Cubist

Plays: 3Px1.

The Game

In Cubists you are sculptors - cube artists - who use dice as the material for sculptures and buildings. You race to complete commissioned artwork, and you contribute towards building an art museum. Both of these give victory points. The game ends when someone completes five sculptures, or when the museum is completed.

These four columns of components are (from left):

(1) The player board. Every turn you roll two dice. You can use them to build sculptures in one of your two workshops here. If you choose not to, or if you can't use the dice yet, you can store them in your storage space (top right corner of your player board). You can store at most two dice. When you build a sculpture, you should build it according to the specifications of the customers. This is a business afterall. The customer requirements are in the next column.

(2) The players race to complete these sculptures requested by customers. Whoever completes one takes the card, and earns one or two bonus dice. The point value of a sculpture card is in the yellow star. The number of bonus dice is indicated by the red cubes. The most important use of the bonus dice is to contribute to building the art museum. You can use them for other purposes, and sometimes it makes sense to do so, but they are usually best used as museum building material, because they score 2VP per die.

(3) This is the construction site of the museum. It starts with one red die as a cornerstone. A blueprint card is randomly drawn at the start of the game (that green card), and everyone builds according to it.

(4) These are the artist cards. When you have two or three dice of the same value, you can use them to book an artist. Artists give a one-time special ability. Once you book an artist, you can use him any time from your next turn onwards. Once used he is discarded (sad but true). An opponent may take over your artist. If he has two (or three) dice of the same value, and that value equals or exceeds the value of your dice on an artist, he can eject your dice and place his in their place. So you probably don't want to wait too long before using your artist. There is much variety in artist abilities. E.g. some give you a die of a specific value, some let you modify the value of a die.

The basic rules around building a sculpture and building the museum are the same. When you add a die next to another, the values of these dice must be different by exactly 1. E.g. you can only place a 3 or a 5 next to a 4. When you add a die on top of another, their values must be the same. You can only place a 4 on top of another 4.

These are the artists. At the moment three are booked. The third artist booked with a pair of 1's has no loyalty at all. Any pair including another pair of 1's can take him away. The second artist booked with 6's is harder to sway, but it is not impossible.

The Play

I did a 3-player game with Allen and Han. I played in a simple way, focusing on just the sculptures, and contributing to the museum construction as often as possible. The competition in completing the commissioned works is fierce. There were a few times Allen was narrowly beaten in completing a sculpture, and it was quite painful for him because it meant much effort had been wasted. The new sculpture order coming in may not look anything like your half completed masterpiece, so often you need to start from scratch. Before you abandon a sculpture you can use the dice for signing up artists. That is a small consolation, but it's better than none.

I'm still unsure about going for artists. Some of them do seem powerful, but I feel they are risky - others may steal your artists. Also they are not exactly cheap, costing at least two dice. I only invested in artists when I had spare dice which I couldn't find a good use for. You do need to consider the artist abilities in the context of the current sculpture orders. Some artists may give you an edge in completing certain orders. Sometimes they let you take a combo-rific turn when the stars line up. That is fun and satisfying.

Deciding which sculptures to work on is something you need to do all the time. If many opponents are working on the same one, there is a higher risk of losing out. If someone is almost done with a sculpture, you probably don't want to go anywhere near it. Sometimes two sculptures are similar, and you want to build in such a way that you have the flexibility to complete it as one or the other. The number of orders is small, so there is no avoiding the competition. You need to choose wisely and hope for the best. This is a tactical decision you make all the time.

Which die values to use in your sculptures is another thing to consider. Ideally you want one workshop to use lower values and the other higher values, so that no matter what you roll, you can fit that die somewhere.

We played very quickly. I'm not sure whether it's us or it's the game. We generally play games at a brisk pace, often starting to take our turns before others finish taking theirs. In Cubist you only roll two dice on your turn. Even if you have two dice stored from your previous turn, that's only four dice in total to consider. There is not that much to think about when you need to decide where to place them. On other players' turns, you should take note of what they are doing, e.g. which sculptures they are going for and which artists they are investing in, but there is still plenty of time to think of your own medium- and long-term strategy. I find this a light and speedy game.

This is my player area. I have completed two sculptures at this moment. They have given me three bonus dice, and I have used them all.

