one of the top sites

I only recently discovered that my boardgame blog has been listed as one of the top boardgame sites at Frugal Dad. Woohoo! It’s a long list with 33 entries, but still. Here’s how my blog was described:

"Sharing insightful reviews and analysis of a variety of different board games, Hiew’s Boardgame Blog lives up to its name. Each review includes detailed descriptions of the game and the instructions, as well as impressions from actual play. The comprehensive thoughts shared in each review help provide a clear picture of each specific game."

This list appears to have been made quite some time ago though. Some of the websites on the list are no longer active. BGG is not on the list, and I’m curious why. Anyhow, I am going to stick that fancy-looking logo on my sidebar.

11 Jan 2013: There link to Frugal Dad's list does not work anymore. It seems the page has been taken down, or they have done an overhaul to their website. Now I can only find their logo. I'm using this old logo because this was their logo when they released their top boardgame sites list.

boardgaming in photos

29 Jun 2012. Continuing our journey to play most of the games on BoardGameArena (BGA), Allen, Han and I played Coloretto, the simpler and more straight-to-the-point but did-not-win-the-SDJ older brother of Zooloretto. A player from Taiwan joined us and thrashed all three of us soundly. How embarrassing. When I later looked at the final score, what went through my mind was - I had no idea what I was doing...

In the Year of the Dragon on BGA. Designer Stephen Feld is very popular, but somehow most of his games don’t quite click with me. In the Year of the Dragon is the only game I really like. I enjoy Notre Dame too, but not as much as this game. Maybe it’s because I’m Chinese. I also like the sense of impending doom. I certainly experienced much doom in this particular game I played with Han and Allen. I made some missteps in the early game, and my house of cards came tumbling down. The events knocked me off my feet, kicked me before I could get up, and then dropped a fridge on me, twice. OK, maybe not literally, but that’s the general idea. Yet, I still felt good at the end of the game, because despite coming dead last, my final score of 81 was not that far from Han’s 102 and Allen’s 98. In this game most of your energy is spent on damage control and survival, with only the leftover spent on actually scoring points.

1 Jul 2012. Chen Rui (5) asked me to play Kids of Carcassonne with her. She doesn’t understand the strategy yet (yes, there is some) so I sometimes make suggestions when she makes a sub-optimal move, or when she misses a good opportunity. Hmm... I should bring out (adult) Carcassonne to play with Michelle. It has been quite a while.

6 Jul 2012. Puerto Rico 10 year anniversary deluxe edition, played at OTK Cheras. We did a four-player game. This time I decided to go for a shipping strategy. My cash flow was rather poor. All the others earned money better than me. In the end I failed to buy any of the big buildings. In hindsight I probably should have saved up money earlier and sacrificed other things. Since I was the only one fully focused on shipping, the Customs House would have greatly benefited me. I was a little surprised that I still managed to come second. Jeff won, greatly helped by the combo of Factory plus all five types of production buildings. The Factory makes money depending on the types of goods you produce, and he produced all five types.

The deluxe version looks very good.

My island at game end. I focused on corn (yellow) and indigo (blue), the cheapest to produce goods. I wonder why the publisher swapped the positions of the building spaces and the plantation spaces in the deluxe edition. The upper half of the board used to be for the buildings.

8 Jul 2012. Hacienda on the iPad was on sale, so I bought it. I’ve always liked Hacienda, although it is not among Wolfgang Kramer’s most well known designs. The interface of the iPad implementation is good. Stability seems to be a problem in the first version I downloaded, but after an update, it seems to be fine.

The AI’s seem to be weak unfortunately. Even against expert AI’s I (green) have not lost a game so far.

9 Jul 2012. I have now started Shee Yun (7) on Ticket to Ride. She likes it enough to request to play. She even plays against AI’s by herself. She doesn’t understand all the strategies yet, but she does try to make the longest route. She enjoys completing her tickets. Of course, I don’t play nasty with her. So, no intentional blocking. In this particular game she actually beat me, because of the 10pt bonus from longest route.

11 Jul 2012. Tigris & Euphrates on iDevices has good AI’s. I had learnt from them. In this game one of the AI’s beat me! I still enjoy an occasional game because the AI’s are challenging, and I am often surprised. Not just by unexpected moves of the AI’s, but also implications that I hadn’t foreseen when I made certain moves. This really is a very clever game design.

This particular game was unusual because many disaster tiles were used, not only by me but also by the AI’s. Four had been played in total. I rarely see this. The disasters broke up nations and triggered big changes on the board.

Get Bit

Plays: 4Px1.

