Crystal Palace

The Game

Crystal Palace is a game about the 1851 world fair in London, the Crystal Palace being the main exhibition hall of the event. You play as countries participating in the fair, and you want to put up the most impressive show to win fame. 

Crystal Palace features a dice placement mechanism. Dice are your workers. You place them at various locations to get things done. You get to decide the values of your dice. The higher the value of a die, the more powerful it is, as in it gets to perform an action earlier, perform it in a more profitable way, or it enjoys the privilege of being able to act at all. However, the higher the value of a die, the more expensive it will be for you. You have to pay your dice (workers). 

The game comes with many boards! This looks intimidating, but you can view them as just three types of boards. That largest one on the right is the admin board. It is just three tracks for you to mark your score, your income level, and your buzz level. At the centre you can see one board with a single track. That's the black market. You send assistants here to gain various benefits. All the other boards are just locations where you place your dice (workers) to gain resources / do stuff. The eight locations are separate boards because you need to use a different board or a different side of the board depending on your player count. The game supports 2 to 5 players. I guess it is possible for the publisher to create two large double sided game boards, each side of each game board for a specific player count. Maybe they do it the current way due to cost considerations. 

This is a player board. There are 5 player boards in the game and they are double side, so there are 10 countries you can pick from. The countries are different, specifically in the left column. You have one assistant here which you can advance to score points, if you fulfil a certain criteria. This difference drives players to pursue slightly different goals. 

The ten spaces in the middle can be filled using loan tiles or research tiles. At game end, if there are still empty spaces, you lose 2 victory points (VP) per space. When you take a loan, you lose 8 to 10 VP. Even if you manage to repay the loan, that penalty only reduces to 5 VP. Ideally you want fill the spaces with research tiles. On the right you keep track of your newspapers - one of the resources in the game. Newspapers can be gained in a few ways, and at any time they can be redeemed for other items, e.g. a new die, some cash, a gear. 

Along the bottom you can see the procedures of a game round. You start with everyone secretly setting his dice values. Once you are done, all dice are revealed, and you take turns placing dice - one die per player at a time. After that you resolve each location - players who have dice at a location perform actions. Then the orange, blue and green powers activate. Some of your cards, tiles, assistants give you such powers. 

The game is played over five rounds. You play years 1849, 1850 and 1851, two rounds per year except for 1851, because the fair will be held in the second half of the year. 

Let's look at the dice placement mechanism. At the location board on the left you can see two rows of squares. The first row has five squares and the second row four. Spaces in the first row indicate die values. These are the minimum requirements to place a die. Above the rightmost space there is a £2 icon, which means when you place a die here, you must pay £2. 

When it is time to perform actions, you check who has the highest valued die in the first row. In the case of ties, the leftmost die wins. The player with the highest die moves first. He moves his die to the first space in the second row, and performs the action associated with the location board. In this example here, there are newspaper icons in the first two spaces in the second row. This means players who move their dice here each gain one newspaper. 

If there are five dice placed in the first row, one of them will not be used to perform an action, because there are only four actions available. If you are the poor last guy with no more action space available for you, you get a £1 compensation. You may forfeit your action when it is your turn to move a die to the second row. If you voluntarily forfeit an action, you get no compensation. 

This location board on the left is the patent office. You get patents here. A patent can later be transformed into a prototype. When you do that, you score points, and you also gain some benefit. You need to pay resources to make a prototype. Usually the earlier you build it, the more points it is worth. 

Everyone starts the game with four dice. You leave two dice in your colour at the centre of the table. There are ways to gain more dice during the game. With more dice, potentially you get to do more things, but you will likely be paying more too. 

This location - the Reform Club - is for recruiting characters. The difference between characters and patents is you must immediately pay when you recruit a character. 

On the right you have the income track. It determines how much cash you earn every round. By default, your income level drops by three every round, after you collect income. This is scary, because if you hit rock bottom, you will lose points and you will lose money. It takes conscious effort to keep yourself from hitting bottom. 

