Zombicide

Zombicide has been around for quite some time. I have never been a zombie fan, so I never got around to trying it until recently, when I played the second edition of the game. This is a cooperative game. Every player controls two characters. You try to survive in a zombie apocalypse. The game is scenario based, and every scenario has a different set of winning conditions. Sometimes you need to escape through a certain location. Sometimes you need to find certain items. If any of your party dies, you lose. 

The game is intuitive to learn. Every character has some action points. You spend them to move, attack zombies, break doors, search for items, exchange items with other characters and so on. After every character has acted, it is the zombies’ turn to act. They move towards you, or if they can’t see you, they move towards noise. Making noise to redirect zombies is a valid tactic here. Zombies in the same space as you attack you. You don’t want to end up in the same space as any zombie still alive. Hah! “Alive”! 

One mechanism I like is how zombies slow you down and even completely bog you down. Moving costs one action point, but it costs an additional action point for every zombie in the same space. You really don’t want to share space with zombies. If there is just one, you can try to kill it first then move. If you are swamped by several, you are probably going to die and lose the game, unless you have some special ability or powerful weapon, or your friends manage to help you. In one game I was trapped by four or five zombies. Thankfully I had the legendary Japanese sword which could deal much damage. I barely managed to kill that group of zombies which surrounded me. 

Characters have either two or three life points. You die quite easily. Once anyone dies, everyone loses. Every character has an adrenaline meter. Various things increase this adrenaline value, like killing zombies and completing missions. As your adrenaline reaches certain thresholds, you unlock new abilities for your character. This is fun. However adrenaline value also increases the number of zombies spawned. The spawn rate is determined by the highest adrenaline level among all characters. There’s escalation in the game. Your characters get stronger. You also get more zombies, and stronger zombies. Sooner or later you will be overwhelmed by zombies. You must complete your missions before you get overrun. The build-up of zombies is effectively a timer. 

One exciting element I like is how searching for items can get you unexpected zombies instead. I always like searching. Maybe I like that lucky draw feeling. Now I have learnt (the hard way) that you probably shouldn’t search with your last action point. If you find a zombie, you won’t have any action point left to try to kill it. 

I like that the scenarios are pretty challenging. This is not a feel-good cooperative game. You need to play purposefully and not waste actions. I find this an accessible game. There is a fair bit of rules and the many characters, weapons and zombie classes have various abilities. However the rules are intuitive so you don’t feel you have to learn them. You’re just doing what you’d be doing if you were in a zombie apocalypse. 

Quick takes: Neon Reign, Mercado de Lisboa, Jurassic Snack

Neon Reign is a simple game I have played several times, and still don't understand. This is a 2-player card game about those 1v1 fighting arcade games. There are several characters you can play, and every character has their own deck of cards. To win, you need to reduce the opponent's life points to zero. 

You have a hand of seven. Your cards are mostly button presses or joystick moves. Some are specific defensive moves like blocks and throws. On your turn, you either play cards to attack, or you draw to seven. Some cards when played in combination give you extra effects. For example extra attack points, or storing energy for your power attack. Some cards can be used in response to your opponent's attack, possibly cancelling some of their card plays. 

These are the various combinations and their effects

Every character has a different power attack. You need to store energy for this. Once the energy bar for this is full, you unleash the power attack. Usually you'll deal some damage, and there are usually other effects as well.

Although I have played three games, I feel I have been doing the equivalent of button-mashing. I still don't quite know what I'm doing, and I am losing consistently. I always complain that when I play complex games on BGA, I don't have patience to learn the game properly. Neon Reign is not a complex game, and it's not hard to learn. I don't know why I am so clueless about this game. Is this just a pretty random game? Or are there tactics I have not discovered? Looking at how consistently I am losing games, my hunch is I don't really get the game yet. I need to play this more. 

So far I have been mostly playing as many buttons and joysticks as I can, until I'm out of cards, and then I replenish. I suspect that is not necessary the best move. Maybe I should be replenishing more to try to get better combos. Also I suspect I need to be building up my shields more. Possibly I need to be saving cards for defence. Maybe I need to anticipate attacks and keep cards that can break the opponent's combos. 

I can't conclude about this game yet. I'm still need to figure it out, despite it being such a simple game. 

Mercado de Lisboa is a game about opening market stands, placing restaurants, attracting customers, and most important of all, making money. 

This is a tile laying game. You will place market stands, which will cost money depending on how crowded the row and column are. You will also place customers along the edges. When you do this, all market stands in the row or column which sell something the customers want make money. The board starts with some restaurants. When market stands are placed next to matching restaurants, they can earn more money. If a market stand is placed on top of a grey restaurant, you claim that restaurant and you can place it (coloured side) on a future turn. 

