Android: Netrunner

Plays: 2Px3.

Netrunner is a 1996 game by Magic: The Gathering designer Richard Garfield. Fantasy Flight Games republished it in 2012 with some modifications, and gave it the same setting as the boardgame Android, thus the new name. I have heard good things about this game even before the re-release, but never quite got interested enough to try it. It was only after the March Madness tournament on BGG this year that I started considering this game seriously. I was surprised that this reprint won, and also that it had reached 5th place in game rankings.

The Game

Android: Netrunner is a two-player card game. One player is the corporation, the other the runner, i.e. a hacker. The corporation's objective is to complete agendas worth a total of 7pts, while the runner's objective is to hack into the corporation's servers to steal agendas worth a total of 7pts. The corporation sets up servers to advance its agendas, and protects them with ice (anti-intrusion software). The runner attempts to invade to steal agendas and to destroy the corporation's assets. If the corporation's deck of cards runs out, it loses. If the runner is forced to discard cards and doesn't have enough to do so, he is flatlined and loses.

The corporation's play area is made up of servers. The draw deck is a server. The discard pile is a server. Even the hand of cards, represented by the corporation's identity card, is a server. The corporation can create new servers (called remote servers) during the game. Agendas need to played as a server for the corporation to advance and then score them. Assets can be played as servers too. Assets usually give some benefit to the corporation, or act as a diversion or a trap to confuse the runner. When the corporation plays any card, it is played face-down. So the runner will not know what it is until it is activated (flipped over) by the corporation, or exposed by the runner. The same applies to ice which the corporation plays in front of servers to protect them. Only after the runner has encountered a piece of ice for the first time will he know what it is - how powerful it is, what is required to bypass or neutralise it. There is a cost for the corporation to activate any card, so it is important to have cash on hand. Non-activated cards have no effect.

I'm playing the corporation. The row at the bottom are my servers. The first three from the left are remote servers, i.e. servers played after the start of the game. The third server is an asset and has been activated. It is giving me $1 per turn now. The fourth server is my corporate identity card, which represents my hand of cards, called my HQ. The fifth server is my draw deck. The rightmost server is my discard pile.

Most servers have ice protecting them now (the horizontally played cards). However none are activated yet. Usually you need to pay money to activate a piece of ice, and you can do it when the runner is approaching it.

The runner's play area is much less structured. Only those cards in the top right corner need to be organised into three rows by type, and this is only for convenience.

On a player's turn he takes four actions. For the corporation player the first action must be to draw a card. Other actions include playing a card, collecting $1, removing a virus, and destroying a resource card of the runner (which can only happen if the corporation successfully traces the runner). The runner has some action types which are similar to those of the corporation. The most important action type of the runner, which is also the centre of the game, is making a run, i.e. attacking a server. The runner picks a server to attack, and tries to work past all the ice protecting it to access it. The runner has hardware cards and program cards to help him do this. Icebreakers are programs which are needed to penetrate the corporation's defenses. An icebreaker first needs to have sufficient strength to interact with a piece of ice, and then often it also needs to be able to disable subroutines that the ice will trigger. Subroutines do things like terminating the run, causing harm to the runner, and tracing the runner. If the runner can work past all active defenses, he accesses the server, and gets to reveal, or steal, or remove the card. This is how agendas are stolen.

For the corporation to complete an agenda, it needs to do an action called advancing the agenda. When this is done, $1 is placed onto the card. An agenda is completed only after a certain number of coins are placed on it. It usually takes more than a turn to complete an agenda, so there is always some time when it is vulnerable to attack. The corporation can't play and then complete an agenda within the same turn. What is tricky for the runner is guessing which remote servers are agendas and which are not. Often the corporation can set traps, or diversions. This game is very much about double-guessing.

The Play

I played twice against Allen, and once against my wife Michelle. In the first session I thought it would be more fun playing as the runner, so I let Allen play that side. It turned out it was tougher than expected. In the first game I caught him unprepared for my traps, and he was flatlined (required to discard card but he had run out of cards) and lost the game. He was more careful the next game, and this time I won by scoring 7pts on agendas. The most memorable moment was a run that he made against my hand of cards (which is called the HQ in the game). At that point I had four cards, and three of them were agendas! I had no decent ice protecting my HQ and was already trying hard to appear calm. He easily hacked through. He randomly picked a card from my hand, and picked one of the agenda cards. I pretended to be frustrated with his good luck. He decided he was lucky, and didn't bother to attack my HQ again, assuming that there wouldn't be such a coincidence of me holding more than one agenda card. Had he pressed his attack, he probably would have won that game. That was an almost-peed-in-my-pants moment.

