concise reference sheets update

It has been almost a year since I last shared these. Not that I have not been making such concise reference sheets, just that I never got around to tidying them up and releasing them. New games and updated / corrected games are listed below. Now I have close to 250 games in the package.

1. 1955: The War of Espionage
2. 1989: Dawn of Freedom (correction)
3. Agricola: All Creatures Big and Small
4. Android Netrunner
5. Aquaretto (corrected)
6. Axis & Allies Pacific 1940 (updated with Alpha 3 rules)
7. Axis & Allies Europe 1940 (updated with Alpha 3 rules)
8. Axis & Allies Global 1940 (updated with Alpha 3 rules)
9. Axis & Allies 1914
10. Clash of Cultures
11. CO2
12. Entdecker
13. Fearsome Floors (enhanced)
14. Flashpoint: Fire Rescue
15. Goa (enhanced)
16. God’s Playground
17. The Great Zimbabwe
18. Hare and Tortoise (updated)
19. Jamaica
20. Java (enhanced)
21. La Citta
22. Liberte (corrected)
23. River Dragons
24. Robinson Crusoe: Adventure on the Cursed Island
25. Seasons
26. Town Center (enhanced)
27. Tzolk’in
28. Ugg-tect

My goal is always to keep it to half a piece of A4 paper, like this. Sometimes for very simple games I can do it in a quarter, but nowadays when heavy Eurogames tend to be more complex rules-wise, I often need a full page.

blind spots

As my gaming tastes evolve, the types of games that catch my interest change. I find that as I gain "expertise" and "experience", my vision actually narrows, in a way. You can say I know what I want so I automatically tune out from games that I know I won't like. That's a good thing - it means I know how to enjoy my hobby in the best way that is suitable for me. On the other hand, because of this I miss games which are in my blind spot. I automatically dismiss them when I come across them, or sometimes I don't even venture anywhere near them to hear about them.

There are some German games from the 90's and early 00's that I quite like. Games like The Princes of Florence, Puerto Rico, Ra, Taj Mahal. Games from that era are simpler than the kind of games I pay attention to nowadays. Sometimes I feel that recent games are all getting more and more complex. However this is not entirely true. There are actually still games of similar complexity and style as those from the 90's to early 00's - roughly the Catan (1995) to Carcassonne (2001) era. The problem is I now automatically tune them out! Most Reiner Knizia games are still of this light-to-medium weight as the C-to-C era, e.g. Qin. There are also games like The Palaces of Carrara. If these games came out 6 or 7 years ago, I probably would have been much more interested. Nowadays games that spark my interest are those like Archipelago, Robinson Crusoe, Clash of Cultures, Ora et Labora. Recently when I read the rules to Entdecker (2001) and La Citta (2000), I found that I miss the games from that era. I have played Entdecker before. I suddenly itch to play some C-to-C- era games again. I wonder whether this is the syndrome of pop songs during one's youth being the best. I got into the hobby in 2003, so the C-to-C games are the equivalent of songs that I grew up with.

Taj Mahal

The Settlers of Catan

It is quite ironic that I have a nagging feeling that C-to-C games are better - lean and mean, and not overburdened with superfluous chrome and unnecessary complexity - and yet whenever I come across a game of that style, I can't muster the enthusiasm to read more about it. In the case of Alien Frontiers, I have played it, and liked it, and would happily play again, but I don't make plans to play it again. You can definitely draw an analogy between boardgamers and drug addicts. You may start with simple games, but soon they become unsatisfactory and you need something stronger. After you've played a lot of a certain type of game, you start to feel restless and you need to seek out something different. I've certainly moved from C-to-C games to heavier Eurogames, although I sometimes feel heavier is not necessarily better. It's the need to try something new that drove me to try an 18XX game 18TN, a not-low-complexity wargame Rommel in the Desert, and a CCG game (okay, strictly speaking it's LCG) Android: Netrunner. It is also why I recently bought Conflict of Heroes. So far all these ventures have been successful. I did enjoy myself. I have not really ventured deeply, so there is a lot more for me to explore and learn. I consider myself lucky. There is still a lot of mileage in my boardgaming hobby. There is no shortage of games that I enjoy, whenever I have time and opponents. And I haven't even gone anywhere near RPG's and Go.

Alien Frontiers

18TN

The need to try something different helped to create my blind spot over C-to-C games. The other blind spot I have is crowdfunded games (a.k.a. kickstarter games). I do think there aren't many outstanding crowdfunded games, and that's why I rarely bother to read about them, but there are good ones. Alien Frontiers is one. Also Fleet, and Vanuatu (gosh I miss this).

Vanuatu

Having fellow gamer friends who also buy games helps to alleviate this blind spot problem. Well, unless they have the exact same tastes as you do. I certainly have been introduced to some very good games only because one of my fellow gamers bought them.

