in the first half of the game the Romans are on the defensive. Later, on round 6, the Romans get a powerful general, Scipio Africanus, the match for Hannibal, and with him, 10 army units. So, in this game there is a turn of the tide, like in Axis & Allies: Battle of the Bulge.

There is a lot of historical flavour in the game. Romans have naval supremacy, and this is represented by the Carthaginians having to roll a die every time they move by sea. The sea move may fail, and in the worst case they may lose their whole army. The events themselves add a lot of flavour to the game, e.g. Syracuse will likely revolt, because there's such a card in the deck. The change of Roman consuls every round represents Rome being a republic ruled by a Senate. The Senate changes consuls regularly to avoid military leaders getting too powerful. And of course there are elepants too (for the Carthaginians)! The rules are a lot to get through. There are quite many special situations, or exceptions handling specific aspects. This adds flavour, but also makes learning the game harder. This game is probably considered one of the easier games to learn among wargames, but to the average Eurogamer this is challenging. Not impossible, but challenging.

There are few armies and few generals in Hannibal: Rome vs Carthage. Fighting battles is an important way to win but not the only way. The political game is also important. Battles are but a means to an end, i.e. to force your opponent to lose political influence due to his soldiers getting killed in battle. Even if you win a battle, your casualties can also cause you to lose political influence. Your people don't like having their sons getting killed in battle. You don't get many new soldiers. Every round, the Carthaginians can get probably four new units, and the Romans five. Some event cards give you one or two units. You need to conserve your men. This is not Axis & Allies where you just build and build cheap infantry and send them to die as cannon fodder protecting your tanks. The Carthaginians only have 5 generals. The Romans will usually have 3 or 4 at any one time. This may actually be a more accurate representation of a war, compared to other war-themed games I have played. Generals and soldiers are a limited resource to be managed carefully.

The generals and the soldiers. Hannibal is in the centre of this photo.

The political game is somewhat interesting, but by itself I don't think it can stand. You can play cards to place political control markers, but you cannot flip a political control marker easily to your side. You can do it only if your soldiers are stepping on it. This makes an interesting consideration, and ties the battle / army movement aspect of the game with the political control aspect. At the end of each round, you count how many provinces you control, and if you have less than your opponent, you have to remove a number of political control markers equal to the difference. So this is "poor gets poorer". Some event cards and some generals' special abilities have impact on the political game too.

Battles in this game are resolved using a unique battle card system. I think it is unique. I have not seen this in other games I have played. There are many people who do not like this aspect, but it has its supporters too. After one play of the game, I like it so far. It's a quick and simple way to resolve battles. There is luck, of course, but I think it is acceptable. Whenever a battle is to be fought, you add up factors such as your general's strength, number of units, your political influence in that region, etc. This tells you how many battle cards you receive for the battle. Your opponent does the same. During battle, the attacker plays a card (e.g. left flank, right flank, frontal assult, double envelopment, probe), and the defender must play a matching card, or lose. Very simple. Naturally, if you get many cards of one type, then it is like your opponent has less or none of this type.

Another aspect I like about the battle system is the casualty concept. The longer a battle drags on, the more likely that more soldiers will be killed (both yours and your opponent's, and regardless of who wins the battle eventually). So, sometimes maybe it is a good thing to do to intentionally lose early, to minimise your losses.

The strategy cards that are dealt out at the start of every round.

In our game, as the Carthaginians, I brought Hannibal to Italy quickly, by land, across the Alps, to go beat up any Roman soldiers I could catch. Hannibal brought along two other generals, and these three guys kept busy visiting different towns terrorising the populace (stepping on political influence markers), so that I could "convince" the people to support Carthage (play cards to flip over the political control marker). I didn't bother with sieging any cities, even if there were Roman soldiers hiding inside. I had no patience. Han's Romans were defensive, but were also quick to grab any opportunity to intercept or attack my Carthaginian armies when they split up. However, Hannibal is just too strong for the Romans, and the Romans lost one battle after another. I guess that's historically accurate. Han sent some men to North Africa and did some damage (in terms of political conversion). I converted many of the Italian provinces. Battle casualties continued to haunt the Romans and they kept losing political influence. At the end of Round 5 (I think), the Romans conceded defeat, because they only had one political control marker left on the map. Scipio Africanus never had the chance to come into play at the start of Round 6.

We played one important rule wrong. After battles, you lose half the number of political control markers as your casualties, rounded down. We played 1-to-1 loss, which made things very very tough for the Romans. Since there is a "poor gets poorer" effect, things went into a downward spiral. Well, this is Han and my first time playing a card-driven wargame, so it really is a learning game. I look forward to play again, this time as the Romans. It will be a big challenge to stop or hinder Hannibal.

I don't have a firm opinion of Hannibal: Rome vs Carthage yet. I've enjoyed my first play, but maybe it's because I'm playing the "fun" side with Hannibal. I have yet to appreciate the game more to decide whether it's a game I really like and want to buy a copy too. And, of course, I need to know the rules better. I think I will need another one or two games to really get familiar with the game and then I can appreciate it much better. Perhaps Han and I should make this our "Game of the Month" (not literally) like Hammer of the Scots, and learn it well, and play it more, and then be able to appreciate all the intricacies.

One thing that really attracted me to this game is the graphic design by Mike Doyle. I like most of his work. Very classy. The box design, the rulebook, the card backs. However we found the map to be rather busy, and can at times be distracting. The map was not drawn by Mike Doyle though. I have a feeling that my urge to buy the game is more because of seeing Mike Doyle's graphic design than because of the game itself. So I shall give myself a few more plays before making up my mind. However, it seems the game is selling so well that it may go out of print again soon. I hope I'm not too late if I decide to buy it.

hidden information

When I pondered the mechanisms for randomness in boardgames (and cardgames), another topic came to me and I thought it would be interesting (well, at least to me) to explore the mechanisms for hiding information in boardgames. When I say hidden information I mean information that is known to one or more players but unknown to one or more other players. I am not referring to information that noone knows.