On the left you have your buzz track. Buzz is another resource type. When your buzz reaches specific levels, you gain some one-time benefits. At certain milestones, you may claim privileges. Privileges give you something every round. You may claim at most two privileges per game, and you can't change them once you claim them. If you think you will move far on the buzz track, you should wait until you reach a higher milestone to claim the better privilege. If you are not ambitious, just claim the first two you can get your hands on. 

This is the black market. If you have assistants here, during the green phase of a round, you'll gain something. If you voluntarily remove an assistant who is at step 3 or higher, you get one gear (a type of resource). There is a danger here. If at any time the black market is filled up, the cops come and disperses everyone, except for that last assistant who called the cops. 

We did a full 5-player game, and I think that's the most interesting player count. 

The Play

You do lots of stuff in Crystal Palace. They are all centred around the dice placement mechanism. You collect stuff and eventually try to score points. Prototypes and characters are two important sources of points, but there are also many others sources to consider. Generally you try to identify the most lucrative sources of points and you maximise your actions to gain points efficiently. 

Money is tight. We were all wary of taking loans, but eventually no one could avoid loans. It was only a matter of how soon and how much. I was particularly adamant in avoiding loans and I was thrifty. In hindsight, that might not have been such a good idea. It should not be about avoiding loans. It should be about making sure taking the loan is worth the VP penalty, i.e. you will gain enough victory points to justify taking the loan. To save money, I often set my dice to low values. Going into the final round, I had few resources left and felt there wasn't a lot I could do, so I set low dice values to reduce money spent and to avoid loans. In hindsight, I should have been more aggressive and still tried to do something with that final round. 

The dice placement mechanism creates interesting situations. You need to watch what your opponents are trying to do, to help you decide which die you should deploy first, and where to deploy it to. As long as another player still has a die that is higher than your current highest die, there is a risk that you may not get to do what you want. That guy may come from behind to deny you. 

I feel engine-building is slightly lacking. There are ways to gain permanent powers, but there are not many such powers, and you collect them like odd pieces here and there, as opposed to being able to go in with a plan and a clear area of focus. Often competition is tactical in nature. You are analysing the board to find what's most beneficial at that point in time. You are not really building up to something. You are constantly seeking and fighting for short-term wins. 

One action in the game lets you sacrifice a die to gain points. We nicknamed this "selling piglets" (Cantonese: maai zyu zai) - the practice of sending people overseas to work as coolies. In the late 19th century and early 20th century,  many people from southern China went overseas to work as contract labourers. In Crystal Palace, doing this in the early game was lucrative, and one of us did it in the very first round. I wasn't entirely sure it was a good move, since losing 1 out of 4 dice meant losing 25% of your workforce. However, later in the game I was the one who grabbed the remaining coolie actions, because I was cheap and didn't want to feed my people. 

One thing I didn't spend attention on but somehow managed to gain a lot of was the newspapers. At one point I had 6 (max possible was 7). I hadn't been using them for most of the game, and only later on I realised how handy they could be. Sometimes when you desperately need a particular resource, newspapers can come to the rescue. You convert them to the resource you need. At one point the other players started asking me whether I collected old newspapers as a part-time job. In residential areas in Kuala Lumpur, you often hear small lorries driving around with loudspeakers blasting, "Old newspaper, old battery, suratkhabar lama, bateri lama."

The red 2 has just been screwed by the blue 5. The blue 5 was placed last. By placing the 5, the 2 would become the smallest number and would not be able to perform any action. The blue player will be the first to perform an action, followed by the white player (because his die is the leftmost among the 4's), and finally the red player (for the 4). The red player will need to pay £2 when performing the action, because the third action space requires that. 

Location 4 on the right - Westminster - is where you get to increase your influence. You gain some resources whenever you level up. Most importantly your influence affects the salaries of your characters. In most cases they get cheaper when you have more influence. In this photo you can see the white player has maxed out, while the blue player has given up. 

This is where you collect patents. 

This is where you recruit characters. Some characters combo with patents / prototypes. When you have a combo, you score extra points. You do need to turn the patents to the prototype side though. 