Ultimately, blind spots is not really a big deal. I already have more than enough games to keep me entertained. There are simply too many good games out there and it's impossible to play every single one of them. But I will continue to try to keep an open mind. I won't try to play everything, but being willing to try games that sound iffy means sometimes I am pleasantly surprised. Such discoveries are part of how I enjoy boardgaming.

boardgaming in photos: do not unto others...

11 Aug 2013. Playing Android: Netrunner with Michelle in Kota Kinabalu using the mahjong table at my parents' home. By now Michelle has played this with me 7 times. I have been hoping that we can make this our next spouse game, but unfortunately she doesn't like it, so it's not going to work out. I guess I should be thankful that she has humoured me for 7 games. I should not foist on her a game she does not enjoy. She finds the game rather stressful. She plays the corporation, and she keeps complaining that when I make a run, I don't get penalised even when the run fails. I try to console her that when I spend so many clicks (actions) and money and don't gain anything from the run, that's considered a big loss to me. We did play one important rule wrong for quite many games, which benefited me (the runner, i.e. hacker). When the runner is unable to or does not wish to spend money to interact with a piece of ice (anti-intrusion software), the subroutines on it do execute and thus harm the runner. Earlier on I thought they have no effect if the runner is unable to interact with the ice. Actually interacting with the ice is only the minimum requirement for the runner to break subroutines. The runners inability to interact with the ice doesn't stop the ice's subroutines from executing. I had inadvertently taken advantage of Michelle.

Michelle finds Android: Netrunner too confrontational. The games that worked for us as spouse games are usually VP-scoring games, e.g. Race for the Galaxy, games from the Ticket to Ride series (we don't play proactive blocking), Mystery Rummy: Jack the Ripper, Carcassonne, Agricola, Through the Ages. Games that I tried but failed include Innovation and Blue Moon. They have elements of robbing something from your opponent or attacking your opponent. Michelle doesn't like Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation either. Even the title has "confrontation"! Now I'm thinking of trying to get 7 Wonders to work as our next spouse game. I have played the 2-player variant with her before and she doesn't dislike it. I didn't pursue it further because I felt 7 Wonders is best played with 4 or 5 players. That's coming from the perspective of the game. If I come from the player count perspective, among games that can be played by two players, 7 Wonders is not a bad choice. Let's see if this works out.

Coming back to Android: Netrunner, after playing 9 games in total, I still feel I am barely scratching the surface. I have played all three runner factions. I have played against three of the four corporations - Jinteki, Weyland Consortium and Haas-Bioroid. I have no exposure to NBN. My favourite runner faction for now is the Shaper, but not because of what it's like but because I'm not yet comfortable with the other factions. The Anarchists are a bit too extreme for me. I have won before, but at the cost of taking brain damage (I mean in game terms). The Criminal faction seems a bit difficult to play well, but I like the Inside Job card (bypass first ice protecting server). I've just started tinkering with deck-building, adding Inside Job and one other card type from the Criminal deck to the Shaper deck. I need to find an opponent. I know there are some veteran players in Kuala Lumpur. I'm still thinking whether to go swim with the sharks or to find an opponent among my more regular kaki (fellow players). I have bought two of the expansions now, What Lies Ahead and Future Proof, and intend to get a third, Humanity's Shadow. That's no small investment after adding up the costs.

I am at the stage where I feel Android: Netrunner should be a 20-30 minute game, i.e. can be played quite briskly. Once you are familiar with the cards, you spend very little time reading and digesting the text. One particular game lasted less than 10 minutes for me. That was due to pure bad luck. I was the runner and I had no icebreaker cards at all in the early game. No icebreakers means no running. Michelle completed her agendas very quickly.

It has been quite a while since I took such photos of Race for the Galaxy. Nowadays Michelle and I don't play this game anywhere near as much as when it was our main spouse game. It was fun to bring it out again. There is always angst about which cards to use and which to sacrifice, hoping to be able to create effective combos, hoping to draw the right cards. When things work out, it feels wonderful.

In this particular game I focused on Development. By game end when I picked a Develop action, I would get a discount of 5, and I would draw a card, and after doing the Development I would draw yet another card. I would be gaining cards even if I developed a 6-cost card! I managed to play four 6-cost Development cards. I still had three in hand and could not play them before the game ended.

23 Aug 2013. I played Urban Sprawl with Allen and Wai Yan at OTK. OTK had a theme night focusing on GMT games. Most of GMT's games are wargames, so it's not exactly easy to find games that are suitable for 3 or more players, and do not take a long time to play. Friday night gaming starting at 9pm is not exactly the right occasion for Here I Stand.

I have played Urban Sprawl once before, with Allen. Not a big fan, but I don't mind playing. I think most decisions are quite tactical, because you have to see what buildings are available on the board to be built, and you try to make the best of your turn. Your actions are mostly driven by what cards come up. There are longer-term strategic elements that you need to think of, e.g. having majority in the four building colours, having majority in rows and columns, and having the most vocation tiles. However I find that most of the time you have to build the building that works best for you on your turn. You turn to the strategic considerations when all building options are so-so, or poor.