So, what kind of information is hidden in games? (maybe I should call this secret information) Money (e.g. St Petersburg, Modern Art), available strength or power or choices (Tigris & Euphrates, San Juan, Ingenious, Reef Encounter), identities (Werewolf, Citadels). Having hidden information in a game increases unpredictability, because you don't know what hand your opponent has, and you have to guess based on known information, or how he/she behaves. Sometimes you make moves which are not directly beneficial to you in order to confuse your opponents about your true intentions. You bluff. Bluffing is crucial in Poker. Having hidden information adds some chaos in games, and spices things up a bit. Sometimes it is necessary to prevent a game from becoming a tedious mathematical exercise, to avoid analysis paralysis. Sometimes it is the core of the game. Werewolf would not be a game at all if the villagers know who the werewolves are. In Citadels, the core of the game is choosing characters. When the hand of cards reach you, you can tell what are missing, and you'll know what characters the players before you may have chosen. After you choose a character, you pass the remaining cards to the next player, and he or she will have slightly less information to work on (one card less). When you choose a character, you can think about what information you are releasing to the next player, and how he or she will react to that. However I have not gone to that level of depth of play myself. I just think of what bad things they can do to me if I don't take so-and-so card, or what good things they can do to themselves if I don't take another so-and-so card. In Vinci, where victory points are open information, sometimes people complain that this causes analysis paralysis in the final round when all players are trying to calculate all the possible combinations of moves that can increase their own score and decrease their opponents' scores.

Some types of information are hidden in some games but not in others. E.g. money. In Medici, money is open information. In fact money = victory points because the winner is determined by how rich you are. Everyone knows exactly how much everyone else has. You know who is leading and who you need to be wary of. In St Petersburg, money is hidden, so sometimes you really are not sure how much money your opponents have and whether they'll be able to afford the craftsmen / buildings / nobles / upgrades available on the board.

There are also situations where some information is known to more than one player but not to others. There are some games with very interesting combinations of hidden / open information and how information is communicated. In Cluedo and Mystery of the Abbey, which are both deduction games where players gradually collect small pieces of information and use an elimination process to find the murderer, each player starts with a roughly equal amount of information. During the course of the game, the players try to extract information from others, while also trying to release as little information as possible to others. As the game progresses, it becomes harder and harder to remember what information you have released and to which opponent, or what cards each opponent is holding (so that you can avoid asking the wrong question which will only give you information that you already know). In Lord of the Rings, a cooperative game, with the Sauron expansion, the hobbits will not know what cards Sauron is holding. They also cannot see what cards each other is holding, although they want to communicate this information to one another so that they can plan together to beat Sauron. However, Sauron is right there at the table listening to any information exchange. This poses a tricky challenge to the hobbits.

Some games have more hidden information, some have less, or none. Theoretically, games with little or no hidden information will tend to require more skill and are more challenging to master. Think of Chess, Go, the GIPF series. Games with more hidden information will tend to be more chaotic and tend to be lighter games. E.g. Ca$h 'n Gun$, Poison. However, in practice, having much or little hidden information is not really a big factor in determining whether a game is heavy or light. The more dominant factor is randomnes / luck. Blokus is an open information game. You can see exactly what pieces your opponents have left. Yet Blokus can be played in a very relaxed way. It can be played with much thinking and planning too. I guess it is very much up to the players. Coloretto is also an open information game, but is a light game. This is because of the luck / randomness introduced by the card draw. Monopoly is also open information (I think). Gulo Gulo and Villa Paletti are open information games, but you'd hardly associate them with Chess. On the other hand, Tigris & Euphrates has hidden information, i.e. your hand of 6 tiles, which is often crucial when it comes to the wars or the civil wars (more layman terms for the official terms used in the game - external and internal conflicts). Yet it is quite a deep and challenging game.

What are the mechanisms for hiding information?

• Cards - This is probably the most handy way of hiding information. You can hold many cards in your hand, even for games like Ticket To Ride where you will often have many many many cards. Just imagine playing Ticket To Ride using tiles instead of cards. It would be a nightmare. For almost all card games, cards are used as a mechanism for hiding information. There are exceptions, like Coloretto.
  Cards are the most convenient way of hiding information. This is Mystery Rummy: Jack the Ripper

• Tiles - Scrabble, Mahjong, Ingenious, Acquire. For some, you have a rack on which to put the tiles. Tiles are often required to be of a certain shape, so that they can fit onto the board. Otherwise using cards would probably be a more convenient and cheaper way of hiding information. Pieces in Lord of the Rings - The Confrontation can probably be considered tiles. They stand up with the text side only visible to the controlling player.
• Tokens - Order tokens in A Game of Thrones are placed face down on the board. The backs of the tokens show which player they belong to, but other players will not know the order placed. Aladdin's Dragons also uses tokens in a similar fashion.
  A Game of Thrones. The command tokens are the round ones seen on the map (face-down, only showing the player colour and icon), and also on the lower right of the photo (face-up, showing the actual commands).

• Blocks - I'm mainly thinking of block war games like Hammer of the Scots, Rommel in the Desert and Crusader Rex. Your blocks have information only on one side, the side facing you. You only reveal your blocks when you are about to start a battle. Blocks are also a nifty way to keep track of information, i.e. the strength of your troops. Near the four edges of a block are different numbers of pips, indicating the strength level of the block. The block stands upright, and the edge on top incidates the strength level of the block.
  Crusader Rex, a block war game.

• Screens - Tigris & Euphrates, Aladdin's Dragons, Reef Encounter, Keythedral, Modern Art, Samurai, Samurai Swords. Many of Richard Breese's games feature screens. One advantage of screens is they can be used to hide different types of components - cubes, tokens, tiles, coins. They provide an area where you can just drop these components, without needing to arrange them neatly like Scrabble tiles or cards to make sure they are not visible to others. You can just carelessly drop them behind your screen. The bad thing is if you are too careless and tip over your screen... oops!
• Time / Memory - The (not unlimited) capacity of the human brain in memorising and tracking information is a mechanism for "hiding" information. When playing Tigris & Euphrates, technically you can watch and track what cubes your opponents collect. But it is so tedious that people just do not bother. Instead, you just get the general feeling that a certain opponent has many cubes of so-and-so colour but not many of another colour. In Modern Art, you can track how much money everyone has, because every everyone knows who paid whom how much and for which painting at every auction. But how many people actually do that? In many games, victory points get this type of treatment too. There is some tracking of victory points, but you are not exactly sure who is in front and who is trailing. In Carcassonne, you do track your points throughout the game, but the farmer scoring at game end usually has a big impact, and there is also scoring for incomplete features at game end, so sometimes you can't be sure exactly who is winning. This helps to discourage detailed calculation. Most people prefer not to bother and just play from the gut. In Through the Desert, you can track and calculate the scores of everyone at any one time. This is a open information game too. There is no score track provided, but you can calculate the scores if you want to. But most people don't bother. You just use your general gut feel to tell you who is doing well and who isn't. That's the beauty of the laziness of the human brain.