You win by having the most money. In the early game, you need to earn money to fund your subsequent market stands. This means spending victory points to earn more victory points. Money is victory points. This is a perfect information game. You have to plan carefully how to position your market stands well to make the most profit, and at the same time try not to help your opponents. A market stand can potentially earn money from four customer tiles. Customer placement spots are valuable and you have to watch out. The game looks simple, but I think if you want to play well you have to play thoughtfully, considering your opponents' possible moves. 

If you claim restaurants (the round tokens) but fail to place them all before the game ends, you will lose $1 per restaurant. Restaurants don't belong to anyone. They help all matching market stands next to them. 

Customer values go from 1 to 4. You can play the higher level customers only when a row or column has the required number of market stands. It is important to position your market stands to score big in late game. I think the game is deeper and more serious that it appears to be. 

Jurassic Snack feels like a children's game. Maybe it is. It is an abstract game for 2 players that plays in about 15 minutes. 

You move your dinosaurs in straight lines (like rooks in chess) to eat vegetation. When you eat a patch of vegetation, you flip over the tile to see what's in front. 

Some of the vegetation tiles show special powers, e.g. you can fly one dinosaur anywhere, or you give birth to a new dinosaur. Tiles have point values (represented as number of leaves). 

Two of the vegetation tiles show a T-Rex. Once a T-Rex comes into play, on your turn you can choose to move it instead of one of your dinosaurs. The T-Rex moves in a straight line too, but it eats dinosaurs instead of vegetation (of course). 

If you manage to have a T-Rex eat all of your opponents' dinosaurs, you win, ignoring the points scored from eating veggies. The victory points only apply if the game ends in a normal way - when players are not able to eat anything on two consecutive turns. 

Technically the T-Rex doesn't eat your dinosaurs. The rulebook clearly says it just scares them away. If you are playing this with your child, please use the proper term. 

See you in Klang

I'm going to booth at a mid-autumn festival event in Klang on Saturday 19 September, 5pm - 10pm. If you are in Klang, come play with me! 

Tash-Kalar: Arena of Legends

 

Tash-Kalar: Arena of Legends is a 2013 game from Vlaada Chvatil. This guy is a genius. He made Through the Ages, Galaxy Trucker, Codenames, Mage Knight, Space Alert, and many more. Most of his games are very different from one another. Tash-Kalar too is very different form his other titles. He makes bold publishing decisions. 

The basic premise is you are two teams of fighters in an arena. There are several game modes, and I have only played one of them. You have pawns that you can deploy into the arena. There is a basic action of deploying a common pawn on any empty spot. Your fighters come in three levels - common, heroic and legendary. You can deploy common fighters directly, but heroic and legendary fighters can only be summoned by fulfilling conditions on your spell cards. One thing that's very unusual in this game is you can't move your fighters anywhere you like. Your fighters can only move as the result of triggering spells, and spells are triggered when you have fighters positioned in specific orientations. 

You have your own deck of cards, representing your faction. In your hand you will have basic cards, advanced cards, and a catch-up card. Configurations on basic cards are easier to achieve. Those on the advanced cards are much harder, but the effects of these cards are more powerful too. The catch-up card can only be used if your board position is much weaker than your opponent. 

You can activate a card when you have fighters on the board which fulfil the criteria. Some cards let you deploy fighters, or upgrade fighters, or kill enemy fighters. You rely on these cards to get yourself heroic and legendary fighters. Cards allow you to move fighters too. 

Red and green spaces on the board are sometimes relevant to card effects. Red means danger, and usually that's where fighters get killed. Green means life, and sometimes fighters get deployed or upgraded here. In the screenshot above you can see that the light green faction has all three levels of fighters. Most of the time fighters can only kill enemies of the same level or lower. If you manage to kill enemies on your turn, you score them at the end of your turn. You gain 1 point for every two common fighters, 1 point for every heroic fighter, and 2 points for every legendary fighter. In the game mode I played, we raced towards 18 points. 

This advanced card is quite hard to activate because two of the fighters in the configuration must be at least heroic fighters. You need to find ways to either upgrade common fighters in those positions, or somehow move heroic fighters into position using other cards. 

Tash-Kalar is certainly an interesting game. There are tons of team-based tactical battle games, but I have never seen anything quite like this. This is certainly refreshing. I wonder what it feels like to play this game at a higher skill level. When you know your own deck well, you will be prepared for the kind of configurations you will need. You will place your fighters in the patterns you expect to need, before you draw those cards. When you know your opponent's deck well too, you will try to place fighters to prevent them from making the patterns they need. In the game I played, since it was my first game, I played in a mostly tactical manner. I just tried to make use of the cards I had. I tried to use them under situations where their effects would be maximised, e.g. being able to kill an enemy fighter. It is satisfying to plan a combo play of your cards. You can use some cards to set yourself up to use other cards. It feels great to pull off those advanced cards. 