I did quite well in the early game. There were many turns when I used up my hand of cards, leaving me with less flexibility for my next turn. However on those turns there were just very good opportunities that I couldn't pass up, even if it meant I had to use up my cards to construct those buildings. Towards late game things started going downhill for me. The game's catch-up mechanism came into play. Allen was the trailing player, and gained the contractor role which allowed him to demolish and build over other players' buildings, and at the same time prevented others from doing the same to him using Urban Renewal cards. Quite a few of my buildings were torn down. I tried to compete with Wai Yan in collecting vocation tiles, which were used to fight for the mayor role. I was no match for her. The roles that came into play at mid game were very useful, and she managed to dominate quite a few of them. At game end, I had not a single role, while Wai Yan and Allen had three each. Wai Yan's score overtook mine and shot ahead, because of the end-game bonuses from the roles. This photo shows our final score, Wai Yan was white at 188, I was green at 151, Allen was pink at 121. This was Wai Yan's first game!

24 Aug 2013. Shee Yun (8) asked to play Lord of the Rings, and requested to be Frodo. We have played once before. We still played at the easiest difficulty level (Sauron at 15). She had her own ideas about how to play, so I let her make her own decisions, only reminding her of her options now and then. She liked to draw cards and didn't use her cards much. Her hands are small and she couldn't hold too many cards at the same time, so she had to hold some and leave some face-down on the table. Because of this, she sometimes forgot what cards she had. In a few precarious situations I had to remind her to check her cards and not just keep drawing more, and indeed she actually already had the right cards that could save us. Eventually we won the game quite comfortably. I think it's time to move on to a higher difficulty level.

I made my daughter Chen Rui (6) cry when we played Mamma Mia. This is a game about making pizza. Players take turns contributing cards (representing various ingredients) to a pool, and when you are confident that the pool has enough ingredients for a specific pizza recipe in your hand, you play that recipe card, which will potentially use up many ingredients that are already in the pool, and thus possibly deny your opponents from completing their recipes. In our game, Chen Rui was quite conservative and kept counting ingredients carefully before committing any of her recipes. Shee Yun (8) and I on the other hand were more willing to take risks, knowing that even if we were short of ingredients when it came to pizza-making time, we could add ingredients from our hands. There were quite a few times that I played my recipe card just before Chen Rui was about to play hers. That completely spoiled her plans. A few more times of this happening, and she started to frown and pout. We told her that's poor sportsmanship. Eventually we did finish the game, but she wasn't happy.

Later when my wife Michelle and I played Race for the Galaxy, Michelle heard Chen Rui crying quietly upstairs, and went upstairs to investigate. Poor girl. She was so upset that she couldn't stop crying. Michelle had to console her for some time before she finally calmed down. She complained that I kept using up her ingredients. I guess having me being her right-hand player was tough. I didn't mean to bully her or to ruin her plans. I just did my best when playing, which I believe is the right way, even when playing with children. I don't believe it's right to intentionally let your children win all the time. Chen Rui is lovable. She is true to herself. She did not get angry and she did not leave the game. She was just upset that things didn't work out the way she wanted them to.

Meeples Cafe Merdeka Sales

Meeples Cafe is having a Merdeka Clearance Sales from today till 16 Sep 2013. If you live around Kuala Lumpur, check it out.

When I first went through the sales items list, I thought there were quite a few good titles, but didn't plan to buy anything. The only game that tempted me a little was Conflict of Heroes. It was 60% off! Then Allen sent me a message, asking whether I was going. I said no. He said if I were he'd probably ask me to help buy some for him. He didn't have transportation. Then I thought, what the heck, I'd drive him there myself. He was originally thinking of getting Reef Encounter. He ended up getting 5 or 6 other games as well. Oops. It was probably at least partly my fault. I kept picking up boxes and saying to him: hey this one is not bad, or, hey this is a reputable title (e.g. La Citta). Surprisingly the Martin Wallace name didn't work its magic this time. He didn't buy Steel Driver, Aeroplanes or Toledo.

I shouldn't be poking fun at him. I ended up buying Conflict of Heroes afterall. At RM115.60 (~USD35), it was quite hard to resist. And I bought two Android: Netrunner expansions too (which were not on sale) - What Lies Ahead and Future Proof. I'm planning to get Humanity's Shadow when it is restocked. These three are the expansions that many people recommend.

Part of the loot today, three mine and three Allen's (they came straight to my place for storage and rules reading).