One game mechanism that is related to hidden information is blind bidding. E.g. players secretly bid an amount of money for a particular privilege, like being the start player for the round. Some people don't like blind bidding. I don't hate it, but I'm not particularly fond of it either. I guess it makes me feel a lack of control, and makes me feel I have to make a blind guess. There is blind bidding in Modern Art (bidding for a painting, of course), Aladdin's Dragons (bidding for the right to use a location), Die Macher (turn order), Felix: The Cat in the Sack (in this case, "blind" in the sense that you don't really know what you're getting), Samurai Swords (turn order), A Game of Thrones (the right to claim the throne, fiefdom, espionage, and contribution to protect the realm from the wildings).

After writing this blog entry, I realise that the amount of hidden information has little correlation to whether I like a game of not. I had thought I'd prefer games with less hidden information.

fascination about war

Why do people like to play wargames, or war themed games? Why do people like to play games about killing people, destroying things? Why do we let children play with toy guns, toy swords? Michelle doesn't allow me to have any toy guns in the house, not even when I made my home-made version of Ca$h 'n Gun$. I had thought about buying RM2 toy guns from the nearby shop, but Michelle said I can use my finger as a gun and toy guns are not necessary. Who am I to argue with the boss.

And yet there many wargames and war themed boardgames (and toy guns and toy swords too). There are many people who like these boardgames. Why this fascination about war? Are we glorifying war? Sun Tzu's Art of War is worshipped by some in the business world. There are many people interested about historical battles. There are people re-enacting battles, like battles during the American Civil War. There are war movies. There are lots of computer games about warfare. Are humans just naturally violent and competitive?

I must admit I myself have an interest in warfare and historical battles. Not exactly a die-hard fan that can tell the difference between a Panzer and a Tiger, but at least I know these are German tanks during World War II. Before I became a true boardgame hobbyist, I played boardgames now and then, and at the time I thought Axis & Allies (about World War II) and Samurai Swords (about Sengoku Jidai or warring period in feudal Japan) were the best boardgames around. I thought the best and most challenging boardgames were all about warfare. I bought Advanced Third Reich, a hex and counter wargame (i.e. a true wargame by the common definition in the boardgame hobby), and to my surprise it was much more complex than Axis & Allies, and it was totally beyond me. I made two or three attempts to read the rulebook, but never succeeded. I haven't even started reading the scenario book. So, my copy of Advanced Third Reich is now yellowing, and even some pieces have been damaged by my daughter Shee Yun (this incident triggered me to move all boardgames to the upper shelves), and it is still unplayed. At that moment I thought these wargames were the pinnacle of boardgaming. To some die-hard fans of wargames (known as grognards), they probably are.

People who play war games (I'm using the term loosely here to mean any games with a war theme) will explain that they are not violent people, that they are pacifists; and I believe this is true. Some people say they play war games out of interest in history. Some people say when they play war games it is in memory of the people who had gone before us, who had sacrificed their lives for others. Some people have other reasons for this interest in war games.

I like war games for the intellectual challenge. When a nation or a people is at war, it is the most desperate situation for them. They exhaust all means of defeating their enemies. Desperation brings out the genious in people, in new technology (like computing and radar during World War II), in new tactics. Desperation also brings out the worst in people, in the ruthlessness and immorality of means to defeat one's enemies. The ends justify the means. To me, playing a game (not necessarily a war game) allows me to explore all means (well, at least within the rules) of defeating your opponent(s). It's a game, so it's OK to be nasty and ruthless and pitiless and evil as long as you are still following the rules. It's an avenue for doing something you probably wouldn't do in real life, or probably would not have the opportunity to do in real life (like directing a war effort). So, there is fun in a role-playing sense, pushing infantry across the board, driving tanks over your enemies' dead bodies, bombing Tokyo with your fleet of bombers, and also killing William Wallace (the Scottish independence war hero depicted in the Oscar-winning movie Braveheart), sacking Constantinople, burning Rome, assasinating a daimyo (Japanese feudal lord) with a ninja, etc.

Having a war theme is not necessary for creating competition and intellectual challenge. In fact there are many challenging and very good Eurogames that are not about war. Well, almost all Eurogames are not about war. War themed games are not popular in Germany, the birth place of Eurogames. However, a war theme does add a unique flavour to a game. There is this excitement, and anxiousness or nervousness, and tension. We're talking about life and death here. What can be more serious? Also war games can give a primitive kind of satisfaction, of being able to crush your opposition by brute force. I guess there is still a bit of cro-magnon man in us civilised modern humans. And of course if you win by clever maneuvers and good planning, it satisfies the part of you which is the intelligent and civilised modern human.

Axis & Allies: Battle of the Bulge is one of the recent war games that I have played. This is a battle between the Germans and the Americans and British in Europe during World War II.

I have learnt a lot of history from war games. It would be lame to justify playing war games by saying that it teaches history. People don't play boardgames to learn history. Those who say so are just giving an excuse. Learning some history is just a fun "side-effect". I learnt from playing Hammer of the Scots that a lot of details in the movie Braveheart are plainly wrong. Fabrication. The movie is based on a true story, based on history, but they didn't tell you how much was made up. Fiction. Thankfully I learnt this after I have watched the movie, because it is one of my favourite movies. If I were a historian watching the movie, I'd probably cringe and cry insolence. I learnt about World War II in the Pacific arena through Axis & Allies: Pacific and Pacific Victory (and maybe Axis & Allies: Guadalcanal too later). I have read about this period through a Japanese comic series Zipang (by Kaiji Kawaguchi 川口开治, translated as 次元舰队 in Chinese). It is very interesting to me how these two different games portray the same period of history in their own ways. Sometimes I wonder what my grandparents were doing during that time.

War games is just one type of boardgame. I don't play only war games, and I am happy that there are many other themes and many interesting mechanisms in boardgames. But war games will always be one type of boardgame that I enjoy. I don't see myself getting into hex and counter wargames, or miniature / tabletop wargames like Warhammer or DBA (I don't even remember the full name, but it is also a game with beautifully sculpted and painted miniatures). But I'll probably keep buying new releases in the Axis & Allies series. I just won't expect my wife to be playing these with me. She had nightmares about ashigaru spearmen chasing her after we played Samurai Swords.

Final food for thought: Chess is a war game too.

mechanisms for randomness

One fine day, I spent some time thinking about what are the mechanisms used in boardgames to create randomness. It's one of those things that a boardgame hobbyist (a.k.a. geek) does. I tried to distill all the mechanisms that I know of down to the basics. I tried to categorise them. I came up with a list. But first, let's define "randomness". In the context of this blog entry, I define randomness in games as anything that players (1) mostly cannot predict, and (2) mostly cannot control. E.g. what cards you draw from the deck, the outcome of a die roll. This is as opposed to something that a player can predict or can manipulate, something that is deterministic. E.g. in Puerto Rico if you take the role of craftsman and produce lots of corn, the player next to you who also produced lots of corn will probably then take the captain role so that he can ship all his corn for victory points before you can do the same. In Pirate's Cove, you can discourage others from fighting you by upgrading your ship to be the most powerful ship in the Caribbean.