The Game

Get Bit is a simple filler-type game with double guessing. Players are swimmers swimming in a queue (don't ask me to explain why). A shark chases them from behind, and takes a bite off the last swimmer at the end of every round. It bites swimmers limb by limb, until finally eating whole a swimmer with no limbs left. To win, you need to be at the front of the queue when there are only two survivors left.

Each player has a same set of numbered cards. Every round everyone plays a card onto the table simultaneously, and then they jump to the front of the queue in ascending order of the numbers played. That means bigger numbers are better, because the later that you jump ahead means the further in front you will be when the shark bites. What's interesting is if multiple players play the same number, these players don't get to jump ahead at all. So playing a big number doesn’t guarantee safety, and playing a small number doesn’t guarantee injury.

Cards played are left on the table, which means your hand dwindles. Only when you get bitten, or when you run out of cards, you get to pick up all your played cards. This is a consolation when you get bitten. The game is all about avoiding the shark, and if you last long enough to be in the final two, you need to manoeuvre to be positioned in front.

With four players, cards numbered 1 to 5 are used.

The Play

I did a four-player game. The number of cards used is different for different numbers of players. With four players, we used cards numbered 1 to 5. The game is mostly double guessing. There is a bit of calculation, as you ponder the cards already played by other players. You gamble, you pray for a little luck, and you groan or curse or cheer or breath a sigh of relief. There is more pressure on the last player in the queue, because if he happens to choose the same number as any other player, he’s screwed because he won’t be able to jump from the last position. That’s something to take into account whether you are the last player or not. You also need to plan how to use your cards. That 1 card is always risky, but if you guess well and play it when others have clashing numbers, then you turn it around to be a useful card. There is pressure as your hand dwindles, because your choices will narrow. You have to watch your opponents’ cards played and try to stay flexible. When you are down to your last card, your opponents will know exactly what you will play. It’s tricky to manoeuvre yourself into a better than pessimistic situation, but it’s possible.

Two of the swimmers were already legless by this point. The shark figure is a bonus. The basic game has no shark. Allen bought Get Bit on Kickstarter, and at his pledge level he got this shark figure as a bonus.

That’s the shark card that is used in the basic game.

I don’t remember many details from the game we played. I think Allen won. I was eaten by the shark.

The Thoughts

Get Bit is a filler type game, with double guessing and a little hand management. Strictly speaking there is no luck. All the decisions are made by the players. There is no randomness. It’s arguable whether you should blame luck if you keep guessing wrong. The game works with up to six players. It can work as a party game, and definitely a drinking game too (now that would be interesting...). It can be easily taught to casual players. It can work with children too, as long as you don’t describe the setting too graphically. Don’t ask me how a limbless swimmer swims. I don’t know head-style swimming.

Mundus Novus

Plays: 6Px1.

The Game

Mundus Novus was developed based on the card trading mechanism in Mare Nostrum. The basic idea is every round everyone is dealt 5 goods cards, and then they do trading, trying to collect sets of similar cards or different cards. They use these cards to earn victory points or claim development cards (special ability cards), and any cards left over are discarded before the next round starts. The game ends when a player reaches 75VP or when a player collects all 10 different types of goods cards.

Every round a Trade Master announces how many cards everyone must trade (between two and four). Everyone simultaneously picks these cards and reveals them as his offer. Whoever has the highest valued cards starts trading by picking one offered card from someone else. That someone else then continues the trade by picking another player’s card, and so on. Cards are numbered 1 to 9, and there are jokers too. Sets of different cards (jokers disallowed), and jokers by themselves can be spent to earn VP’s. Sets of at least three cards of the same value can be used to claim development card. The higher the number of cards and card value, the more options you have. The development cards give all sorts of special abilities. Ships let you get more cards every round. Warehouses let you keep some cards for the next round. Some cards let you convert the values of your cards, some cards let you make money from other players’ ships, etc. Since the basic number of cards received every round is only five, it is important to make use of development cards.

There are two rows of cards at the centre of the table (well, columns in this particular game we played). The left column are the five development cards available to be claimed. With a weak card combination, e.g. three of 2’s, you can only claim the first development card. With a medium card combination, e.g. three of 5’s or four of 1’s, you can pick any from among the first three development cards. With a strong card combination, e.g. three of 8’s or five of 3’s, you can pick any development card from the pool.

The column or three goods cards are a swapping area to be used during the trading phase. If you don’t like any goods card offered by other players, you can still take a goods card belonging to another player, move it into this swapping area, and then take a goods card you want from the swapping area.

Sometimes the development cards pool triggers events affecting everybody. Most are bad, e.g. ship owners losing cards and warehouse owners being unable to keep cards. Players have some control over whether an event occurs though. An event only occurs if its icon is on the first development card on the table. If you want to avoid the event, take the card. The next development card will slide down to take the place of the first development card, so you can see what’s coming too.

