Endeavor

Allen brought a new unpunched copy of Endeavor on Sat 15 May 2010, and we punched the game (and played quick games of En Garde and Times Square) while waiting for Han to arrive. Allen had played the game before, and taught us how to play.

Endeavor is a recently released game (2009) which has been well received. So I was happy to have a chance to try it.

The Game

The historical background of the game is the Age of Exploration, when European nations are exploring and colonising new lands. In the early game players fight over Europe, but soon they run out of space and start exploring and conquering new distant lands - North, Central and South America, Africa, India and the Far East. The game is played over 7 rounds, and at the start of every round you get to construct a building (for free). Buildings usually give you an action that you can use during the action phase of a round, or increase your level in one of the four status tracks. Your choice of building will determine your strategy.

The action phase of each round is the meat of the game. You normally take an action by placing a marker on the building that allows you to do that action. You can also take an action by discarding an action token that you have collected earlier. The most basic action is the Occupy action - you place one of your markers on a vacant city and take the token on it. You can Attack another player's city, replacing his marker with yours, by paying one marker. There is no defense against this, but you do need to have the appropriate building or action token to make an Attack. You can Ship, which means to explore a certain new region - you place a marker on the outermost vacant space of the shipping track of the region, and take the token on it. Shipping symbolises exploration of the region, and only when the region is fully explored (represented by the shipping track being filled up), it becomes available to be Occupied.

You can Draw cards. There are stacks of cards that provide various benefits in the regions, sorted in a fixed order from good to very good. When a card is taken, the next (usually) better card is revealed and becomes available. However to be able to get the next card you need to have sufficient presence (i.e. markers) in the region.

Throughout the game you keep collecting tokens and cards from the board, and most of them have icons that allow you to progress on your four status tracks, which are like development tracks. The Industry status track determines how many building types are available to you. The more advanced you are, the more and better the available buildings are. The Culture track determines how many markers you gain every round. The Finance track determines how quickly you can reuse your buildings (by removing the markers you've put on them when you use them). The Politics track determines how many cards you can hold. All these tracks also give victory points depending on how far you progress.

There is a spatial element to the game. Most cities on the board are linked, and a token is placed on the link. The first player to control both cities at both ends of a link takes this token. The player who controls both cities at game end also earns 1VP.

So the whole game is about land grabbing, exploring, and advancing on your status tracks. The buildings you construct, the tokens and cards you collect, and the benefits you gain from advancing on the status tracks, are all your tools to do these.

The Play

I started the game with a card collecting mindset. Unfortunately my rhythm in Occupying was a bit off, and I found myself eventually controlling only 1 European city, compared to 5 and 4 respectively by Allen and Han. I did quite badly at the spatial element of the game, not ever controlling cities at both ends of a link. I did alright in card collecting, and that did help. But the poor performance on the board meant I came in a rather distant last at 36pts. Allen won the game at 51pts, beating Han's 49pts narrowly.

The game was very quick, very streamlined. Everything clicks very well. The different aspects of the game are well integrated and are intuitive.



The whole board. Europe is in the middle. At the start of the game only Europe is open for players to fight over. At this point in the game, Africa (lower left of this photo) had been fully explored, and Han (white) had Occupied both the cities there. North America had been fully explored too, and it was now fully Occupied by Allen (red). Han did some exploration of the Caribbean (top centre) and the Far East (bottom right), but Allen and I had not been interested to participate.


A slightly closer look at the board. See how weak I was in Europe (green).


Africa, land of lions. Colonising Africa was good for Han because the cities link to other cities in the Mediterranean already Occupied by him.


My player mat in round 6 (6 buildings constructed, not counting the one everyone starts the game with, the Colonial House). I had filled up all my card slots. Unfortunately most of my cards are not very powerful ones, nothing more than Level 2. I did have one Governor card due to being the biggest explorer of North America.


My player mat in round 7, the final round. Some of my cards had been replaced with better ones.
The Thoughts

I quite like Endeavor. It does not have big innovations, but there are some small ones that I quite like. I like that the buildings are free and you don't need to managed multiple types of resources like many other Eurogames. The game play feels smooth, simple and clean, although there are actually some rules exceptions and small details that you need to keep in mind.

I think the game is quite thematic, which many may disagree. Occupation, exploration and warfare are abstracted down to simple mechanics, but I find that the game as a whole works very well to give a feeling of colonial powers competing in discovery, conquest and technology.

There have been complaints that the status tracks, i.e. the development aspect of the game, are not very interesting, because by game end everyone tends to have more or less the same technology level. I don't think that is a problem. I think in this aspect of the game the journey is more important than the destination. During the game you need to decide and prioritise which tracks to progress on. Indeed you can't let any specific track fall behind too far, but there is some room for flexibility during the game, and it is within this space that you try to come up with a competitive strategy.

There is a bit of a game of chicken in Endeavor. Do you wait for an opponent to pick up a card, so that you will gain access to the next more powerful card under it? Will another opponent place enough markers to take that card before you? There may be multiple regions that you want to compete in. Which city do you Occupy first? Which region do you Ship to first?



Details of card artwork.
One thing that I like a lot in this game is the artwork, especially the box cover and the buildings. I like the overall graphic design very much - the style, the font, the colour scheme, and the good communication design. It is by Joshua Cappel, who also did the graphics for Wasabi, another game with very good artwork. Joshua is also the co-designer of Wasabi. Multi-talented.

After the Flood

After the Flood is a strictly 3-player game by Martin Wallace, about the rise and fall of ancient civilisations in Sumeria. It is a complex eurogame, typical of Martin Wallace, which means it is also very thematic and it brings out the history and the background of the subject matter very well. On Sat 15 May, Han and Allen came to play, and Han taught us this game.