Randomness is important in a game, because without it, there is no game. If you can predict and control everything in a game, then it is not a game. It is a machine, with a known input and a known output. Chess is a perfect information game, but there is still randomness (well, at least according to this blog post) because you cannot always predict what your opponent will do. If you think about it, starting a game without knowing who will win is randomness. Randomness is important in making one game different from the next. It is the spice. It creates variety. It creates surprises. Games with more randomness can level the playing field between experienced players and newer players, and thus making it more fun for both because everyone has a more or less equal chance of winning.

After thinking about this, I find that there are only four basic mechanisms for randomness in games. Every mechanism in every game (well, I guess I can only say so for the games that I have played) that creates randomness can be categorised as one of these four. Here they are:

Dice

One of the most basic mechanisms for creating randomness. With one normal (i.e. not unbalanced) six-sided die, each of the six numbers are equally likely to appear. When you roll this die, you expect an average of 3.5, because assuming you roll many many times, the results should average out to be 3.5. There are dice with more than six sides. There are dice with less than that. Dice in Samurai Swords and Axis & Allies: Battle of the Bulge have 12 sides. There are games that use more than one die. The Settlers of Catan and Monopoly use two dice. Can't Stop uses four. Risk Express, Pickomino, Yspahan use a lot of dice. When more than one die is thrown, you can calculate probabilities. With two dice, 7 should appear much more frequently than 2 or 12. The possible outcomes are not equally likely anymore, and you can use probabilities to guide your decisions. Just remember probabilities are just that - probabilities. In the long run the results will reflect the probabilities, but your game may not be long enough for that to happen. So don't whine when you build your settlements next to 6 or 8 spaces in The Settlers of Catan, but noone throws 6 or 8 throughout most of the game.

Wargames often use dice as a mechanism to manage probabilities. Often you throw dice to fight. E.g. in Axis & Allies, an attacking bomber scores a hit if you roll four or less. So the probability of a bomber being successful in an attack is 67%. In Hammer of the Scots, a full strength unit (i.e. your soldiers have not been killed or injured yet) rolls more dice than a depleted unit, and thus can score multiple hits with one attack.

Some games use special dice. Lord of the Rings has a six sided die, showing different numbers of different icons, and even has a blank side. Pickomino's dice have numbers 1 to 5, and 6 is replaced by a worm. Die Macher's dice are numbered 0, 1, 1, 2, 2, 3. By having special dice, these games customise the probabilities and possible outcomes to suit the game.

Very colourful dice in Risk Express.

Even with standard dice, there can be interesting ways of using them. In Struggle of Empires, when fighting a battle, you roll two dice, and your strength is the difference between the two dice. So your possible outcomes range from 0 to 5. 1 is most likely (10/36 chance), followed by 2 (8/36), 0 & 3 (both 6/36), 4 (4/36) and 5 (2/36). In Yspahan, you throw 9 dice (you can pay to add more), and then group them by numbers, and then these groups of dice are assigned to up to six possible actions that all players can choose for this round. Sometimes when the numbers are evenly distributed, all six actions will be available. Sometimes when the results are lopsided, then some actions may not be available. This is quite innovative.

An important aspect of dice, and dice-like mechanisms, is that there is no memory. Every die roll is independent of the previous roll, and no history is kept. If you roll a 6 for ten consecutive rolls, it does not make rolling a 6 more or less likely in your next roll. The probability is still 1 out of 6. You cannot take known history into account when determining the probability of the next die roll. This is easy to misunderstand, because naturally people will think: What are the chances of rolling a 6 for eleven consecutive rolls?! So, those people at roulette tables at casinos who record past results are not behaving rationally, at least based on my theory here.

There are other mechanism which are not dice, but behave the same way, and I categorise them together with dice. E.g. the spinner in Twister.

Cards

The other commonly used mechanism for creating randomness is cards. The most important difference between cards and dice is the memory element. Consider a standard card deck. If you already have three aces in your hand, then the chances of drawing the fourth one from the deck is quite small. So the memory element exists because once you draw a card from the deck, then there is a smaller probability of that type of card appearing again, or in the case that every card in a deck is unique, then the card will never appear again. The "memory" is "reset" only when the deck is reshuffled. This memory element is important for many games.

One of the mini expansions for The Settlers of Catan replaces the two dice with a deck of cards. The cards are mostly just numbers from 2 to 12, representing the possible outcomes of throwing two dice, and the 7s appear more than the 2s and 12s, reflecting the probabilities. I think there are some special event cards too. By replacing the dice with cards, this expansion tries to make the "die rolls" more "fair", i.e. you are less likely to get a situation where a lot of 4s get "rolled" and no 8s get "rolled" at all. Different people may have different opinions about whether this is good or bad. I am just using this example to illustrate how the memory element is being used. This mini expansion is using the memory element to try to make the "die rolls" more "normal".

Using a deck of cards allows much flexibility for the game designer to control probabilities and the distribution of possible outcomes. The number of cards in the deck, the distribution of cards within the deck, the hand size of players, how many cards are drawn every turn, are all factors that determine randomness. In Princes of Florence, if you draw cards from the deck you draw five and choose one. This makes it less likely that you will be stuck with a card that is completely useless to you. So the game is basically trying to minimise bad luck to you due to randomness, and is trying to give you more choices. In Bohnanza, the more valuable cards occur less frequently (e.g. red beans) than the "cheap" cards (e.g. wax beans).

When playing a game with cards, you should make use of the memory nature of cards. In Ticket To Ride, if you remember that many green trains cards have been picked up by your opponents or have already been played by your opponents, then you probably should not be trying to claim a new long green route.

There are many mechanisms in games that are of the same nature as cards, although physically they are not cards. Mahjong is one example. I have actually seen a card version of Mahjong. That really saves space, and is much more quiet. But of course you won't get the enjoyment of shuffling mahjong tiles the traditional way, the "swimming" way. The tiles in Carcassonne is actually also the card mechanism. If you are like me and remember that there are exactly only two cloisters with roads (in the base game), then if both have appeared, you don't bother hoping to draw another one. The tiles in Tigris & Euphrates is a card mechanism, but since there are only 4 types of tiles in the bag, you can't really keep track of how many are drawn and it's quite difficult to predict what will come next. The tiles in Scrabble is also a card mechanism. Similarly, tiles in Ingenious, event tiles in Lord of the Rings (if you have drawn a lot of good ones, you'd better not dilly-dally anymore and quickly finish the scenario before you start drawing one event tile, i.e. usually bad, after another), building tiles in Attika (as the game progresses, you gradually narrow down what are remaining in your stacks), treasure tiles as well as forest tiles in Tikal.