The red 3 was placed before the black 3. The red player didn't place it in the leftmost space because he wanted to take the assistant action (white icon). 

When you decide how to set the values of your dice, you can do it behind this little box, and then hide your dice under the box once you are done. 

Tim (yellow) filled the black market, and kicked everyone else out! Party pooper! When the black market was two slots from getting filled up, he took an action which let him place two assistants at once. I didn't see that coming and was caught off guard. 

This was Jeff's player board. He had already filled up the ten spaces at the centre. Some were loans, but he had six research tiles. Not bad! 

This was Tim's player board. His assistant had reached the highest level. He needed to have 5 research tiles to be able to reach the top, and he had that. 

I had the patent for the crystal palace. This was an unusual one. It only scored points if it was converted to the prototype side in the final round, i.e. in 1951. Normally patents score more when they are converted earlier. I set aside 2 energy and 2 gears to build the crystal palace in the final round. 

By late game, our buzz levels had not progressed very far. Most of us had claimed our privileges early (the small round discs), because we didn't except to climb far. 

The Thoughts

Crystal Palace is a heavy Eurogame. The most important element in the game is the dice placement mechanism. It is the core on which the rest of the game was built. The dice placement mechanism introduces interesting tactics and novel player interaction. Money is tight. This is a challenge that I like. Borrowing money is scary. What's important is knowing the worth of loans and making them work for you. 

Overall I feel the game somewhat lacks engine-building. I didn't feel like I was building up my capabilities. There are some permanent abilities you can gain throughout the game. It's just that they feel disjointed and they don't feel impactful. I didn't feel I was deliberately pursuing a particular strategy. I was mostly trying to identify the most lucrative action of the moment, and hoping to beat others to it. So the game felt tactical to me (vs being strategic). The country-specific scoring criteria is there to push players towards slightly different directions, but it felt shallow to me because it's quite easily done as long as you don't forget to do it. There is no struggle or tension. I guess it does achieve its goal, because players do what it wants them to do. I feel like I'm completing homework before the end of the school holidays, as opposed to enthusiastically performing actions which align to my strategic goal. 

Sekigahara storage

My copy of Sekigahara is the second edition. The box is deeper than the first edition, so fitting all the components into the box is much more manageable. I didn't like the box insert, so I re-folded it, to give me more space and more freedom in how I wanted to store the components. I found a small black box which suited perfectly for the cubes and special tokens. I used a Secret Recipe cake box to create two custom boxes for the blocks. 

That's the box bottom on the left, with the box inserted re-folded to become just "wallpaper". The two red boxes on the right are for Tokugawa and Ishida blocks respectively. 

The Ishida box has a small yellow stripe, which I had cut out from the original sticker sheet. 

To open the box, first slide the string sideways. No need to untie the knot. 

Once the string is removed, start unfolding the box. Lower flap first. 

Then the upper flap. 

Finally the two sides. 

I arrange the blocks this way to ease game setup. All blocks with setup icons at the bottom right are placed together. The rest of them are arranged based on the clan mons. 

The Tokugawa box has a black stripe. 

Shift the string sideways. 

Then start unfolding the box. 

Open the upper flap. 

Then the sides. 

Tokugawa blocks are arranged in a similar manner. Those with setup icons first, and then the rest based on clan mon. By referring to this photo and the previous one showing all Ishida blocks in the game, you can work out the probabilities of which blocks are what during play. It's a lot of work though, so I don't actually do that. 

I think this little black box was originally for a key chain. 

Next let's pack up the game: 

Box bottom. 

First I put in the two boxes containing all the blocks. 

Next are the two draw bags, the two decks of cards, and that little black box. 

Now the game board. 

Two reference sheets. 

Rule book. 

This is my own reference sheet. I've made many such reference sheets for games I've played, more than 300 by now. 

Finally the box cover. 

Pandemic Hotzone Malaysia

 

Fresh off the press today on Malaysia Day! Pandemic Hot Zone Malaysia is a fan-made print-and-play version of Pandemic. It's non-profit, but gosh they've put in a lot of effort! Respect! 

