boardgaming in photos: Race for the Galaxy, Ark, Pickomino, Yspahan, Arena: Roma II, 7 Wonders: Duel

29 Jan 2017. It had been a while since I played Race for the Galaxy, one of my most played games. I brought it back to Sabah to play during the Chinese New Year holidays. This set contains all the expansions in the first story arc - The Gathering Storm, Rebel vs Imperium and The Brink of War. The deck is monstrous and rather unwieldy, but I'm too lazy to sort the cards. I like the gameplay even though it's a little complex in this form.

I bought the fourth expansion Alien Artifact, and even bought a second copy of the base game because of it, since it's a new story arc. Unfortunately I didn't quite like the new mechanism in this expansion - the alien orb. I haven't played this expansion much, not even in the format excluding the alien orb. It is supposed to be better balanced than the first story arc. The fifth expansion has been released now - Xeno Invasion. I decided not to buy it, since I don't play Race much nowadays. No point getting it just for the sake of completeness.

19 Feb 2017. We had a kind-of family day of boardgaming, playing quite a few games in one long afternoon. My wife Michelle joined us at the beginning, playing Machi Koro. This was her second time playing and she didn't do as well as the first time, because she was not very familiar with the game. My children Shee Yun and Chen Rui and I had played Machi Koro many times and we knew the buildings well.

The children ganged up on me again. This was understandable, since I was the leading player throughout most of the game. When one of their aggressive cards was triggered, they normally chose to target me. Sometimes when certain powers were triggered, they would even forgo their own benefit to help the other gain an advantage. E.g. when Chen Rui rolled a 10, she would use her Harbour to convert the result to 12 so that Shee Yun's Tuna Boat could be triggered. Chen Rui didn't have any Tuna Boat herself.

We now play with just the base game and the Harbour expansion. I have taken out the Millionaire's Row expansion. It feels better with fewer cards in the mix. With too many cards, the deck is too diluted and it is difficult to collect many cards of one type or of the same family to create effective combos. Maybe next time we should play with base game + Millionaire's Row, swapping out Harbour.

The children still enjoy Love Letter. The effort spent self-making this Adventure Time themed version was definitely worthwhile. The cards are already looking a little battered. I love the artwork in this themed version, which I found on BGG. Compared to the original, I find the original rather dull. I'm sure the children prefer the Adventure Time artwork too.

This is Ark, a game about Noah's ark. Shee Yun (right) suggested it. She is going to a missionary school now, and I wonder whether that's why she is interested in this game based on a Bible story. This was the first time the children played this game.

On the right half of the photo where animals are grouped into sets, these sets represent cabins on the ark. During the game your job is to load animals onto the ark. There are many restrictions and difficulties. Large carnivores cannot share a cabin with smaller animals, because they would eat the other animals. Herbivores cannot share a cabin with your provisions, because they would eat your provisions. Every animal has a weight and will tilt the ark one way or the other depending on which side of the ark you put it. The ark must be kept in balance. Initially I wondered whether all these would be too much for the children, but it turned out OK. We just kept reminding one another and they managed fine.

This is essentially an area majority game. There are five categories of animals, and you compete to load the most in each category. I remember when I first played Ark, it felt so-so. The setting was unusual, the artwork cute, but gameplay was not particularly interesting. Having played it again recently, my opinion did not change.

Chen Rui is good at Pickomino. Or she's lucky. But not so lucky this time. I managed to beat her quite comfortably. We did a 2-player game since Shee Yun was not interested.

The tiles in the centre are the score tiles. The numbers are the dice total you need to achieve in order to claim the tile. The worms are the victory points. When you claim a new tile, you stack it on top of your existing tiles. The tile on top is still vulnerable - other players may rob it from you if they manage to roll the exact number.

This is Yspahan, on older game that has faded away. Most newer gamers will not know it. It uses dice in an interesting way, like the more recent El Gaucho (2014). At the start of a round, the start player rolls a bunch of dice and then groups them by value. For the rest of the round, the players take turns claiming a dice group to perform actions, the strengths of the actions depending the number of dice in the group.

Things seemed to go rather too smoothly in the game we played. I think both Michelle and I managed to construct all six of our buildings, and Chen Rui managed five. I wonder whether we made a mistake. It felt too easy. We did mostly ignore the caravan aspect, and we didn't aggressively hinder one another. Maybe due to these we saved much energy and managed to build our individual engines efficiently. I felt a little empty though, because things went too well. Geez... gamers are hard to please...

By Day 2 of Week 3 (the final week of the game), only Michelle (red) had 2 cubes at the caravan - the smaller board on the right.

24 Feb 2017. I asked Allen whether he wanted to go to Boardgamecafe.net. He had to babysit his kids. So I went to his place to play instead. Arena: Roma II was one of the games we played. This is Roma Version 2. I had played Roma before, but had forgotten almost everything about it. I had to learn the rules from scratch.

