San Marco

I played San Marco at Carcasean on 22 Jul 2010. I'm back in KK (Kota Kinabalu) again, which means visits to Carcasean to try new games and to revisit good older games with Chong Sean.

The Game

San Marco is a medium complexity area majority game with an I-split-you-choose mechanism at its core. The game is played over 3 phases, where players try to score points by having presence in the 6 regions on the board. The regions are connected by bridges, which restrict movement. The game starts the players owning few bridges, and during the game they can build more. When you place your cube (OK, I'm not sure whether they are supposed to be "people", or "influence", or something else - physically they are cubes) onto the board, if the target region is connected to other regions by your bridges, you can place your cube in an adjacent region instead. When a Doge (i.e. scoring) card is played, you can move the Doge across anyone's bridges, but you pay 1VP to an opponent if you use his bridge.

Setting up the game. 8 cubes of each player are randomly placed onto the board by die-rolling (see die symbol in the regions). The numbers in the regions are VPs for whoever has the highest and second highest presence. The sun on the lower right indicates the phase of the game.

This is how the game works (for a 3-player game). At the start of the round, one player draws 6 good cards and 4 bad cards, and splits them in any way he wants into 3 sets. Then the other 2 players select one set of cards each, leaving one last set for him. As a player claims cards, he uses them to take actions. The simplest cards allow you to place one cube in a specific region, or adjacent one if you have the necessary bridge. The Bridge card lets you build a bridge. The Transform card lets you change a cube to your colour. The Banish card lets you remove cubes from a region - you select the region then roll a die, and then remove that number of cubes from the region. There is a risk of removing your own cubes if the number of opponents' cubes is small and you have your own cubes in the region. The Doge card lets you move the Doge then score the destination region. These are the good cards. The bad cards are number cards ranging from 1 to 3. Once anyone collects bad cards that add up to 10 or more, he's out of the current phase. Other players who have less than 10 do one more round. The differences in bad card values also determine bonus points for players with less than 10. The bigger the gap between your bad card value and the that of the worst player, the more bonus points you score.

Three phases are played, and then the game ends.

Cards in the game. Top: Banishment, Doge (scoring), Transform. Bottom: Region cards for you to play a cube (and then possibly move to an adjacent region).

Close-up of the San Marco region. The Doge is the red dude. Cubes on bridges don't mean aristocrats crossing bridges. I thought they were were I first saw artistic photos of this game. Cubes on bridges indicate ownership.

The Play

I played the game with Chong Sean (who has played before) and Aaron, a new friend. When I did the card splitting, I tended to split them quite evenly - the sets tended to have about the same mix of good and bad cards. Aaron went with a more extreme approach, he often had one very big set with many good and bad cards, and the other 2 sets only had one good card each. Twice Chong Sean could not resist and took the biggest sets, and later this came back to haunt him, because not only he had one less round, the bad value gap also gave many bonus points to Aaran and I, especially Aaron. I had also succumbed to the big set temptation. Eventually Aaron won the game with 61pts. I had 49pts, Chong Sean 45pts.

I did this split quite evenly.

Near game end, when most of the bridges had been built.

The Thoughts

The first thing I have to say about San Marco is that I love the artwork. Unfortunately, I'm not a big fan of area majority games, so it won't be a game I'll request to play often. The game design is clean and simple. The bridge building is an interesting long term planning aspect that you need to think about. The player who has to split the cards has the toughest job. I think it early games this part can really slow down as new players struggle to understand the implications and to evaluate the cards. However I think once you get familiar with the game this can be done much more quickly. Selecting a set is usually less strenuous, but it is still an interesting decision. Overall this is a middle-weight game, because there are a few aspects you need to think about at the same time. It is not only about area majority. You also need to consider the bridge building, the phase ending condition, and the bad card value gap bonus.

In the Shadow of the Emperor

In the Shadow of the Emperor was a half impulse buy, i.e. I only broke half a rule about buying games that I had set for myself. It was on sale, and it is considered by some to be a hidden gem that never received the attention it deserved. So I decided to give it a shot.

The Game

The game is about politics in the Holy Roman Empire (i.e roughly modern-day Germany and some surrounding regions). You manage a family of aristocrats, guiding them through a few generations, as they compete to get elected to powerful positions - to become an Elector of one of the seven Electorates (~provinces), and even to become elected Emperor of the HRE.