But why Lahad Datu featured and not Tawau? I was born in Tawau and I should lodge a formal appeal to the designers.  

More details here

Download here

 

revisiting Sekigahara

5 Sep 2020. Allen and I played Sekigahara again. It's my top 3 game, so I should play more of it. This time I played Ishida (yellow) while Allen played Tokugawa, because I remember the previous time we played it was the other way round. 

Both of us were rusty with the rules, so we had to do some revision before we started. During the game we still occasionally had to refer to the rule book. 

In the early game, Allen's Tokugawa army from Edo (upper left) swiftly descended upon my castle at the centre of the board - Ueda Castle, and captured it in one fell swoop. In real history, Sanada defended the castle well and tied down a big portion of the Tokugawa army. At the upper right, I gathered my troops to attack Allen's castles. Things went well for me. I had more troops in the area. By now Allen's forces were greatly reduced here. 

At the lower right, Allen's Maeda army had struck out from their home base, approaching Kyoto. I had a vacuum in the Kyoto area, so this was a looming threat. I needed to raise troops quickly, or send some back for defence. 

On the left, my forces had been completely wiped out. In a few short and decisive battles, Allen destroyed my Uesugi army. By now he had also captured all the resource locations on the left half of the board, indicated by the small black cubes. At the upper right, I had finally captured both of Allen's castles. Now I had to station soldiers there to keep them subdued. Allen had no more soldiers in this area. He did have one muster location there, but that would not be of use for some time. 

At the lower right, my army had attacked and beaten back Allen's Maeda army. Now I was pushing towards the Maeda clan castle. The situation on the board had clearly split into eastern and western halves. 

I had only two blocks in my recruitment box at this time. I had already mustered many of my blocks onto the map. In the background you can see Allen still having many blocks waiting to be mustered onto the map. He was holding a 5-block stack, ready to deploy. My casualties were high, and this was worrying. 

The five yellow Mori blocks were located in Osaka. As the Ishida player, it is costly to deploy them - one card per block. In history, Mori Terumoto was not so happy with Ishida Mitsunari and refused to deploy. That is why he's such a pain in the neck for the Ishida player in this game. Only if the Tokugawa player attacks Osaka then all these Mori blocks will come onto the map to defend Osaka. 

On the right side of the board, I have mustered some fresh troops. At the centre of the board along the Nakasendo Highway, there was one resource location which nobody dared to capture for a very long time. It was in a kill zone. Whoever captured it risked being attacked by the other side. 

There are 9 castles and 9 resource locations in the game. Castles are worth 2VP each, and resource locations 1VP each. The player controlling more castles gets to draw one extra card every round, which is handy. The player controlling more resource locations gets to draw one extra block when adding blocks to the recruitment box. The extra block is not yet deployed onto the map, it is just being available in the recruitment box. The Tokugawa player starts with five castles to the Ishida player's four, so Tokugawa has a slight advantage at the start of the game. 

At the bottom I was originally planning to attack and capture Allen's castle. I had enough soldiers, but I didn't have the right cards. So I sent that army further to the left to capture a resource location. This was a little risky, because if Allen mustered troops at his castle, he might send his new army to the right, which was lightly defended. Thankfully this did not happen. Eventually my army returned to capture this castle. In the late game, I managed to control six castles to Allen's three. 

At the top, Allen had assembled a large Tokugawa army and had marched it along the Tokaido (highway along the coast) towards my large army at the upper right. In the late game, I was ahead in victory points, so the pressure was on Allen to wrestle castles and resource locations from me. Either that, or he had to find and kill Ishida. To capture Osaka was already impossible. It was a bridge too far. 

Ishida Mitsunari was here in this army, preparing for Allen's attack. If Ishida got himself killed, I would lose the game. This army was mostly Ukita blocks. Previously I only had one block holding the castle here, and the rest of the blocks were slightly behind the front line. I had considered stalling, so that I would win by victory points when time ran out. However when I counted our points, I found that there was still enough time for Allen to capture the points he needed. So I must still fight and I could not afford to concede points easily. 