The Game

The game is played over 5 rounds, and players take multiple actions within each round. The players play 2 roles - the local people and workers of Sumeria and the powerful empires which fight over control of various provinces in the Sumer region. You assign workers to produce grain and textile, and to work metal into tools. You also assign them to provinces neighbouring Sumeria so that you can trade with these provinces. Every round you produce a limited amount of grain and textile. You trade them for other goods like wood, metal, oil, gold and lapis lazuli. Goods are needed for many things - deploying workers, gaining extra troops, strengthening your army, and very importantly, expanding your cities. Expanding a city is something that can only be done once to a city, and it awards you victory points depending on how many resources are spent.

On the military side of things, every round you get to start one empire. There are three preset empires every round with different numbers of soldiers and starting locations. If you have a worker in a province where an empire can start, you can do so, discarding your worker, collecting your soldiers, and placing the first one in the province. Thereafter you expand your empire by placing a soldier in a province adjacent to one you already control. You can fight other empires, which is done by rolling two dice. Your soldiers do not kill workers of other players. They just prevent the workers from trading. If your soldier controls a province, you can trade there as if you have a worker. You can spend soldiers to destroy cities. You don't gain victory points for this, all you gain is an empty spot to build a new city, and probably you deny your opponent one city to expand. Both can be important, because expanding a city can give up to 20pts. Every province you control at the end of the round gives you victory points, and after that all soldiers are removed from the board. So these empires start a fresh every round.

Workers don't go away every round. Some of them go away in Rounds 2 and 4, so there is a form of reset too on the industry side of the game.

The game board. It looks a little intimidating, and I'd say a little ugly too. But it contains lots of very useful information, and I think it is quite practical. Give me a practical board over a beautiful board any time.

A close-up of some of the provinces. Light coloured provinces are Sumeria. Many of such provinces provide some benefit if you build or own a city in them. The dark coloured provinces are outside of Sumeria. The resource icons tell what resources can be traded for there.

Top row: The discs are gold, tools and oil. The cubes are metal and wood. Then an expanded city, the smaller square being the expansion marker. Bottom row: Two workers and a soldier.

Blue discs are lapis lazuli. White cubes are textile, yellow cubes are grain.

The irrigation and weaving boxes are very important because they determine how much train and textile you produce at the start of a round. At the start of the game everyone has one worker, so every produces the same amount of goods.

Resource values on the top left tell you how many workers one unit of a resource can be used for placing. Grain, metal and tools only can be used for boosting the number of soldiers you receive for an empire, by 1 / 2 / 3 per unit of resource respectively.

So in summary, you gain points from having your soldiers occupy provinces, and expanding your cities. A province containing your city can be controlled by an enemy soldier, but as long as your opponent has not destroyed the city, you can still expand it and earn points. Expanding cities is a long and hard road. You need to plan ahead and collect various resources. Given the limited resources that you produce and can trade, and disruption by enemy soldiers, this is quite hard to do. At game end, there is a special area majority scoring based on workers. Some provinces outside Sumeria have this scoring, and the irrigation space for producing grain and the weaving space for producing textile too.

The Play

Our game started with everyone building cities all over Sumeria, which is normal (and recommended by the rules). Most provinces give some benefit when you build or own a city in it. This helps to create some differences among the players from the start. Everyone started the game with a good set of resources. We didn't quite know what to do with them. We didn't really spend much on equipping our armies or boosting their numbers. So we ended up using up the initial resources for expanding cities. Expanding cities is a funny thing. It is an end in itself. Once you achieve it, you don't care much about that city anymore. In fact, you may even want your opponents to destroy it, so that it would release one spot for city building. You are more concerned about keeping safe cities that have not been expanded, because they are the ones with potential.

I had a poor start in the game, making myself vulnerable. I had thought I'd focus more on the industry / economy aspect of the game, but I underestimated how important the military aspect is. Military conquest not only gives victory points. It is also important for controlling trade rights or denying your opponents trade rights. I wasn't aggressive enough from the start, and made some dumb moves which invited attacks. I struggled through most of the game so much that Han and Allen started teasing me for being an AP (analysis paralysis) player. Indeed I tend to do this when I'm stuck and I try to get myself out of the hole I have dug for myself. In this game it didn't work out. I came in dead last, but thankfully not too far behind. I even had to employ pity tactics to beg the others to attack me less. I also kind of played kingmaker towards game end. I had enough resources to make one more city expansion of the best type (i.e. I had 2 wood plus all 4 types of luxury resources, which give 20pts). However, there was some risk that my last remaining unexpanded city may get destroyed by either Han or Allen. Han had one unexpanded city, Allen had two. To mitigate risk, I needed to destroy one of these and build a new city over the ruins, so that I would have a backup unexpanded city. If I destroyed Han's city, it would have been his last city. He probably would have been able to destroy another city and build a new one to expand, but why invoke his wrath and risk retaliation? His armies were near both my existing unexpanded city and the potential sites I could build a new one. I would be in deep trouble if he destroyed both my old city and the new one that I would build.

Allen had 2 unexpanded cities, so I had a good excuse (err... in a way I guess) to destroy one of them. He would still have another one. Also the other reason is his armies were further away, and although he could easily reach my old city, it would be harder to reach the newer one I was planning to build. So I chose to destroy one of Allen's cities and build a new one of my own over the ruins. Throughout all this reasoning and discussion, I was actually secretly kingmaking. I expected Han would see the opportunity to mess with Allen's plans by destroying his other (and last remaining) unexpanded city. This would benefit Han and disadvantage Allen, since the two of them were competing for top position. At the same time tempting Han to attack Allen would mean I had an even better change of being spared. It may even give me a chance of moving up to second place.

And indeed Han grabbed the opportunity and attacked. Allen had the resources to do a 10pt city expansion, but had no city to expand. However I still couldn't beat him. He scored 121. I had 110. Han won the game at 133. Even if Allen had been able to perform a city expansion on the last round, he would not have beaten Han.