This is a 2-player game. The game board is a long strip divided into 9 sections. On your turn you roll 3 dice, and use them to perform actions. If you place a die on the coin space (leftmost section of the strip), you earn coins according to the die value. If you place a die on the card space (rightmost section), you draw cards according to the die value. If you place a die on any of the seven spaces in the middle, you trigger the power of the card on that space. Six of these spaces only allow a specific die value. The 7th space - the bribery space - allows any die value, but you must pay coins according to the die value. Playing a card does not require spending a die, but there is a cost in coins.

You start the game with 10 Victory Points, which prepares you for losing VP in the early game. Every empty space in the middle seven sections causes you to lose 1VP at the start of your turn. So it is important to try to fill up your side of the strip. The game ends in two ways. You lose if you lose all VP. The game also ends when the VP tokens run out. You compare scores to see who wins. The VP tokens are the light blue and light green square tokens.

The most important element in the game is the card powers. At the top left corner of each card you can see the cost for playing the card and its defense value when being attacked. There is much variety in card powers. Some let you score VP. Some let you attack and try to remove your opponent's cards. Most cards are triggered by a die, but some require no die. In this photo, the card on the right lets me discard another one of my cards and then score VP according to its defense value.

Cards come in two colours. Green cards are buildings, yellow cards are characters.

My Ballista card lets me attack a card directly or diagonally opposite it, but it may only attack buildings and not characters. If Allen limits himself to character cards at these three positions, he will not need to worry about the Ballista. You may play a card to an occupied space. It will replace the existing card.

The second space from the right is the bribery space. You may use any die to trigger the card here, but you must pay a cost equal to the die value.

In this photo both of us had filled up all spaces. Arena: Roma II is all about how you make good use of your cards and how you respond to your opponent's cards. There is interaction between cards, e.g. how the Ballista may only attack buildings, but most card powers are individual and don't synergise with other cards to create combos. The key is how to match your card play with the board situation. If you have a card which scores points based on how many character cards your opponent has, you probably want to hold on to it until your opponent has played many characters. Or you can play a Ballista to entice him to play more characters first.

Allen and I played two games. I had a horrible start in the first game. I kept losing VP because my hand cards were high cost cards and I was unable to earn enough money due to low die rolls. It took me a long time to fill in the spaces on my side of the strip. That was painful. The second game was kinder to me. No death spiral in the early game.

Arena is a fast-paced game. There is some strategy. There aren't that many rounds - just enough for you to feel satisfied that you've done something, exercised some mental muscles. How the VP chips work is interesting. It is not necessarily about scoring as many points and as quickly as you can. If your opponent's rate of scoring points is higher than you, that's suicide. You are just expediting the game end and digging your own grave. You should instead try to force him to lose points, or you should attack his point-scoring cards. You need to slow down the game. There is an interesting balance between being constructive and being destructive. In the early game, destroying your opponent's cards can force him into a bad position, and you may even be able to force him to lose the game by running out of VP's.

I also taught Allen to play 7 Wonders Duel. I had played it with Michelle a few times, but playing it against Allen allowed me to see some aspects which I hadn't seen before. One of these is the tech tokens. When playing with Michelle, she preferred to collect many different science symbols, hoping to achieve a science victory. She didn't go for pairs of identical science symbols to claim tech tokens. When playing against Allen, we made more use of these tech tokens, and I found that some of them synergise rather well. They can also help tremendously when pursuing a specific strategy. The other aspect which came into play more was the military aspect. Responding to military threats is not just about keeping your opponent a safe enough distance away from your capital, it is also about denying him victory points. Having a military advantage can also force your opponent's hand when he is picking cards from the table. You can force him to pick military cards to protect himself, allowing you to take another card which you want, or which he would otherwise have wanted. It is interesting to see how 7 Wonders Duel gradually reveals some of these subtleties.

West of Africa

Plays: 4Px1.

The Game

The setting in West of Africa is yet another one of those farming-in-an-exotic-location type, like Puerto Rico and La Granja. The location they picked is the Canary Islands. It is a game about planting, harvesting, selling crops and then eventually spending the money to build settlements to earn victory points. This all sounds rather dull and been-there-done-that. However I was pleasantly surprised after playing it. The impression it left me was completely unexpected. This is a brutal, boardgame version of Race for the Galaxy!

With components so cute and colourful, "brutal" is probably the last thing you imagine it to be.

On the board are seven islands. Those on the west are fertile and suitable for agriculture, but you are not allowed to build settlements here. Also crop prices here are low. The islands on the east are the other way round. You can't plant anything here, but you can build settlements. Crop prices are high. The islands in the middle are between these two extremes. They have land for agriculture, land for settlements, and even multipurpose land.

Everyone has one boat and three workers. You can ship crops to islands with better prices to make more money. Workers help reduce the cost of planting. Agricultural land can be reused - after you harvest, you, or another player, can plant again. Residential land cannot be reused. After you build a settlement you never tear it down. The numbers on residential plots are the costs of building settlements. Settlements are all worth a fixed 3VP, so everyone will fight to build on the cheaper plots first. Building settlements is the biggest source of victory points.