The art museum construction is still in progress. I (green) have contributed two dice. Han (beige) has contributed two too.

The Thoughts

Cubist is a light family strategy game. It's easy to learn. There is a spatial element to it. There is some luck and excitement in the die-rolling. You have a medium-term goal to chase after in the commissioned works, and a long-term goal in the art museum.

Crowdfunding: The Award Winning Game

This is a Kickstarter project with a cheeky name, launched by my southern neighbours. The game looks good. Check it out especially if you are Singaporean.

link: a Netrunner story

A good article I read at Shut Up & Sit Down - a story at the 2015 UK Netrunner Nationals.

boardgaming in photos: the trio

There was a period when Han, Allen and I gamed together regularly, usually at my place or Allen's. Our play styles are similar. We tend to play quickly, sometimes taking actions even before our turns come. Sometimes we are so self-conscious about not playing speedily enough that even before others tease us for thinking too long, we already start apologising "Sorry sorry, AP AP" (Analysis Paralysis). I enjoy our brisk pace. Han is now living in another city, so we don't get to play together often, but when he's in town we try to meet up. On his recent visit we managed to game for two days, playing both old and new games.

This is God's Playground by Martin Wallace. My previous play was probably two years ago. The game is about the history of Poland. Poland has always been sandwiched by bullies. Players take the role of Polish dynasties, working together to defend Poland while at the same time competing to be the most powerful clan. This is a game where you sometimes sacrifice the greater good for selfish ambition.

The situation in Prussia (northwest) and Greater Poland (west) is not good. Only Allen (blue) is invested in Prussia (the discs are estates), and only I (white) am invested in Greater Poland. This means only one of three players has strong incentive to defend these regions. This is dangerous. If an enemy successfully invades and sets up camp, it can spread to neighbouring regions.

The Hapsburgs is an unusual enemy. For the first three rounds (of four) they don't launch military attacks, and instead exert political influence, reducing the influence of Polish nobles. Only in the fourth round they may attack Poland. In the third round, the Ottomans attack the Hapsburgs instead of Poland. You can try to help the Hapsburgs by fighting the Ottomans. However the Hapsburgs are not grateful people. If you don't defeat the Ottomans in Round 3, they will conquer the Hapburgs, they will be militarily stronger in Round 4, and they will attack from two fronts in Round 4. If you manage to defeat the Ottomans, they will be weaker in Round 4, but they will still try to attack you. The Hapsburg, instead of thanking you for saving their backsides, will instead think you are ripe for military conquest. So you have a lose-lose situation. In our game I was the only one heavily invested in Greater Poland, which was the entry point of the Hapsburgs. So I had to deal with them every round, and I saved their butts in Round 3, and I had to endure their attack in Round 4. Very annoying!

This was Round 3. My personal army (white) supported by the national army (grey) beat up the Ottomans kau-kau (severely). We placed many white and grey success cubes in the Ottoman box. One funny thing in our game was I kept rolling 1's during battle, which was very bad because it meant losing units. The national army was a shared resource. All three of us could use our influence to borrow it. Han and Allen kept screaming at me "what are you doing?!!". Each time I led the national army in battle they had to pray hard I didn't get more soldiers killed, leaving them a much diminished army when their turns came around.

This was the middle of Round 4, i.e. final round. Most of the spots for estates were occupied. The only remaining vacant spots were in Prussia, because that region was pretty doomed. The enemy was strong, the defenses thin.

The enemies (black cubes) had invaded Prussia. They were many, and we only had two nobles (the blue and white cubes) to tie them down. All the enemies that we could not pin down would spread to the neighbouring regions. Many of our estates were soon burnt down. It was not a pretty sight. Earlier during the game we thought we did quite well. Not many enemies managed to break through our defenses. Little did we know they had saved the best for last.

This was the final score. It was amazingly close. I (white) only won because of the tiebreaker rule - whoever has more nobles remaining on the board wins.

I taught Allen Machi Koro. This was his first time playing. We played using the Harbour expansion straight-away.

Han has played Machi Koro before with other gamers in Johor Bahru.