Tokugawa Ieyasu himself was first to charge into battle (the face-up black block on the left)! 

This was how this large battle turned out. Allen lost the battle due to a loyalty challenge card I played on him. His last 2-mon Tokugawa block turned traitor and joined my side. He had played one loyalty card too, but it didn't work on me because I still had an Ukita card in hand. All my troops stayed loyal. 

This was not the only time Allen lost a battle due to a loyalty challenge. The loyalty challenge mechanism is very clever. If you have a loyalty challenge card, you will feel anxious because you are often unsure when you should play it. Play it too early, and your opponent may still have the right card to defy it. Play it too late, and you may not have the chance to play it at all. Also, the fact that you have a loyalty challenge card in hand means you have one fewer card which can be used to deploy your own troops. Having a loyalty card, which is the highest numbered card in the game, is not necessarily a good thing. 

Although Allen lost one battle here, his reinforcements soon arrived and he was ready for another big showdown. This time I was defeated and my front line crumbled. 

Time was running out, so I could eventually apply the stalling strategy. First, Ishida must retreat and get out of harm's way. I also sent one block to the left to capture that resource location nobody dared to touch all this while. It was the last round now, so victory points mattered. I needed to send a block there so that Allen would not be able to capture it without sending at least two blocks. He had one four-block army at the centre of the board, which he would need to split into three, in order to maximise the number of victory points he could get on his last turn. One division had to stay where it was, at a castle originally loyal to Ishida. A garrison was required, otherwise the castle would immediately revert to my control. The two other divisions would need to attack separately to capture two different resource locations. Eventually this proved too much for Allen's army, and he wasn't able to grab enough points. 

Ishida lost the final big battle, but won the war. Time ran out, and political pressure forced Tokugawa to surrender. 

Sekigahara is a tense and beautiful game, full of surprises and excitement! 

2-player Terraforming Mars

I did a 2-player game of Terraforming Mars with Allen. I have played the game before, but this was my first time playing it with just two. It turned out to be decent. Allen's copy is a deluxe or improved version, so the components are nicer. 

We used the Prelude expansion, which is a simple one. You draw four bonus cards during setup and pick two. They give you bonuses so that you have a quicker start. I chose cards (top right) which gave me steel and titanium production, which were very handy. When playing building cards and space cards respectively, their costs could be reduced by spending steel and titanium respectively. This saved me a lot of money and allowed me to play some strong cards early in the game. 

When picking a company, one of my options was this one (top left) with a Chinese character in its logo. This character was similar to my Chinese name (same pronunciation, slightly different writing). I picked this company purely because of that. Its strength was in building construction, which worked well with my Prelude card - the steel production one. The company name Cheung Shing is likely based on Cantonese pronunciation, and it means The Great Wall of China. 

The player board is indented. The tracks for resource production are designed in such a way that the cubes used for tracking fit snugly and don't easily get knocked off the tracks. 

I played those high values cards (20+ and 30+ costs) quite early in the game. My steel and titanium production helped me tremendously. These cards were powerful. I continued to focus on steel and titanium production. I also boosted my energy and heat production. Terraforming Mars is ultimately about just three things - increasing oxygen, raising temperature, and creating oceans. The energy and heat I produced helped greatly in raising the temperature, which gave me both victory points and regular income. Every round, leftover energy was automatically converted to heat. I was hot hot hot! 

Oceans are created usually by playing specific cards. They can also be created by spending money. In fact all three terraforming actions can be performed by spending money, just that the costs are high. In the early game, you probably want to spend your money on improving your company, so that you can more efficiently perform the terraforming actions. 

The oxygen level is increased by planting forests. In our game, Allen specialised in this. His company was good at this, and he also focused his efforts on improving this capability. He was the green guy. 

At this point my steel production was 3, titanium 5, energy 6 and heat 11! I did not produce any trees though. 

I was green, and Allen red. On the board he had now planted three forests (green tiles). Our ocean making went fast. We already had six on the board out of a total of nine ocean tiles. We had reached halfway on the temperature track. Our oxygen level was still low though. I was hopeless in tree production so Allen was the only guy pumping oxygen into the atmosphere so far. 