So this game actually has some diplomacy and meta game! There is a nice tension of trying to keep a balance among the 3 players. This reminds me of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms. In our particular game, it was mainly a competition between Han and Allen, as a result of my dumb moves in the early game, but at least I still felt I wasn't a complete non-factor throughout the game. But it took me such a long time to make my moves - there was so much to think through. I was desperate to try to do better, but it didn't work out unfortunately.

Near the end of the first round of the game.

A close-up of the game in progress.

On the fifth round, Han and Allen fought fiercely over gaining majority of this province of Assyria, because the most powerful empire would start here. To start an empire you need to have a majority of workers (ties allowed) in the province. Han (purple) and Allen (red) kept adding workers here turn after turn. This escalation was good for me, because this meant they were spending their actions here while I did other things. It also meant they were spending many resources and workers (both limited) here. 鹤蚌相争，渔人得利.

Eventually Han gave in, and Allen started the Assyrian empire. He had to lose all 6 of his workers as part of the start empire action. Ouch. Han's 5 workers here were a waste too, because it was more than enough to gain majority.

Near game end.

The Thoughts

After the Flood is tight game and a challenging game. Resource production is capped every round, and how much grain and textile you gain is based not on the absolute number of workers you have assigned to producing them, but on the relative number of workers all players have. This means the competition to outproduce others can become quite nasty, if every tries to pile on more and more workers. Or it can be very peaceful, if everyone keeps the same number of workers, so that everyone gains the exact same amount of resources. Sometimes by adding more workers you don't produce more, you just make others produce less. Nasty eh?

The game has a very good integration of the industry and military parts. The military part is a little like History of the World, Britannia and 7 Ages, where different preset civilisations pop up at specific locations with specific numbers of soldiers. In itself this aspect is quite simple. However at the same time you have to think of the industry layer of the game - where and when to assign workers, when to trade. Timing can be very critical. Sometimes you may want to place your workers quickly and trade quickly, before the non-Sumerian provinces get occupied by enemy soldiers, and you are prevented from trading. A trade action can sometimes be quite complex. With one trade action, you can trade once at every province. So usually it is preferable to get your workers (and soldiers) set up at multiple provinces, and then do one big trade action, as opposed to doing multiple smaller trade actions. You need to manage this timing. Watch our for the enemy soldiers!

When expanding an empire (i.e. spreading your soldiers around), it is possible to sacrifice soldiers to expand more than one province per action. You are sacrificing how far you can expand, but gaining the advantage of being able to do it quickly. Sometimes you want this speed. You also have to watch out for your opponents doing this. The enemy may be at the gates earlier than you expect.

I am quite impressed with the story that After the Flood tells, and how it tells it. You see the rise and fall of civilisations and powerful armies. You see industries and trade prosper and decline. The game seamlessly weaves together a simple war game and a medium complexity "cube conversion" game, creating a very challenging, tense and complex game.

Homesteaders

Homesteaders is published by a small publisher, Tasty Minstrel Games, and is designed by Alex Rockwell (a.k.a. alexfrog), a BGG member well known for his strategy articles, especially on Puerto Rico. Given this background, I expected Homesteaders to be a deep Eurogame, and I was right.

The Game

The rules of Homesteaders are surprisingly simple. In a nutshell, you participate in 10 auctions, in which winning some will allow you to construct some buildings, and throughout the 10 rounds you make use of your building powers to gain resources, which can be used for constructing more buildings or earning victory points. But then, the devil is in the details. In this game, that means the buildings.

Buildings give various types of benefits. The basic type is giving you a resource (wood, food, iron, money, livestock, gold etc) every round. Sometimes this benefit requires you to assign a worker to the building. Some buildings allow you to convert something to something else. Some buildings give a one-time benefit when you build it. Some buildings give victory points at game end depending on a specific criteria (i.e. like the big buildings in Puerto Rico and San Juan.

The auctions are in most cases for the rights to build a certain types of buildings. You don't bid for a specific building. This means you have some flexibility in pursuing different strategies. Sometimes the rights being auctioned allow you to build more than one type of building, sometimes all types. Sometimes they also give you bonuses, like a free worker. You have to be careful with workers though. Once you hire, you can't fire. You must pay their full salaries whether you use them or not. So it's not a good idea to employ more people than you have work for.

There is always one right less than the number of players up for auction every round, which means at least one player will not win any right. Sometimes more than one player will suffer this fate, when they can't afford or do not want to pay even the minimum bid. These players get to advance on a Railroad Development Track, which I think of as a consolation prize track, because you do gain a consolation prize. The types of prize you can choose from depends on how many times you've failed to win an auction. These prizes are actually quite helpful. So not winning any auction is not too big a disaster. In fact I suspect sometimes you may not even be interested in any of the rights up for auction (just a wild guess, since I've only played this game once).

The game board is very simple, 3 spaces for auctions (3rd one empty because it is for 4-player games only), and one Railroad Development Track a.k.a. consolation prize track. This board was actually home-made by Allen because he didn't like the board that came with the game. This one is mounted and quite sturdy. Graphics is exactly the same as the original board.

Some of the buildings.

One important concept in the game is the marketplace and the trade chits. You can always buy and sell goods (and hire workers) at the marketplace. The buying and selling prices are the same, i.e. trading is not a viable business model. Every transaction costs you a trade chit, a special resource type in the game, which limits how many times you can use the marketplace.

The Play

Han, Allen and I played a 3-player game (the game supports only 3 or 4 players). Although the game structure and rules were very simple, I quickly realised that there was a lot more to the game. There were many buildings to consider, and it was very overwhelming trying to come up with much of a strategy in the first game. Han got a gold mine, which was very helpful in maintaining good cash flow. He mined gold every round, and could use the gold as $5. He won the most auctions throughout the game, and also kept the start player marker most of the game. Allen tried to grab as many victory points as quickly and as early as possible. I decided to try to get as many railroad tiles and workers as possible. Railroad tiles give $1 every round. During the game I tried to get buildings which gave victory points based on the number of railroad tiles and workers. My cash flow was pretty bad, and I lost many auctions. I was struggling.