Your goal is to reach 25 victory points. Once a player reaches 25VP, you complete the round, then compare scores, to see who wins (it is possible that two or more players exceed 25VP). VP mostly come from building settlements, but there are other sources. At the end of every round, mayoral elections are done on every island. Your goods are worth 1 vote each (they represent your influence), your workers and ship are worth 2 votes each. Mayorship comes with 1VP, plus the exclusive rights to build settlements on the island in the next round, until it's election time again. At the end of a round, the richest player also gains 1VP. At game end, every $10 is 1VP. However you can hoard at most $45, i.e. a max of 4VP from unused cash.

These are the mayorship tokens, specifying the island and also reminding you to claim the 1VP.

The overall flow of the game is rather simple - you plant crops, you harvest, you may ship crops to another island, you sell crops to make money, and eventually you spend the money on building settlements, which give you points. This doesn't sound like much, but the devil is in the details. Let's take a closer look.

Everyone has the same set of 13 cards. Each card specifies an action or a location. Each card has a value too (top corners). At the start of every round, you secretly pick 4 or 5 cards to use for performing actions. If you pick 5 cards, you need to pay $4. Once everyone has picked cards, you announce the total value of your cards. Turn order is determined by this total. Whoever has the smallest total goes first. Turn order is important. E.g. you plan to plant on a particular island. If another player has decided to do the same, and he goes before you, he may use up all the farmland leaving you with nothing to do, wasting a complete round. This is very painful. Normally the more valuable actions and locations have higher card values, so if you want to perform a strong action, the risk is higher. This is the part of the game which makes you nervous.

In this photo, the cards are: plant crops, sell crops and move workers.

The first card is move ship. The third card is a location. Location cards are paired with other action cards. When you plant crops, sell crops or build settlements, your action card must be paired with a location card. This means you are using two cards for one action. If you want to do two different things on two different islands, that's four cards!

This is called the minus card. It has no action or location, but it has a negative value. It's only use is reducing your total card value. This can be crucial if you need to fight for turn order. Whenever you use the minus card, you pass it to the next player. So this is a card you need to use carefully. It can be a matter of life and death.

The number of settlements that can be built in a round is limited. With 4 players, the max is 6 settlements. This again emphasises the importance of player order. Once the settlements for the round are exhausted, no one else can build any more until the next round. The cubes in the player colours mark the turn order.

The harbour on each island has a limited number of berths for ships. In this photo, the light blue rectangles are the berths. The rightmost island has five berths, so there is enough for everyone. The next island Fuerteventura only has one berth. The yellow player's ship is here now. Both the islands on the left have two berths. Both blue and green ships are at the leftmost island. When a ship arrives at a full harbour, it displaces one ship of its choice, pushing it to the next island. This doesn't sound like much, but it can really mess up a player's plan. In our game, Sim got his ship displaced by Jeff, and this one simple displacement cost him the entire round. Sim had planned to use his ship to transport his crops from one island to another, and then sell them there so that he could build some settlements. Jeff was earlier than him in turn order. When Sim's ship was displaced, it no longer had enough moves to transport his crops to the right location. That meant being unable to sell his crops since they could not be delivered to the island he had picked to do the sale. No sale, no money, no settlement, an entire round wasted. This was a huge hit to his tempo. This is the kind of disastrous screwage as seen in Vanuatu. This is the kind of situation when you see people pale.

Harvesting is automatic. It happens at the end of every round and all crops go to the storage space. No need to spend any action. However since it happens at the end of a round, your end-to-end flow from planting to building a settlement will span at least two rounds, with the harvesting happening at the end of the first round. Two rounds is the minimum. Sometimes when you want to transport your crops to another island to sell them at a higher price, things may take longer. Sometimes when you don't win the right mayorship at the right time, the process drags even longer.

You have a limited number of crop markers (four sugar canes, two grains and two grapes). You can only have this many markers on the board. E.g. if you have harvested four sugar canes but you have not yet sold them, you won't be able to plant any more sugar canes because the markers are still waiting to be sold. Each farm plot also specifies what you can plant, so that's yet another restriction you need to consider. On this island in this photo, you can only plant grains or grapes.

The crops selling price is on the left of the island name. On Gran Canaria you sell crops for $9 a piece. The lowest price is $6, and the highest $12. The default cost for planting crops is $3 per piece, but this can be discounted if you utilise your workers.

The Play

West of Africa is a game of careful planning and risk calculation. From the start you already sense the precariousness. The reason I feel it is like Race for the Galaxy is it also has the simultaneous action selection mechanism. In Race, you want to guess your opponents' actions because you want to make use of them to give you an edge. Usually it's because you want to gain something extra. Sometimes you take a risk, betting that your opponents will do a certain action, while you pick another action which depends on them having picked that action. In West of Africa, guessing your opponents' intentions is not about gaining some bonus, it is more often a matter of survival, of being able to do anything at all. If you misread your opponents, you may end up completely wasting a round. Thus the "brutal" in my one sentence summary of the game.

You face a dilemma right at the beginning. Everyone needs to do the first step - planting crops, so most likely everyone will be fighting for farmland. Is it always worthwhile to pick the lowest valued cards to ensure you go first? Or do you go for the higher valued actions and locations, hoping that the others are all going to play safe? After the first round, it can be easier to predict your opponents' moves, because your tempos may go off phase. Players may spread out to be at different stages of the production cycle. If you are the only person with sugar cane markers to plant, you can rest assured no one will take those sugar cane farmland from you.