In addition to being a mechanism for creating randomness, cards are also a very convenient mechanism for hiding information from your opponents.

Tiles in Taluva is basically a card mechanism, but in this game the luck element in the tiles is not very high, and also it is quite difficult to remember tiles (i.e. card counting). Well, at least I never bothered to do so.

The event tiles in Lord of the Rings (the square tiles in the middle of the photo with dark green backs) are a card mechanism. This photo shows Lord of the Rings with the Battlefields expansion.

Players' Intentions

I hesitated a little before deciding to add this to the list. It is a fair assumption that players play to win, and will make decisions that improve their chances of winning. That is something predictable. What is not so predictable is what your opponent(s) considers as the best move at a specific point in the game. He or she may feel that a certain move is the best, which you do not agree with. He or she may have some grand scheme behind that one move that you are not aware of. There may be some ulterior motive. Maybe he likes you and wants to let you win. Or maybe he hates you for beating him so soundly in the previous game that he is now working harder to make sure you lose than to make sure he wins (jerk).

Taking a step back, I realise that players' intentions are a random factor in every game! Well, at least in non-solitaire games. You won't be able to fully predict or control your opponents' moves. If you could, there is no point in the game.

Randomness caused by players' intentions is commonly called "player chaos" in the boardgame hobby. Some games allow you to better guess your opponents' decisions. Some games make it very difficult to predict your opponents' moves. Games with mostly or all open information are usually the former, e.g. in San Juan, if you see your opponent hurriedly building 4 or 5 cheap indigo plants, he probably has a guild hall in his hand. In many games you can observe what your opponent is doing and more or less guess what he is trying to do, what is his strategy, or what kind of information he is hiding (e.g. cards in his hands, how much hidden money he has left). In some games it is harder, e.g. in Category 5 (a.k.a. 6 Nimmt) it's hard to predict what cards your opponents have and what they will play. In some games guessing your opponent depends on how good he is. Good opponents may sometimes be easier to guess because he knows the game well. A new player may be quite clueless. In some games guessing your opponent well requires knowing him well, e.g. some people just enjoy being the assassin or the thief in Citadels, or some people just want to be them to protect themselves.

Hidden information in a common mechanism that can be used to hide player intentions. Your cards in Jambo, the number of cubes (i.e. your score) behind your screen in Tigris & Euphrates, your ticket cards in Ticket To Ride. Maybe this is another topic I can explore in the future.

Physics

The last thing that I can think of, which probably will not apply to most boardgames, and will only apply to dexterity games, is physics. Most boardgames are about information, and the physical components just represent information. Boardgames can easily be implemented as a computer program. Then you just have pixels on the screen instead of physical components representing and presenting information. Physics does not come into play in these cases. But when it comes to games like Carrom and Loopin' Louie, physics do come into play. The strength of your finger flicking the disc, the friction of the table, the slight tilt of the table etc.

Now let's see how my hypothesis can be applied to my collection of games. I'll mostly skip the 3rd and 4th, player intentions and physics, since the former is applicable to all games, and the latter is applicable to very few games. Let's see how card and dice apply to some of my games.

• Acquire - The tiles are a card mechanism.
• Age of steam - Has dice.
• A Game of Thrones - Although you have cards, everyone has a fixed hand, and the key element of randomness is actually player intentions, because you don't know which card your opponent will play. Also you don't know when your ally will backstab you.
• Amun-Re - Province card = card mechanism. Worshipping (or stealing from) Amun-Re = player intentions. I guess blind bidding = player intentions.
• Ark - It's a card game, so obviously...
• Blokus - No card, no dice. Only player intentions. This is a perfect information game, like Chess, and yet it is a very newbie-friendly game. I guess it depends on how seriously you want to take it.
• Ca$h n Gun$ - Definitely player intentions, plus a bit of card mechanism in the 5 money cards revealed each turn.
• Caylus - I can't think of any randomness other than player intention. No, wait, the first six pink public buildings are set up in a random order. And I think that's the only randomness.
• Chicken Cha Cha Cha - Card.
• En Garde - Card, and memory element is important because the card deck is so small.
• Gulo Gulo - Card.
• Hammer of the Scots - Cards you draw at the start of every year, and dice during battles and some events.
• Hansa - Card mechanism, for the distribution of goods at each city.
• LOTR: Confrontation - Mostly player intentions, but you can say there's a bit of card mechanism, in terms of how your opponent's characters gradually get revealed. The cards in this game doesn't really have the card mechanism that I'm talking about, because you know exactly what your opponent has in his hand. It is his intention that you have to guess.
• Modern Art - Definitely card.
• Monopoly - Mostly dice, and that's probably why many Eurogamers dislike it. Card too for the Chance and Community Chest card decks.
• Mykerinos - Card, in terms of what "lands" get drawn and how they are laid out at the start of every round.
• Power Grid - Card, for the power plants.
• Puerto Rico - Card, for the plantations. And that's the only random element, and the impact is not very big.
• Ra - Card.
• Risk - Lots of dice. Cards in terms of your card rewarded after a successful attack.
• Samurai - Card, for your hand of tiles.
• Through the Desert - There is some randomness in the setup, in where the oases are placed, and where the water holes of values 1 to 3 are placed. I guess you can say the setup has a card type randomness, in that if you've placed a 3-value water hole, then there are fewer 3-value water holes for you to place. The game itself doesn't have any dice or card type randomness.
• Traumfabrik / Hollywood Blockbuster - Card.
• Villa Paletti - Here's one with physics.
• Wallenstein - Another one with physics. When you throw cubes into the cube tower, you will not know exactly how many will fall through and come out, and how many will be stuck inside.
• Yinsh - Perfect information game, i.e. only player intention.

Hey, my generalisation seems to work!

Axis & Allies Battle of the Bulge

On 10 Nov 2007 I played my second game of Axis & Allies: Battle of the Bulge. It was Han's first time. This time I played as the Axis. The last time when I played against Chee Seng I played the Allies.