My number of games acquired has been kept very low so far this year. I've only added Qwirkle and Android: Netrunner to my collection up till yesterday. But this month and next there will be many new games arriving - 2nd edition of Sekigahara, which I pre-ordered under GMT's P500 program, Axis and Allies 1914, Robinson Crusoe, and of course since I've broken down and bought the two Netrunner expansions, I might as well buy Humanity's Shadow too. There are a few wait-and-see games that I am thinking of buying if I'm well under my annual game acquisition quota - Cavum and Clash of Cultures. I wonder whether there will be any new and shiny games that will distract me from them. Afterall Essen is not far away.

Panic on Wall Street

Plays: 7Px1.

The Game

Panic on Wall Street is themed around stock market trading, in the non-computerised age, when buyers and sellers shout and haggle and behave no differently from a fishmonger at a wet market. Despite the theme, some of the mechanisms actually do not work the same way as their real-life equivalents. So you need to make sure you explain the concepts carefully so that players don't get confused by their own preconceptions.

Players are split into two groups - fund managers and investors. They compete separately within these two groups, and at the end of the game there are two winners, one richest player from each group. The most prominent part of the game is the trading. This is a real-time phase, timed by a 2-minute hourglass, where all managers and investors try to sell / buy shares. It is an open-for-all format. Strictly speaking, the managers are not selling the shares to the investors. They are merely selling the rights to earn dividends from those shares for one round. When an investor buys a share, he needs to consider how much dividend it might bring and how much he is willing to pay. A share can actually "pay" negative dividend, i.e. the poor guy who bought it will lose more money! When a manager sells a share under his control, he will of course try to sell it for as high a price as possible. There is a $10 per share commission that he must pay to the bank every round. That is his operating cost. For every share that he can't sell, it's a $10 loss. There is time pressure for both investors and managers. Investors want to grab every opportunity to make money, and managers want to make sure they don't end up with unsold shares.

The large cards are the shares. You can write prices on them with a dry-erase marker that comes with the game. The round markers are investor markers, indicating that the shares have been sold. Each investor has his own colour. All three shares here have been bought by the same investor player.

Once the trading phase ends, it is time to determine the dividend amounts. This is determined by die rolls. The die faces don't specify the exact dividend amounts, they just indicate how many notches the values go up or down on the game board. There are four types of shares, ranging from low to high risk and volatility. The higher the volatility, the more extreme the possible values for dividends. The more volatile share types (red and yellow) can "pay" negative dividends, but when the dividend amounts go up, you can really make a killing. Once the new dividend amounts are determined, investors collect dividends, then pay the managers, and then the managers pay the $10 share commissions to the bank.

Movement of dividend payout level is determined by these colourful dice. Red is the most volatile. It can go up 7 levels! That means it can go from one end of the scale to the other.

Before the next round starts, some new shares will be introduced, and the managers will buy them via an auction. As new shares are injected into the game, there will be more opportunities for both managers and investors to make money. They will also be able to diversify more if they choose to do so. The game ends after a fixed number of rounds, and the richest players (among managers and among investors) win.

The Play

I did a 7-player game, 3 managers and 4 investors, and I was one of the managers. The trading was quite a riot. It was a messy, noisy and chaotic free-for-all. As a manager, I always felt the pressure of time running out and not being able to sell all my shares. Every unsold share is a $10 loss. That said, I tended to set prices higher, trying not to cut my own margins too slim. There was a lot of haggling. At one point I even offered packaged deals - three shares for $50!

I sold those three shares on the right as a packaged deal to Allen, three for $50.

The trading phase may be the most prominent, but the game is certainly not only about that. It is an exciting and engaging execution phase, but outside of that phase you do need to plan your strategy beforehand, e.g. what shares to buy as an investor, and how to price your shares as a manager. Things may not always work out when the clock starts ticking, so you have to be flexible and be able to think fast. Sometimes you need to be adamant, but sometimes you have to react to how others are playing. I find that managers bidding for the new shares is quite an important aspect of the game. This is a long-term, strategic aspect of the game, allowing managers fine-tune their portfolios.

Red shares have hit rock bottom, while green shares are doing well.

All these standing up are the investors. Look at them all so absorbed. But in the end it was the cool cat sitting down (Ivan in black) who beat all of them to win. He observed that the green shares kept going up so he invested heavily in them.

The buying of shares, to me, is more or less just gambling. The investors can decide how much risk to take, whether to diversify. They know the current dividend level, and how volatile each share type is, i.e. how much the dividend level may go up or drop down to, but whether it will go up or down or not move at all is purely determined by a die and not by player actions.

The Thoughts

Panic on Wall Street will be remembered for its noisy and chaotic trading phase. I feel this is the central idea and the rest of the game is built to support it and to give it context. It certainly is exciting, and it works. Two things make me a little uncomfortable about the game, although I would hesitate to call them problems. Firstly, the fact that players need to compete in separate manager and investor groups. It would be nice to have them all compete together, as opposed to having this disjointed economic system. As a manager, I don't really care how well or how badly the investors do. It would be nice to have an integrated economic system, which would create more conflict between investor and managers. Separated competition means a 6-player game feels like two 3-player games.