The game is played over 5 rounds only. The core of the game is the elections. Every round there are elections at the 7 Electorates, to determine whether a new Elector will take power, or the old Elector will stay. Who takes power is determined by presence in the Electorate - aristocrats, knights, cities controlled. After the elections at the Electorates, they may be another election for the Emperor's position, if a challenger has stepped forward to demand an election. Everything else in the game is to help you work towards success at the elections.

The game board. The track on the left is for tracking money. The track at the top tracks the round and shows the bonus for the current emperor. The 3 regions in the middle are religious Electorates (diocese), and only unmarried aristocrats can become Elector. The 4 regions at the bottom can have single or married Electors.

One important aspect of the game is aging. Your aristocrats will grow old and die, and you need to make sure you give birth to enough sons (or adopt) to maintain a big healthy family. Whether you get a son or a daughter every round is determined by a gamey mechanism - the types of actions you take in the previous round. Most actions that you take are represented by a pink or a blue card. If you have taken more blue than pink, you get a boy, else a girl. Getting a son means you have one more aristocrat on the board. If you get a daughter, you can try to marry her off to another player. She joins the other family and gives 1 more vote in Electorate elections. But you get 1VP for the successful marriage proposal. If you are refused, or if you don't want to bother trying, your daughter becomes a nun and you earn $1. Talk about selling off your daughter...

The actions are the main activities you do. Each action type is limited. Once all the cards of an action have been taken, that action is not available anymore. There is a lot of variety in the actions - making an aristocrat younger, bringing in a new young aristocrat, bringing in a knight, claiming a city, marrying your son and a foreign princess, moving an aristocrat (or couple) to another Electorate, promoting a knight to a baron, deny an Electorate votes for the Emperor, giving extra votes to an Electorate, and even challenging the current Emperor for his throne. All these actions affect how you compete in the elections. The actions have different costs, so you need to spend your money wisely.

Some of the action cards. Top left: One single bachelor gets married, i.e. strength becomes 2. Top right: Claim a city. Bottom left: Move an aristocrat to another Electorate. Bottom right: hey... why did I take two exact same cards to use as examples?! Idiot...

There are many different ways to score victory points in the game. Becoming an Elector of an Electorate gives 2VP. Successfully marrying off a daughter gives 1VP. One action card gives 2VP. Claiming cities give VPs. One Electorate's special power is 1VP. The Emperor gains VP depending on the round. Supporters of the winner in an election for Emperor get 1VP. When playing the game you need to be aware of all of these. VPs are hard to come by and you need to make use of every opportunity, not only to earn VPs, but also to deny others of them.

The Play

We randomly assigned Han to be the Emperor at the start of the game. Throughout the game, every round someone challenged the Emperor. We thought no harm trying. In hindsight, it may not be such a good idea, because if you know you can't win, you are basically giving 1VP to the bystander who will naturally support the winner. I was kingmaker most of the game, as in most of the time it was Han the Emperor vs Afif the challenger or vice versa, and I had enough votes to decide who won. I only tried to become Emperor once, but was unsuccessful. I focused my effort in getting my aristocrats onto the board, neglecting city building, which meant I had less cash. I had so many aristocrats that I ran out of aristocrat tokens. I gave them good healthcare (i.e. rotate anti-clockwise to make them younger) so they stayed alive longer. However, towards later game I had a whole bunch of them dying together, suddenly making my presence much weaker.

Throughout the game I have been selecting mostly the pink actions, so I have been getting daughters every round. In contrast, Han has been choosing the blue actions, and I think he had sons every round. Just like in real life. I have two daughters, and him two sons.

Han (yellow) and Afif (red) having a fierce fight over Mainz Diocese. Han's strength is 4 (a couple gives 2, knight 1, city 1). Afif's strength is 6 (1 couple giving 2, 2 bachelors giving a total of 2, city 1, knight 1).

Both Afif and Han claimed cities earlier, and they had more money, which allowed more flexibility in taking actions. Cities also helped in Electorate level elections.

By the final round, I knew I was pretty screwed, due to my loss of momentum. Also I have not been Emperor even once. When the final scores were revealed, I did come in last, but did not do as bad as I had thought. I had 23pts. Afif had 26pts, Han 25pts. It was quite a close game. Every single VP counts!