The three of us are now playing a game of After the Flood online at Sloth Ninja Games. I fared horribly, and even before mid game we all knew I was screwed. Han played the best. Now Allen and I are trying to see whether we can turn the tide. After the Flood is an intricate exactly-3-players game. If I play as a neutral party, Han will cruise to victory. If I team up with Allen, Allen has a chance to win. So I'm playing the troublemaker now (or if you want to put it nicely, the balancing factor). But perhaps I'll backstab Allen at the last minute. Just for kicks.

The Princes of Machu Picchu

Plays: 5Px1.

The Game

The Princes of Machu Picchu is an older game by Mac Gerdts. In this age of glut in boardgames, a 2008 game is already considered old. Mac Gerdts is famous for the rondel mechanism in his designs. I've always felt the rondel is just a tool he uses, and it's misleading and unfair to simply describe his games as rondel games. His games have different characters, and they are not defined by the rondel, clever though it is as a tool.

The gameboard of The Princes of Machu Picchu is based on a famous photo of Machu Picchu, and it behaves like a huge irregular rondel. Players move their pawns (the princes) from district to district, triggering the power of the district being entered. Normally you only take one step to move to an adjacent district, but you can spend a llama to jump to any district.

The discs are your workers. You need to spend goods to recruit them. Once assigned to work in a particular district, they stay there for the rest of the game, unless you fire them. When a production district is activated, anyone with workers there can pay corn (the basic currency in the game) to produce goods. Some districts let you spend goods to recruit priests. Some districts let you spend goods to pray. These are the main ways you collect and spend goods.

This is a scoring card. Everyone starts with one, and can collect more as the game progresses. Each card has two main icons telling you how you will score. This particular card tells me each of my corn farmer and cloth maker scores 1VP. The three gold statues at the top means something too. The story in the game has two possible ends, either Machu Picchu is discovered and conquered by the Spaniards, or it remains safely hidden. If it stays safe, everyone does normal scoring and the highest scorer wins. However if it is conquered, players need to compare their total gold value. Whoever has the most gold triples his score, and whoever has the second most doubles his score. This is truly a game changer.

Some districts are adjacent to many others, some just a few. When you move your pawn, you need to think a few steps ahead. What options will be available to you next turn, and the turn after that? There is always the option of paying a llama to go anywhere you want, but that's expensive.

Everyone has a runner on this mountain track. There are a few ways to get him to advance, the main one being praying and making sacrifices. When your runner reaches certain milestones, you gain some goods. What's most important though is getting to the top. That's when you get to draw a new scoring card. Once your runner hits the top, he goes back to the foot of the mountain and starts again. You want to keep him going and going so that you can collect more scoring cards.

This is the marketplace. One of the districts on the board lets you buy and sell goods here. When you buy, take the good off the market. The price will go up. When you sell, place the good here. The price goes down.

This is the player reference card. The table on the left shows what you need to pay for each type of worker you want to train.

These are the priests. Once someone starts recruiting priests, numbers will be revealed. The most recently revealed number at each row tells you how many steps each priest can make your runner take. If you examine the numbers you will find that it keeps decreasing as more priests are recruited. This creates tension as players race to recruit the early, more powerful priests. There is also a dilemma between popular and less popular priest types. If many others recruit the same priest type as you, the priest strength weakens. However you can possibly rely on them to trigger prayer time, saving you a valuable action.

This scoring card on the left tells me that each of my puma priests and sun priests are worth 1VP.

The large round tokens near the top trigger the end of a round. On your turn you can decline to take a normal action and instead claim a token. Every token gives a bonus. Once the third token is claimed, the round enters a final phase. Players have some control over the tempo of the game. If you want to speed up the game, grab these tokens quickly.

The key to the game is the scoring cards. To get more cards you need your runner to run often and run far. To get your runner to run, you need priests and you need to pray. To do these you need goods. This summarises the whole flow of the game. Scoring cards are secret, so you are never exactly sure how your opponents are going to score. However you can make educated guesses based on their play. If someone is recruiting many cocoa farmers, he probably has a few such scoring cards. The two possible end game situations are the biggest uncertainty in the game. You can't be 100% sure whether you will have more gold than the other players. You need to carefully evaluate which outcome is better for you. Once you decide how you prefer the game to end, you need to do all you can to manipulate the game tempo and to score points. I think this end game twist is a master stroke.