Tanglung

Tanglung is a 2-player abstract game by Mark William, published by Malaysian publishing house Luma. "Tanglung" refers to Chinese lanterns which are carried during the Mid Autumn Festival.  

I absolutely love the production of the game, especially the attention to detail. The insides of the box are decorated. I adore the art! 

A game is set up like this. The two corners will always be roosters, and the players each start on a rooster. Other cards are random, and the four central cards are face-up. On your turn, you must move your player pawn - the matchbox - to another card. You move based on the movement rule of the card you are on, or you can also choose to use the rooster movement (one step orthogonally). After you move, the card you were on is discarded. The board shrinks. If you move to a face-down card, you flip it face-up. 

There are several ways you can win. If your opponent is unable to make a move, you win. This might be because the board has shrunk too much, or you are blocking him. If you light the last lantern, i.e. you reveal the last face-down card, you win. If you bump your opponent twice, you also win. When you bump into your opponent, his pawn is temporarily removed from the board. Next turn, he must place his pawn on an empty space. 

There is a fan in the game. Some cards let you place or move the fan. The fan blocks movement. It can be used to stop your opponent from moving. You can also force your opponent to go to a position where you can bump him. 

The gameplay feel is that of an abstract game. You have to think ahead a little about your opponent's possible moves. You do not have perfect information though, because of the face-down cards. You do know the card distribution and the movement rules of the cards. This allows you to plan somewhat. 

The pawns (matchboxes) are different on the two sides. The full health side shows a full matchbox, while the "injured" side after you have been bumped once shows only one match remaining. 

Tanglung is a short but thinky game. 

Playtesting with Simon

Simon Schmieder is the designer of Jakarta Traffic, Durian Smuggler and Food Alley. He is from Germany and currently lives in Indonesia. I got to know him through boardgame fairs around South East Asia. We were both in Bangkok for the Bangkok International Game Festival (BIGF) in August, and he, Jon and I met up for a playtest session. 

The Airbnb Simon stayed in was like a mini museum, with so many antiques. There were no other guests, so we had the whole place to ourselves. 

We took turns playtesting one another's games. The one I asked them to playtest for me was Rebels of the Three Kingdoms. I wanted to playtest the 3-player variant more. 

This is Simon's prototype You're CC'ed. It is about that one thing in the workplace everyone loves to hate - emails! Everyone has a secret identity. You know who you are, but at the start of the game no one else knows. Throughout the game emails will be generated, and you manipulate who these emails get sent to. As a general rule, getting many emails is bad because it stresses you out, and getting fewer or no emails is best because you can relax. You reveal cards in the play area. Some will generate emails. Some are paths through which emails will be routed. Some are inboxes of the various characters in the game. This is how they receive emails. In addition to the four possible player characters, there is also a CEO and a spam folder. Emails might go to the CEO or the spam folder. 

Here you keep track of how many emails are received by each employee, the CEO and the junk folder. This list must stay sorted. Depending on which card is on top (most emails received), the winning condition changes. If a regular employee is on top, then it is the employee with the third most emails who wins. The first two are burnt out from overwork, and the last is fired for being useless. If the CEO's card is on top, the employee with the fewest emails wins. The CEO is stressed out and fires everyone. You are fired but at least you are happy for having had the least work. If the spam folder is on top, it is the employee with the most emails who wins. This is because the CEO rewards you for being the most hardworking. Manipulating this ranking is crucial because you want to position yourself to win. 

Several things in this game are very relatable. Emails are bad, but if you receive funny GIFs, they balance out the emails you receive. Sometimes attachments are added to either emails or GIFs, doubling their effects. Sometimes emails bounce back to the sender. I find this game hilarious. I am amazed with the themes Simon pick for his games. They make the games highly enjoyable. 

This is Jon's Foundations of Rome, and it is now called Pillars of Power. He has been trying to find a non Roman theme for it, and he wanted a more serious theme. The theme now is political ideologies. I think this works better. 

This game is like a friend's child I've seen grow up over the years. I have played many versions and seen how it improved over many iterations. I still enjoy playing it. I hope it finds a publisher soon. This is a light strategy game and it is better suited for the international market, as opposed to the Malaysian market. I keep telling Jon I like this better than Castle Combo. 

This is Simon's prototype about introverts at a party. Although you are an introvert, you know you should be going out there to meet people. Throughout the game you will meet other guests and collect them. These guests you claim will score points in various ways at game end. 

The house is customisable. You can meet people only in certain rooms. You're not going to meet new friends in the toilet. At least not in this game. 