The Thoughts

In the Shadow of the Emperor is very much an area majority game. I also realise that it is a perfect information game. Well, except for the victory points (and I think it is better that the VP is hidden). So if you spend time to calculate the repercussions of your moves and those of your opponents', the game is quite deterministic, and it can drag if everyone tries to analyse every possible move and all the implications.

The players have a wide range of choices. So the game feels quite open. There are many things you can do, some beneficial for short-term, some long term. One thing I like is all the actions are very thematic. You can boil everything down to simple area majority competition, but all the actions that you can do in the game are associated to something realistic. You do feel like you are pulling the strings and helping your clan fight for supremacy.

It is also a manipulation game - you need to manipulate your opponents. Try to appear weak. Try to make someone else appear strong. Sow mistrust. It can even become a negotiation game if you try to make deals with your opponents. You can lie, beg, threaten, make promises, break promises. These are not explicitly encouraged nor disallowed by the rules, so it's up to you how you want to play.

I find that I generally don't enjoy area majority games, so I am biased against In the Shadow of the Emperor. But I appreciate how thematic the game is and how everything ties together. There are a lot of little rules to remember, e.g. in the many different action cards. Every Electorate also gives some benefit to the player controlling it. I joked that the game has as many exceptions as Ameritrash games. Overall, I find that everything ties together quite well.

ColorMonsters

I started my boardgame blog around mid 2007. Recently, for the first time in my boardgame blogging life, I received a free copy of a game, because of my blog. It was pretty exciting and flattering for me. I have never expected something like this, since I don't think my audience is big enough. Han teased me that I have now been elevated to the status of game reviewer, and that even he and Afif are now elevated to the status of playtester team of a game reviewer. So here's my experience.

The parcel. All the way from the other side of the world - USA.

Shrink-wrapped in orange plastic, and well protected with plastic bubble sheets, which both my daughters started popping immediately.

The box front.

Back of the box.

The game comes with this storage tray, which is quite handy.

The game board, with mock starting positions of colormonsters.

The back of the game board, action cards, ref sheets, storage sheets. I think this is a fully home-made game. It truly is a labour of love. There is so much work that went into it. The cards are thick, but sizes are not all uniform. The ref sheets and storage sheets are done very well. The board is slightly thin, but it's workable.

The other components. Top row: stones, from which gems or cards can be harvested. Once harvested stones are flipped over to become rubble (far right). Middle row: gems in 6 colours, dice. Dice are colour-coded to match the game board, to make it easier to tell where new stones will appear. Bottom row: Gold, currency (only $1 and $2), action cards (front and back). My only complaint about components is the stones (the triangles). They are thin and can be hard to handle.

The Game

The game starts with players creating their baby colormonsters, made up of 3 segments, each segment having one mouth. Every round, dice are rolled, and stones are added to the board. The colormonsters harvest gems (and action cards) from these stones if they have a mouth next to the stone. Once harvested the stones turn into rubble. Players get to trade with one another and with the bank. Different colour combinations of gems can be sold to the bank for different prices. With the money earned, you can buy action cards or gold. You need to collect 7 gold to win the game.

In the early rounds you can grow your colormonster. The new segments added have two mouths. Colormonsters reach adult size at 7 segments. You can move your colormonsters and adjust the positions of their mouths. You try to position them to harvest as many gems as possible, or to have the best chances to harvest more gems in future rounds. You compete against other colormonsters for board position.

The action cards are mostly good. You can use them to help yourself or to hinder your opponents. Some even let you collect gold, which saves a lot of effort. However there is one type of action card that forces you to give away gems to other players.

When a player reaches 7 gold, all other players have a chance to do another round of trading, to try to achieve victory in the same round.

The Play

Afif, Han and I played a 3 player game. The game went pretty fast. I think most of the mechanism is familiar, so many of the actions could be taken simultaneously. We only paused a little when some actions had dependency on turn order, e.g. when two colormonsters could harvest from the same stone. The colormonster later in turn order would not gain anything because the stone would have turned into rubble by then.

Afif spent a lot of money on buying action cards. And oops... I didn't explicitly tell him there were bad cards in the mix. OK, game explainer's fault. I just tried to position my colormonster to be touching hexes of as many different numbers as possible. I didn't move my colormonster much. I think Afif and Han also did not do it much. Maybe we did not play to block others aggressively enough, since our colormonsters all seemed to be positioned well enough. Perhaps we should have tried to cordon off more space for ourselves.