Allen had grabbed the first milestone now (top left section). Each milestone is 5VP, which is significant. The milestone he won was the one requiring three forests. 

At this point we had placed all the ocean tiles and also achieved the temperature target of +8C. What was left was the oxygen level, and we were only halfway there. Three milestones had been claimed (upper left). Of the five available, only three can be claimed in any game. In our game, Allen claimed two and I claimed one. At the lower left, I had activated three awards. Similar to milestones, only 3 out of 5 awards can be activated in any one game. However, awards are not evaluated immediately. They are only evaluated at game end. Certainly when I decided to activate an award, I picked a category which I was strong in and would likely win by the time the game ended. Unfortunately I only managed to win 2 out of the 3 awards I activated. I tied with Allen on the third one. He managed to catch up before the game ended. However it was still worthwhile that I activated that award. Had I not done so, he might have activated a different one, which compared tile ownership on the board, and he would certainly win it. He had many more forests and cities than me. 

Normally you can't build cities adjacent to other cities. However Allen had a card which bypassed that rule, allowing him to create one clump of connected cities. At this time the game was near the end. Although the oxygen level was still 5 steps away from the goal, this would be covered very quickly because our companies were very powerful by this time. 

I had a strong advantage in the early game, being able to build a solid engine quickly. However, Allen's board position was much better than mine. In the end when we counted our scores, I won by a slim margin. I was lucky my cards scored me some extra points. Some cards do that. Allen had few cards worth points. In fact he had one card which cost him points. 

The last time I played Terraforming Mars, I remembered it being complicated. This time it didn't, and I don't think it was because I was now familiar with the game. I had actually forgotten most of the rules and had to reread. What helped was rereading my previous blog post. I had summarised for myself that ultimately the game was just about doing those three terraforming actions. So this seemingly complex game was not that intimidating after all. 

Two-player Terraforming Mars worked pretty well. I was a little worried whether it would be less fun. There is little direct player interaction. You do need to race to claim good spots on the board, but you don't often hurt your opponents. Most of the time you are coordinating your own company operations to upgrade yourself in order to terraform more efficiently. The game has same cooperative game vibes, because everyone is working on making Mars habitable together. 

Age of Steam: The French Riviera

On 29 Aug 2020, I joined an Age of Steam session organised by boardgamecafe.net. Age of Steam is Martin Wallace's classic, a game about starting your own railway business, and trying to get to break even point before going bankrupt. There are many expansions for Age of Steam, and The French Riviera is one designed by Alban Viard. The map is the south eastern part of France, along the Mediterranean coast. We did a full 6-player game, which is not for the faint of heart. We had five experienced players and one new player, Sook Yan. 6-player games are scary because the competition is intense. If not managed well, you can go bankrupt. This is a game about borrowing money from shareholders to run your business. You need to pay dividends every round. You are effectively borrowing more money every round to cover interest payment, and for the new money borrowed, there is already interest to pay at the end of the same round. You are digging an ever deeper hole for yourself. 

Notice the lighter hexes along the coast. It is more difficult to build tracks here, because only the player with the Engineer role may build tracks on these hexes. There are many cities along the coast. They have goods to be delivered, and they accept deliveries, but unfortunately access to them is restricted and hotly contested. There are many towns inland, but towns don't produce goods to be delivered nor do they accept goods. They will need to be urbanised to becomes cities first. With 6 players, it is impossible for everyone to be making deliveries in the first round. Someone will have to go with no income increase. One player playing Engineer will be able to secure a delivery route to or from a coastal city. One player doing Urbanisation can create a new city and do delivery to it. The other four will need to fight for what's left, which is not a lot.  

The photo above was taken in Round 1. Sook Yan (blue) won the Engineer role, and built a track to the city at the bottom right. She also started a track from a red coastal city at the lower left. Dennis (red) did Urbanisation at the upper right, placing the blue city B. 