The Play

I did a six-player game, with a mix of players who have and have not played before. The early game felt rather futile, with only five cards to work with. Putting together five different cards won’t earn you much money, so you might as well try to put together a set of similar cards in order to claim a development card, which will help you in the long run. The early game seems to be a no-brainer - you should go for developments. What types of development you go for will define your strengths. I went for a heavy shipping approach, because having ships meant I received more cards every round. Every round a pool of cards are turned face up depending on how many ships the players own in total, and then depending on the players’ ship values, they take turns claiming cards from the pool. I had many ships and their values were big, so I was often last to claim cards, which meant I got mostly lousy cards. Perhaps my shipping strategy was a bit too unsophisticated.

Every round upon looking at my starting hand of five cards, the first decision was whether to shoot for many different cards so that I could earn many VP’s, or shoot for many similar cards so that I could get a good development card. Sometimes it was a bit of both. What was important was to try to not waste cards, because unusable cards must be discarded.

I really like the artwork of this game.

The highest valued goods card is 9.

Fighting for the Trade Master privilege can be useful, although it means you need to be willing to part with high valued cards. Being Trade Master allows you to start the trading, to decide who buys developments first, and also to dictate how many cards are to be traded in the next round. Being able to dictate the number of cards to trade means you can pick a number most suitable for your hand. You can intentionally go for a higher number (max is 4), to break up good hands others may have. Or go for a smaller number so that everyone has limited trading capability.

Some players went for the VP path, i.e. trying to accumulate as many VP’s as possible every round to reach 75VP and end the game. From the beginning I tended towards the instant win victory, thus my approach of getting as many ships as I could. I actually could have switched to the VP path, since having many cards meant I could make larger sets of different cards. The game is quite naughty, tempting you from both directions. One other interesting decision is when do you switch from engine-building to scoring, i.e. when do you stop emphasising claiming development cards and try to go all out for VP’s. In the case of going for the 10 different cards instant win, you probably can do development for longer, since the instant win is a one-shot thing and not an accumulated thing.

Going for the instant win was nerve-wracking, because towards late gate I was sure I was too far behind the VP-earners to be able to switch approach, so it was a race against them as well as against other fellow moon-shooters. VP’s were hidden, so I could not be sure how close the VP-earners were to 75VP. Eventually it was Allen who pulled off the instant win. He had ships, but not as many as me. He had warehouses though, which I didn’t have. That let him keep cards. He also had a development card that let him convert one card to a different value. Together these let him make his set of ten.

The Thoughts

I had only heard of lukewarm responses to Mundus Novus, but it turned out to be better than I expected. Overall it is quite simple. It is fun to put together effective combinations of development cards. Set-collection itself is fun. There is also an interesting timing aspect to your strategy execution. How long do you try to keep your options open? When do you decide which victory condition to focus on? When do you switch from engine-building to VP-earning? I think this is a game that can be comfortably played on auto-pilot. The steps are simple and turns are quick. Some actions are done simultaneously, and even when you are waiting for others to take their turns, you need to remain conscious of the cards on the table to prepare your next move. Deciding what to do with your cards is tactical. Picking developments is strategic. You need to pay attention to what developments others are going for, because some developments affect the potency of others.

Age of Steam: Alabama Railways

Plays: 2Px1.

I have always liked Age of Steam, but I seldom get to play it. When I saw a number of 2-player expansion maps on sale, I decided to get some, so that I could play against my wife Michelle. The player count for the base game is 3 to 6. I bought two expansions, and each expansion contains three maps, two being small 2-player maps, and the third being a 3-5 player map. That means I have four 2-player maps now. I started with the simplest-looking map.

The Game

In Alabama Railways, and in other 2-player maps, a number of changes have been made to make the game more suitable for such a small number of players. The maps are much smaller, of course, forcing competition. There are goods of three colours only, instead of five. The roles (i.e. special abilities) for players to choose from are fewer. In Alabama Railways specifically, there is reduced income. For every delivery, $1 less is earned. This is a big deal. You don’t make money at all by making 1-link deliveries. You only earn $1 for 2-link deliveries. This means it’s much harder to crawl out of net loss. In the game that we played, I kept running low on cash and once I even ran out. I kept needing to issue more shares to fund my track building. There was once I was forced to reduce my income level because I didn’t have enough cash in hand for train maintenance and dividend payment. That was painful.

Another unique aspect is there are no cities accepting goods at the start of the game. Players must take the Urbanisation action to create markets for the goods (i.e. cities of the specific colours). Because of this, bidding for turn order can be very important, to make sure you can pick Urbanisation, place the new city somewhere convenient for you, and also build tracks first to gain access to the new city.