At game end when we tallied up our scores, it came as no surprise that Han beat both Allen and I handily, at 60pts. What surprised we was I actually narrowly beat Allen, 41pts to 37pts. I had been so sure I would be dead last.

Railroad tiles, buildings and workers are public information, i.e. in front of the player screen. The rest of the resources are secret. I had a lot of trade chits, but I never quite knew what to do with them.

The game moved very fast. Many things could be done simultaneously, e.g. assigning workers, gaining resources. The auctions went fast, since most of the time money is tight. I literally had a headache because of analysing the many building abilities and working out possible strategies, within the very short time between actions in the game. It was like trying to eat a 10-course meal in 15 minutes. Too much to digest.

The Thoughts

Homesteaders is a game that takes less than half a game to learn the mechanics, and probably 10 times that to learn the strategies. There is still so much I have not yet explored - different combinations of buildings, strategies focused on different types of goods, etc.

This is very much a Eurogame, so don't expect much in terms of theme. It's all about the game mechanics. Player interaction is all via the auctions, which sometimes can be quite brutal. The game is very streamlined. I am amazed at the depth that could be achieved given such a short playing time. There is nothing ground-breaking in terms of mechanics, so the game can feel a bit samey to other deep Eurogames.

Zombie State

When Han brought out Zombie State, he said (something to this effect), "It's a zombie game, so I had no choice - it's a must buy". I'm sure most gamers out there can appreciate this, but probably not their significant others. Han is a big Ameritrash fan, so we make a good combo - he buys most of the Ameritrash games and I buy most of the Eurogames. He's the one who introduced me to zombies. I never had much interest before that. The Walking Dead is a still-ongoing graphic novel series that I quite enjoy.

The Game

Zombie State is played on a world map, divided into 5 regions (sorry Australia, you're merged with the Asian continent), and depending on the number of players (2 to 5), certain regions are in play. Each player controls one region, and every territory in every region starts with some population, represented by pips on a die. Some territories produce goods, which are needed for raising armies and research. As part of game setup, some zombies appear in some territories. These zombies will start biting people, converting them to zombies, and the zombie plague will spread and spread. The players scramble to try to save their people and their territories. They try to kill zombies where they can, and generally just try to survive. When the game ends, you win if you have the most population remaining.

The gameboard is quite wide but not very high. The timer track is on the far left.

Every round zombies will either bite or move. Each zombie will bite one population point, reducing your population die by one, and creating one more zombie. If that area has no more population, the hungry zombies which have not bitten anyone move to the neighbouring territory with the most population. If there are too many zombies, they split up and move to multiple territories. If all neighbouring territories are vacant, the zombies get confused and they sit around doing nothing.

Your resources in the game are freedom points (FP's) and 4 types of goods. FP's are basically action points. Depending on how many of your territories still have population in, you get between 2 to 6 FP's. You need FP's for moving armies, fortifying armies, producing extra goods, performing research and using some technologies that you have already researched. You use resources for raising troops, research, and in some cases for using technologies too.

Research is a very important part of the game. There are three streams - medical, military and physics/science. You spend resources to research a technology, and get a 50% chance to succeed in developing the technology. If you fail, on your subsequent tries your chances improve. If other players already have the technology, your chances will also be better. Technologies give you various benefits. One lets you kill zombies from afar, one lets you build walls cordoning off zombies, one lets you migrate your population, one lets you produce goods in territories which originally do not produce goods. The technologies are important in combating the zombie plague and in surviving.

The player reference sheet is intimidating at first, but soon I found it to be very useful and practical. The track along the top tells you how many Freedom Points you get at the start of the round. Territories with no population left will have their dice placed here, and the track tells you how many territories you have left, and how many FP's you get. The small box on the top left is for storing your FP's, represented by the plastic pawns. Each time you spend an FP, you remove a pawn from the box.

Below that box you see a long box containing the round summary, which is quite handy. The technologies take up most of the space. You don't need to remember them all when you play. Just browse and find what you like. At the start you can only attempt to develop the Tier 1 techs. After you have developed three of these (like I had done here), you can move on to Tier 2.

A close-up of the Popularity Track, which is used for tracking FP's you get.

The Play

In our 3-player game, Han played Europe (yellow), Allen played Africa (red) and I played Asia (green). North and South America were not in play. At the start of the game I decided to invest in a technology that gave me +2 to my die rolls (on a 12-sided die) in future when I attempted to develop new technologies. I thought it was good investment. For the rest of the game I rolled quite well in my tech rolls and ended up not really utilising this ability very much though. But I think I still benefited from the confidence it gave me to invest in tech rolls.

From very early in the game, I was already torn between short-term and long-term concerns. Should I build more troops to try to slow down the advance of the zombies? Should I build attempt to develop new technologies? Would my people survive long enough to be able to benefit from the techs? The zombie armies grew at an alarming rate. The people they bit became zombies themselves, boosting their ranks. It was a mad scramble trying to contain the outbreak. And then there are literally Outbreaks throughout the game. Some happened at fixed turns, some came up from the event deck. When Outbreaks happened, a zombie appeared at a random populated spot, and we had to start worrying about containing that new zombie. At one point in the game, Allen had separated his populated territories from zombie-infested territories using a wall, but when an Outbreak came up and he rolled the die, a new zombie appeared precisely in the territory on this side of the wall, as if some smart (oxymoron?), previously-unaccounted-for zombie had breached the wall.

I played Asia (green). The dice on the board represent population level. I had lost all my population (all bitten by zombies) in Mongolia, West China and Bangladesh/Burma. One zombie just walked into Beijing (red side), but I had an army which could defeat it. India is a lost cause, 8 zombies there.