Being out of phase with other players is generally a good thing. You will likely have less competition. You worry less about your ship being displaced. You worry less about others fighting for the same mayorship as you. However, it may not be wise to slow down your tempo just for the sake of going out of sync with your opponents. Afterall, this is a race to 25VP.

Your treasury stores at most $45. This forces you to go through the production cycle multiple times. You can't simply amass a lump sum of money and instantly build tons of settlements. The limited number of crop markers also forces you to go through the cycle many times. This means you will encounter plenty of situations where you conflict with others. You constantly worry about whether you are able to execute the actions you want to do. You are often torn between playing safe and taking a risk hoping to gain more, or simply hoping to be a little more efficient. This is a game where you need to read your opponents.

The track at the bottom is the score track. In our game Dith (red) gambled on the first mover strategy, spending a lot of money to build settlements cheaply in the early game. This gave him a significant lead, but also put him at risk because his cash flow was crippled for some time. It took a while for him to get it back to form. He was hoping to surpass 25VP before anyone else caught up, which meant he needed to end the game as quickly as possible. Eventually it did work out for him.

This was when the game ended. Dith was the only one who made it past 25VP.

The Thoughts

West of Africa is a gamer's game. Despite the idyllic art style and the cute components, this is not something for introducing newbies to the hobby. It is a game of outguessing and outmanoeuvring your opponents. You do not inflict direct harm to your opponents, but sometimes the indirect harm is just as devastating, or worse. You will find yourself planning your actions nervously, quietly contemplating the many risks before you. The production cycle is simple, but there are dangers in each step. There is a need to plan ahead, e.g. if you want to build settlements, you need to wrest mayorship from the incumbent. The game doesn't feel long, but many apparently small decisions feel weighty. There is more than meets the eye in West of Africa.

in the news: Sinchew Daily

A reporter from a local newspaper Sinchew Daily, Tsae Jeng, contacted me mid January. She was working on an article about boardgames, and was interested to experience firsthand the boardgame hobby. We arranged an interview session, which eventually turned out to be 90% boardgame session and 10% interview session. It was casual and relaxed. We played four different games, all with three players. I am excited about being in the papers. I am also glad that boardgames is getting exposure in the mainstream media. I feel I'm doing my little bit in promoting the hobby.

I had shortlisted quite a few games for Tsae Jeng to pick. Of the four we eventually played, three were cooperative games - Pandemic, Hanabi and Escape: The Curse of the Temple. The fourth game was the ever popular Love Letter. So we've played both boardgame and card game; we've played a real-time game (Escape); we've played a weird game where you hold you cards backwards (Hanabi); we've played a microgame with only 16 cards (Love Letter). I say that's pretty good variety and a decent introduction to the hobby.

The article was published on 14 Feb 2017 (Valentine's Day!). For those who read Chinese, you can click on the photos below to read the article. The first one below is the introduction. Not surprising that an image such as this was used. Most people automatically think of Monopoly when they hear "boardgames".

One strange thing about Malaysian Chinese newspapers is they contain a mix of Traditional Chinese and Simplified Chinese, even within the same article. The titles and headings are Traditional Chinese, but the content is Simplified Chinese.

This next photo is the full view of the article. The font is small, so if you want to read the content, click the next few images, which are the zoomed in shots of the 5 different sections.

The copy of Love Letter I have at home is a self-made version using the Adventure Time theme, so I asked Tsae Jeng to go find an image of the original.

Crowdfunding: Pasaraya - Supermarket Manager

A fellow Malaysian is running a crowdfunding campaign for his design - Pasaraya. Click here to find out more.

World's Fair 1893

Plays: 4Px1.

The Game

The setting of World's Fair 1893 sounds dull to me. I would not have given it a second thought had I seen it on a shelf, and I would have missed out on this little gem. This is a Eurogame with area majority and set collection, and it is implemented quite cleverly. Here's how it works.

This is the game board. It is a ferris wheel surrounded by five exhibition areas, each in a different colour. On your turn, you place one of your agents (i.e. cube) in any exhibition area, and you claim any cards next to that area. At the end of each of the three stages of the game, each exhibition area is scored based on agent majority. You score points, and also win rights to convert designs to products.

Each of the exhibition areas will have some cards. These can be design blueprints, exhibition tickets, or famous characters. Whenever you place your agent in an area, you take all the cards there. At the end of your turn, you add three new cards to the board - one each to the next three areas on the board. So the cards in each area will be claimed and then will be replenished gradually.

The first two cards (red and blue) are designs. Designs are your main source of points. By themselves they are worth nothing. You need to convert them to finished products before they can be worth anything. So collecting designs is just the first step.

The third card is a ticket. These cards are a countdown mechanism. Each time anyone claims a ticket, the timer marker moves one step around the ferris wheel. When the marker makes a complete round, a stage ends and scoring is done. The game ends after three stages. Claiming tickets affects the tempo of the game. Also tickets are worth 1VP each, which can add up to be significant.