Heng (purple) was the long-term planner. He built many short tracks, which was the ideal way to play. The tracks themselves would score more points, and also you want deliveries to be done via many stops. The more stops there are, the more you earn. It is not about how far you go. Heng did not deliver goods in the first round. He planned ahead to start delivering in Round 2. I (green) started at the lower right. Jeff (black) started in the middle, blocking my way. Sook Yan (blue) also blocked me from expanding towards the centre. I was a little stuck and had to start a new track at the lower left. Tim (yellow) initially started in the middle. In Round 2 he won the Engineer role, and started new tracks at the bottom left. Dennis (red) continued to dominate the upper right. 

From left: Sook Yan, Tim, Jeff, Dennis, Heng. It's pandemic time, so it's face masks all the way. 

The veterans tended to be better concentrated, in order to plan for longer deliveries. Heng (purple) at the upper left, Tim (yellow) at the lower left and Dennis (red) at the upper right. Jeff (black) dominated the centre, which was a good thing because if many people had to borrow his tracks for east-west deliveries, he stood to gain much. I (green) was supposed to be a veteran, but my network was messy. I had two disjointed networks, and I was not quite able to set up any good long distance deliveries. Sook Yan's (blue) network was a little like mine - disjointed too. 

In a 6-player game, the bidding phase is tense. It determines turn order for the round. It decides who picks roles first, who builds tracks first, and who delivers goods first. Turn order is crucial. If you are behind, you may not get the role you desperately need, you may not be able to build where you want, and that lucrative goods cube you are planning to deliver may be snapped up by your opponent. When the bidding phase concludes, only 1st and 2nd place players pay their full bids. Everyone else only pays half, except the last player who pays nothing. Paying the full bid and paying just half is a huge difference. Sometimes you make a higher bid hoping to win 3rd place and thus pay only half. However you might "accidentally" win 2nd place and end up having to pay full price, which can be painful. 

One special power in the game is the passing power during bidding. It lets you sit out of the bidding just once. Normally when your turn comes, you must either bid a higher amount than the previous highest bidder, or drop out. If you drop out, you take the remaining lowest position. If you up your bid, you continue to compete and hope others drop out before your turn comes again. The passing power is handy because after you sit out for just once, you will likely see quite a few other people dropping out. So you can earn a decent position without spending a single cent. Usually this passing power doesn't sound too sexy. In a 6-player game though, it can save you a lot of money. Picking it is setting yourself up for a strong position in the next round. 

Sook Yan (blue) and my (green) positions on the board did not look so good. So when other players needed to borrow other people's tracks for delivering goods, they preferred to help either Sook Yan or me. It's always preferable to help the trailing players if you are forced to help someone. I benefited much from this. I hadn't realised that my tracks were that well positioned. Certainly when I built them, they did not seem like choke points. I think it was the goods production that created new opportunities for my tracks. When others helped me by giving me just a $1 increase in income, it didn't feel like much. However these gradually added up, and I found myself having a strong income. My delivery capacity grew slowly. Even towards game end I was only making 3-step and 4-step deliveries (max is 6-step). 

We started breaking even about 70% into the game, and I was among the first batch to achieve this. I quickly halted issuing shares, preferring to be frugal. Each share issued would cost me 3VP at game end, and I wanted to minimise this penalty. Eventually it was all the small boosts that others gave me which won me the game. I was surprised how things turned around for me. I didn't do so well in the early game, and had expected to come in 3rd or 4th at best. In a 6-player game, leeching off other people can be super effective! 

At game end, the board was almost full! We were scoring the tracks now and for ease of counting we removed the player discs once the corresponding tracks were scored. 

geekgroup.app website

Do you use   boardgamegeek.com to keep track of games you own and games you play? If you do, check out this nifty website geekgroup.app. It extracts your data from BGG and presents it in many interesting ways. 

Try this link below. Replace the "hecose" part with your BGG username. 

https://geekgroup.app/users/hecose/insights/collection

What I enjoyed most was watching the evolution of my most played games. I started recording my plays in 2004. Watching 16 years of my own game play history was a sentimental moment. You can try it using this link below. Replace "hecose" with your own username. 

https://playback.geekgroup.app/hecose