West China used to produce the blue resource (I don't remember what it was), but since I had no population remaining, I couldn't produce there anymore.

I was quite lucky in this game. My initial zombies were all near the borders with Europe, and the zombie plague spread westwards, and never seriously threatened east Asia or Australia. Heavily populated India was a zombie magnet. As the zombies swarmed India, I used my Evacuation tech to get my population out of the neighbouring territories. I managed to create a no man's land between zombie-infested territories and safe territories. This protected my remaining territories, but it also meant the zombies now headed for Han's territories to my west. Sorry man, this is not a cooperative game.

Han and Allen weren't as lucky with their zombie distribution. All hell broke lose in Europe and Africa. They had to keep spending on troops to fight zombies. Eventually most of the northern half of Africa was devastated, and the western half of Europe too.

Every round three event cards are turned up. Some events are good, some bad. Outbreaks are bad. Free walls are good. Sometimes you lose or gain FP's. Sometimes some types of research become less, or more, expensive. Some of these make you feel like you've won a lottery, e.g. a free wall when you desperately need one to hold off the zombies. Some make you want to bang your head against a wall. E.g. I had one Outbreak in Japan, which was in the middle of my group of "safe" and isolated territories. I had the MV1 virus screening tech, which could prevent Outbreaks, but I had forgotten to keep one good to pay for using it.

After I managed to isolate my territories from the zombies, I spent a lot on techs to further ensure the safety of my population. I even managed to repopulate some territories next to zombie territories because by them I had walls to hold the zombies off. I had the luxury of developing new goods production facilities, and even conducted air strikes to kill off some zombies in Han's territories. I don't think this is normal. We are not playing Puerto Rico here. Colonists? Goods? What zombie game is this?

India and Pakistan remind me of Twilight Struggle. In our game, they didn't need to fight anymore. All the people had turned to zombies.

Close-up of India and Pakistan. The 3 population in Iran are shuddering with fear.

A wall built to stop the zombies in India from entering the Indonesia territory.

Middle East, North Africa and South Europe have all gone to hell.

Asia was looking sweet. I had repopulated Indonesia since it was now protected by a wall. Anyway I had bombed the zombies in India to oblivion. Australia had a new uranium mine (yellow), Hong Kong had a new corn farm (orange), North China had a new oil well (purple).

Eventually the game ended when for one full round I had no zombies in any of my territories. I had bombed them to oblivion. The game can end in 2 other ways - the end of a timer track, or one player loses all population. We were close to the end of the timer track. Things were more settled down in Europe and Africa by then, so Han and Allen's people weren't at risk of extinction. We didn't really bother to count our scores. It was quite obvious Asia survived with most people remaining. The Australians were probably saying, "What zombies? All we had was a bunch of Indonesian refugees!"

The Thoughts

Zombie State is a fun game. One would squarely categorise this in the Ameritrash camp, but surprisingly I find that it is quite a low player interaction game, or "multiplayer solitaire" game, which many Eurogames are often described as. Everyone is trying to survive, and you can't really interfere much with others' plans. You can try to manipulate your population near your borders with other players, and try to get the zombies to go after other players instead of you, but the ability to do so is limited. You can try to reseach techs that other players already have, because you'll have a better chance of success. However tech needs differ depending on your situation. You will be so busy trying to save your behind, you won't have time to mess with your opponents. The most you can do is laugh at their misfortune.

The game actually feels a little like a cooperative game (assuming you don't laugh at your opponents). You are all on the same boat. You are all part of humanity trying to survive the zombie plague, so you feel like you are part of the same team. I tell you this is a scary game. Watching the zombies grow in number and spread is nerve-wracking. You feel so doomed, facing an unstoppable tidal wave. Zombie feeding and movement is deterministic. You feel very helpless because there is so little you can do, especially in the early game. You need to pick your fights wisely and fall back where necessary. Calculating the zombie actions can feel a bit mathy - how many people get eaten, where the zombies will move, how to trick them into moving the other direction. On the other hand, the events introduce quite a bit of randomness. Most of the bad random events are not too severe. Some can be bad though, e.g. Outbreaks. They only introduce one more zombie, but sometimes just one zombie can trigger a chain reaction that wipes out one big swath of your population.

Zombie State tells a compelling story. It is a serious take on the zombie genre. You can say it's an "experience game", but that tends to have a negative connotation, that your decisions don't matter much. I don't think this is the case here. There is definitely randomness in the game. The excitement comes from how you try to manage the disaster. You will get a mix of good and bad surprises, and you have to manage the bad ones while trying to make the most out of the good ones. This is a once-in-a-while game, and not something you want to play repeatedly and frequently to hone your skills. I certainly had a fun ride.

Dune

Jeff of boardgamecafe.net / Old Town Kopitiam Cheras gamers organised a session to play the classic and out-of-print (and very expensive) Dune, a game based on the famous science fiction novel series. He had never played it before, although he had had it for some time. This was the French version published by Descartes Editions. On Labour Day, 1 May 2010, we played a 5-player game at Old Town Kopitiam.

The Game

I read the first two books of the Dune series a few years ago, but don't remember the details very well, so some details written here may not be accurate. Dune the boardgame is played on a map of Arrakis, the planet where precious spice is harvested. Multiple factions are vying for control of Arrakis, and they have different agendas, strengths and weaknesses. There are 5 strongholds on the map. You need to control a certain number of strongholds to win the game, that number depending on the number of players and the size of the alliance you are in, if you are in one.

You need military units to control a stronghold, and military units in this game are very simple. You have a total of 20 tiny round tokens. Depending on the faction you play, some start on the board, some start off board and need to be deployed later. Every round, you can do exactly one shipment of units from off board onto the planet, and exactly one movement of one group of units from one space to one other space on the board. I was surprised how simple this was when I read the rules, and was later surprised again how well the game works in spite of this simplicity.