Axis & Allies: Battle of the Bulge is about the famous Battle of the Bulge battle during World War 2, between Germany and the Allied forces. At the time the tide had turned and the Allies were gaining ground on Germany, after having landed in Normandy and liberated territories previously conquered by Germany. This battle was one of Germany's last major offensive operations, with the objective of capturing the port of Antwerp, thus cutting off the supply line of the Allies. In retrospect the objective was overly optimistic, even though the Germans were initially successful in this battle, having planned it well and used the element of surprise well. In the end, the Germans failed to capture Antwerp. They did create a bulge in the front line at one point, thus the name of the battle.

In this game, instead of setting the same goal as the Germans had in history, the designer Larry Harris gave the Axis player a different (and more realistic) goal - to outdo the Germans. You can say it is to create a bigger bulge than was achieved in real history. For the Allies, the goal is to prevent this from happening. The game is played over 8 rounds. The Axis wins if at the end of any round they capture 24 victory points worth of towns. Else the Allies win. The Axis start with a strong presence on the board, and also some reinforcements coming in the first few rounds of the game. The Allies start with little presence, but have more reinforcements coming. In the first four rounds, the weather is bad and aircraft cannot fly, but in the subsequent four rounds, aircraft comes into play. The Allies have an advantage in the air. There is a very clear change of momentum in the game. The Axis are strong at the start, and must utilise this advantage well and play aggressively. The Allies need to try to hold on for the first four rounds, balancing between conceding ground, falling back and regrouping, and at the same time trying to hold back the Axis and not let them advance too easily. The second half of the game is when the Allies see the tide turning. This is an interesting asymmetry.

One difference between Axis & Allies: Battle of the Bulge and other games in the Axis & Allies series (Axis & Allies, Axis & Allies: Europe, Axis & Allies: Pacific) is that you don't get to build new units. Instead, you have a more-or-less fixed timetable for when reinforcements will arrive at the scene. This is similar to Axis & Allies: D-Day, the only game in the series that I do not own. Another big difference is how casualties are handled. In the standard Axis & Allies fare, the defender decides which unit dies, and usually it'll be the poor cheap infantry. In Axis & Allies: Battle of the Bulge the casualty system assigns hits randomly. And not all units die when hit. Infantry, tanks and artillery are only forced to retreat if hit once, and die only when hit twice. There can be times when the same unlucky tank is hit more than twice (i.e. will be destroyed) and the joker next to it doesn't get a scratch. Or sometimes when you attack, your (incompetent) men end up destroying all those supplies and trucks that you are hoping to capture and neglect to kill that lone infantry guarding the supplies and trucks. This casualty system is interesting and I find it is in a way more realistic too.

Trucks and supplies are another important addition. You need supplies to attack and to move. Without supplies, your men (and tanks and artillery) cannot even return fire when shot at. They will be sitting ducks. So supplies are important. The Allies have more than enough supplies, but supplies can be a bit thin for the Axis. So far in my two games supplies have not yet been a major difficulty for the Axis, but it did provide some challenge. Trucks are important for transporting supplies, and also for transporting infantry and artillery to the front lines (otherwise they can only move one step at a time).

Overview of the initial setup of the game.

One of the three reinforcement sheets for the Allies. This has a mixture of British (biege) and American (green) units.

The cool black German reinforcements.

Aerial view of the initial setup.

Slightly up close and personal with the troops.

In our game, I (as the Axis) had some pretty good die rolls from the start. In contrast, Han's die rolls were not exactly auspicious, to put it in a nice way. He had lots of 11s (you need 6 or below to score a hit, since those were 12-sided dice). The Allies do not get to shoot in the first round, and can only move after all shots were fired. This is to represent the element of surprise that the Axis had. The Axis caused some major damage in the first round. In the next few rounds, the Axis offensive was quite successful, in some areas completely wiping out the Allied resistance. However, in some towns, notably one of the northern towns, Verviers, the Allied soldiers fought bravely, despite being outnumbered. The attacking Axis forces could not kill off the defenders or force all of them to retreat and vacate the town. Some of the defenders were very stubborn and held on to the important town (3 victory points). In round 5, the bombers and fighters arrived, providing much needed support to the Allied forces. Unfortunately it was too late. The Axis were already well poised to conquer the last few towns to score more than 24VP. The Allies did not have enough ground troops to stop the still strong Axis forces. In retrospect, the Allies probably should have conceded more ground earlier, and only left token defenders just to waste the Axis' supplies (you need to spend supplies to attack, even if only attacking one lone infantry). Han had underestimated the value & scarcity of his units. He probably should have retreated a bit more to regroup, rather than standing his ground. And the not-so-auspicious die rolls definitely didn't help. One heroic moment in the battle was when a lone British tank blitzed through a hole in the German front to recapture a small town. Tanks can blitz, i.e. move twice, by paying two supply tokens instead of one. This British tank created a zone of control (also a new concept, meaning any hex adjacent to any enemy combat unit) such that I had two hexes which had no retreat path, i.e. any units there being shot at and forced to retreat will have nowhere to retreat to, and will be destroyed instead. I paid dearly for my mistake in leaving a hole in my front line.

The bulge I created when my southern force wiped out the Allied defenders. Actually I'm not even sure whether the bulge should look like that. I hope I didn't get the front line marker placement rules wrong.

The brave British tank that broke through the German defenses to recapture the town of Houffalize.

I quite like Axis & Allies: Battle of the Bulge. There are some new interesting concepts introduced. There is an interesting asymmetry. So far it seems that the game is very difficult for the Allies. In both my games the Axis won, the first time by round 6, and the second time by round 5. Well, maybe for the first four rounds the Axis have the advantage, so it feels as if the game is much more difficult for the Allies to win. I suspect the game will often be decided by round 5 or round 6, and need not be played to the end of round 8. If the Axis are not near achieving their objective by then, they probably should concede defeat, because by then the advantage would be on the Allied side already. Maybe only very close games need to be played to round 8. Well, that's just my guess. I may be totally wrong.

The game (in my humble opinion after only 2 plays) seems to be more "fun" for the Axis, because you can (almost) mindlessly attack and cheer on your troops. However it may be more interesting for the Allies because that's when you need to think hard about how much ground to concede, how to plan your retreat, how to execute your counter-offensive, which towns to hold on to and which ones to give up. It seems to be more challenging to play the Allies.

Now I'm looking forward to the next game in the series, Axis and Allies: Guadalcanal. It is being released this month, and after reading some articles about it, it is already a must buy for me. I heard that the next Axis & Allies game that Larry Harris will make is going to be about Stalingrad. That will be for 2008 I guess.

the convenient gaming group: my wife

If you believe some of the people at www.boardgamegeek.com, boardgame geeks (I'm stereotyping here, saying that the average boardgame geek is male) will marry any woman as long as she is a gamer.