The second thing that makes me uncomfortable is the lack of control over dividend levels. They are not driven by market forces or supply and demand. This is more a problem with my expectations than a problem with the game. The game tells the players probabilities and risks and rewards, and lets them make decisions based on these alone. The eventual dividend levels are modeled as something beyond the players' control.

All that said, I think this game is best played as a light party game with a big group, and the two concerns that I have will become non-issues when you are playing with a rowdy bunch of friends. The game becomes one of brinkmanship and of striking deals under time pressure. How much are you willing to pay for an opportunity? How much risk are you willing to take? In the end it is not about how much you transact. It is about how much you earn from the transactions. That's something to keep in mind throughout the game.

Nanuk

Plays: 7Px1.

The Game

Nanuk is a party game, a card game, a bluffing game, a gambling game, and a group psychology game. That's quite a mouthful, but it is actually a simple game. Players are Eskimo hunters planning hunting excursions to the Arctic tundra. They bluff about how many days they can last on the punishing tundra and how many animals (of a specific type) they can bring back. They outdo one another, until eventually someone will say that's impossible. Then this naysayer and the "highest bidder" split the group into two. Other hunters must decide to join one of these groups - whether to join the hunting trip or to stay home. The participants contribute food to prepare for the excursion. If it is successful, all participants gain food (and glory). If it fails, then the doubters gain food instead. OK, that last bit of the story doesn't quite make sense, but it is necessary for the game to work. Here's how the story translates to game mechanisms:

At the start of a round, every player holds 3 cards. Cards come in four suits - fish, bird, seal and deer, and each such animal card has one or two animals of the same type. The start player initiates the bluffing by indicating on the game board how many days he thinks the hunting party can last on the tundra, and how many animals of a specific type can be bagged. The next player must then decide whether to doubt him or to further raise the stakes. If this next player thinks he can do better, he updates the board by increasing the number of days he thinks he can last. The animal type and count can be changed, but it is not mandatory. Increasing the days in itself already increases risk, because every additional day spent hunting increases the chances of drawing a card with a polar bear icon. Polar bears cause hunts to fail, unless there is a lucky charm card to distract them.

When a player eventually decides to be the naysayer, the rest of the group must decide which side to take. The hunt leader and the naysayer both may try to convince others to take their sides. The decision to go or to stay put is made secretly and simultaneously. Once decisions are revealed, the participants may contribute cards for the hunt. These cards may not necessarily be of the specific animal type being hunted. Contributors can give whatever they like. These cards are shuffled and then revealed, and the hunted animal type is counted. After that, the hunt leader draws cards from the draw deck one by one, until the hunt fails because of a polar bear encounter, or until he reaches the number of days he said he was going to last. If the hunt is not failed by a polar bear, the leader checks whether he has reached the target number of animals. If the target is reached, the hunt is successful, and all participants split the loot, which is cards contributed by participants plus cards drawn from the deck. If the hunt fails, the loot goes to those who stayed home instead.

In the background, the markers on the game board indicate that the active player thinks he can do a one-day hunt and catch six (5+1) fish. In my hand are a fish card, a bird card and a seal card.

I'm not exactly sure of the loot splitting process, because in our game we decided to randomly distributed the cards as equally as possible, so that we could play more quickly. In the official rules the players get to see the cards and pick what they want.

The game ends when the draw deck runs out. Players then score points using all the accumulated loot cards (not hand cards). Every complete set of four animals is worth 3VP, and every pair of similar animals is worth 1VP. Highest scorer wins.

The Play

We did a 7-player game, and in the case of Nanuk, I think it is definitely the more the merrier. More players means it is possible to have high ambitions. There is more uncertainty, and thus more excitement. Sometimes you feel positive that many will join the hunt, and you go for a high target because you have that together-we-can-do-this feeling. Sometimes your gut feeling betrays you and you find that even your loudest supporter was just kidding. We certainly had a lot of table talk - claiming we had so many animals of a certain type, urging others on to make ever bolder claims. Most of us were new to the game and we were mostly optimistic, especially early in the game. That lead to very ambitious targets. Ian, who had played before, said we were crazy bold. And then our early excursions were mostly successful too, which fueled the optimism even further. Whenever we had a decent number of participants, the hunt was usually successful. Only towards mid-game people started to consider staying home more often. That was when decisions became trickier. You don't want to end up on the wrong side of the divide. It is usually better to end up in the bigger group. Hunting party or opposition party, there is a higher likelihood that the bigger group will end up being right. However if you happen to be in a minority group that is right, it can be very profitable. Imagine a big group of losers going hunting and putting together a huge pile of cards, and then you being the only guy staying home, but being right. That would be a major windfall. And you get to put on a smug I-told-you-so look too.