The rightmost card is a character. These cards give you a special ability which you may use on your next turn, e.g. placing two instead of one agent, placing an extra agent in a specific area, moving a agent from one area to another. These special abilities can be quite handy, but you must use them next turn or forfeit them.

At the end of each stage, each of the five areas is scored. Players with the most and second most agents in each area score points, and also win the rights to convert some of their designs to end products. Naturally, said designs must be of the same type as the area being scored. So as you collect designs of a particular type, you need to also remember to fight for the conversion rights of the same type. In this photo, the tiles on the right are the end products.

You want to collect sets of different end products. A complete set of 5 different products is worth 15VP. A set of 4 different products is worth 10VP. A set of 3 is 6VP, a set of 2 is 3VP, and a single product is only worth 1VP.

The medals and coins on the left are what you score from winning majority in an area and from tickets respectively.

A game only lasts three stages, so you only have three chances to convert designs to products. A stage passes very quickly. The things you do on your turn are very simple, so turns pass in a snap. You just place a agent and collect cards. Sometimes there is a little more to do because you have collected tickets or you have a character card to use, but mostly it's like eating chips. You finish a whole pack before you realise it.

The Play

Gameplay is mostly tactical. In general you want to collect wide, i.e. you want to complete many sets of all five different types of products. Getting there is done via many small tactical decisions where you try to play as efficiently as possible. You want to collect designs and convert them to products more efficiently than your opponents. This game uses the area majority mechanism, so what you want to do is to compete efficiently, spending the least effort for the most gain. You want to avoid the hotly contested areas, preserving your resources, and invest your energy in less competitive areas so that you win more rewards with the same amount of resources spent. This is easier said than done, because everyone thinks this way. The situation on the board is ever changing. The competitive landscape in each area changes, and the cards available in each area changes. You are presented with five options, and you need to evaluate which is best for you. This is the juicy part of the game. Sometimes you want to win majority in an area, but another area which you don't intend to dominate turns out to have a few very attractive cards. What do you do? Do you grab those cards and waste your agent placement, risking losing majority in the area you actually want to win in? Or do you steel yourself to fight for the area, even if it means you're getting lousy cards, or even no card at all? Another thing to think about is how lucrative the options are to your opponents. You need to evaluate what they want too. Sometimes you make a move not because it benefits you, but because you want to deny your opponent. Sometimes it is worthwhile to deny your opponent at a cost to yourself.

In the early game, each player already starts off having one or two agents in some exhibition areas, so the value of each area to each player already starts to diverge. If you are already leading, you will hope to maintain the lead without expending too much more effort. There is a barrier to entry for other players. Still, since everyone wants to make end products in all five types, the early stage of the game is quite open. You don't have a strong preference which products to focus on first. You know you want to get all of them eventually. You just try to grab opportunities as they arise. By mid game, after you have already progressed in some areas, the needs and wants of every player become more obvious. If an opponent already has products of two types, he will probably want to focus his energy on the other three types. This is when you start to have a better grasp of your opponents' intentions.

Assessing the value of an area becomes more interesting when tickets and characters come into the mix. Tickets affect the tempo of the game. If you are in the lead in multiple areas, it will be good to end the stage quickly when you have the advantage. In this situation, you know your opponents are less likely to claim tickets because they want to prolong the stage. The characters can be useful to some players but not others. E.g. a character that lets you place an extra agent in the agricultural area is worth little when you already have a few agricultural end products, but it can be crucial to an opponent who has a few agricultural product designs and desperately needs to convert them to end products.

What makes the game interesting is how the many items in each area have different values to different players, and how you need to constantly assess the changing options on the board to make the right tactical decisions. You rarely get a perfect choice - the area where you want to win having many cards that suit your purposes perfectly, but that's the beauty of the game. You are presented with multiple choices with different mixes of pros and cons. It is these agonising decisions that make the game.

In the agricultural exhibition area (green) at the bottom left, the white player already has three agents (cubes), while the others have one each. The area has one design (grey - industry), one ticket and one character. This is more cards than any other area on the board. For the white player, these three cards may seem lucrative, but placing yet another agent here is a little wasteful. It might be better to place it in the red area (fine arts) to try to catch up with the leader (blue), or maybe even the grey area (industry) to secure a safer lead. This is the kind of decision you need to make in this game.

The Thoughts

World's Fair 1893 looks pedestrian, but I was pleasantly surprised. I felt nostalgia. It reminds me of the good old days, of the time when Eurogames had fewer rules, were quick to play, but still had decent strategic depth. It is a clean and clever game. I like how it constantly forces you to make tough decisions. You evaluate your options not only based on how much they benefit you, but also based on how much you will benefit the next player by not taking a particular option. I like the tempo element of the game - how claiming or not claiming tickets will speed up or prolong the game to your advantage. A game flies by quickly. You feel that you just need a few more actions to execute your perfect plan. But there is no perfect world. You have to make do with your limited time and resources, and make the most out of it - like Agricola. This is the hallmark of a good game. I am impressed.

Secret Hitler

Plays: 8Px3.