I am lucky to have a wife who enjoys boardgames. Michelle is not a boardgame geek like I am. She doesn't prowl www.boardgamegeek.com and www.boardgamenews.com every day. In fact, she doesn't visit these sites at all. She doesn't remember who designed which game. She sometimes replies to me saying "the same guy who designed Lord of the Rings?" because I always tell her so-and-so game is yet another Reiner Knizia game. She doesn't organise boardgame sessions. She sometimes joins to play. Sometimes she offers to play a game with me. Occasionally she tells me she feels like playing so-and-so game (or feels like playing a game), and I'll be going head over feels and heading to pick up whatever game it is she wants to play.

Certainly having a spouse who can enjoy boardgames is very convenient and helps to scratch that boardgaming itch. Coming from another perspective, playing boardgames together is a good activity to spend time together. Probably better than watching TV, or watching a movie, definitely better than roaming shopping centres aimlessly (which both of us hate). I remember a time when she was very much into Japanese TV series, and I was very much into PC games (before I got into boardgames). Both were pretty "solitaire" activities (quoting a much used term at www.boardgamegeek.com).

Michelle and I started playing boardgames regularly since around end of 2003 or early 2004, when I got into the hobby seriously. At the time we were in Taiwan and we visited the Witch House boardgame cafe regularly to try different boardgames. I gradually established a regular boardgame group when in Taiwan, and Michelle joined to play almost every time. After we returned to Malaysia, we still play regularly. Sadly I do not have a regular group now, unless you call two players (myself and my guest blogger Han) a group. Sometimes Michelle joins us to play. There were times when she played more, and times when she played less, mostly dictated by the arrival of our two children. Boardgames take a backseat. Now that our younger daughter is nearing one year old, things are getting easier and she is playing more games again.

Michelle's favourite games include Carcassonne (with the Inns & Cathedrals expansion), Ticket To Ride (and others in the series), the Mystery Rummy series (we've played about 200 games of Mystery Rummy: Jack the Ripper), andBlokus (we mostly use our Blokus set to play Blokus Duo, the 2-player only version). She tends to prefer playing card games, because they are shorter. With two young girls to take care of, that's natural. So, sometimes she is also reluctant to learn new games, and prefers to just play a game she already knows well. She is sometimes impatient when learning a game and wants to start straight-away and just learn along the way. Typical non-gamer behaviour, although I wouldn't say she's a non-gamer, since she plays so many games. I sometimes need to rein her in, at least long enough for me to cover the important points, else she'd say "you didn't tell me that!" when she loses. Recently she also enjoyed Risk Express, a quick dice game, which can be quite exciting at times. I think the excitement is inherent in rolling dice.

She wins a fair share of games. I usually have an advantage, because I'm the one who researches games, reads the rules, and teaches them to her, and of course I also play more games (with other friends too) than she does. But when it comes to a game that she is already familiar with and good at, she plays competitively and does well. I still remember we had a stretch of 10 games of Mystery Rummy: Al Capone and the Chicago Underworld, where she beat me in all 10 games. What are the chances of that? 1 in 1024. She also tends to win more than a fair share of San Juan.

20 Dec 2007. Michelle at the hospital waiting for the birth of our second daughter Chen Rui. Chen Rui was born on 21 Dec 2006.

One of the implications of having a gamer wife is when I buy games (or, more precisely, when I consider what games to buy from a long, long list of potential buys) I will specifically consider whether the games are suitable to be played as a two player game. Some games get some brownie points because Michelle may like them. Well, maybe I'm just giving myself excuses to buy more games. E.g. Ticket To Ride: Europe, Ticket To Ride: Marklin, Ticket To Ride: USA 1910 (because she likes the series), On the Underground (because Michelle lived in London for a few years), and games in the Mystery Rummy series. Well, I guess it's just practical to buy games that you think you will get the chance to play. Other than Michelle I have only one regular opponent, so it doesn't really make sense to buy games that are only playable (or only good) with 4 or more players. Well, sometimes I still cannot resist it if the game really really interests me.

Tips for having a convenient gaming group:

• Get married.
• Have kids. (long term investment)
• Let her win sometimes. (although sometimes I have difficulty making her lose)
• Patience. Sometimes it takes time to cultivate the interest in boardgames.
• Find games that she may like, or games with themes that she may like. You'll strike jackpot if you find a game that she falls in love with. Then she'll ask to play. For my case, that's Ticket To Ride, Carcassonne.
• Use the kids. Buy children's games, and convince her to play together with the children. Eventually children's games will (hopefully) "upgrade" to your boardgames.
• Live with it. She may never become a gamer, but at least you can set a secondary aim of having her accept your hobby. It helps if you also accept her hobby (or in case it is something like flower arrangement, which you probably won't ever be able to sincerely get into, then give her space and time for it).

And lastly, Michelle's colour is red.

card shuffling

How do you shuffle your cards? In my game collection, I have card games (Mystery Rummy series, Bohnanza, Lost Cities), cards games with some other components (San Juan, Settlers of Catan Card Game, Jambo), and boardgames with cards (Ticket To Ride, St Petersburg, Hacienda, Lord of the Rings). When I think about it, cards are a very clever mechanism that fulfill many purposes. They introduce luck and randomness and variability in games. They store information and define the boundaries of a game (or an aspect of it) and probabilities of those events / resources / buildings / powers appearing in a game. They are a convenient way to hide information from your opponents. Some card decks control the flow of a game, e.g. the cards in Domaine, which are divided into four subdecks from A to D. The D deck is placed at the bottom and A on top, and each subdeck has different characteristics for the start, middle and end of the game. Twilight Struggle uses a similar concept. With cards, come the need to shuffle them (usually).

The objective of shuffling cards is to make their order random. Once my cousin Edward brought up an interesting question about shuffling cards. Does a good shuffle mean when you deal out the cards, everybody will get bad hands? During a card game, if someone gets an unusually good hand, the first reaction will often be that the shuffling wasn't done well. Following this logic, it seems good shuffling means you get lousy cards. This is not correct. The objective of shuffling should be to make things random. Being random does not mean always getting bad hands, but it does mean that you should be less likely to get good hands. In card games where you deal out all cards, like Bridge, or Big 2 (Cantonese: "Cho Dai Dee"), sometimes getting a good hand means your opponent is also getting a good hand, e.g. you are getting many cards of one suit, then it is more likely that your opponents are getting more of another suit. Anyway, the objective (as far as I can think of), should always be to make the deck random.