I was the first to reach 7 gold, triggering the final trading round. Han was able to reach 7 gold too, so we were tied for the win. Afif was just short of 1 gold.

Early game. The colormonsters had not grown to adult size (7 segments) yet.

Mid game. All the colormonsters were adult sized now.

I had gems in five colours. I needed another yellow so that I could trade the full set for $12. I had 3 Gold at this point. $12 would allow me to buy another 2 Gold.

Three stones which I could not reach due to being blocked by rubble.

Near game end. So much rubble... And only then we realised Afif had made a mistake with his (red) colormonster. The colormonster must be connected touching sides, not touching corners.

The Thoughts

ColorMonsters gives me a feeling that the designer has played The Settlers of Catan before - the hexes, rolling dice to produce resources, the open trading, and the spatial element of competing for positions on the board. It feels like a typical resource-collection-and-conversion Eurogame. One unique part is the growth and movement of the colormonster. How do you jostle for position to ensure you have more room in future? How to block your opponents? How to avoid getting locked down by rubble? I think we have not explored this spatial element much. We just focused on collecting gems. There seemed to be an abundance of resources, so I didn't feel the urgency to compete with the other colormonsters. Only in the late game I realised things I could have done better earlier to avoid getting stuck where I was.

That said, I feel the flexibility to fight for positioning is limited. You need to keep your colormonster in one piece. Sometimes that means you will only be able to move very few segments. The board seems mostly quite static, with minor skirmishes when colormonsters approach one another. Despite the alien life form theme, the game is mostly an abstract strategy game.

Going off-topic here: When I look at the game components and rules of ColorMonsters, I get a feeling that the designer is not a boardgame geek like I am. The way the rules are written and structured, and the terminology used, make me think that this is not a person who has played hundreds of different games and read hundreds of game rules. Definitely not a person who lives on www.boardgamegeek.com like it's oxygen (which I do). Like a reflex response, I immediately had an urge to suggest doing the rules, or designing the game, or changing some keywords to be like so-and-so other games. Then I thought again and realised that it may not be a good thing. I think sometimes we old timers are so used to the way games are, we become resistant to new ideas or different approaches. One can argue that there are reasons that some things are done the way they are. I say at the same time we need to keep an open mind.

I am quite impressed with the effort put into ColorMonsters. I have toyed with some game designing ideas, but never went much further. The game itself has some interesting ideas, but overall it doesn't really stand out. I have only played the game once, so these are my first impressions. Further plays may reveal more, in particular the spatial competition aspect which I have not yet explore much of.

If you are interested in the game, visit colormonsters.com.

boardgaming in photos

4 Jul 2010. Agricola with Farmers of the Moor expansion. My farm. This was one close game that I beat Michelle by 1pt.

I had quite many Occupations and Improvements played. I had many Minor Improvements that required a certain number of Occupations to have been played, and many of my Occupations seemed useful, so from the start I decided to play many cards. In the end there were still some Minor Improvements that I didn't manage to play. Not enough actions to do everything that I wanted, or the ideal time had passed. I was a complete vegetarian in this game. My animals were just for show - a mini zoo.

Michelle's farm. She had 5 family members, just that I forgot to move them back before I took this photo.

Michelle's cards.

11 Jul 2010. Galaxy Trucker with expansion. We played with 2 Rough Roads cards and also with Evil Machination cards. When building this Class IIA ship, we had a Rough Road card that specified that all connectors must match exactly, else engine strength reduces by one per mismatch. A mismatch is when a universal connector connects to a single or double connector. That's why the connectors on this ship seem so perfect. Also thank goodness we didn't have the Epidemic event, else my crew on the right-side ship would die badly due to the adjacent cabins.

My Class III ship was armed to the teeth. The front compenents were all cannons. However I didn't have any shield. Michelle had taken both the shields available. With the expansion compenents added in, if you play with less than 5 players, you must remove some components randomly before the game starts.

12 Jul 2010. Race for the Galaxy with first 2 expansions. This was one game I was proud to win, because the upper left AI had Earth's Lost Colony and Alien Toy Shop after the first round. This was a strong combination because it could double-consume for 6VP. I had expected to lose the game. However I managed to win using an Alien strategy. Only after the game I realised that the ELC+ATS combo is only very strong in the 2 Player Advanced game, because you can double-consume and produce in the same round. With 3 or more players, you have to produce on one turn and double-consume on the next, so the consume rate is only half. I popped my own bubble... It wasn't such a great victory afterall.