The battle system is simple. Three factors come into play - units, leaders, and treachery cards. The number of military units is known when two armies clash, but each side secretly commits a subset to actually fight. The loser loses all units, and the winner loses only the committed units. Both sides also secretly commit a leader (every faction starts with five), and some cards. Leaders boost the total strength. Cards are used for killing the enemy leader, or protecting your own leader.

That's me teaching the game. Left to right: me, Arm, Wai Yan (game spectator, whom, in hindsight, we probably should have asked to be the 6th player playing Bene Gesserit), Ainul.

Many photos here are courtesy of Jeff of www.boarddgamecafe.net.

That's me handing a battle disc to Arm. The battle disc allows you to secretly select a number, which will be the number of units you want to commit in the battle. That little round recess is the spot to place your leader.

Leaders are round discs. These are Jeff's Harkonnen leaders. The numbers are the strength that these leaders contribute to a battle. The strength 10 Harkonnen leader should not be in play. It's part of an expansion.

One twist in battles is traitors. During game setup, each faction secretly gains a leader from another faction, a traitor. If you end up fighting an army lead by this traitor secretly serving you, you automatically win the battle, which is cool. However you also will not know how many and which of your leaders are secretly serving other lords.

For most of the actions that you can take in the game, you need spice. This is the key currency in the game, and it is scarce. You need spice to ship units onto the board. You need spice to bid for cards. You need spice to revive dead units. You start with some spice, but once the game starts, you have to harvest spice yourself. Every round some spice will be discovered in one region. The players need to rush there to harvest the spice. Other factions are not the only thing you need to worry about. There is a raging storm which will wipe out your units together with any spice if it hits you when you are in the desert, and Arrakis is 80% desert. There are also giant sandworms which will eat up your units and the spice. They tend to appear in the region most recently found to have spice, so it's a dilemma between getting there before other factions and waiting for an extra round until it's safe. Life is tough.

This was my player shield. You hide your spice under this. The artwork is comic-style and very 80's.

The Play

In our game, Jeff played the Harkonnen, master of treachery (more treachery cards and more traitors than others). I played the Atreides, the faction of the main character in the story. I could see some extra information, e.g. whether a sandworm was coming, where spice would appear next, the opponent's leader in a battle. In the novels the Atreides and the Harkonnen were sworn enemies. They each started the game controlling two important strongholds near each other. Ainul played the Emperor, rich because bids for treachery cards were paid to him, but he started with no units on the board. Arm played the Guild, who monopolised transportation, and was nicknamed DHL. The Guild was rich because unit shipment costs were paid to them. Ken played the Fremen, the natives, nicknamed orang asli (which means aborigines). They were poor but numerous. They popped up freely near a particular desert as opposed to needing to be shipped from orbit. They also get revived for free when killed. They moved faster.

The first round of the game. Atreides (green, played by me) started in Arrakeen, and Harkonnen (black, played by Jeff) started in Carthag. These two cities are important because having units present here mean you have access to ornithopters (something like helicopters) and your units anywhere on the board can move 3 steps instead of 1.

When we played, the French in the game posed a bigger difficulty that we had expected. The English rules we had referred to region names in English but the names on the board were in French. The card texts were in French and we had to look up the English reference sheets. Despite this, we had a fun game and quite a number of interesting stories.

The Tleulaxu tanks, where dead leaders and units go to, and can be revied. Ken (Fremen, yellow) was first to have casualties.

Some spice appeared right next to my (green) home base of Arrakeen. Ainul (red) attacked Jeff's (black) home base of Carthag, shipping his army in directly from orbit. This is one thing that you always need to be careful of. If your enemy has enough spice (i.e. money), he can ship a large army directly to any space on the board (unless it is under storm, or it is already occupied by two factions).

Ainul (Emperor, red), Jeff (Harkonnen, black), Ken (Fremen, yellow), Arm (Guild, orange). Look at how much spice (money) Arm has under his screen. He's filthy rich because all payments for shipping units from orbit get paid to him.

Jeff (Harkonnen) was aggressive from the start, since he had an advantage. Strangely, he reduced his defenses at Carthag, his home base, moving his units to threaten Ken (Fremen). Later, we realised it was because he had a treachery card which would blow up the Shield Wall which protected Carthag and Arrakeen (my home base), making them vulnerable just like deserts when the storm passed over. I was conservative and kept reinforcing my units already in Arrakeen, and when I realised Jeff's plan, I had to mass migrate hurriedly before my army got wiped out by the storm.

Amidst the chaos of my house-moving, I carelessly neglected to notice that Ainul was already in control of two strongholds, and would immediately win when he captured a third. When my huge stack of units stepped out of Arrakeen, leaving a token garrison, he shipped in a huge stack from orbit. It would be the battle to end the game. I was heavily outnumbered. Then I remembered something. One of his leaders was a traitor secretly loyal to me, Comte Hasimir Fenring, a strength 6 (i.e. very strong) leader. If he chose this leader for the battle, I would win regardless of my numbers. When the battle discs and leaders were revealed, I almost shouted with joy. It was Comte Hasimir Fenring! What a dramatic twist of fate. Ainul lost his whole army. Then he saw my leader, and guess what, my leader was a traitor secretly loyal to him too! So it was mutual annihilation. Neither of us gained any spice. All soldiers were killed. Arrakeen became an empty town.

I (Atreides, green) temporarily vacated my home base of Arrakeen to seek refuge at the polar sink (centre of board), which was always safe from storms and safe from attack.

Ainul (Emperor, red) plopped down an army from outer space. Ouch...

The leader he committed to this battle was a traitor secretly loyal to me.

Mutual destruction left Arrakeen deserted. My huge army watched helplessly from the polar sink.

And this was not the only battle ending in mutual annihilation. There was another battle where Jeff attacked Ken with a tiny army, which was literally on a suicide mission. Jeff had both a laser gun treachery card and a shield treachery card. If both these came up in the same battle, everyone died. The rules didn't forbid the same player from playing both these cards, so we agreed this was allowed. The revival tanks (where units could be brought back to life) became rather crowded.