The Game

Secret Hitler is a Kickstarter game. It's a secret identity team game. Most would call it a social deduction game. There seems to be more and more such games nowadays. Werewolf and BANG were among the earlier ones. Then there were The Message: Emissary Crisis and Saboteur. More recently we had Don't Mess With Cthulhu and Templar Intrigue. The popular ones which I have not played are Coup and The Resistance.

Secret Hitler is loosely based on Germany before World War II. The game supports 6 to 10 players. I played with 8, so I'm going to explain the game based on 8 players. On the surface, everyone is a liberal. However in secret, three of the players are fascists. One of those three is Hitler himself. During the course of the game new laws will be enacted. Some laws are fascist laws and some are liberal laws. The liberals win if 5 liberal laws are enacted. The fascists win if 6 fascist laws are enacted. Both sides have an instant win condition. If the fascists manage to get Hitler elected as chancellor, they win immediately. If the liberals manage to kill Hitler, they win.

At the start of the game everyone gets an envelope like this. It contains two cards, a party membership card and an identity card. For the liberals, there is only one type of identity card, but for the fascists, you might be a regular fascist party member or you might be Hitler.

Before the first round starts, everyone closes his eyes. The two fascist party members open their eyes to identify each other. Then Hitler raises his thumb (eyes still closed) so that his supporters know who he is. Hitler knows he has two supporters, but not who they are. The liberals know nothing at all.

Every round one player becomes the president. You take turns to play president, in clockwise order. The president must propose another player to become chancellor, and then everyone casts a yes/no vote. If the candidate fails the election, the round ends early. Otherwise, the president and the newly elected chancellor proceed to enact a new law. The president draws three law cards, then discard one facedown. The remaining two are passed to the chancellor, who then discards one facedown, and enacts the last one. Most cards in the deck are fascist laws. If the law being enacted is fascist, the president might bemoan that all three cards he had drawn were fascist, so he had no choice. The chancellor might say the same. However, the president might say to the chancellor, hey I gave you a good and a bad law, why did you pass the bad one? The chancellor might retort, what? You gave me two bad laws, and now you are trying to frame me? If such a thing happens, one of these two is probably a fascist. Even if the two legislators are in alignment, you can't be sure both are liberals. They might both be fascists and they might have have discarded liberal laws without anyone else knowing. Or the chancellor might be fascist, and he is passing the liberal law so that he doesn't arouse the suspicion of the president.

These two boards indicate how many fascist (red) and liberal (blue) laws have been enacted.

When a new fascist law is enacted, special actions need to be performed, or new rules come into play. These are indicated on the board. When the second fascist law is enacted, the president gets to see the party membership card of another player. When the fourth and fifth fascist law is enacted, the president gets to kill another player. This is how the liberals can kill Hitler. Naturally, this only works if they manage to find out who Hitler is, and also if the president that round happens to be a liberal. After three fascist laws are enacted, if Hitler gets elected to be chancellor, the fascists immediately win. From mid game onwards, you need to be much more careful when voting.

The procedure in the game revolves around electing a chancellor and then passing laws, but throughout all these actions, what is most important for the liberals in to find out who is who. For the fascists, it is best to stay in hiding for as long as possible, and use deceit to mislead and to sow mistrust among the liberals.

The Play

We played three games one after another. I experienced being both liberal and fascist, and the feeling is very different. There are more liberals, but the fascist has one important advantage - the party members know who is who. It is crucial they make good use of this information, and even more crucial that they make use of the ignorance of the liberals. The fascists need to sow doubt and stay hidden. Hitler doesn't know who his supporters are, and needs to be alert of clues. There are ways for his supporters to communicate with him. E.g. when Hitler is president and he has picked a fascist member to be chancellor, he can pass one fascist law and one liberal law to the chancellor to test him. The fascist member knows Hitler's identity, and will safely pass the fascist law while bemoaning that both the laws given to him are fascist laws. Upon hearing this, Hitler will know the chancellor is his fellow fascist.

The liberals need to find out who the fascists are. It is not easy to pass 5 liberal laws, since the number of liberal laws in the deck is low. They need to be careful not to allow fellow liberals to be killed when the fourth and fifth fascist laws are passed, and they need to make sure Hitler doesn't get elected to be chancellor. When the president and the chancellor say different things, it is usually a good sign. It normally means one of them cannot be trusted. If you want to play safe, trust neither. The fascists will do their best to appear liberal, even to the extent of passing liberal laws. The liberals need to discuss openly and be critical of every little clue and suspicious action. There will be paranoia, as the fascists try to complicate matters by throwing accusations and suggesting reasonings on why so-and-so should not be trusted.

The president's job of proposing a candidate for the position of chancellor is a heavy responsibility.

The most impressive game components in the game are the hefty wooden signs for president and chancellor. You can kill a cat with them.

Kareem was the unluckiest player in our game. No one ever believed what he said. When he was a liberal and spoke out against a fascist, providing sound reasoning, everyone thought he himself was the suspicious one. When he was a fascist and tried to frame a liberal, everyone trusted the liberal instead. It was all because he already had a reputation as a strong player, so everyone was wary of him, even though what role got assigned was completely out of his control. It was hilarious (but maybe not to him) how many times he was frustrated.