15 Jul 2010. Another takeover. Using Imperium Cloaking Technology. My military was only +1 higher than the AI on the right, so normally I wouldn't be able to takeover a 3-defense world. However I had the Alien Tech Institute which gave me +2 strength against Alien worlds.

After takeover (Imperium Cloaking Technology card had been discarded). No difference to victory, the leading AI (on the left) was too far ahead.

I had one experience of my world being taken over by an AI. It was rare. I didn't take a screenshot because I only realised there had been a takeover after the incident. I was missing one world. Only then I saw it on the AI's tableau. It had discarded New Military Tactics (temporary boost in strength) to takeover my world, sneaky.....

On 18 Jul 2010, Afif and Han came to play. Han and I played 2 games of Space Alert while waiting for Afif. We finally won a mission for a 2nd time. We could have won for a third time if not for my mistake in calculating the location of a serious internal threat. Now Han wants to start adding the advanced threats. I'm not so sure we're ready yet. We'll probably crash-and-burn again.

Afif arrived just in time for a game of Catacombs. This was my 2nd play, this time playing the dungeon master while Afif and Han played the heroes. The boss that I randomly picked was the Dragon.

Afif and Han.

One injured troll (green disc, figure with black background) fighting the elf (next to it) and the barbarian (to the left).

Han comtemplating whether to take this difficult shot. Actually I'd say it's impossible. He eventually decided against it.

The orange discs are fire spirits. If they attack successfully, they die, get flipped over and become a fireball. Any enemy touching them gets injured. The dragon's special ability is it can summon two fire spirits on its turn. In this photo, the thief was in a difficult position (lower left) between the dragon and a fireball. The dragon could easily deal her two points of damage, one for the dragon's attack itself, one for getting pushed to hit the fireball. The wizard (near Han's hand) was now casting a spell to be able to shoot an arrow at the dragon.

I had used my dragon's ability to summon a fire spirit right between itself and the elf (the pretty lady). The fire spirit had attacked, dealing one damage, and had now transformed into a fireball protecting the dragon.

The heroes eventually lost, but halfway through the last room (i.e. when it was too late) we realised we played one critical rule wrong. The dragon should not have been able to summon fire spirits and attack. It should have been either one or the other. We greatly overpowered the dragon. The heroes had entered the final room in quite good shape, so the heroes would have had a much better chance if we had played right. Catacombs is very successful in giving context to a flicking game.

the Dominion bug (with Intrigue and Alchemy)

Now I see why people love Dominion (which I first wrote about in Nov 2008) so much. After the previous blog post about playing Race for the Galaxy and Blue Moon against AI's, I discovered a computerised version of Dominion too (it contains base game + Intrigue + Seaside + Alchemy). It makes playing the game much much much faster, because the computer manages picking cards, arranging cards, shuffling, card effects, counting, tracking - basically all the chores - for you. I've played 85 games in 4 days, and have been enjoying myself very much. I need to increase my rating of Dominion, maybe to 8.5.

One thing I like about this program is you can name your AI opponents. I gave them names of two good friends whom I first played Dominion with.

Here is a list of random observations:

1. All my games were 3P games against 2 AI's. I win 58% of the games, come in second 21%, am last 21%. Not that I'm good at Dominion, just that the AI's are not as strong. I think it's due to how many different combinations of action cards Dominion can have. It's hard to program a generic AI that can adapt to all sorts of combinations. Sometimes they do apparently silly moves, like buying a Garden (cost $4, worth 1VP per 10 cards in deck) on the first turn. Not sure what the logic is behind that. There must be some rules that the AI's follow, and somehow under specific situations based on those rules they think that buying a Garden is a good idea.
2. The AI's mostly don't know how to defend against Pirate Ships (cost $4, when you play it you either attempt to rob all other players or make use of the coins you've acculumated; if robbing, each other player reveals two cards, if any player reveals a treasure card, gain a coin, and you get to trash one revealed treasure card of each opponent; if using coins, +$1 per coin). I enjoy employing a fleet of Pirate Ships and they are quite effective most of the time. By the time I have 5 or 6 coins I can buy a Province almost every turn. The AI's don't use Pirate Ships much. Sometimes I feel guilty for bullying them. But once when there were Moats (defense card) in the same game as Pirate Ships, the AI's stocked up on Moats and my Pirate Ship strategy didn't work well. I haven't quite thought about how to defend against Pirate Ships myself. I guess you need to get your money from the +$ cards as opposed to treasure cards.