Playing the corporation, I felt exposed and vulnerable. My hand and my draw deck were defenseless at the start of the game so I had to scramble to get some ice up. Agendas are a love-hate thing. I need them to win, but they make me nervous. I try to play them as casually as I can, pretending they are just regular assets. But of course when I start advancing them, the runner will be like a shark smelling blood. Thankfully the corporation has some traps which can be advanced too, which can be used to confuse the runner and lure him into traps. I don't have a good grasp yet of whether a wider defense is better, or a deeper one. A wider one means it's harder for the runner to guess which servers hold agendas, but less ice per server means weaker defenses. A deeper defense means it is more costly for the runner to attack, or even impossible if he doesn't have the appropriate icebreakers yet. I think different situations will warrant different approaches.

Allen feeling very at home. Well, we were playing at his home.

When I played the runner against Michelle's corporation, I felt the pain of poverty. I managed to get many hardware cards and program cards in play, but I was poor most of the time. I wonder whether I shouldn't have spent so much money so quickly on equipment. Michelle on the other hand maintained a decent treasury most of the time, anticipating my attacks. Having many programs was handy, and I managed to hack into many of Michelle's servers, destroying assets, exposing decoys and stealing some agendas. However being short on cash meant I was conservative about attacking heavily protected servers. Eventually Michelle managed to score 7pts of agenda before I could get organised enough to stop her.

It's not easy to beat an accountant at moneymaking.

The Thoughts

Android: Netrunner has a rare setting, and it's not window-dressing. I find it quite interesting. The mechanisms click with the setting. I like how you need to constantly try to read your opponent's intentions. It's psychology. Is he bluffing? Is he gambling? Is he making a feint or is this for real? Will he take the bait? How do you use your actions to lie, to lure, to distract, to terrorise? This is a very interactive game and you need to pay attention to what your opponent is doing, and adjust your strategy based on what you think he's trying to do.

The game is an LCG - Living Card Game. After the initial base game, many expansions have now been released. The base game already comes with enough cards to play four different corporations and three different runner factions. However there aren't enough cards to explore the deck-building aspect of the game. When you pick a corporation (or faction) to build a deck for, you can pick any number of cards belonging to that corporation and any number of neutral cards. You can add a limited number of cards from other corporations. With the base game, you have limited choices in cards, so there really isn't a lot of deck-building you can do. I have only played three games, and have only seen one corporation and one runner faction in action, so I'm nowhere near considering buying expansions. But I do see there is much to be explored. Nowadays I am less interested in trying many games and more interested in exploring fewer games but more deeply. Android: Netrunner is a good candidate. I look forward to play more.

River Dragons / Dragon Delta

The Game

The gameboard represents a delta, with some big islands along the edges, and many small ones scattered about. Each player starts at a different big island, and the objective of the game is to be first to reach the island on the opposite side of the board from where you are. You do this by placing stones on the those small islands, then placing planks across them to make bridges, and then finally crossing those bridges.

At the start of every round, every player plans five actions he wants to execute that round by picking action cards from his hand and placing them face-down in front of him in the desired order. Once everyone has completed this planning phase, the first cards are turned over, and players take turns to execute their first action, according to the player order of the round. Once everyone's first actions are done, you flip over the second cards, and execute them, and so on. In addition to placing stones and placing planks, actions also include removing planks, moving, and canceling an opponent's action. There are three movement cards - move one step, move two steps, and jump over one pawn. Moving two steps may seem to be automatically always better than moving one step, but the tricky part is if you can't move forward to where you had intended to go, e.g. because another pawn is blocking the way, or another player in an earlier turn order has removed a plank you need, you must move in a different direction. If there is nowhere you can move to legally, you have to go back home, i.e. your start island. This can be particularly painful when you are only two steps away from winning. The jumping over action works the same way. If the pawn which you had planned to jump over has moved away, and there are no pawns which you can jump over, you are forced to go home and start again.

The cancel action can have big repercussions. When you are first in player order in a round, you'd think it would be easier to plan your moves because you will get to execute them before the others and there is less chance of their moves disrupting yours. However if an opponent chooses to cancel your action (at the cost of one action to himself), then you may find your plan for the round completely screwed.

The first player who reaches his destination wins the game.

The Play

Michelle and I played River Dragons with children at Meeples Cafe. The game seems straightforward enough, so I don't think the children (8 and 6) had any problems understanding the rules. My very first action in the very first round was canceled by Michelle. She did out out of curiosity - the let's-press-this-button-and-see-what-it-does kind. That completely messed up my plans for the round. I realised that meticulously planning my round had come to naught, because I had neglected to consider how others' actions could interfere with my plan. I was first to suffer the fate of having to return home. Michelle soon followed suit. The stars aligned for Shee Yun, and by the end of the second round she had crossed the delta to achieve an abrupt surprise win. We were not even warmed up yet!