The giant sandworm made an appearance in our (relatively short) game. A huge pile of spice popped up in a desert just outside of one of the strongholds that Ainul was holding. Some of Ken's Fremen troops were also in range to come harvest the spice. Ken sent in his troops. I expected Ainul to send his troops to fight over the precious spice, but he decided to stay put. Then on the next round, the sandworm came! What a lucky decision for Ainul. I was about to start laughing at Ken for his greed. Then I realised that the Fremen were not afraid of sandworms. In fact they rode sandworms, and Ken's troop took a free ride to another region.

In the fourth round, when the sandworm appeared, it also meant a Nexus would occur. This was the time players could form, join, or leave alliances. Ainul's Emperial troops were doing well, and Ken's Fremen orang asli too, and they agreed to become allies. Jeff and I decided we needed to form an alliance too. Arm had to leave by then to catch a flight. In that same round, Ainul and Ken together reached 4 strongholds, and Jeff and I could not stop them. So the original lead hero and lead villian of the novels were sidelined, and the nobility + orang asli pact won control of Arrakis.

Last round of the game. I could not move quickly enough to reoccupy Arrakeen. Ken (Fremen, yellow) and Ainul (Emperor, red) were allied and had units in 4 strongholds. Jeff (Harkonnen, black) was still contesting one of the strongholds with Ken, but eventually could not beat Ken's superior numbers.

Another shot of the final round. The Tleilaxu tanks were pretty full.

The Thoughts

We played only 4 rounds out of the max possible 15, and yet we had so many memorable events and exciting twists of fate. Despite the very simple core rules, the different factions play very differently. Their unique powers give them very different strengths. They also have very different starting positions, and they require different strategies to play. I was surprised how thematic and immersive the game was, despite the simple core rules. A lot of this come from the treachery cards, and of course the varying faction special abilities.

The game is very dynamic. Spice is always scarce. Every round some spice turns up, and the players have to decide whether to scramble after it. Then there's the ever-moving storm. You can never be sure how quickly it will sweep across the deserts, and you have to be careful your troops don't get caught unprepared. There is one weather control treachery card which allows a player to move the storm between 0 and 10 steps, as opposed to the normal possible range of 2 to 6. If you have planned your troops to be a "safe" 7 steps away, and an enemy has the weather control card up his sleeve, you can be royally, ahem, disrupted.

I quite enjoyed Dune, and I think it truly is a classic. Too bad it is out-of-print. I found out that it was designed by the same team behind Cosmic Encounter. I enjoyed Dune much more, but I could see some similarities between the games - simple core rules, but the unique faction powers make a very big difference and create very interesting interactions among the players.

Horus Heresy

Han received Horus Heresy on the same day that we had scheduled an evening session, so we decided to give this new Fantasy Flight big box game a go. Han had read the rules before, but I hadn't, so I quickly downloaded it and read it hurriedly while Han prepared the components and set up the game.

The Game

The backstory is set in the Warhammer 40K universe. A general, Horus, has just decided to rebel against the Emperor, and is attacking Earth, where the Emperor's palace is located. The rebels win by killing the Emperor, or controlling all four of the space ports on Earth (they start the game controlling two). The Emperor wins by killing Horus, or controlling all space ports. The Emperor also wins if he can hold out long enough. When the timer runs out, the Emperor's supporters and reinforcements arrive, and they are numerous enough to kick the rebels' behinds.

The game starts with almost all the Emperor's units already on the board. Some of the rebel units are on the board, but most are still off board, in orbit waiting to land on Earth. As part of game setup, the rebels can attempt to convert some of the Emperor's units to their side. The rebels can also fire some cannons from space trying to destroy some of the Emperor's units. These allow for some variation in the game start situation. There are a number of different scenarios, each with a slightly different setup (although all are about the same battle), and, more importantly, with a different event deck.

The flow of the game is controlled by Order cards and a timer track. Each player starts with a preset hand of Order cards. You need Order cards to deploy units, to move units, and to attack. Order cards cost action points to play, and when you spend action points, you move your counter on the timer track. The timer track works like those in Red November and Thebes - the player who is behind takes the next turn. You may take a few consecutive turns as long as your marker has not passed your opponent's.

The timer track determines many things, e.g. when already activated troops can act again (move or attack), when you can draw more Order cards, when events occur. Of course, most importantly, it also counts down toward game end (i.e. Emperor victory).

Han comtemplating his Combat cards. In this (blurry) photo you can see the main board, the time track at the bottom, the spaceship near the top right (where Horus is located initially), and half the strategic map on the right (red).

A close-up of part of the main board and the time track. Some spaces are 3D - these are thin plastic pieces which protrude through holes in the game board. They do look good, but I prefer not to have them. You need to spend time setting them up. The units fit, but just barely, and they can't stand straight.

Grey units are mostly Emperor units, except some which turned traitor at the start of the game, and these have black bases. Coloured units (red, green, purple and blue) are rebel units.

Order cards. Skulls on the left mean action point costs if you play the card directly. If you play the card onto the strategic map, it costs 1 action point to seed it, and 1 action point to activate it.

There is a mini-map (called the strategic map) on the board. Order cards can be seeded facedown onto this strategic map as opposed to being played directly on troops on the main map. Seeding an Order card here costs 1 action point, activating it also costs 1 action point. Order cards cost 1 to 3 action points. Usually it doesn't make sense to seed a cost-1 Order card on the strategic map. For cost-3 cards, you save 1 action point if you do play it on the strategic map. There are other considerations too. Some Order cards become more powerful if played on the strategic map. Sometimes you want to use your Order card to cover one of your opponent's.

The strategic map is divided into 6 regions. Both Emperor and rebel player can play Order cards onto the map. The game starts with the rebel player having 4 Order cards already placed here.