We were quite a rowdy bunch. At one point someone started asking do you have birds, and another guy (was it me?) started saying you should have at least one. Sorry to Wai Yan, the only lady at the table. We were a bunch of 30+ year old adolescent boys. Eventually it was Wai Yan who won, because she made the correct judgments frequently, and thus collected many cards.

In the last round of the game, we realised how unbelievably lucky we had been throughout the game, and why. Most expeditions, as long as they were being supported by enough hunters, were successful. It probably made us more optimistic and careless than we should have been. In that final round when we flipped over the cards for the final hunt, we found that many of the polar bear cards were at the bottom of the deck. No wonder we didn't see that many polar bears earlier. Needless to say, that final hunt failed miserably.

My accumulated loot at game end. Two complete sets of animals = 3VP x 2 = 6VP. Two birds make 1VP. That's a total of 7VP. I have one extra bird. Wait, that doesn't sound right.

The Thoughts

Nanuk feels like Liar's Dice. It's a simple party game suitable for big groups. There's group psychology, push-your-luck, and bluffing. There's an exciting gambling feeling too. It is best played as a light game, and I think the variant of randomly distributing the loot is a good one. If you want more control, you can use the official rules which allow participants to pick cards.

boardgaming in photos

28 Jul 2013. I have been playing a lot of Ascension (on the iPhone) lately. Mostly with Han - we have two concurrent games running at any one time. Also due to either pressing some wrong buttons or some auto matchmaking when a game invitation timed out, I hooked up to play against some strangers. Once I was beaten 117:58. Gosh there are sharks out there!

This screen capture is a game I played against Han, where he made very good use of Lifebound heroes. Some Lifebound heroes have a Unite power, which gives you additional benefits if you play (or have played) another Lifebound hero on the same turn. He had five Lifebound heroes, three of them had such Unite powers, and their Unite powers include drawing a card. That's how he managed to draw and play so many cards. All five of his Lifebound heroes came into play this turn.

Sabre the Moonlit is one of the more powerful Lifebound heroes. He's expensive (cost 6), but if you can make use of his Unite ability often, he's very much worth it.

I should be thankful I didn't lose by more than 20pts.

This is another game. On his turn, Han managed to completely exhaust his deck. 18 cards, all drawn and all played. On the top right corner you can see that the hand cards icon, the green draw deck icon and the red discard pile icon all show zero. The current Event allowed drawing a card when discarding a defeated Fanatic, which helped.

16 Jun 2013. Shee Yun, Chen Rui and I played some games. Chen Rui requested to play Kakerlaken-Poker. Except for two-player games, all cards must be dealt out to every player, which makes holding cards quite a challenge, even for adults, when there are only three players. So I use this method which I learned from Chong Sean - make use of the tile holders from 10 Days in Asia.

I like the artwork and style.

Notice that cards of the same insect have different drawings, e.g. the two spider cards.

28 Jun 2013. Zaiham is my colleague. He used to play a lot of Magic: The Gathering during secondary school days. I thought he might be interested in boardgames, and invited him to play. It has been a long time since I did any boardgame evangalising. I picked Blue Moon, because it's a card game and many cards have unique special abilities, so it has some similarities to MTG. It worked really well! We played four or five games back-to-back, and that's just with the basic races Hoax and Vulca. We haven't even started exploring other races.

The other game I introduced to Zaiham was Lord of the Rings: the Confrontation. This time a boardgame, but there is card play, and the characters have unique special abilities too.

Now Zaiham has started playing MTG again. He got together with a bunch of old schoolmates and they all jumped in together. Now he plays regularly at a shop near his home. I guess it was a fruitful session - I encouraged him to start gaming again. Now that he's deep into MTG, I probably won't be able to get him to join many of the boardgame sessions. But it's good to have helped rekindle an old passion.

30 Jun 2013. Playing Ubongo with the children.

What coloured gem to pick?

The cooking game - A la Carte.

27 Jul 2013. I asked Shee Yun whether she wanted to play a game. She said yes. I suggested Tales of the Arabian Nights. It had been a while since I last played. I thought it would be good for learning English and for practising drama and storytelling skills. For her, not for me. The English in the game is still a little challenging for her, and she often had to ask me how to read a certain word and what it meant. But I think it's a good opportunity for learning. She even won!

Chen Rui was supposed to be drinking her milk, but she wanted to watch us play.

I certainly had a love story full of twists in this game. I fell in love with a dentist's daughter, only to find that she was already married, and had a daughter old enough to marry. She asked me to marry her daughter instead. I said no. She got upset with me and sent thugs to beat me up. I ran away, but they eventually caught up with me and beat me silly - they crippled me! Eventually I found my true love in Russia and got married. Married life was more restrictive than I expected. The wife would only allow me to visit one city per trip, so I must go home immediately after visiting a city (and bring souvenirs I presume). Since I was a cripple and thus could not travel quickly, my movement on the map was greatly hindered. If I needed to visit a particular city, I needed to adjust my itinerary to avoid all other cities en route and on the way back.