I think this was one of the games when Pirate Ships worked very well for me. I won 45pts vs 12pts vs 9pts.
3. I hate hate hate Saboteurs (your opponent reveals cards from the deck to find a $3+ cost card, trashes it, and gains another card cheaper by $2 or more). I've lost Islands (VP card) this way. I've lost Provinces (6VP!) this way. I don't know how to defend against this. No $3+ card is safe from it because you have to dig through your deck till you find one. I've tried to use Islands to stash other VP cards safely away, but sometimes I can't do this quickly enough. It feels like some bully keeps coming back to kick a sand castle that I keep trying to build. Maybe I should go kick his sand castle too.

This is why I hate Saboteurs. I ended the game with only 1 action card because all the rest have been trashed by enemy Saboteurs. I had many other victory point and treasure cards trashed too. I kept buying Estates since they cost $2 and were not vulnerable to Saboteurs. That didn't work.
4. I like using the Ambassador to "return favours" (cost $3, show a card from your hand, you may return one of two of this card type to the supply, then your opponents each take one such card). I love it when Ambassador comes up together with 2 Curses. I not only get rid of my Curses, I also force my opponents to take them. It's even sweeter when the Curse supply has exhausted (which happens quite often in games with Curse-giving cards). My opponents may think they are safe from further Curses, but I get to return Curses to the supply and then "award" them out.
5. Curses annoy me a lot, but I wonder whether they are that big a deal. They are -1VP. They clog up your deck. But sometimes I wonder whether it's worth the effort to get rid of them using cards like Ambassadors, or to protect yourself from getting Curses by buying cards like Moats and Lighthouses. Maybe sometimes it's better to live with them and focus on earning VP cards, or apply strategies that minimize their impact and at the same time allow you to go for VPs.
6. I hate Ghost Ships too (your opponent puts cards from hand back to deck until only 3 cards remain). Ghost Ships are used on me quite often. They make my hand much less effective. If I put victory cards back to my deck, I will draw them again in my next hand and they will be just as useless. Sometimes I get attacked again on my next turn. Aarrgghh! Very disrupting. I have to keep the VP cards in the current turn, wasting my current turn, so that next turn hopefully won't be a waste.
7. The AI's buy Coppers quite often. I'm always reluctant to buy Coppers because they are inefficient. Maybe I need to reevaluate my prejudice.
8. I like the hybrid victory point cards - Harem (cost $6, worth 2VP and at the same time is a $2 treasure), Island (cost $4, 2VP, can be stashed aside with another card, thus slimming your deck), Nobles (cost $6, 2VP, +2 actions or +3 cards), Great Hall (cost $3, 1VP, +1 card +1 action). I like them simply because they are not "useless" victory point cards. I find them very useful. They make your hand seem much less wasted.

Here is a list of new and reinforced impressions / opinions of Dominion:

1. I enjoyed Intrigue well enough. Some cards give you choices, i.e. some flexibility. The choices are quick though and they don't slow down your game, unless you are very indecisive. I am a little tempted to buy a physical copy of Intrigue, but the problem is I don't even play my combined base game and Seaside very often. So it's probably not a good investment.
2. I thought Alchemy was just so-so. I like University (cost $2 + potion, +2 actions, gain a card costing up to $5). Transmute (cost $0 + potion, trash action card / treasure card / victory card to gain Duchy / Transmute / Gold), Vineyard (worth 1VP for every 3 action cards in your deck), and Philosopher's Stone (treasure card worth $1 per 5 cards in your discard pile + deck, i.e. it will be worth more as your deck grows) are interesting. I'm not tempted to buy Alchemy. Somehow I find it distracting to have to manage the potions. The AI's almost always buy potions if there are cards costing potions in the mix. I sometimes don't bother and am happy with the no-potion-cost cards.
3. I appreciate Dominion much more now that I have played many more games. Eliminating the tiresome part of the game helps to bring the strategy part to the fore. Dominion is very much about the macro strategy and not tactics. The key decision is what card to buy, and not how to use the action cards in your hand. The former is the strategy, the latter is just execution, with some small decisions sometimes. The game is very much about analysing the 10 action cards available in the game and picking a strategy. It is also in watching how your opponents play and deciding whether you want to react to that.
4. I suspect it is better to stick to one focused strategy rather than trying to do too many things, i.e. just buy a few types of cards which you think will work well together. Sometimes when there are many cards that you like, you may lose focus and buy one or two of each, and end up not having any coherent strategy. You do need a coherent deck. If you are going to have many action cards, you better have action cards that give extra actions.
5. Pacing is important. You usually need to buy and play cards differently at different stages of a game. Some cards are more useful in the early game, e.g. Coppersmith (Coppers are worth $2 instead of $1), Cutpurse (force opponents to trash Coppers - more useful in early game when everyone has mostly Coppers, less effective later when everyone has more Silvers and Golds, in fact in late game you're helping your opponents by trashing their inefficient Coppers). Some cards are more useful in the late game, e.g. Scout (draw 4 cards, return to your deck non-VP cards - this makes your next turn more efficient because you have weeded out VP cards; this is more useful in late game when you have more VP cards). When you buy a card that will only be useful in the early game, you need to be prepared to suffer the consequences of a dead/weak card when the usefulness declines. E.g. Sea Hag and Familiar are not so attractive when Curses run out. Hmm... not that I find them physically attractive. Just functionally. Sometimes.
6. In Dominion there is this default (or control, or reference) path to victory. You buy Silver, then buy Gold, then buy Provinces. Maybe you buy some action cards to help you a little here and there, but mostly you try to upgrade your treasure cards or buy better treasure cards, until you can regularly draw $8 to buy Provinces. The trick to Dominion is how to make use of combinations of action cards to do better than this basic reference strategy. If you are not careful you can end up trying to implement a strategy which is worse than this reference strategy. There are so many cards and so many different combinations that sometimes they distract you, make you want to try something fancy, and you will only realise later that it doesn't really work.

KISS principle: Keep It Simple, Stupid. The AI tends to buy all sorts of cards. I only had 7 action cards (compared to 15 and 16 of the AI's), 5 of which were Treasury cards (+1 action, +1 card, +$1, with possibility of putting it back to the top of your deck if you do not buy a VP card). I beat them 83:34:17, having bought 11 of the 12 Provinces.
7. It is not always the case that you need to do better than the reference strategy. Sometimes you can try to make your opponents do worse than the reference strategy, i.e. the destructive approach. Curses, Ghost Ships, Bureaucrats, and all sorts of attack cards. I had one game where the AI won with 8VPs. The other AI and I had 7VPs. I think it was a game with Saboteurs.

I think Dominion would be a great game to play using the iPhone + iPad combination. Computerise the chores, focus on gameplay.

good AI, bad AI

I recently played quite many games of Race for the Galaxy and Blue Moon against computer opponents, using programs downloaded from keldon.net. I have been enjoying the games very much, which surprised me a little. I have written about why some computer versions of boardgames spoil the games for me. So I wondered why I enjoyed these games so much.

The main reason I dislike playing boardgames against AI's is it makes the game feel very mechanical and formulaic. Real computer games, e.g. Civilization, Pharaoh and its siblings, the Total War series, Europa Universalis 2, are enjoyable because despite their AI's not matching human intelligence, they do many things that boardgames can't do. They handle many complex calculations behind the scenes allowing complex simulations, they can manage a real-time aspect easily, they run complex scenarios and allow much content to be programmed and presented, and of course, they have good graphics and sounds too. As for why some computerised boardgames turn me off but some hook me, I think it boils down to just one simple reason - hidden information.

St Petersburg (computerised version) didn't click because throughout the game, the cards available to be bought is open information, and cards that have been bought is open information too. So after a while you can more or less figure out how the AI's make their decisions. Same case for Yspahan. There is randomness in these games, but after cards are drawn or dice are rolled, it's all open information. However, in Blue Moon and Race for the Galaxy, you can't see the AIs' cards. I guess in a way I'm saying they appear more intelligent than they actually are because of hidden information. I can't easily figure out how they "think" because I don't know what they know. But still, they are pretty good and they give me a good challenge. Actually, I should be saying the programmer who programmed them is pretty good. In the recent 58 games of Blue Moon played against AI's, I lost 60% of them. In the recent 88 games of Race for the Galaxy with 3 players (myself and two AI's), I won 32% of the time, came in second 42%, came in last 26%.

