Expeditions

Expeditions is the sequel to Scythe. It is an independent game, set in the same universe - an alternative 1920 Siberia with giant mechas. The war (which happened in Scythe) is over now, and there is peace. A giant meteorite has crashed in Siberia, awakening ancient corruption. Expeditions to the site did not return. Now it is your turn to launch a new expedition to the crash site. Each player leads a different team. You are going in to discover, to suppress corruption, and to gain techs for your nation. 

The map is set up with about one third of tiles face-up, and two thirds face-down. The face-down tiles are the meteorite crash area which you have to explore. You start the game with a mecha, a character, and an animal companion. Your mecha is represented by both the beautiful pawn on the map and your player board. Your character and companion are two starting cards in your hand. All three elements are unique in the game. Together they are a set and they are your faction. 

There are three action types in the game - you can move, you can play a card, and you can gather, which means using the ability of the tile you are on. Most of the time you can only perform two different action types. Next turn you must do a different combination of two actions. You can forgo a turn to reset. When you do that, on your next turn you can perform all three actions. The reset is important because you need it to bring played cards back into your hand. This core mechanism provides an interesting challenge. You have to plan around this to make the most of your actions. 

There are many things you can do in this game. When you move to a face-down tile, you turn it face-up and collect the map token on it. You discover what benefit that tile offers for the gather action. There will be one or two types of corruption on these revealed tiles. Another thing you can do is to spend resources to vanquish corruption. When corruption is completely vanquished from a tile, a stronger benefit will be unlocked. Tiles offer many different types of benefits. Those tiles which are already visible from the start offer basic benefits, like workers or cards. More advanced benefits are only available on the initially face-down tiles. 

These two above are starting cards. When you play a card, you get the resource at the top left. If you attach the right worker to it, you get the benefit at the bottom as well. Cards played need to be taken back into your hand using a reset or some other tile or card ability before you can play them again. You will be able to gain more cards during the game, and there are three types of cards - quest cards, meteorite cards and item cards. They can be used just like your starting cards, and they can also be tucked under your player board using specific actions offered by tiles in the game. The upgrade action lets you tuck items on the right. The solve action tucks quest cards above. The meld action tucks meteorite cards below. Cards tucked give you long term benefits. 

When you reach certain achievements, you can perform a boast action to place a glory token (star). This is very much like Scythe. For example when you have tucked four cards under the right side of your player board, or you have 8 cards in hand, or you have vanquished 7 corruption tokens. Glory tokens you place will be worth points. The game ends when a player places his fourth glory token. Items cards, corruption tokens are worth points too. During the game itself you may also score points from certain actions. 

This is the player board 

Expeditions is a game about exploration and upgrades. There is a wide range of things you can do, and you probably want to focus on just some and not all. You may not even be doing much exploration, as long as there is someone doing enough of it to reveal tiles that offer the better actions. This is an efficiency game. You will likely spend some effort on upgrading your abilities, even if you don't intend to go for the related glory star. Eventually you have to decide which glory stars to go for. If you are first to get the fourth star, it's a good position to be in, but it doesn't guarantee victory. It depends on how well the others are doing. 

You don't fight the other teams. However you do block them from occupying the same tile. They can move through you, but they can't stop where you are camped. This is sometimes crucial, for example when you are competing for the boast action on a tile in order to place your next glory star. Another thing you will compete for is the cards. There are five face-up cards. Usually you want to get four cards of the same type, i.e. those which can be tucked under the same side, because you need four of them to qualify for a glory star. If another player is going for the same card type, you will have competition. 

I like Expeditions more than Scythe. Titles from Stonemaier Games never really click with me. I don't dislike them, and many of them are decent. It's just that they feel only okay to me. I can see there are some clever ideas, like how the player boards in Scythe work. Scythe is an okay game for me, and Expeditions is an okay game too, but I like it a little more. I enjoy the efficiency puzzle of working within the constraints of the core action mechanism and making the best of the cards I have and the tiles within reach of my mecha. The game feels mostly solitaire. Sometimes for long stretches you don't bother with your opponents. I find that I don't mind it too much. Maybe I'm very absorbed in my own race to get all my glory stars out as quickly as possible. The process to decide which glory stars to aim for is interesting to me. You shouldn't decide up front. You have to watch how the game develops, and then decide which will be easier. Sometimes opportunities present themselves, and you go with the flow. 

The LOOP

The LOOP is a cooperative game. The evil scientist is using his time machine to create clones of himself in different eras and he wants to take over the universe. His machine is creating rifts in spacetime, and if this gets out of control, the universe will be destroyed. You must work together to stop the scientist and save the universe. 