Being married was not all bad though. Every time that I successfully made a healthy baby, I gained 1 Destiny point. Being a cripple was not all bad either. Whenever I scored Story points, I would score double. The adventures of a cripple are always more impressive.

Shee Yun's character had reached Baghdad and won the game.

My character was still toiling far from home. Just when I was about to achieve the required Destiny and Story points, I had an encounter which allowed Shee Yun to send me to a far corner of the board. Since I was crippled, and married, and not rich (these add up to a huge restriction on movement) I could not make it back to Baghdad in time.

My skills and statuses at game end. When I gained the Respected status, it caused me to lose the Crippled status. I guess when you are respected, people pretend not to notice your disability.

Shee Yun's skills and a treasure at game end. During this game she encountered a passage that needed precisely this set of keys, but unfortunately it happened before she obtained them. It would have been interesting to see what would happen if she had the keys at the time. I'm sure it would be quite an adventure.

The Road to Canterbury

Plays: 3Px2.

The Game

I'm quite sure this is the first time I've seen any setting remotely similar to that of The Road to Canterbury being turned into a boardgame. You are greedy priests accompanying three groups of pilgrims on a pilgrimage to Canterbury. You tempt them to commit sins, so that you can sell them pardons. You make them sin so much that they die from their sins. After the fifth pilgrim dies, you reach the end of your journey. You tally scores to determine who the most profitable priest is. There is a special place in hell reserved for priests like this.

When distilled down to basics, what you do on a turn is just this: play a card, and draw a card. There are three types of cards - sin cards, pardon cards, and relic cards. Sin cards and pardon cards have 7 possible values - greed, gluttony, pride, wrath, luxury, envy and idleness. A sin can only be pardoned by a pardon card of the exact same kind. Relic cards are single-use special power cards. When you play a sin card, you play it on one of the three leaders of the pilgrim groups. You keep track of what kind of sins you have tempted pilgrims into committing. The first priest to have "mastered" all seven sins gains a big bonus. Others who achieve this feat will gain bonuses too. When you play a pardon card, you must play it on a matching sin card or cards. You earn money depending on how many sin cards you are pardoning at the same time. You place a cube of your colour on the pilgrim whom you are pardoning. The pardoned sin cards are turned face-down, but are not removed. They still count towards the total number of sins the pilgrim has committed. When the count reaches seven, the pilgrim dies from his sins.

Sin cards.

One of the pilgrims, a knight.

The gameboard is a fat cross. The big central section is only for tracking which sins each player has tempted the pilgrims into committing. The yellow, blue and green scrolls represent the three groups of pilgrims. A pilgrim tile is drawn and placed on each scroll. This is the leader of group. Sin cards are played offboard next to the leaders. The map on the right represents the road to Canterbury. It is basically a countdown track.

Dying is a complex process. It is basically a mini scoring round. Whoever has the most cubes on the dead guy must move one of his cubes to the Road to Canterbury and score points accordingly. This is actually a countdown mechanism - the game ends after the fifth pilgrim dies. Others' cubes are not discarded, but are kept aside near the pilgrim group this dead guy is in. They will be needed for end-game scoring. Whoever played the seventh sin card that killed the poor guy gets something too - a Last Rites token. You can use it to take an extra turn. If unused it is worth $3, i.e. 3VP. After the leader of a pilgrim group dies, another pilgrim is randomly drawn to take his place. The priests continue to tempt him to sin and then pardon him. Business as usual resumes.

The Last Rites token.

The game consists of quick turns of playing and drawing cards, as the tension builds up until eventually someone will die for sinning too much, and then there is a pause to settle funeral matters. The actions you do are not complex. It is the various ways of scoring that you need to digest and understand how to be competitive at. There are four hree long-term goals to keep in mind - you want to make pilgrims commit all seven types of sins, you want to have pardoned a pilgrim the most times before he croaks, at game end you want to be top personal pardoner for the most number of pilgrims, and finally at game end you want to have done pardoning as much as possible in the three pilgrim groups. All these can give big chunks of points, but you may not be able to do all. The pardoning action itself and killing pilgrims give points too, but these are usually smaller and more tactical gains.

The Play

Allen bought this game and put it at my home for quite some time. I never got around to reading the rules, and eventually he read them himself and taught Han and I to play. Since a turn is just playing a card and then drawing a card, he underestimated the rules, and we fumbled through half a game before knowing what we were doing. At that point I had become a runaway leader and neither of them could catch me. I won the game with more points that both of their scores added. We decided to play another game immediately. This time we had a much better idea what we were doing and the scores were much closer.