The game expansion itself is just sheets of thick paper - game board on the top right, game "cover" on the bottom right, and a few other sheets underneath. No mounted game board. But the paper thickness is sufficient for the board to stay flat, so it is no problem. The 2-player boards are on one sheet each, while the 3-5 player map is on the back of both the 2-player boards, i.e. two sheets need to be placed together to form a larger game board.

The Play

I made a number of small tactical mistakes in the early game, which made my company financials rather wobbly. In contrast, Michelle was more efficient in building tracks, and thus saved money. I teetered on the verge of the downward spiral towards bankruptcy for quite many rounds, needing to issue new shares round after round, to pay for new tracks, to pay for train maintenance and also to pay for the dividends for those shares themselves. Only towards the late game, my long-term planning paid off. I had more tracks, and had planned for making longer deliveries. It was these long deliveries that let me pull ahead. Also a $1 loss for a $6 delivery was much less painful than a $1 loss for a $2 delivery.

Michelle had not planned as well as I did for the longer deliveries toward game end, so by then her income level fell behind. Also we were quickly running out of goods to deliver. Throughout the game whenever we rolled dice for new goods, there was only once that we rolled two of a kind, so although all the 1st place goods came onto the board, only one of the 2nd place goods came out. We agreed to end the game one round early, since goods were running out and there wasn't much else for us to do.

The four starting cities are brown and they only produce goods but not receive them. There are only three goods types - red, blue and black.

I (green) created red city A, while Michelle (red) created blue city B and black city C. I had a half-built track from city A to city C, pending to be completed the next round.

Near game end. I was the one who created black city D, but because I was so focused on track-building somewhere else (towards brown city 5/6, which had many goods), Michelle connected to it before I did.

Game end. In the Goods Display, you can see that almost all the 2nd and 3rd place goods still remained. In the Action Selection section, you can see that for this map, only Urbanisation and Locomotive are available.

The Thoughts

2-player Age of Steam works very well! Alabama Railways is scaled well and the game is very competitive, tight and unforgiving. I really enjoyed the struggle for survival in the early game. That penalty of reducing my income level was a rude wake-up call, reminding me of how brutal Age of Steam can be. I'm quite happy with my purchase and I look forward to trying the other three 2-player maps.

Triumvirate

Plays: 2Px1.

The Game

Triumvirate is a 2-player-only trick-taking game. That sounds weird. At least I have not heard of "2-player-only" and "trick-taking" linked together before this. Surprisingly it works quite well. There's no simple way to give a brief overview of gameplay. I will forge ahead and describe the whole thing.

The deck has 27 cards in 3 suits (colours), numbered 0 to 8. At the start of the game all but five cards are dealt out. Like most trick-taking games, the leading player plays a card, and the other player must follow suit if possible. When you win a trick, you don't claim the cards. You just become the next leading player. The trick played remains at the centre of the table, to keep count of how many tricks of each colour has been played. The winning card determines the winning colour. When a colour reaches three tricks at the centre of the table, a hand ends. A disc of the winning colour is placed onto the gameboard. Each player secretly sets aside a card for potential scoring. Cards numbered 3, 5, and 7 are scoring cards. They are worth points if at game end the winning colour (the one with 3 discs placed onto the board) matches them.

So the game is played over a few hands. At the conclusion of each hand, a disc will be added to the gameboard, and two cards will be secretly removed from the game by the players. Players keep their hand of cards. Other cards, including those previously not dealt, are reshuffled and dealt out again, leaving three undealt (as opposed to five in the first hand). This means players can quite easily count cards. They can see all the cards that have been played in the previous hand. There is some uncertainty in those three undealt cards, so you can't be 100% sure of what cards your opponent may be holding. The cards that have been set aside by your opponent are an uncertainty too, but you can try to guess what colour your opponent is going for by his card play. Cards set aside need not be scoring cards. Non scoring cards can be set aside too, just that they won't be worth points, but they can help in manipulating the card pool, and maybe even in confusing your opponent.

The gameboard serves only one purpose - to track how many of the yellow, red and black discs are on it. The game ends when the 3rd disc of one of these colours are on the board. The green disc is for tracking the leading player. Allen and I scoffed at it. There are only two players. How hard is it to remember who the leading player is? However we soon realised that it was a good idea afterall. We kept forgetting who won the previous trick, especially at the end of a hand. We learned humility. The purple discs are to track wins. The game is short, so it is recommended to play 3 games consecutively.

Normal cards have their numbers in circles, scoring cards have theirs in squares. Zeroes are in hexagons and they are special trump cards.

When one colour has its third disc placed onto the board, the game ends. Both players reveal their secret cards, and only scoring cards in the winning colour count. Whoever has more points wins.