When playing with standard playing cards, I do the interleave method. I don't know the right term for this so I'm inventing this term. You split the deck into two equal halves, and hold each half with one hand. You hold the two shorter edges of a face-down half deck with your thumb and middle finger, and press your index finger on the back of the half deck. Placing the two half decks near each other, with your middle fingers touching the table, and your thumbs near each other, you release the cards by gradually releasing your thumb. The cards from the two half decks will slap onto the table, taking turns between left and right deck, and overlapping each other. Once all cards are released, you get two half decks partly overlapping. You join them into one full deck. Gosh, that was quite a challenge to describe in words. Anyway, this is the interleave method. I have heard that doing this seven times gives the best results. I wonder whether there is any scientific proof for this. When I play the games in my collection, I do not use the interleave method.

One of the methods that I use is the overhand method. I'm not sure of this term. I think this is correct. This is the most basic method for shuffling cards. You hold the deck of cards with your left hand with your palm facing up and the deck being held on the long sides by your thumb and fingers. You use your right hand to draw part of the deck from the middle or bottom of the deck, and then put this partial deck back onto the top of the deck. You repeat this several times. Obviously this is a much less efficient method compared to the interleave method, but the important thing is it doesn't bend my precious cards.

Another method which I like is the disperse method (again, my own terminology). You just deal out the whole deck of cards into four piles. You can deal systematically from left to right, or left to right to left (etc), or deal randomly. You can use more than four piles. Once all cards are dealt out, just stack those piles together to form a new deck. This is good for dispersing cards of the same suit / same colour. In many games when cards are played or discarded, similar cards tend to clump together. Using this disperse method will break them up. This is suitable for games like Ticket To Ride, Lost Cities. After doing the disperse shuffling, I usually do a few more overhand shuffling to mix things up a bit more.

I also often use a 2-dealers version of disperse shuffling. This is when Michelle and I play 2 player card games, like games in the Mystery Rummy series. We divide the deck into two, and then both of us do disperse shuffling onto the same four piles laid out between us. This is even better shuffling than 1 person doing disperse shuffling. We do make sure that the cards are aligned in the same direction, i.e. I'll be holding the cards in the normal way, which Michelle holds the cards upside down, so that when we both deal into the four piles, the cards become aligned (because she is sitting opposite me).

On thing that I am very particular about is that cards must be the right side up, at least for the types of cards where the direction you hold them in matters, e.g. Hacienda, the Mystery Rummy games, Ticket To Ride ticket cards, Lost Cities, Lord of the Rings feature cards (those picked up on specific spaces on the main board or scenario boards), Ark, Blue Moon City, San Juan, Settlers of Catan opportunity cards. When the cards are discarded during the game, I must have them all discarded in the same direction. I cannot resist rearranging the discard deck if other players discard in the "wrong" direction. I don't do this for all games. Cards that do not matter are like those Ticket To Ride train cards, Lord of the Rings hobbit cards, China cards, Settlers of Catan resource cards.

Other than shuffling, I also apply some techniques for discarding cards. For some games, I discard cards to more than one discard deck, to make it easier for me when I pack them up or to make it easier to shuffle for the next game. For example, when playing Ticket To Ride (and others in this series), I will create four or five discard decks. So, for example, if I play 4 red cards to claim a 4-length route, I will discard each of the four cards into a separate discard deck. This breaks up the cards of the same colour. Same principle as disperse shuffling. So, after one game of Ticket To Ride, I usually just do some overhand shuffling and don't bother to do disperse shuffling. Saves me some work. When I play Lord of the Rings, I also create two discard decks, one for hobbit cards and one for feature cards. Makes life much easier when I finish the game and want to pack up. When packing up I sort the feature cards according to the locations, and then stack them up in the correct order. So, the next time I play, I can set up the game very quickly. For San Juan, when I put away the game after playing, I will put two indigo plants on top, because I usually play this only with Michelle, and at the start of the game everyone gets one indigo plant.

See the bottom of this photo of Lord of the Rings (with the Battlefields expansion). I have two separate discard decks for hobbit cards (right) and feature cards (left)

Ticket To Ride. The upper row are the five open cards that players can choose from, and the lower row are four discard decks.

Coming back to shuffling, different games have different needs in terms of shuffling cards. In some games there is a natural tendency that cards will get arranged into same suits / colours, or in an ascending number order, etc. In these games there is a need for good shuffling to make things random, because during a game the cards will tend to get arranged in some order. Examples of games with high shuffling needs are Ticket To Ride (especially when people like to claim those long routes - you'll see lots of cards of the same colours, maybe with some jokers too, all grouped together in the discard deck), Lost Cities, Bohnanza. Actually there really are quite many in this category. In some games, there is not as high a need for shuffling, because there is little or no relationship between one card and another, and they don't tend to get grouped together. E.g. San Juan. There is not really any concept of suit or colour. There is still some level of clumping, e.g. if a person pulls off a guild hall strategy, he/she will probably have the guide hall plus lots of cheap production buildings grouped together. But in general, I don't bother shuffling San Juan cards too much. Jambo is another example. On The Underground too. In some games, don't even bother shuffling. If you shuffle the Settlers of Catan resource cards, someone will call you an idiot. These resource cards are mainly an accounting mechanism. They are sorted by type and laid out as separate face-up decks. You collect an appropriate card when your settlement produces a resource. Similarly, the money cards in Hacienda, which is basically just like paper money in Monopoly or Power Grid. In Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation, you need not bother shuffling your cards either. You always start with 9 cards, and your opponent knows what they are. He/she just doesn't know which one you'll secretly pick to play when it is time for your characters to fight. So, don't bother shuffling unless your opponent is the type that secretly remembers the order of your cards and tries to tell what card you have chosen by looking at the position in your hand from which you picked the card. I hope I don't have to game with such characters though.

Card shuffling methods can also be applied to other types of boardgame components, e.g. Carcassonne tiles, and event tiles in Lord of the Rings. I use the disperse shuffling method for Carcassonne, and I usually have 5 or 6 stacks of tiles (as opposed to 4 discard piles of cards). I am a big fan of the disperse shuffling method.

Can anyone tell me what are the correct terms for all these card shuffling methods?

audience

Today I visited a new blog about boardgames, Still Unpunched, by Oliver Harrison. Very good design and layout. And I was pleasantly surprised that my boardgame blog was actually one of the links on the front page. I am flattered. Well, I do hope I am writing something interesting for others to read. Another boardgame blog which has also listed my blog in its link section is Yehuda Berlinger's much more popular blog.