I was green and Michelle was yellow. While we struggled near our start islands, Shee Yun (pink) and Chen Rui (red) had already built a highway between their homes.

Without even turning back, Shee Yun (pink) reached her destination before the end of Round 2.

The Thoughts

I think a game ending in 2 rounds is not the norm, so this blog post is even more a first impression than how most of my other "reviews" are really first impressions. The premise of the game is simple, so it's suitable as a family game and a party game. I think it will work best with the max number of players (six), because that's when everyone will trip over one another the most, which will be the most funny. However I can imagine this can also be frustrating to some. It can be hard to plan, and there is always the uncertainty of the cancel cards. This is a game with much double-guessing, and with plenty of opportunities to mess with your opponents, e.g. taking out the planks they are planning to use. Even if you don't intend to be evil, you will likely stumble and crash anyway. There is a little Galaxy Trucker in here - you plan as much as you can, and then see if you crash and burn or you actually make some progress through the colourful network of planks.

Ugg-Tect

Plays: 2P practice x1.

The Game

Ugg-Tect (prehistorical architect) is a team competition game. Two teams each have one architect (well, technically ugg-tect, but it's annoying to type), and the rest of the teams are workers. The architects each hold a blueprint card that the workers don't see, and they need to direct the workers of their respective teams to build the structures depicted on the blueprints. The trick is they can't use normal language or gestures. They must use the caveman language defined in the game, caveman gestures, and a big inflatable club. You do things like shake your hips and stomp your feet to indicate which building blocks to use. You say things like Manungu, Ugungu, and Kachingu to direct your teammates to move, turn, tilt and lay down the building blocks. What further complicates things is saying a word once or twice means opposite things. E.g. Konguku means to lift up, but Konguku-Konguku means to lower. When your worker does something right, you hit him on the head once. If he does it wrong, you hit him twice. So yes, you get to hit him all the time with that club.

The inflatable club is quite large.

It's the first thing that children will play with, including those children over 30 years old.

When your team completes a structure, you call for a time-out, using caveman language of course - "Ugg-tect!". The opponents' team gets to examine your structure to make sure it meets the specifications on the blueprint. If it passes examination, your team scores points according to the blueprint card. If it fails, your team loses 1pt. The game then continues until one team reaches 10pts. At any time during the competition if any team makes any mistake (e.g. using normal language), the team loses 1pt. If the architect decides the current blueprint is too hard and wants to forfeit to draw a new blueprint card, the team loses 1pt too.

A completed structure.

The Play

I played Ugg-tect with my family at Meeples Cafe. We formed teams of one adult and one child per team. However, Chen Rui (6) found the game hard, so we ended up not playing the game afterall. I did a few practice rounds with Shee Yun (8). This is not a game for shy people. I was the architect and had to stand up and do all sorts of silly things. It was certainly an attention-grabbing game.

Without a competing team, naturally there was no time pressure. We did try to complete the structures as quickly as we could. We were quite clumsy and had to refer to the reference card all the time.

Chen Rui was not very pleased with this wilting club. There must be a leak somewhere.

This blueprint card is worth 3pts.

Shee Yun the worker starting her building work.

Mission accomplished!

The Thoughts

This is obviously a party game and is suitable for big groups. I think the game is best when everyone is new to it. As you get better at it, the game would become less funny. There would be no more struggling the commands and gestures. What is left would be just hitting friends on the head. Well, I guess that in itself can be entertaining too.

In hindsight, I think the game would be better if the players are not allowed to use the reference card, or are only allowed to use it with some penalty (e.g. a time penalty), or are allowed to use it only a limited number of times. This forces them to learn the language before the game starts, and they need to depend on their memory instead of simply gluing their eyes to the sheet all the time during the game, which I think takes out the fun. Also more mistakes is more fun. The architect gets to hit his teammates twice instead of once! But remember, players on the same team take turns to play the club-wielding architect.

I think the novelty in this game will wear out quickly, but you can still use the clubs as a punishment mechanism in many other games.

I think the reference sheet is a hindrance to fun.

When I look at my daughter I don't have the heart to hit her hard on the head. But if it were my kaki (mates), it would be a very different story.

Jamaica

Plays: 4Px1.

The Game

Jamaica is a racing game with a pirate theme. You race to complete a circuit around an island, picking up treasures where you can. You collect food, weapons and money, and also spend them as movement cost. The first to pass the finish line will score many points, but may not necessarily win, because players also score points from treasures and money collected.