The Play

We did a 5-player game. At the start of the game, progress felt slow. Priests were not cheap at all, and there were so many of them. The production districts could only produce once per round. How were we going to buy all those priests? However as we built up our teams of workers, I found that we could plan and optimise our turns much better and we could play much more efficiently. Setting up a good sequence of actions can help your runner leap far ahead.

There is a cooperative element. Or maybe I should call it a leeching element. You can rely on other players to activate production districts where you already have workers or temple districts when you already employ the corresponding priests. As long as your have the corn to pay your workers, or the llama and goods to sacrifice, you can piggyback on your opponent's actions, saving you valuable turns. However you also need to be careful not to be caught unprepared. E.g. since each production district only produces once per round, if it gets activated by someone else when you don't have the corn to pay your workers, you are missing out on production for this round. When you activate a district you may be helping your opponents, but sometimes there is sufficient incentive to do so, because as the one doing the activation, you get a bonus, e.g. an extra good.

The production chain in The Princes of Machu Picchu is not complex. Your end goal is always the runner and drawing scoring cards. You always need to choose your actions to make the most of your scoring cards. You need to constantly think of the two possible end situations. If everyone is determined to save what remains of the Incan empire, recruiting all priests before the last round ends is actually not difficult. However there is always some rich fellow thinking about the x3 bonus, which is very tempting. Also if you think you are falling behind in normal scoring, turning traitor may be your only chance at winning. In addition to these, there will also be players hesitating between which outcome to push for. While they hesitate, time is being wasted and they may not be recruiting priests quickly enough. This intricate balance between saving Machu Picchu and selling it out is amazing.

These were the scores at game end. Among the five of us, eventually only Jeff and I tried to save the empire. Although recruiting all priests appeared daunting at first, as we neared game end, it turned out to be within grasp. Unfortunately we fell short. Not by much though. Ivan, Salah and Heng all felt they had a chance at being richest. I (green) came in dead last. I can only console myself that I died a patriot.

The Thoughts

I have played a few other Mac Gerdts designs - Antike, Navegador, Concordia. They are all good games and I like them. In The Princes of Machu Picchu I found something more. The end game twist really makes the game shine. This game is not just about scoring points efficiently. A big part of it is assessing how the game will likely end, determining how you want it to end, and adjusting your play accordingly. You need to watch your opponents as they do the same. You need to guess their intentions. This constant struggle and manoeuvring between preserving and betraying the empire is what makes this a great game.

Pictomania

Plays: 6Px1.

The Game

Pictomania is a game from Vlaada Chvatil, and it is completely different from his magnum opus Through the Ages. Pictomania is a real-time party game. It is a family game of speed and quick wits. It is a game about drawing and guessing what the drawings mean. The twist is both drawing and guessing are done at the same time, by everyone.

Everyone gets one set of equipment like this. The board is for drawing. The tiles with stars on them are award tiles. Every round you award them to fellow players who guess your drawing correctly. The first to guess right gets 3VP, the second 2VP, and the rest 1VP each. You want to give them all out, because if any is left, you lose victory points. The cards are for guessing the drawings of other players. They are numbered 1 to 7 and are in your player colour. .

Before a round starts, 6 solution cards are revealed and everyone gets to study them. The cards are placed on stands, and each card is matched to an icon. Every player draws two mission cards, a number card and an icon card. This pair of mission cards determines what you need to draw. Taking this photo as an example, if you get the six-sided star and the number 2, you have to draw a comb.

Once everyone has read all tho solution cards, and knows what he needs to draw, the round starts. Actions are all simultaneous. There are no turns. You need to draw your own drawing and also guess what others are drawing. When guessing a drawing, if you feel confident it is a specific numbered item on a specific solution card, you need to find that number from your hand of cards, and play that card face-down next to the drawing. This is a first-come-first-serve thing. If another player has already played a card to that drawing, you will need to slap your card on top of his. After a round ends, when the drawing owner examines how many people have guessed right, he does it in the order the cards were played. If you guess right, you earn points based on how early you have played your card. If you guess wrong, you may be penalised. At the end of each round, if a single player has made the most mistakes, he loses points.

As a round progresses, once you are happy with your drawing and with the guesses you have made, you can decide to exit the round. You do this by grabbing an exit tile. Exit tiles have different numbers of stars (which mean victory points), so there is a race to grab the most valuable tile. The number of exit tiles is one less than the number of players. Once the last tile is taken, the round ends. No more drawing, no more guessing. The slowest player will not get an exit tile.