When playing Blue Moon, once I find a combination that is hard to play, I keep playing it so that I can learn and improve. I find playing Khind against Mimix quite hard, and playing Flit against Terrah even more difficult. Sometimes I swap races, so that I can learn from how the AI plays the "weaker" race. It turns out that the AI can beat me too, but I do learn a few tricks in the process. In Blue Moon it is slightly easier to see through the program logic, because each race deck has a fixed set of 30 cards. So after a while you know some of the common tricks when playing one specific race against another, e.g. playing a character card requiring your enemy to play a booster card, when you know your enemy deck has no or few booster cards. Race for the Galaxy has many many more cards than Blue Moon, so it is not as easy to work out how the AI thinks.

I enjoy learning from the AI's. I only play these games with very few people, so there are many things that we have not explored or even thought about trying. Despite my 400+ plays of Race for the Galaxy, I still think I'm a mediocre player.

Sometimes I'm sloppy when I play Race for the Galaxy against the AI's. I don't watch their tableaus, I don't pay attention to what actions they have chosen and I don't bother guessing what they will choose. I find that when I'm lazy, I tend to lose more. Sometimes when I play a long stretch of games, I win more in the earlier games, and as I become sloppy and impatient, I lose more and more of the later games. I think this shows that Race for the Galaxy should not be played in a solitaire way. You do need to leech off your opponents' actions in order to do better than them.

In conclusion, I lied about good AI's and bad AI's. The AI's are all good. It's just how we perceive them. But then "not-so-transparent AI's and transparent AI's" is not exactly a catchy title.

Playing Blue Moon against the AI. I played Flit against Terrah. It sucks when all your cards are non-character cards. You are forced to retreat. See how my cards are all greyed out.

A game of Race for the Galaxy that I won using a novelty goods consume strategy. I had both Free Trade Association and Consumer Markets, and I had four novelty goods worlds. I also had the Alien Toy Shop, which could consume for 4pts (if I double-consumed).

I thought I did pretty well in this game, but I still lost. I had three 6-cost devs, Terraforming Guild (10pts), Prospecting Guild (14pts!) and Rebel Alliance (6pts). The other two AI's also had three 6-cost devs each! Scores were 57, 51 (me), 48.

This is one pretty extreme game which I won 81, 23, 15. I played Galactic Federation very early, and eventually had five 6-cost devs. I also won three first-to objectives and one most-of objective. Playing a 6-cost dev early is a strategy I have never thought of myself, even after 400+ games. I learned this from the AI. I used to think that 6-cost devs are just too expensive and would stunt further progress. Now I realise they can be very powerful under the right circumstances.

A close game in which I lost by 1pt. In the last round, I had the choice of ending the game there and then, or extending it by another round. I developed Uplift Code. I had the choice of whether to discard R&D Crash Program to pay for it. If I had done that, my tableau would not have reached 12 cards yet, and there would be another round, in which I could then develop Pan-Galactic League (worth at least 7pts), and possibly settle one more world if one of the AI's chose Settle. I was too lazy to do detailed analysis and just decided to end the game early. And I lost by 1pt. In hindsight, I probably should have stalled one more round.

Takeover in action (I had the Imperium Seat, which could takeover Rebel worlds). I have played many games with the Rebel vs Imperium expansion before, most with takeovers on, but even so takeovers were rare. I think I have only done it once with the physical copy of the game. So it was fun to be able to do a takeover again. Naturally I targeted the AI which was closer to me in points (top left).

This takeover did not changed the result of the game. I would have won anyway.

Another extreme game where at one point 7 out of 9 cards in my hand were 6-cost devs.

I eventually developed two of them, but I lost by a big margin, 57-45-39(me). The winning AI had four 6-cost devs.

One very blue game. Six novelty goods worlds and Free Trade Association. Other than my start world (yellow - Alien), everything else was blue or blue related.

Another takeover. Before...

... and after.

A developer dream come true. I think I chose Develop for all but 2 rounds (or thereabouts). By mid game, whenever I chose Develop, I would draw 3 cards, and get a -4 discount for developing. Also both Galactic Federation and Galactic Bankers rewarded me for developments.