During the setup phase of one of our games, when everyone except for the fascist party members had their eyes closed and the moderator announced that Hitler was to make a thumbs-up sign, one player responded "OK". The rest of us burst into laughter. Did Hitler just inadvertently reveal himself? We almost restarted that game. Eventually, the person who OK'ed was not the real Hitler. He was probably just trying to sow confusion even at the setup phase of the game. Jeez... these gamers... so calculative and cunning!

Secret Hitler is a noisy game, with speculations and accusations flying everywhere. The fascists are a minority, but they have important information which gives them an edge. The liberals need to work together and pay attention to every detail to root out the fascists. They rely on open discussion and they need to be careful in judging who can be trusted.

The Thoughts

Secret Hitler is a fine social deduction game. I had expected that having played quite a few of these, any new game would feel similar. I was pleasantly surprised that I found something new to like in this game. If you don't like this genre, Secret Hitler won't change your mind. If you like this genre, I encourage you to give it a go. Throughout the game you can observe and collect little tit bits to help you deduce who is who. However logic alone is often not sufficient. Often you need to make judgement calls on who to trust. You need to rely on your instincts. This is how psychology comes into play. This is where the human interaction is.

If you ask me what's different about Secret Hitler compared to other social deduction games, I would say it's the chancellor election and the law passing. These are its ways of presenting information for you to work on. Some social deduction games give you little to work on, e.g. Templar Intrigue, Werewolf. Some give you more, e.g. BANG, Saboteur. How they differ is the control of information - who knows what, who doesn't, and how the the information is gradually revealed to more players. The game progresses to a climax as more and more information becomes known.

In Secret Hitler, the two sudden death victory conditions - executing Hitler and Hitler becoming chancellor - make the game exciting. Regardless of the number of laws passed, the game can take an unexpected turn at the last minute. I find the game slightly more complex than other similar games, in particular the special actions and additional rules that come into play when a specific number of fascist laws are enacted. That will take a while for new players to digest and incorporate into their strategic planning. When teaching the game, one needs to regularly remind the new players to take into account these actions and rules.

Ponzi Scheme

Plays: 5Px1.

The Game

Ponzi Scheme is designed by Taiwanese designer Jesse Li. Around the Essen 2016 period I had come across some positive reviews, but I was never particularly interested to try it. The subject matter is depressing, and the box cover does not inspire confidence. I got to try it at Boardgamecafe.net recently. I think it was Ivan who brought it. I had a pleasant surprise.

The premise of the game is you are all fraudsters running scams, offering too-good-to-be-true investment schemes to raise money to buy companies. The schemes you run are all not sustainable because the interest being promised is impossibly high. You are just trying to raise money to buy up companies, from the market as well as from one another via hostile takeovers. Sooner or later, someone will be unable to pay the interest due, and the schemes will break down. That person goes bankrupt and loses automatically. The rest then compare points. Most points will come from the portfolio of companies you own. Some will come from cash in hand, and some from luxury goods bought during the game.

There are always 9 investment schemes on the board, divided into three rows, and sorted in ascending order. The large number on each scheme card indicates how much cash you will receive when you choose to run the scheme. The card also tells you how frequently you need to pay interest in future, and how much to pay. There is a meaning to how the schemes are divided into three rows. When you choose to run a scheme from the first row, you must claim your first company in one of the four industries. That means if you already own companies in all industries, you can't run any scheme from the first row. Similarly, to run a scheme from the second row, you must at the same time claim your second company in one of the four industries. That means the prerequisite is owning exactly one company in one of the industries. The third row works the same way. If you want to buy the fourth or fifth company in a particular industry, you can't do so via starting an investment scheme. You will have to do so via hostile takeovers.

To buy a company from another player, you yourself must have a company in the same industry. On your turn, you specify an opponent and a company, then put the amount you are willing to pay into a leather folder. You pass the folder to the company owner, offering to buy his company. Now he has two options. Either accept the money and give his company to you, or counterattack by paying you the same amount and then taking your company instead. He puts that amount of money into the folder, and returns the folder to you together with your money. You only have one chance to set the price. There is no back-and-forth bargaining. Also, the transaction amount is kept secret from all other players.

Ivan, Sinbad, Allen. That long black folder in Sinbad's hands in the folder used during hostile takeovers. Everyone has a player screen to keep his cash secret. There are ways to estimate how much money your opponents have. Consider whether they have recently launched any new scheme, whether they have recently paid any big amount of interest, whether they have just bought another company, or received money due to their companies being bought.

The four stacks of tiles in the foreground are the companies in the four industries - media, agriculture, transportation and properties.

Some of the investment scheme cards have bear icons (see the bottom three). When there are five such cards on the board, the market will crash, and during that round everyone must pay interest not only for the current round but also for the next. Market crashes are dangerous. However that does not necessary mean everyone will try to stop them. If you happen to be in good shape, it might be a good time to let someone go bankrupt so that you can win the game.