Those stacks of multicoloured cards next to the drawings are the guesses made by the players. On my board (green) you see a black tile with 3 stars. That's the exit tile, and it's worth 3VP. I was first to grab an exit tile this round.

The game is played over 5 rounds. After the 5th round, the highest scorer wins. There are many solution cards in the game, and they come in different difficulty levels. New players can start with the easy ones. Veterans would probably enjoy the impossible ones more.

The Play

Pictomania is a game of quick thinking and smart thinking. If you are good at drawing, it certainly helps. However what is more important is deciding what to draw to communicate your word or phrase to others. Let's take the word "weekend" as an example. Ivan got this word in our game. He drew two simple pictures, one of a guy working at his laptop, and the next one of the same guy throwing down his laptop and running away while cheering aloud. I would not have thought of this. I would probably just draw a row of seven boxes and shade the last two.

Every player's solution is a different number, and you can use this to your advantage. If you are very sure that one particular opponent's solution is a #4, then you can ignore all the other #4 words. However, one funny thing that often happens is when you are trying to find in your hand a specific number to guess a particular drawing, you realise that you have already played that number. That means you are probably losing out on two drawings - the earlier one which you have guessed wrong, and the current one which you won't be able to play the right card on.

Being the first to guess right is a big advantage, so you do want to pay keen attention to your opponents. At the same time you don't want to waste time by not drawing your own picture. This is what makes the game exciting, and also chaotic. Since this is a real-time game, everyone is very involved all the time. There is no downtime.

A flurry of activity.

The drawing on the left is the story "The Boy Who Cried Wolf", and the drawing on the right is "Lord of the Rings".

These are the higher difficulty cards. I like!

The Thoughts

Pictomania is a party game, a family game, a casual game. It is easy to learn and players will immediately feel engaged. It is a good warm-up game, and also works well as an icebreaker game. Some of the drawings will trigger discussions and jokes, not necessarily because they are ugly. It can be because of how the drawing owner decided to present his word. I prefer the tougher solution cards. Some really make your jaw drop and start praying you won't get them.

Viticulture and Tuscany expansion

Plays: 5Px1.

The Game

Viticulture, the well-received debut game from Stonemeier Games, was funded through Kickstarter, and so was the Tuscany expansion. I played Viticulture for the first time recently, with 5 of the expansion modules from Tuscany. I have never played vanilla Viticulture before, so I can't make any comparison. The version I played is probably more a revamped Viticulture than base Viticulture plus some additional rules, because even the board has changed.

Viticulture is about wine-making. You inherit a derelict winery from mum and dad. You need to revive the old family business and make it profitable again. You have to invest in the necessary facilities and equipment, you plant vines, you harvest grapes, you process grapes to make wine, wine takes time to age well, and eventually you sell it for profit and, tadaaa, victory points. Outside of this wine-making lifecycle, there are a few other ways to score points too. You also get to draw various types of cards which give you additional scoring methods and special abilities. There is no fixed number of rounds. Once someone hits 25VP, you complete the current round and the game ends. Whoever scores highest wins.

The Papa and Mama cards are just starting setup cards. They create different starting conditions for each player. Everyone does start with one big worker (the foreman) and two small workers, and $3, but other starting resources differ. I started with, on my Mama card, one purple contract card and two blue winter visitor cards, and on my Papa card, the choice of getting a medium cellar or $4 more.

This is the expansion map, which has four seasons, compared to the base game map which only has two. The worker placement spaces for the four seasons are green, yellow, orange and blue for spring, summer, autumn and winter respectively. One round is one year, and each round is played in four stages, i.e. season by season. You need to plan where to place your workers up front, because you only get your workers back at the end of the year. One special aspect of the worker placement mechanism here is the foreman - the large worker. He cannot be blocked. He can still use any space which is already occupied, just that if that space comes with a bonus, that bonus is already claimed by the first worker and he doesn't get the bonus.

The table on the left is the turn order table. Before a year starts everyone will claim a turn order position. The table shows the goodies you get to claim at every season change. The later you are in turn order, the better the goodies.