At the start of a round, the active player rolls two dice, and assigns one each to day and night. Then everyone simultaneously picks one card for the round, from a hand of three. The selected cards are revealed and resolved one by one, starting with the active player. Each card has two halves, for day and night actions. Actions include moving forward, moving backwards, collecting money, collecting food, and collecting weapons. The number of steps or the amount collected depends on the die value. That means sometimes your card selection will not match well with the die roll of the round. E.g. high numbers are rolled, but you don't have any move forward action; or you do have a move forward action, but the active player assigns the high number to the other half of the day.

Card artwork is fantastic. Each action card has a left (day) and a right (night) half. On this card the day action is collecting weapons, and the night action is collecting food.

Every time you move, you need to pay the movement cost depicted at your destination, which is either food or money. If you can't pay, you have to move backwards, and it is possible that you end up further back from where you started. However being unable to pay is not always a bad thing. Sometime you want to have this happen to you so that you can end your movement at a buried treasure location.

The start of the race. Start / finish line is Port Royale. The tiny white squares on the sea spaces are food requirements when you land on the spaces. If you can't afford the food, you pay all you can and then must move backwards. That die on the right is the combat die.

When two pirate ships meet, you fight! That's regardless of whether the two players involved want to or not. Fighting is simple. The attacker decides whether to spend weapons to boost his attack, and then rolls a special combat die. After that the defender decides whether to spend weapons and then rolls the die too. The winner gets to steal a treasure from the loser, or steal the content of one cargo hold, or give a cursed treasure to the loser.

The game ends once a player crosses the finish line. Scores are tallied, and the highest scorer wins.

This player board represent the five cargo holds of your ship. You can only store one resource type per hold. If all holds are full, and you have a collect resource action, you must clear out a hold before you load the new batch of resources.

The Play

Michelle and I played Jamaica with the children (8 and 6) at Meeples Cafe. The game doesn't really feel that much like a race game to me, because you don't really keep pressing towards the goal. Instead you are at the mercy of your card draws, and you make tactical decisions to gradually sail forward, picking up food, money and weapons along the way, which are needed to fuel your race. The game is not just about the destination; it is very much about the journey too. There will be competition for the treasure chests. There will be fighting and robbing one another.

There is some luck in the game, but the fact that you always get to choose from three cards makes you feel you have reasonably good control. Also everyone has the same deck of cards, which helps in balancing things. And of course when you are the active player and get to roll the dice and assign them, that's a little bit more of control. There will be times that you can't do anything very useful because of the dice and your hand of cards. You just have to try to make the most of it. I think the relaxed pace of the race helps to make you mind less about the luck factor. There is less sense of urgency, so having a bit less control (I imagine the game is representing sailors at the mercy of the winds) doesn't make you feel too frustrated. In addition to the racing, you also enjoy the manoeuvring and positioning, the robbing and double-guessing along the way.

I was first to cross the finish line, and I won the game. However Michelle who was closest to the finish line was outscored by Shee Yun, who had more money and treasures. That proves the race is not everything.

Both dice are 1's so the active player has no decision to make when assigning them. There are still many round treasure tokens scattered around the race track. When you collect a treasure, you discard the token from the board and then draw a treasure card from the centre of the board. Treasures are usually worth points. Some are special equipment. Some are curses (negative points). There are more treasure cards than there are treasure tokens, so no every treasure card will appear in every game.

The Thoughts

Jamaica is well-suited for families and casual gaming. The copy at Meeples Cafe has gone through a lot of wear and tear. Nothing broken, but it has obviously been played many times. Components are soft and rounded and not crisp and sharp. It's a well-loved game. Jamaica has that balance of luck and control that makes it suitable to be played by adults and children together, or regular players and casual players together. More experienced players will do better but will not always win. Less experienced players are not overwhelmed and don't feel they have no chance.

Aquaretto

Plays: 4Px1.

I brought the family to Meeples Cafe again on 19 May 2013 (gosh, I'm really far behind in my blog posts), and we tried a bunch of new games. Aquaretto was one of them. It's the sister game of Zooloretto, a Spiel des Jahres winner, which is based on an older, clever card game Coloretto.

The Game

In Aquaretto, you build a marine zoo. Unlike in Zooloretto, you now collect dolphins, seals, penguins, killer whales, hippos and even crocodiles. The central mechanism is still the same. On your turn, you can choose to draw an animal tile from the bag and add it to a truck which has space available, or you can choose to not draw a tile and instead claim a truck and all animals on it. The crux of the matter is you want to collect only a few types of animals, and you want to collect many animals of those types because they give you points. You try to avoid collecting too many animal types because that would give penalty points. What differs from Zooloretto is instead of having animal pens with a fixed number of spots, you get one big piece of land where you can freely cluster your animals. You are only allowed three animal types initially, but if you expand your land you are allowed more types. Space is still finite so you may still run out of space, but there is more freedom than in Zooloretto.