The large tiles on the right are the luxury items. The game starts with four, and one of them has already been bought. The large numbers are the costs, and the small numbers the point values. Point values range from 1 to 4.

This hexagonal rondel is an important tool. The red arrow indicates the current round, and the numbers indicate future rounds. Whenever you launch a scheme, you place the scheme card next to the sector of the future round when you expect to make the first interest payment. The rondel is turned every round, and each time the red arrow points to one or more scheme cards, it is time for you to pay interest.

The Play

There are two main dimensions in Ponzi Scheme you need to manage - staying alive (ha ha ha ha...), and competing for companies. Let's talk about acquiring companies first, since that's how you score points. There are quite a few tactics involved. Even from the start when you are claiming your first companies, you are already setting yourself up to compete with the players who have invested in the same industries, and isolating yourself from those who are not yet in the same industries. If many players have vested interests in an industry, there will be more competition, but also more opportunities. If few have invested in an industry, the opposite is true. There are pros and cons in both cases. Hostile takeovers are crucial to winning. Attack at the right time, and you may catch your opponent with his pants down - not having enough cash to counterattack, or not having enough cash to dare counterattack. Miscalculate your opponent's funds, or his appetite for risk-taking, and you will find yourself losing a company to him instead. Sometimes a hostile takeover is merely a disguise for selling your own company at a good price. Set a price that your opponent can't refuse, and you'll secure much needed funds while giving away a company that you are not keen about in the first place. Hostile takeovers are very much about reading your opponents. You need to have a good guess about how much money they have left, and how highly they value a certain company. You need to observe their interest payment cycle. If a big interest payment is coming up, they are probably desperate for some cash to stay afloat.

The second main dimension is to not be the first to bankrupt. Everyone is on a slippery slope, which will only get steeper and steeper. You can be bold and reckless, but you don't want to be the first to crash and burn. Every time you run a new scheme, you are getting cash to help keep you alive and buy more companies. However you are also committed to even more interest payments, accelerating the countdown of your personal time bomb. It is quite scary. Everyone is waiting and hoping for someone else to die first. When picking investment schemes to run, sometimes you'd rather pick one with a small up-front gain and a longer repayment period or smaller repayment amount. Some other times you want to pick a scheme that gets you a huge lump sum, even if the payment period is short, and the interest amount high. Sometimes you make the decision based on your long-term strategy. Sometimes you decide out of desperation. Deciding the right type of scheme to run is a big part of Ponzi Scheme.

One needs to think hard when initiating a hostile takeover. If you do intend to buy the company, you need to set a price which your target cannot afford to pay, or is not willing to pay. If you actually hope your target will buy your company instead, the price you set must be both attractive and affordable.

In the game we played, I decided to go all out on media companies. I had five at this point. That is 15 points, which is a lot. The first company of an industry you own is worth 1pt, the second is worth 2pts, and so on.

During our game, there were a few times I was surprised by the result of a hostile takeover. Sometimes I thought the target would counterattack and buy a company from the active player instead, but he didn't and the active player (who was probably intending to sell and not buy) ended up really buying a company. This can be quite bad for the active player. He may have gained some points, but cashflow becomes tighter now.

We paid close attention to the interest payment cycles of our opponents, because you are most vulnerable just before a big payment is due. You need to do all you can to make sure you have enough cash - sell companies, start new schemes, save money. That's when people may try to buy your companies at low prices. Sharks smell blood from 5 kilometres away.

Our game ended earlier than we had expected, and it was all my fault. I made a miscalculation, and ran short of money to pay interest. I thought I still had one round to run a new scheme to earn money. In Ponzi Scheme, changing start player and rotating the rondel is done in the middle of a round. I had subconsciously thought of these as being start-of-round actions, resulting in my fatal mistake. The others were puzzled by my actions in the last round. They could see I had a big repayment due, but I still confidently initiated a hostile takeover, which was successful, and also fatal.

The Thoughts

Ponzi Scheme is a savage game. "Highly interactive" does not do it justice. The game system is already punishing, and unlike Antiquity, you will never claw your way out of the hole. You can only hope someone else dies first. There is a timing element. You want to position yourself to be most successful, except for the player who is going to bankrupt. You try to manipulate the game to end at such an opportune moment. Market crashes are a tool that may help you achieve this. Naturally, the players who don't think they are ready will try to prolong the game. Debt is ever increasing, and pressure ever mounting. The game can be suffocating. Money enters the system when players launch new investment schemes, and leaves the system when interest is paid. During the short time that money is in the players' hands, you need to make the most of it to gobble up companies.

That sinking feeling of an ever increasing debt was what originally deterred me from trying the game. Now that I have played the game, I feel it is but a stage, an erratic timer. It is within its boundaries that you need to learn to survive and compete. I like how tightly money flows, how you need to sense your opponents' weaknesses, and how you need to value how much they are willing to pay. Despite having an axe hanging over your heads, there is still much space for competition. There is no use obsessing about the axe. Avoiding it is only sufficient to not lose, it is not enough if you want to win. You need to be aggressive, just not too aggressive to get yourself bankrupted.

Happy Lunar New Year

Happy Year of the Rooster!