The map at the bottom left shows seven different regions to which you can send salesmen. Whenever you send a salesman, you gain a benefit (depending on the region). At the end of the game, if you have the most salesmen in a region, you score some points. This is an area majority subgame.

This is part of the player board. The three big tiles at the top are your fields. At the moment I have only planted vines in one of them. Each field has an upper limit to the total vine value (5, 6 and 7 respectively). Now I have planted a value-1 red grape vine and a value-2 white grape vine. When I harvest I will get a value-1 red grape and a value-2 white grape. If I plant multiple vines of the same type in the same field, their value numbers will add up. E.g. planting two value-2 white grape vines would give me one value-4 white grape, not two value-2 white grapes.

The lower left section are the buckets where I store grapes. There is space for only one grape per grade per type. So if I already have a value-3 red grape, and I harvest another one, I won't get a second value-3 red grape. I will have to settle for a value-2 red grape (assuming the value-2 red grape spot is vacant).

The lower right section are the wine cellars. Different combinations of grapes produce different types of wine. Both grapes and wines improve as they age, i.e. their values go up. The max is value-9.

On the player board you can also see many buildings you can build. Their costs and abilities vary. E.g. you need irrigation to be able to plant some of the higher grade vines, the windmill gives you 1VP every time you plant.

I have planted in two of my fields now, but I've sold the third field. The transparent beads represent grapes if they are in the buckets area, and wines if they are in the cellars area. I only have a medium cellar, so my wine quality can go up to at most value-6.

The Play

The game starts a little slowly, because you need to spend much time and money getting your basic infrastructure ready and setting up the whole production line. Wine-making is not a one- or two-year exercise. As the players get their wineries going, the game accelerates, and the initially daunting 25VP sudden seems imminent. Everyone gets a different starting setup. Throughout the game you keep drawing different types of cards too. Sometimes you are forced to discard some cards due to exceeding the hand limit. This variety in the cards drives players towards different directions. You want to play to the strength of your cards. You need to come up with a general strategy that is aligned with your cards. The cards give character to your winery and your play. You are not playing a generic winery and trying to outdo your opponents by doing the same things more efficiently. You can be running your business in a very different way from your competition. This is what I like about the game.

One of the cards I drew was a restaurant. It gave me a private spot to place a worker. When I placed a worker here, I expended one grape and one bottle of wine to earn 3VP and $3. The quality of the grape and wine didn't matter. 3VP might not seem like much, but it was a steady and reliable way to score points. It was the core of my business. I went for a McDonald's strategy, prioritising quantity over quality. Other than ensuring a steady supply of grapes and wine to my restaurant, I also worked on contracts for cheaper wines.

This is my restaurant. The circle drawn with a dashed line is a worker placement spot.

One of the expansion modules allows players to sell land to raise money. In our game whenever someone sold land, the rest made fun of him for being a useless rich brat, managing family finances so poorly that he had to sell ancestral land to raise money. Eventually every single one of us had to sell land. I guess we were all decadent sons.

The components are nice.

These metal coins are only available in the expansion.

These cards are: a vine card, which can be planted; a contract which can be fulfilled; and a winter visitor card. Visitors usually give you a single-use special ability. There is a lot of variety in the cards in this game.

The grey worker is a temp worker. Only the player last in turn order gets to use him, and only for one round - the current round.

Ivan, Jeff and I all scored 26VP when the game ended. We had to use tiebreaker rules. Ivan won because he had the most money left.

The Thoughts

Ivan says vanilla Viticulture is a family game, and I trust his judgement. It is simpler, has more luck, and the card powers are slightly uneven. Viticulture with the Tuscany expansion, in my opinion, is mainly a gamer's game. It is not very complex, but there are enough rules to intimidate someone who is new to the hobby.

There is nothing particularly outstanding about presenting wine-making via the worker placement mechanism. It works well enough. What I enjoy is the variety in the cards and how they create a different story for each player. The players still need to compete for the same actions, but since different resources and actions have different values to them, the decisions become more interesting.

The game will appeal to those who like wines or have an interest in the wine-making industry.

Malaysia

If you are a Malaysian, or know some Malaysian friends, please help me share this video far and wide: This Is My Home And Yours - Malaysia. This song written with friends back in 1997 has given me new meaning today, in the Malaysia of 2015. This is for everyone who loves Malaysia.