You can recruit workers, who score points for you at game end. How they score points depends on what jobs you give them (i.e. where you place them). Cashiers give you 1VP per leftover coin. Trainers (who are placed in the animal area) give 1VP per adjacent dolphin, killer whale and seal (no you can't train hippos; it would be cute, but no).

I have already expanded my marine zoo twice, at the top left and bottom right, using the 2x2 expansions. I have not yet used my 3-spaces expansions (on the left). I have two workers, and both are working as trainers. I'm lucky to be able to collect all three of the animal types that can be trained - seals, dolphins and killer whales. Animals with lightning icons are naughty animals which cannot be trained - they don't help the trainers score points.

The Play

I have always preferred Coloretto to Zooloretto. It is probably simply because it came first and I am used to the simplicity. The additional mechanisms in Zooloretto just feel a little superfluous and unnecessary to me. No bad, but if I want to play a 45-60 minute boardgame, I'd pick something else. In the Coloretto family, I prefer the 20 minute card game version to the 45-60 minute boardgame version. When I read the rules to Aquaretto, I thought it would be more straight-forward than Zooloretto. However after playing it, I find it slightly more complex. Although the core mechanism is the same, the peripheral systems are quite different, so I think it gives a different feel.

Aquaretto has a spatial element, unlike the fixed sized animal pens in Zooloretto. You have a bit more freedom in animal placement, and you have to plan and manage it. There aren't many action types, so the reference card that comes with the game is an adequate reminder. Anyway most of the time you are either drawing an animal tile or claiming a truck. One thing you have to constantly remember though is for every third animal of any type you get to claim $1, and for every fifth animal of any type you get to claim a worker. This can be easily missed in the first few games, but I think it soon becomes second nature. This aspect is interesting because it creates additional value for those 3rd and 5th animals that turn up. It adds a bit more spice to the truck selection.

Chen Rui (6) asked us to not take the truck that she wanted. I said you can't do that.

Shee Yun (8) beat both Michelle and I (both over 35). Good genes!

The Thoughts

I would say Aquaretto is more an alternative version of Zooloretto than a more complex version (it is very slightly more complex) or a more advanced version (it is not an improved or refined Zooloretto, it is taking Coloretto and going in a different direction). It is definitely a family game. It moves at a brisk pace, and there are enough moving parts to keep it interesting as a boardgame. I am biased towards the minimalism of Coloretto, but I must admit it's descendants are pretty decent light-to-medium weight boardgames.

the value of ratings

Many people who review games now prefer to rate games using a four points scale - enthusiastic/love, suggest/like, neutral/indifferent, avoid/not for me, as opposed to giving a score out of ten, or a number of stars out of five. I guess this four point scale is something that is clean and direct. You don't need to argue about the definition of what a 7 is and how it is different from an 8. However I don't think it is much more useful than a 10-point scale.

When I see the BGG rating of a game, or it's rank, what it tells me is how much the average BGG user likes this game and how well it is liked compare to other games. Now this concept of an average BGG user is abstract. There is no such real person. If my gaming tastes are close to this BGG average, then I will probably like a highly ranked game on BGG. So the BGG rating and ranking can be tools to guide me on what games I should explore. The drawback is I usually won't bother to check out games ranked beyond 300, or games with a rating below 7. This is despite the fact that there are games that I like which are outside of these thresholds. In this sense, the BGG ratings and rankings does me harm.

Average ratings and rankings consolidate inputs from many people. When a single game reviewer shares his (or her) rating for a game in his review, this is data from just one person. How useful would this information be? It depends on how closely your tastes match this reviewer's tastes. Do you know how well they match? Do you unconsciously take the rating as a sacred number? Oh this game must suck because this reviewer says so. I have a bad habit of scrolling down to the end of a review to see the rating before deciding whether to read the review itself. Maybe that is a quick way to screen out poor and average games, but I think I have missed some good games because of it too. And there is just no accounting for tastes in the first place. Even if I agree with a reviewer on ten games, there is bound to be an eleventh that our opinions differ.

Some reviewers prefer to list bullets points of pros and cons. I find that a little boring sometimes. After a while all the pros and cons sound like they come out of a checklist of possible tags to attach to a game. Is a game simply a list of strengths and weaknesses? Does everyone have the same standards for what are strengths and what are weaknesses? I think in boardgames one man's meat can be another man's poison. And vice versa, of course. Try to imagine a game that you love. If someone then lists all the weaknesses of this game, you may find that none of them matter to you. But if applied to another game that you dislike, you may find that, yeah, all such weaknesses are true and are stopping you from enjoying this other game. In my case, an example would be the unforgiving nature in Antiquity, and that same unforgiving nature in Greed Incorporated. The same applies to strengths of a game. If there is a game you simply don't like, even if someone can list 10 strengths, they wouldn't move you.