One special case is the 0 cards. Although they are smallest in their own colours, they trump over all cards of other colours. You can use a red 0 to trump a black 6, even if you have other black cards in hand. This is an important consideration during the game.

The Play

The rules are mostly simple, but the implications of your actions are not immediately apparent. The deck size is small so cards are easy to count, if you are willing to put in the effort. The two cards that are set aside at the end of every hand has a big impact to the card pool. It is tempting to set aside many scoring cards of the colour (or colours) you hope will win, but that will weaken the colour. Every round, by watching what cards come out, you can get a good feel of what cards are still in circulation and what cards your opponent have probably set aside for scoring. At least that was the case in my first game. I think at higher skill levels, players can better conceal their scoring cards and also confuse their opponents.

When I played, my approach was mostly quite tactical and short-sighted. I tried to save a scoring card to be set aside every round, and as the game end approached, I tried to push for the colour in which I had the most scoring cards. As I played, I realised that the card pool was greatly impacted by the cards that were set aside, but I never got around to experimenting with manipulating the card pool. I felt I have just scratched the surface of the strategies of this game. I felt there should be tactics in deciding how quickly to let a hand end, so that few cards are revealed. There should be tactics in holding certain cards from hand to hand. There should be tactics in setting aside cards which are not scoring cards. There should also be techniques in guessing what your opponent is trying to do.

The Thoughts

I would group Triumvirate with classic games such as Bridge. Rules are minimalistic, but there are many techniques and tactics involved. One thing that turns me off from these games is the effort required to play well. I always feel (but I may be wrong) that these games take significant effort to learn to play well and to better appreciate them. Something like Go, Chess. Triumvirate has luck, like Bridge, but there is much skill involved too. My gut feel is this is a kind of game that can be played competitively, and there are different skill levels that players can achieve. I feel nervous with these games because I always feel I'm not good enough, and I'm too lazy to put in enough effort so that I can get to a "good enough" skill level. It's quite chicken and egg. Compare this to Eurogames, even complex ones, or conflict games. Sure, these boardgames have many more rules, and they have strategy too, but they don't give me this bare, spartan, merciless feeling, like l'm a gladiator facing another gladiator both wearing only loincloths, and armed with short swords and no shields. Hmmm... how did such imagery come out of a little harmless looking card game...

Triumvirate is very different from games like Lost Cities and Jaipur. In these other games, there are tough decisions to make, there is some strategy, but I'd argue that luck is more significant, and the skills involved are not as deep as Triumvirate. These games can be played in a rather relaxed manner, and still be enjoyed. I find that Triumvirate needs to be played in more intense manner to be able to fully appreciate it. It is suitable to be played with a regular opponent, so that both can explore the depth of the game together and play competitively.

boardgaming in photos

23 May 2012. Playing Troyes against Allen at BoardGameArena (BGA). It had been some time since I last played (I played a physical copy then), so I was rusty not only rules-wise but also tactics-wise. Needless to say I lost by quite a big margin. The BGA implementation of Troyes doesn't work quite correctly for my PC. You can see that some of the meeples are not positioned correctly. They should be on the shields on the cards, but are instead offset to the lower left. Has anyone experienced something similar at BGA or know what I can do to fix this?

24 May 2012. Gosu at BGA. I have a similar problem with Gosu. Notice that the round activation token should be on the second card of the bottom row, but is instead placed outside of my tableau area. In Gosu it's much less confusing though, since you don't have that many activation tokens to track.

2 Jun 2012. Dragonheart at BGA. With a hand of three Legolas (archers) and two ships, I didn't have much choice did I? Playing the archers would not get me much because there weren't many flying dragons to be captured. Playing those two ships would probably be worse, because that would set up my opponent to play the third ship and thus claim the stack of archers and knights.

A physical copy of Dungeon Petz, which I refer to as the pet shop game when I try to convince my wife to play it. This buffalo / snail creature had not been eating much but had been pooping all over the place. It had dumped twice in the other cage (the one above its current cage), and now it dumped twice again.

At the moment I still play with the basic rules and have not ventured to the advanced rules of using the double icons (e.g. the feeding and pooping icons on the green card). I still don't have many plays under my belt yet, and my plays tend to be quite far apart. In this most recent game, I found that setting up for a good sale can be a game winner. It's important to plan ahead and target a particular pet for a particular buyer. I received 27pts (about half my final score) for one particular sale in the last round. That was very satisfying. It had involved painstakingly growing and caring for a suitable pet for a few rounds, saving up the appropriate needs cards, and also very importantly having an imp book a slot on the stage (which can boost the points from a sale by 50%).

20 Jun 2012. Puerto Rico on BGA. It had been a very long time since I last played Puerto Rico. I still remembered most of the rules, but I was a little rusty on strategy. BGA has the 2-player variant, which is nice.