One word describes the feeling of playing this game very well - brinkmanship. To pardon, you need to get people to sin first, but when you do so will you be setting up for your opponents? Pardoning a pilgrim who has committed the same sin multiple times is lucrative, but when you tempt him into indulging over and over, will another priest suddenly come up with the same pardon card that you are just about to play? Can you make sure you squeeze every last coin from the pilgrim before he dies on you? Playing a card is a simple action, but which card to use, and who to play it on, are things you need to consider. As the pilgrims sin more and more, you become more and more anxious about who's next to die.

Two factors add some excitement to the game - the relic cards and the death cards. Relic cards have powerful but single-use abilities, and can create some twists. Death cards are a special type of sin card. When drawn, they are immediately played onto a specific pilgrim. They count as sin cards. That means a pilgrim can unexpectedly die earlier.

Once we got into the rhythm, the game moved very briskly. It felt like a medium weight game that played like a light weight game.

The black player has succeeded in tempting pilgrims to commit every type of sin. The purple player is only one sin short. The pawn marks the sin that the church is denouncing, and pardoning this sin warrants a higher fee.

The Thoughts

The Road to Canterbury is essentially a card game. All you are doing is playing a card, and then drawing or selecting another to refill your hand. Hand management, and remembering cards your opponents have taken (when they take the face-up cards) are both important. It's hard to argue that this isn't a eurogame, but there's something about it that makes it feel unlike any typical eurogame. The mechanisms are quite abstracted and streamlined, but they still jive with the theme. And I definitely have not seen any other eurogame about sinning and death and unscrupulous priests.

I like the brinkmanship in this game. You constantly worry about setting your opponents up for scoring. You try to make use of every sinning pilgrim before he dies. Sometimes you need to prioritise which areas to fight for. The game is very interactive because you are fighting over the same groups of pilgrims. I think this is quite a clever design. A little thinky, and yet can be played at a brisk pace.

Edo

Plays: 3Px1.

The Game

Edo is the old name of Tokyo. Edo is a eurogame game with a medieval Japanese theme. It has simultaneous action selection, worker placement, and it is about collecting resources to construct buildings, which score points. Sounds like a very typical and boring eurogame so far? Yeah... I can't think of any exciting way to summarise it. But then trying to summarise it may not be a good idea. Some things get lost in translation. Let's take a look at some details.

A unique aspect of this game is the square action tiles. Everyone starts with three. In a round you can pick three actions. Each action tile has four quadrants, each quadrant representing one action type. That means you can only pick one out of the four actions from each tile. This creates some tricky planning and decision-making. Another memorable aspect of the game is how you need to send your workers onto the board. They need to be there to collect resources and to construction buildings. Sending them forth is not cheap. Travelling costs money, and every round every worker consumes rice. So you better do proper planning and make sure every trip is worthwhile.

These action tiles are the most outstanding aspect of the game. Each tile has four quadrants, but you can only use one of them in a round. Here the three actions I have picked are the ones pointing downwards. The first action is collecting wood. I have assigned two workers to this. They will need to work together with the two other workers I have sent to the board. When I execute this action I will move those two workers on the board to a forest location to chop wood. I have no worker assigned to the middle tile, so there will be no action. The third action allows me to buy a new worker using a sack of rice.

The resource collection and construction on the board are area majority contests. Once you have buildings in the cities, you start making money from them every round. How much you earn is dependent on how many buildings you have there compared to others. The number of castles that can be built in a city is dependent on the number of houses already built there. Players will compete over these limited slots too. There is often a race to reach resource locations. The output of a resource collection action depends on how many workers are at the location. The more workers, the fewer resources per action. So players will want to race to get to vacant locations. If you want to be mean you can send your workers to crowd a location, and cause everyone there to be unable to gather any resource. But then you would be wasting your workers and rice too, and other players not involved will point and laugh.

Ultimately it's a race to score points. Buildings are worth points. Some in-game actions are worth points. There are a few ways to score endgame points. The game ends after a player reaches 12pts.

The brown location is a forest. According to that table, if there is one worker present, a collect wood action will give 3 wood. If two workers are present, the action is worth 2 wood. If four or more workers are present, the action is worth nothing.

City locations are red or pink. The tiles in the cities indicate how much money you earn when you have houses in the cities.

The Play

As is typical for Han, Allen and I, we executed many of our actions simultaneously and often did not follow turn order. We only paused and waited when some actions could impact other players. The game flowed quite smoothly for us. There were quite a few times that I found I was unable to do what I had in mind, because two of the actions I wanted to execute were on the same action tile. This aspect of the game turned out to be trickier than I expected.

Sending workers out to the board was challenging. It was like making a deep treasure-hunting dive. You only have this much oxygen and you want to make sure you accomplish as much as possible before you have to resurface.

My houses and market (the rightmost one which has a different shape). In the background are sacks of rice.

The Thoughts

Overall Edo is still a rather typical eurogame about collecting cubes and converting them to points. The macro level is not very interesting. The execution layer is more interesting. There are tricky tactical decisions to make. You need to think about how to compete with your opponents, and how to make use of your actions and workers as efficiently as possible.