Greed Incorporated. I still have not given it a second chance. Not that I'm that strongly against revisiting it, just that it is not a priority.

OK, if ratings and rankings have limited usefulness, and can even be harmful, and pros & cons analyses quickly lose meaning, then what is a reviewer to do? I don't have a right answer. I only have an opinion. I prefer reviews that try to capture the feeling and the essence of playing a game. No need to try to describe the mechanisms and rules in detail. No need to have a comprehensive summary of all key features, as if any omission is a failure. No need to come up with a weakness if you don't feel there is any that bothers you. The same applies for strengths - there is no need to try to be fair and to acknowledge some redeeming quality in a game you dislike. I like it when a reviewer can capture what is unique about a game. Sometimes it can be some central mechanism that drives a game, which is something very concrete. But sometimes it can be just a general feeling when playing the game, which is more abstract and does not require the game mechanism to be explained in detail. I like it when a reviewer explains why a game captures his imagination, or why a game disgusts him. It is something one can relate to. Sometimes the reason a game is loved by a reviewer is the same reason that I'd avoid a game. And I'd say the review has been informative and useful to me.

Why do you read game reviews? I used to read them to learn about new games that I may be interested to try or to buy. Sometimes I read them to learn more about games I am already interested in. Nowadays I find that I tend to skim them more than I read them. I am buying fewer games than before. I probably get more enjoyment out of reading entertaining gaming anecdotes (which are more fun if they are related to games I already know) than reading information that helps with buying decisions.

To simply measure a game on a good to bad scale, regardless of the number of points on that scale, misses one important consideration - the context of the game being played. E.g. the audience. If you play games with different groups, some games will work with one group but not another. Their gaming tastes, how "hardcore" they are, their ages, their professions, all do matter. I imagine many games will have spectrums of different widths and depths if we try to measure how well they work under different circumstances. Other than people, there is also time of day, energy level of the group, weather, and festive seasons (gambling games for Chinese New Year? Horror games for Halloween?) to consider. Sometimes I ask myself - what game am I in the mood for today? It certainly helps to have a decent collection of games. No matter what kind of mood I am in, as long as it is a mood for playing games, I can always pull something off the shelf that is right for that moment. I guess that's partly why my buying urge has cooled much lately.

Perhaps there are no bad games. There are only bad moments to play a particular game.

Take 6 / Category 5 / 6 Nimmt would be funny as a drinking game with a rowdy group.

iOS boardgaming

Approx 24 Apr 2013. In this particular game of Ascension, both the strength-7 and strength-8 monsters were in the card row at the same time. This was the first time I witnessed this after more than a hundred plays, but then I did have many plays of the base game before I bought the expansions, and the strength-8 card is from an expansion. I managed to get a hand with strength 7 to defeat the strength-7 monster Avatar of the Fallen, whose power in turn allowed me to defeat the strength-8 monster Samael the Fallen. This was 12VP in one turn, 4VP and 8VP respectively for the two monsters. If I didn't get the right combination of cards, I would likely have lost. Eventually I won this game with a margin much smaller than 12.

30 Apr 2013. Eclipse is one of the hottest games in recent years, reaching the BGG top ten list quickly. However neither Allen, Han nor I were interested enough to buy a copy. Allen wasn't so keen on the space theme. I thought it sounded like just another multiplayer conflict game, albeit one with cleverly streamlined rules. However when the iPad version was released, all three of us jumped in.

This particular game was still my first practice game against two easy level AI's. I was green, the AI's were red and orange. Green planets produce materials that can be used for building spaceships and monoliths, the latter being worth VP's. Pink planets produce science, which can be spent to buy techs. Orange planets print money, which is needed to execute actions. Tile borders which have full target-like icons (which are wormholes) allow passage. Those with half a wormhole or none at all do not. The seven icons along the bottom are the possible actions you can take - pass, explore, exert / withdraw influence (i.e. marking / unmarking ownership of tiles), research (i.e. buy new tech), upgrade ship design (install / uninstall techs for spaceships), build ships, and move ships. This was the last round, and the orange AI had built quite a few monoliths. These are the black upright rectangles, that can be seen in the centre tile and also in the one to its lower right.

I had been doing poorly throughout the game, managing my space empire like the noob that I was. Both the AI's were more efficient than me. However, in the last round I exploited the undefended border of the orange AI and sent my long-range fighters into its territories to quickly capture a number of tiles, many of which had monoliths. Because of this, I jumped from last place to first. But I felt dirty. The green-owned tiles on the right half were mostly captured in the last round.