My island at game end. During the game I got myself many quarries, which let me construct buildings more cheaply. I initially went for a shipping strategy, since I started with a corn plantation and could produce corn without needing a production building. However I was distracted and never properly developed my production capacity. I produced a little corn (yellow), a little sugar (white), and a little indigo (blue). I constructed both the buildings that let me take a new colonist with a new plantation and a new building, which was handy. I needed to do this also partly because my opponent Allen kept taking the Mayor role. The game ended after I filled up my building slots. I had two big purple buildings, which gave me 15pts, and thus the win.

Allen's island. In the early game he constructed a building which let him take an extra random plantation during the Settler phase, so he was able to fill up his plantation slots quite quickly. I think in the early game he also didn't have a very clear direction. Eventually he was the one who went for heavy shipping. He produced much indigo (blue) and tobacco (light brown), and also a little corn (yellow). Unfortunately his cash flow was not as good as me (I had built both small and big markets, giving me $3 more per trade), and he was unable to construct any big purple building before I ended the game.

22 Jun 2012. Allen and I played Sekigahara again, this time switching sides - he played Tokugawa (black) and I played Ishida (yellow). This was relatively early in the game, on the western side of the map, near Kyoto. I had more blocks in this area, and was able to defeat his armies and push them back. In the lower right, I had captured one of his castles.

Mid game (Round 4 of 7). I sat at the northern side of the map, so the map is upside down. On the left side of the map, Allen's armies had previously captured both my yellow castles. However his armies vacated the leftmost castle in order to capture the resource location at the lower left, so the castle reverted to my control since that's the default allegiance. I quickly mustered one block to defend it. In the lower centre section, my army led by Ishida himself was besieging one of Allen's castles. On the right side, my forces dominated. The two boxes on the lower left are my recruitment boxes. I had 6 blocks waiting to be deployed in the normal recruitment box (left). The Mori recruitment box (right) is a special case and starts with these five predetermined blocks, as opposed to randomly drawn blocks. Mustering from here is much more costly than normal, each block costing one card. However if Osaka is attacked by Tokugawa, these blocks automatically muster to Osaka at no cost. Since things looked optimistic on the right side of the map (the Kyoto and Osaka area), I didn't expect to need to pay cards to muster these Mori blocks. I wanted to save cards.

This was probably the most memorable moment of the game. My 6-block army attacked Allen's 5-block army, which was a newly formed army consisting of some blocks hurriedly marched in from the left side of the map along the coastal highway, and some newly mustered blocks. Allen had another army nearby, and I didn't want to let his two armies merge and become much stronger. Little did I know that he had been meticulously planning for this battle. This was the first time I engaged this particular army, and I was surprised that it was a mostly cavalry army. Allen had been saving up on special attack cards, which meant he made full use of the cavalry charges. Every cavalry icon gave +2 strength and also enjoyed a +2 strength bonus for every previously played cavalry icon. This meant the cavalry icons themselves contributed (2 + 4 + 6 + 8 =) 20 strength! My army was soundly defeated and only one block survived and hastily retreated.

After dealing me a crushing defeat, Allen marched more troops towards my turf. I decided I could not let those Mori blocks wait idly in Osaka. I spent four cards mustering four 3-mon Mori blocks to Osaka, and then had them advance to Kyoto together with other blocks. Needless to say, hotels and inns were all fully occupied that evening. At this point, Allen had captured many resource locations and castles, and if he could hold on to them, he would win by the end of Round 7 by having more points than me. So I must take the initiative to bring the war to him and to wrest control of some resource locations and castles from him.

One other way I could win was by killing Tokugawa in battle. That would give me an instant win without needing to count points. My 8-block army caught Allen's 5-block army led by Tokugawa himself in Kiyosu. I came extremely close to killing Tokugawa. I defeated his army, but unfortunately was just one strength point short of being able to kill all five blocks. The lone Tokugawa block survived, and after that ran away towards Edo (his capital) with his tail between his legs. Since this was the last round and I only had one more movement phase, I would not be able to catch him.

The great Tokugawa Ieyasu narrowly escaped death and took a break at Hakone castle.

We came to the last movement phase of the whole game, and it was my movement phase. We counted our point values. Allen had 18pts, I had 9pts. I would need to take 5pts from him to win the game. His forces on the right side of the map were diminished, but mine would be stretched too to try to capture so many locations. I could capture a castle (2pts) and a resource location (1pt) which were undefended. I used whatever else I could spare to attack two resource locations held by Allen's troops. I managed to defeat his army in Kuwana (upper left). So now it was all down to this last battle in Kyoto, my 5-block army against his 4-block army. Just... one... more... point!