Update: If possible, please use this Facebook webpage when sharing: https://www.facebook.com/hiewchoksien/posts/10155973403365483

boardgaming in photos: Machi Koro, Carson City

18 Jul 2015. I have played Machi Koro with the Harbor expansion four times with the children, and I have never won. I have underestimated the power of the fishing boats, especially the tuna boats. The kids love them. If you manage to trigger them, you roll two dice and earn money based on what you roll, i.e. on average $7 per boat. However you need to roll very high to trigger the tuna boats in the first place, so I felt it was not worth the trouble. I guess I was wrong. Both the children love the boats and they always go for them. The harbor (a new building in this expansion) gives you an option of increasing your roll by two if you roll high enough. When the children roll high, e.g. a 10, they always choose to increase the die roll, so that they can trigger their tuna boats. Because of that, my #10 buildings which could have been triggered are not triggered. The children end up helping each other, while I am left in the dust. I had overlooked this groupthink aspect. It's time to fight for boats!

Adding the expansion makes the game take up even more space. Managing the market is also a chore. Whenever you have fewer than 10 types of buildings in the pool, you need to draw a new card. If its type is already available, you need to add it to the stack and draw another one. If it's a new type, what we do is we rearrange the market to slot the new card in the right spot, so that all cards are arranged in increasing order of activation number. I prefer to arrange the market neatly so that it's easier to analyse. Despite the additional overhead and longer play time, I still prefer to play with the expansion. The game feels more alive, organic and unpredictable. I like surprises.

24 Jul 2015. Carson City is one of the earlier worker placement games. It has been a long time since my previous play. I checked my records and found that I had only played it once prior to this, and it was 5 years ago, in 2010. I had forgotten 90% of the rules. In this game you buy parcels of land in the new Carson township, construct buildings, make money and eventually earn victory points. The setup of the initial town is random. In our game we had an unusual setup. The town centre (red house encircled by black roads) was surrounded by many mountains. This made the initial growth challenging due to the lack of flat land.

What's unique about Carson City is how worker placement spots can be fought over. Normally in WP games once your worker claims a spot nobody else can come in or kick your worker out. In Carson City another player can challenge you for the spot. A gunfight needs to be resolved to determine who gets to stay. See the $4-for-a-building spot where the blue player and the yellow player are fighting for.

On the city map in the background you can also see two cowboys preparing to fight. The brown player is trying to rob the yellow player's building (the building has a yellow base to indicate ownership), and the yellow player has sent a cowboy to defend the building. If the brown player wins the gunfight, or if the yellow player hadn't bothered to defend his building, he will get half the income of the building, but only in the current round.

Those isolated buildings far away from the town centre are ranches. They don't need to be connected to the road network, and they earn money based on how much unowned land is next to them. As the town grows, grazing land will dwindle and ranch income will drop.

This was taken in Round 4, the final round. The town has grown much. The long S-shaped path in the foreground is the worker placement path. After all workers are placed, every location on the path is resolved in the specified order.

Most buildings generate income. Mines make money based on the number of adjacent mountains. Drugstores make money based on adjacent homes and ranches owned by the drugstore owner. Some buildings have other functionality. The church forbids robberies in orthogonally adjacent buildings. The prison gives a +2 bonus combat strength to the owner. When you have macha (buddies) working as prison guards, it means you can summon more firepower when you need it. At the end of the game, your buildings earn 2VP each too.

We used some expansions. We used the advanced side of the character cards. We also used the tiles variant for the gunfights (as opposed to using dice), which reduces the luck element. In this particular round, Ivan (yellow) picked the sheriff character. If anyone attacked and defeated his cowboys, he would earn 3VP per cowboy (no points though if he started the fight himself, win or lose). So he placed his people on spots which he knew others want. 3VP per cowboy was not a bad deal. There were some spots which he did intend to win though, because they would give him more than 3VP.

The final layout of Carson City, before final scoring. I started focusing on scoring at the end of Round 2. At the time nobody tried to stop me, and I managed to give myself a strong lead. I managed to hold on to it till the end of the game. I drew poor gunfight tiles at the start of the game (the compensation for that was I had more starting cash), so I didn't want to get into too many fights. Thankfully I decided to pounce early for points, else I would probably be unable able to keep up towards late game.