The top left panel holds all available techs. Every round some random techs become available. Because of this the techs and their quantities differ from game to game. The middle panel on the left is for the techs you own. There are three tech tracks, and once you know at least one tech from a track, you get discounts for other techs of the same track. The bottom left panel is for reputation tiles earned through combat (i.e. VP's). The right panel shows your ship designs. You can adjust the abilities of your ships by using the Upgrade action.

I only played against human factions, which are the vanilla factions. There are many alien factions with different special abilities and limitations.

I have only completed one game, and I am in the middle of two others, so I'm not ready to do a proper review yet. But I can share some initial thoughts. It does feel like other multiplayer conflict games that I have played before, despite the clever and clean bookkeeping mechanism. You can call the overall package a civ game. It does have exploration, settlement, development, tech and warfare. However I find that the peaceful or development part of the game to be quite limited. Most techs are military techs, and you really cannot neglect your military. Even if you do not intend to attack, you need defenses to deter your opponents. Among games of the same period, at least for now I prefer Clash of Cultures.

16 May 2013. In this particular game of Ascension against Han, I went for a Mechana construct-heavy strategy. I knew with such a strategy I would score fewer in-game points but would score more at game end when adding the point values of my cards. However when Han widened the in-game score gap to almost 30pts, I despaired. To my surprise, when the game ended, I outscored him by even more in card value. But it was a close one.

16 May 2013. I bought the iPad version of Puerto Rico quite some time ago, when it was on sale. I put off playing it because my friends said the interface sucks. When I finally got around to play it, I thought the interface was not too bad. You see almost everything at a glance. The only problem I have with it is when you are not yet familiar with the buildings, it is troublesome to look up what they are and what they do. One aspect I like is how the lighted doorways indicate people working in the buildings.

I played with the expert AI's, and won, but it was close. I was only 2VP ahead of the 2nd placed AI. Thankfully I had ended the game without giving them a chance to operate their large buildings. Else I probably would have lost.

17 May 2013. Cafe International is another game that has been giving me a good challenge. I play the hardest AI's, and they beat me most of the time. I do have some suspicions that the 3rd positioned AI tends to play poorly and sets up good moves for the 1st positioned AI. There is definitely a left-right-hand neighbour thing in this game, like in Puerto Rico. A poor player can inadvertently benefit the player after him.

The San Juan AI's beat me frequently too! I'm starting to have doubts about my intelligence. This scoring screen may look dull, but the San Juan interface is done very well. Very intuitive and clear.

18 May 2013. Beaten by an AI in this game of Puerto Rico. The winner scored 32VP from shipping! I can only blame myself for not paying attention. The game plays quickly because the iPad does all the calculations and game component logistics for you. I become lazy and often don't bother to watch closely what the AI's are doing or to guess their intentions. That's one drawback of playing boardgames electronically, and it is not the fault of the computer. It is the fault of human nature.

Another game of San Juan that I lost by tiebreaker. Aaarrgghh!

26 May 2013. Ascension with Han. By the start of Round 3, I already had three cards with the Banish ability - Personal Wormhole, Shadowcaster and Abolisher! Deck thinning and making your deck more efficient by keeping only powerful cards is an important tactic in deck-building games. This was a windfall for me.

By the time the game ended, I only had 12 cards in my deck (number on the green coloured deck at the bottom left). Two of them were constructs (number in circle at bottom left), which were played on the table, which means effectively I had ten cards in my draw deck - the same as when the game started! I think I had banished all the starting cards.

father figure

Recently I have been playing boardgames with the children more and more. It is partly because my elder daughter Shee Yun is eight now, and is starting to shift from children's games to adult games. We start abandoning those simplified rules that I used to make up so that she could play some of the adult games. Younger daughter Chen Rui is six, and is not quite there yet. She does play some adult games, but tends to need help. Shee Yun is keen to learn new games and often likes to refer to the rules herself. She is inquisitive. She generally can handle the rules, but the strategies are still slightly beyond her.

When I play with the children, they don't really give me much challenge. The enjoyment of such sessions does not come from tense competition or the battle of wits. Instead it comes from the act of teaching, of guiding, and of seeing my children enjoy the games. When I was 12, I wanted to become a teacher. I still enjoy teaching others, be it in playing a new boardgame, or in something boring and work-related. I think I enjoy the act of communication, of seeing ideas getting through to others.

14 Apr 2013. We played Qwirkle, a love-at-first-sight game for Michelle. She asked me to buy it after her first play. Chen Rui still often makes mistakes when playing a tile, positioning it at invalid spots.

26 Apr 2013. Allen and Heng. I brought Planet Steam to OTK (Boardgamecafe.net). It has been a long time since I last played.