Allen had some Loyalty Challenge cards up his sleeve, but thankfully whenever he played one, I had the right cards to prevent my blocks from defecting. In fact in this whole game we didn't have a single defection. As this final tense battle drew on, I totalled my strength points, and it came to exactly the same as Allen's! Since he was the defender, he won ties. I could not kick his army out of Kyoto. This was the aftermath of the battle. We both lost troops, but he held on to Kyoto, and won the game 14:13.

designer diaries

Do you enjoy reading designer diaries? These are often long essays, sometimes even series of essays, that are usually written by new (or relatively new) game designers, describing their labour of love from initial idea to publication (or attempted publication in the case of Kickstarter projects). Designer diaries seem to be a new thing that many people are doing, a trendy thing, much like Kickstarter projects. I find that most of the time I have very little interest in them (TL;DR, heh heh...). In fact I'm getting tired of seeing so many such designer diaries being released. Sorry that this sounds negative. This is probably due to my overall jaded-ness with the quantity of new boardgames. The designer diaries that I'd be interested to read would be those by designers whom I already know and like. Also I would probably be more interested in the designer diary of a game that I have played and enjoyed, because I'd be interested to find out the thought processes behind the design, and the story of how the game came about. I remember Agricola had a designer diary. At that time there weren't many such designer diaries. I didn't spend much time reading the Agricola designer diary, and only went back to read it after finding that I liked the game a lot.

I wonder whether people write designer diaries mainly because they feel these will help promote their games, or because they enjoy writing their own stories. Everyone (more or less) likes to tell his own story right? I'm a blogger. I know. :-) To me, there are other better ways of promoting a game. Now I know many marketing snippets can't satisfy hardcore gamers. These are often just flavour text, or marketing-speak. What I would consider more informative and interesting are photos of game components and brief descriptions, and also a round overview. The gameboard and some key game components can tell much. They set the tone of the game. Highlighting a few key aspects can give a good feel of how the game works. A picture is worth a thousand words.

Something like this. The game is co-designed by Tom Lehmann, designer of Race for the Galaxy. Eventually I decided I probably won't be buying Starship Merchants, but hey, at least I read the whole article.

Sat 23 Jun 2012: A few fellow gamers shared their views and suggestions at BGG.

Ticket To Ride: Asia

I own most of the Ticket To Ride expansions and spin-offs, and when I heard about this Asia expansion map I was quite excited, because I live in Asia. However I was disappointed to find out that of the two Asian maps, one requires at least four players because it's a team-based game. I usually only play Ticket To Ride games against my wife, so there's little chance of the team game getting played. So, as often is the case, my justification for buying it is when my two kids grow up we will be able to play the team game as a family.

That means for now I've only played the Legendary Asia map, and cannot write about the Team Asia map yet. The Legendary Asia map is mostly just Ticket To Ride on a different map. There is an element of TTR Europe - one of your start destination tickets is a long route (you can choose whether to keep it). I don't like this element because there are only a handful of such long routes and you'll soon know all of them. I think if you play a competitive game, this aspect is good because you need to prevent your opponents from guessing your card and blocking you. You also want to guess your opponents' cards. However I prefer a more relaxed play style with TTR, so I'd rather have more variability.

The bottom destination card, Ankara - Colombo, is one of the long routes. As usual, the Days of Wonder graphics design is top-notch. The game comes with card racks, but they are mainly meant for the team game, not for helping you hold cards.

Mountain spaces are a new concept. When claiming a route with such spaces you must pay extra trains. These extra trains earn 2VP each. Using them depletes your train supply more quickly. You need to be careful not to run short of trains to complete all your destination tickets. However using mountain routes can also help you force a quicker end while your opponent is unprepared.

I have only played a few 2-player games, so I don't have a good feel of how different this map is from other maps. At the moment it feels about the same. TTR Switzerland is still my favourite TTR map, but that's because I mostly play with two.

I may need to wait a few years before I can experience the Team Asia map. I'm looking forward to that, because the team rules look quite interesting. Maybe I should already start the kids on basic TTR (USA map).

This is the Legendary Asia side of the board. The bottom right corner is for placing trains that have been spent to claim mountain routes.

The biggest flaw of the game is --- there is no Kuala Lumpur! Surely it makes much more sense to add Kuala Lumpur and remove Singapore (cue cheers from Malaysians and jeers from Singaporeans).

Gosu

Plays: 2Px3.

I'm well on my way to sample most of the games at BoardGameArena (BGA). Gosu is yet another game I've played for the first time at BGA. Since Race for the Galaxy is one of my favourite games, Gosu caught my attention when it first came out, being a card game with a tableau concept. Also the designer is a Magic: The Gathering champion. I never got around to try it, but now that it's conveniently on BGA, I must not miss it.