Some of these standee characters are the players, and some are their best friends. When you move about the house, whenever you meet your best friend they energise you. However if you meet other people, you lose energy. That's how introverts work. Energy is one of the resources in the game. In one of the rooms, you can smoke to regain energy. 

To collect a guest card, you need to spend resources. If you have something in common, the cost is reduced. For example you both like music. 

The art is done by Simon's wife, and I find it adorable. It's unique and it really gives the game character. 

You start the game with three tokens for each of the four resource types. Whenever you use a resource, you flip it to the red side to indicate it is exhausted. This means for every resource type you can have at most three unit, unless you are able to gain more tokens. 

Game design is fun! 

10 to Leave

This game will probably always be called the mosquito game. This is a game from Taiwan, and players play the role of mosquito families trying to attack a sleeping guy and then escape without getting squashed. I certainly have not played any other game with this premise. 

Everyone starts with the same set of cards with exactly the same distribution. The only difference is the card colour. Cards represent mosquitoes. You will be playing cards to sting the sleeping guy. He will be waken up several times during the night and he will try to kill some of you mosquitoes, either with his bare hands or using something nearby he can grab. Some mosquitoes might get killed. Some will make a lucky escape. You play until everyone has played all their cards. You don't score points for the mosquitoes that managed to escape. Instead, you score negative points for those that are killed. The player with the least negative points wins. 

This poor guy is going to get very upset and won't be getting much sleep.

Cards are valued 1 to 6, and when a mosquito is killed, you lose points based on the card value. It is very painful to have your 6 killed. Notice that the 3's, 4's, and one of the 5's have a dot below the number. These cards are marked on the back. When you play one of these cards, your opponents know it is between 3 to 5. 

Some cards have icons on the back

A round of play is set up by placing a random weapon next to the sleeping guy. Let's call him Sam. Depending on how Sam is waken up, he might use the weapon to kill you. The weapon specifies the positions of the mosquitoes which will be killed. In this photo above, you can see the positions are I and III. In one of these rows, if your card is in positions I or III, it is at risk of getting killed. 

You will be playing cards into rows next to Sam, almost like queuing up. You will be able to manipulate the rows too. 

What you do on your turn is simple. Refer to the bottom half of this reference sheet above. You will definitely have to play a card, but there is one other action you can take. You may peek at another card, which can be done before or after you play a card. You can also move the first card in a queue to the back. This too can be done before or after you play a card. The third option is to wake Sam up. That means he's going to try to kill some mosquitoes. You can do this only if all the queues have at least 2 cards, and you can only do this before you play a card. 

When Sam wakes up, there are three possible outcomes for each of the queues. Refer to the top half of the reference sheet. You resolve the queues one at a time, revealing the cards one by one until the total reaches or exceeds 10, or until all the cards are revealed. If the total is less than 10, Sam kills the biggest mosquito or mosquitoes by hand, and the rest escape. If the total is exactly 10, the mosquitoes get lucky and they all escape. If the total exceeds 10, Sam uses his weapon and kills according to the weapon. Lucky mosquitoes are removed. Dead mosquitoes are placed before the owners so that you can keep track of your negative points. Sometimes there are unrevealed mosquitoes. These are now shifted to the front of the queues. 

This mosquito game is actually a queuing game! Almost like a guillotine game, because Sam is probably going to kill some mosquitoes. When you play this game you will feel like telling all your mosquito family members, "Survive! Survive!" Playing your 6 is always nerve-wracking. Should you play it early to get it out of the way? I think many people will be tempted to do that. You can collaborate with others to make those perfect 10's. You can talk about your numbers. But can you trust your opponents? Afterall, they are still your opponents. Also even if you line up a few cards to make a perfect 10, you can't stop some other uninvolved fella from moving the first card in the queue, messing everything up. 

10 to Leave teeters between giving you control and putting you at the mercy of other players. You have limited information because you don't know what cards your opponents have played. However you know the marked cards are 3 to 5. Also as the game progresses, you can card count. You get to peek at cards, and that's important information. This helps in making those perfect 10's. Yet you never know when someone else will move a card and spoil your plans. There are two ways Sam wakes up. A player can wake him up, or he wakes up when all queues have four cards. You try your best to position your cards well in anticipation for all queues getting full. However there is always a possibility of a player waking Sam before that. There are several tactics in the game. I like that balance between giving you control and subjecting you to the whims of others. There are skills to this. Also I believe the game experience can vary depending on the group you play with. Some groups may share more information and try to collaborate. Some may be secretive. Some may choose to lie about their cards. That creates a different dynamic. Overall this is still a simple and short game. I hear this game is doing well in Taiwan, and I can certainly see why.