This is the first edition. The components look wonderful, but unfortunately they are not practical. Those round silver high-pressure tanks can be easily knocked over and will roll all over the place. The red caps can be easily knocked off too and you need to be careful when trying to place them onto the tanks. Fantasy Flight Games is publishing a 2nd edition. The box will be smaller and the components different. Probably not as good-looking, but hopefully more practical.

These transport vessels are basically storage facilities. The icon and number at the top left indicate the type of resource the vessel can hold, and how much can be stored.

Planet Steam is a market manipulation game. You start will limited resources, and use them to build equipment to mine more resources. You can use these mined resources to build more equipment, or you can sell them at the market. Prices and resource availability at the market are fully determined by player actions. The objective of the game is to earn the most money, so the game is all about understanding, manipulating, predicting and utilising market trends. You do spend much effort on developing your mining facilities, but the key to winning is having a good grasp of the market, and turn order. The two highest scorers in our game were the two players who were first and second players in the last round of the game. They both stored a lot of expensive resources. By the time they had sold them off for a handsome profit, such resources were no longer scarce, the market price reflected that, and other players couldn't make as much money from selling such resources.

5 May 2013. Michelle and I played Fauna with Chen Rui and Shee Yun. We still needed the measuring tape to help the children guess the body and tail lengths of the animals.

This was the first time I taught the children The Settlers of Catan. Shee Yun understood the rules, and knew how to plan to collect the right resources to build something she wants. However she didn't do it in the most efficient way. She tended to rely on swapping four resources she didn't need for one that she needed, which was definitely not ideal. Rules-wise, there was no problem.

Chen Rui (6) struggled (and I don't blame her, she's only six), so Michelle jumped in to be her strategist.

This is the Chinese version of the game, published by Capcom.

Shee Yun was red, and she worked diligently to win the longest road trophy. However neither she nor Chen Rui (yellow) planned well to improve their resource gathering abilities. I (green) was the only one who had any cities. Eventually I linked up my two stretches of road, wrested the longest road trophy (worth 2VP) from Shee Yun, and won the game by reaching 10VP.

Chen Rui requested to play Kakerlaken Poker, a game in which convincing liars will do well.

Shee Yun asked to play Wasabi. She planned meticulously to complete her recipes with style, i.e. the ingredients needed to be lined up in the exact order as the recipe. She scored many bonus wasabi cubes (each worth 1VP) because of this. I, on the other hand, didn't bother about quality, and focused on quantity. We didn't try to block each other at all. I managed to end the game and win it by completing my 10th recipe before the board filled up. This is an instant win condition and scores don't count. Otherwise Shee Yun might have won.

Shee Yun wanted to play At the Gates of Loyang. I wonder whether it's the beautiful vegetables that keeps her coming back. I don't enjoy this game much. It feels a little one-dimensional to me because it is all about maximising vegetable production and then matching demand and supply. Previously I had invented simplified rules to play this with Shee Yun. I dreaded those even more. So I suggested that we play the proper rules. She agreed. I was a little worried at first, but she managed to grasp the rules well enough, although her strategies are not quite there. I gave her strategy tips along the way, but didn't need to correct rules mistakes much. She enjoyed the game. Hmmm... that may be a bad thing because I really am not so keen about this game. Maybe I should distract her with Agricola.

The components are indeed gorgeous.

Shee Yun was the one who suggested Rabbit Hunt. In this game you play both farmer and three rabbits. On your turn you play cards face-down onto the table, and you may move your farmer to hunt for your opponent's rabbits. When your farmer steps on a face-down card, the card is revealed and if there is an icon, an event is triggered. Most cards do have icons. There are good and bad ones, e.g. gaining a carrot (needed for the farmer to move), peeking at any card, and losing all carrots if you still have a rabbit in your hand. Rabbits are special cards that start in your hand. You need to play them face-down and hope they don't get caught by your opponent.

Shee Yun is not good at hiding her intentions at all. I could read her like an open book. So I caught her rabbits quite easily, especially in our first game. When I saw her hesitate, and then place a card far far away from my farmer, it was so obvious that she was playing a rabbit card. I couldn't help but start laughing. She giggled too.

I had caught one of her rabbits.

The rabbit footprints are the card backs, i.e. the face-down cards.

Chen Rui had wanted to play Wasabi too, but she couldn't play in the afternoon, so she asked me to play with her in the evening. She took a rather different approach from Shee Yun. She intentionally tried to mess with my plans, even playing the Wasabi card to block out some of the ingredients on the board. She is always the cheeky one. But it's nice to see she has a little mean streak (or maybe I should call it a creative one) when it comes to boardgames.