The Game

In Gosu, players build up armies of goblins, taking turns adding goblins, using their special abilities, mutating them, and drawing new goblin cards. In each round, players take turns until everyone passes, then a great battle takes place, which is basically a simple comparison of army strength. Whoever is strongest gains one point. After that a new round starts. Whoever reaches three points first wins the game.

You get a hand of cards at the start of the game, but after that there are no more free card draws. You get two activation tokens every round, which can be used to draw cards. Some goblins' special abilities allow card draws. However these are usually quite limited, so you need to play efficiently and squeeze the most out of your limited resources.

Goblins come from five different clans, and consist of three levels - soldiers, leaders and heroes (with strengths of 2, 3 and 5 respectively). Playing your first soldier is free, and so is playing any soldier of a clan you already have in play. Playing a leader requires it to be matched by one soldier of the same clan, and similarly a hero must be matched by a leader of the same clan. However playing a soldier of a new clan costs two cards, which is a lot. So it is expensive to have many clans in play, yet often, depending on your initial hand, it may not be easy or desirable to stick to one clan. Each player has a 5x3 grid to play goblins, i.e. at most five per level.

Every goblin has some special power, some taking effect when they come into play, some when an activation token is spent on them, some when they mutate, and other situations. Some effects kill opponent goblins, some neutralise them for the current round, some let the player draw cards. Players must make good use of these powers to gain an advantage over their opponents. Some powers get boosted if your points are behind at least one other player. This is a handy catch-up mechanism.

The mutation concept is spending cards to replace an existing goblin. This is usually costly, but can be useful when your slots are full, or you want to make use of an ability that triggers only upon mutation.

The Gosu interface on BGA is simple and clean. Flipped over cards are temporarily disabled for the current round. Their strenghs do not count, their clans and levels are ignored. A card with no other cards above it or to its right are vulnerable and can be killed by a goblin with the kill ability. So at the moment I (left tableau) have three such vulnerable cards, and Han (right tableau) has two - the rightmost card of each row.

Of course it's quite impossible to read the tiny text on the cards, so you need to hover your mouse over a card and a pop-up will appear. The discard pile at the bottom is open information. I wish there were a way to sort the discard pile, e.g. by clan or level. That would make it slightly easier to browse.

The Play

The one thing I remember most about playing Gosu is how limited your resources are after the first round. A lot is at stake in the first round. The composition of your army is largely determined in the first round. You have to decide which clans and which goblins to use. You need to consider flexibility in future rounds, not just winning the first round.

From Round 2 onwards, you will have limited actions. You only get two new activation tokens every round, and often you don't carry over many cards from the previous round. However despite the few actions, if you play well, they can be very effective.

The discard pile is open information, which is handy if a goblin ability lets you pick a card from there. Hero goblins, although strong, have powers that may help all players, so sometimes you need to think twice in case they end up helping your opponent more. I had one particular game where I was in very very bad shape, but I came back from a 0:2 deficit with very few cards in hand, to compete in a 2:2 final showdown. It was because my opponent Han had played a hero goblin that let me draw some cards, which turned out to be a life-saver for me. In the end I lost the final great battle, but it was a dramatic turn of events from a rather hopeless situation.

Hanging back from an early lead seems to be a viable strategy, because of how some special abilities become stronger if there is another player having more points than you do. I have not played enough games to fully appreciate this strategy, but I think it is quite viable.

I'm not sure how I managed to afford four different clans in this game. Each clan has a different card border.

In this game we were mostly focused on one clan. I mainly played the black clan and Han the white.

The Thoughts

Gosu definitely has that feel of "how to make the most out of what you are dealt", similar to Race for the Galaxy. So far from the few games that I have played, I have not seen particularly powerful combos, but I have seen how some individual powers can be very effective if used well. Often it is interesting to pick a few special abilities among many to use. You must choose which clans to go for. Once you play the soldier of a clan, you are committed to this clan to a certain extent.

Compared to Race for the Galaxy, Gosu is minimalistic. Other than the cards, you only have the (shared) advantage token and your own two activation tokens to fiddle with. There is a lot of text to read the first few times you play, but once you get past that and get familiar with the goblin special abilities, the game is brisk and tight. I'd say this is a gamer's game, not something a casual player would have the patience to learn. However I don't think it is particularly deep either. The scope isn't wide. Goblin powers mostly centre around killing goblins, neutralising them, drawing cards, and playing around with the advantage or activation tokens. However the powers are interesting to wield and there are plenty of interesting decisions to make in the game. So I think Gosu is a wonderful short game (I wouldn't call it a filler) for experienced players. In that way it serves a similar purpose as Race for the Galaxy. Gosu plays faster and is more tactical (vs strategic).