Battles are resolved via card play. Both sides draw a fresh hand of Combat cards and Hero cards at the start of a battle, the latter if there are Heroes involved. Both players draw cards depending on the type and number of units in battle. Battles usually last for at most 8 rounds. One side attacks (by playing cards) each round, i.e. you'd have at most 4 attacks. In the first round of combat, only one card can be played. In the second round, two cards, and so on. So the intensity escalates. The Combat and Hero cards have attack values, defense values, and also special power texts. A lot of uniqueness of troop types come from the special power texts, e.g. you need to have a particular troop type in the battle to benefit from the special power.

Combat cards. The number on the top left is the attack value, the number of red icons on the left is the defense or shield value. The main body describes the requirement (usually refers needing a particular unit involved in the battle) and the special effect.

There are many units on the board. However, how frequently you get to use each unit is very strictly controlled. Whenever a unit moves or attacks, it's area is (normally) marked with an Activated marker, which means that whole area cannot be activated again until the next Refresh Phase on the timer track. There are only 4 or 5 such Refresh Phases I think. If a unit is routed (e.g. lost a battle), it is marked with the Routed marker, which has to be turned to the Activated side, and then the marker has to be removed, before the unit can act again. So the number of actions a unit can take throughout the game is very limited. You need to try to make use of as many units as you can, and you cannot expect any superstar unit to be running around doing all the hard work. There are some special Order cards which can allow some already Activated units to act, but these are limited.

The Play

Han played the Emperor, and I played Horus. I was moderately lucky with the initial conversion rolls, and managed to convince quite a number of tank battalions to join me. This helped me in controlling a 3rd space port. However I also lost one of the space ports that I controlled at the start of the game. I couldn't reinforce it quickly enough. It was right next to the palace and it was surrounded by enemies. I had tried to land reinforcements, but because that area had 3 cannons pointed at it, any landing needed to first survive heavy cannon fire. I had one very expensive battalion completely wiped out while still descending from space. That was painful.

Some purple units, and two Heroes at the back. The rebel forces in four colours each have a corresponding Hero. Distribution of unit types is the same for all four colours.

I was rather undecided on whether to go for the 4 space ports victory or the kill Emperor victory. By mid game I thought 4 space ports was going to be too difficult. I had already lost one space port which would be hard to recapture. The other Emperor controlled space port was quite far away. So I decided to go for the kill. I landed as many troops as I could using the two space ports that I controlled, which, unfortunately, were further from the palace. Some of the Emperor's troops which had captured my initial space port were a bit out of position. I also used a lone unit to block their movement. It would cost them an Activation to just defeat that lone unit. Han used his Emperor's bodyguard units, and also another battalion at the other end of the palace, to greet my army approaching the palace.

My red rebel forces held on to this space port. I managed to reinforce it enough to deter Han from attacking.

Enemy at the gates. Red and blue armies attacking the palace. I had one lone infantry unit (grey with black base) on the far left stalling some of Han's armies. The hero on the right is the Emperor himself. The trapezoid leaning against the palace wall means the wall has been breached.

We fought some big battles at the palace. I managed to breach the walls, reducing the defense capabilities. However the Emperor's units were too tough to break. In one of my card plays I managed to force two of his marine units (which are very powerful units) to retreat and become Routed (i.e. it would take a long time for him to be able to use them again). But still, that was not enough. The Emperor's troops were still strong and healthy. In the last third of the game, Han tried to push the time track markers forward as much as possible, to end to game as quickly as he could. I think even if he hadn't bothered with that, he would win.

The uprising was beaten down. The rebels never really posed a serious threat to the Emperor.

The Thoughts

In hindsight, I didn't plan out my moves very well and didn't really fully utilise my troops, my heroes and my Order cards. There were two Heroes whom I never deployed because I forgot I could deploy them with any unit. I was waiting for some Order card for deploying Heroes which did not exist. For a learning game, I guess this is normal. The rebels should be able to put up a better fight after the rules and nuances are better understood.

My initial impression right after the game was rather so-so, because it was tough to learn the game so hurriedly, and it was late in the evening too. However, now that I have thought about the game more and digested the rules and game structure a bit more, it's not too bad. The parts do click and the game works on the whole. However overall I feel rather restricted - by the Order cards that I get, by the frequency of Refresh Phases on the time track, by whether I draw suitable Combat and Hero cards when a battle starts. I guess you can argue that once you get familiar with the cards, you'll know that to improve your winning odds in a battle, you should have Heroes, and you should have variety in troop types.

Compared with other Fantasy Flight big box games, I like Middle-Earth Quest more than Starcraft more than Horus Heresy. Since Horus Heresy is about one specific battle, the replayability is probably not as high as the other games, which are more open. How many times can you reenact the same siege? My gut feeling is there is not a lot of space for you to explore different strategies, despite the fact that the scenario setups allow for some randomness.

A lot of flavour and story come from the Combat, Hero and Event cards. The units are very good looking. These are both pluses.

Randomness can be a problem sometimes, maybe more so for the rebel player. Battles themselves actually turn out pretty balanced. If you attack with overwhelming forces, you normally win. If the forces are equal, the battle can swing either way. So the battle resolution system (diceless) works. Sometimes you get some surprises and some interesting stories. Where randomness can have a big impact is the cannon fire. Maybe I'm complaining about this because I had a whole landing party completely wiped out by cannon fire. Yes I could have prevented that by taking out the enemy cannons first, but time was not on my side. I didn't really have the luxury of ensuring risk-less landings. I guess I just had to take my chances, and since there were so many landings I needed to make throughout the game anyway, the odds would even out.

Horus Heresy is not a fast-and-furious game. It is a game of careful planning, where you need to try to maximise the utilisation of your resources. Actions and turns are limited so there is limited manuevering that you can do, and you must plan it carefully and not be wasteful.