The game board is seven eras connected in a ring. The time machine sits in the middle. It is a tower with an open top into which you can drop cubes. At the foot of the tower there are three chutes which will be pointing at three adjacent eras. Every round the evil scientist will travel to a different era. The chutes will point at that era and those two next to it. You need to drop two red cubes into the time machine. You need to drop more if there are clones in the era. These cubes will randomly drop into those three eras. If an era gets a fourth cube, a rift will open, which is bad. You lose the game when a fourth era gets a rift or when any era gets a second rift.

The players each play a different character with a different unique ability, and also a predetermined set of cards. On your turn you get one free move, and you may play all your hand cards. You will draw new cards next turn. Cards in the game are all unique. In addition to your starting cards, more will be available during play. They can be drawn from the deck or picked up in specific eras. So you have a bit of deck building. Cards let you all sorts of things, like moving and removing red cubes to prevent rifts. You can push clones to an adjacent era. Clones are bad because they cause more red cubes. Each clone has a home era. If you push a clone to its home era, it is destroyed. Another thing you can do is generate energy cubes. These can be spent by anyone to move. They can also be spent to “LOOP”, which in this game means resetting some of your cards. 

You win the game by completing four missions before time runs out. There are all sorts of missions and only two are active at any one time. One example of a mission is having removed a red cube from all seven eras. One thing scary about missions is they are linked to eras. If an era gets a rift and it contains a mission, the mission is discarded, and your progress is wasted. 

If you like challenging cooperative games, this is one. It comes with variants that make it even harder. It is a complex problem to solve. There is much variety in the cards and it is fun to figure out how to make the most of them. 

I find the game technically sound but it doesn’t grab me. I can see how it has been balanced well. The evil scientist’s travel plan is semi random. He will visit every era once before visiting any a second time. So initially there are many possibilities and it’s hard to plan, but gradually the possibilities dwindle and you can plan better. Information is open and you can discuss and plan openly. You can take actions that set your teammates up for their turns. Randomness in the game comes from where the red cubes land when they drop from the tower, and also the home eras of the clones you draw. You are in a race to complete four missions before rifts destroy the universe. You often have to do firefighting because otherwise you’d lose. Yet you also need the discipline to work consistently towards completing missions in order to win. 

In some ways this reminds me of Pandemic. I find the time travel theme interchangeable. I don’t feel like I’m doing any time travel. I’m just moving to an adjacent space. And why does the future era cycle back to the ancient era? 

Wayfarers of the South Tigris

In this game set in the Abbasid Caliphate in 820AD, you are explorers, cartographers and astronomers, setting out from Baghdad to explore and map the land, the seas and the skies. As you explore and discover, you must also remember to report back to Baghdad regularly to journal your findings. You score points mostly from the many cards you collect - land, sea and skies. 

The main board looks like this. There are five types of cards along the edges you can buy. Some give you ongoing abilities. Some give you an additional dice placement spot, i.e. a new action you can perform. Some help you score points at game end. Along the top and bottom of the board there are tiles you can collect. These can be added to your player board to give you new abilities and points. The central part of the board is the journaling progress track. Every player has a pawn here, and you will move from left to right. Normally you get to advance when you perform a reset. You need to have fulfilled the criteria for advancement, which are on the black patches between spaces. Whenever you advance to a new space, you gain some benefit. The game ends when one player completes journaling, i.e. reaches one of the end spots on the right. The journaling progress keeps you on your toes. You have to plan ahead how to progress, and make sure you are able to fulfil the requirements when it is time to progress. 

This is a dice placement and worker placement game. You have your own set of dice. Most of the time on your turn you place one on your player board or on one of your cards, and then you perform the action indicated. Normally you do a reset when you use up all your dice or all but one. That means taking them back into your hand and rerolling them. Whenever you do a reset, you have the opportunity to do journaling, i.e. advancing on the journal progress track. Ideally you can make progress every time there is an opportunity, so there is time pressure for you to fulfil the progress conditions before you run out of dice. 

Workers don't belong to you like dice do. Workers can be used for powerful actions. When you use a worker, it is placed on a card. Whoever gains that card afterwards claims that worker too. 

As you collect cards, you add them to your player board like this. Land cards go to the left. Sea cards go to the right. Sky cards go above them. There's a kind of card called inspiration cards. They go on top of sky cards and if you fulfil their conditions, they double the point values of the sky cards. You can get townsfolk cards too. They give you various abilities and they are tucked below land or sea cards. 

There is a little 6x3 grid showing abilities you gain for each die face from 1 to 6. If you look at the die placement spots (white squares), you will notice some are empty and some have icons. The empty ones allow any die, but the ones with icons require that your die has the required ability. For example the die placement spot with a telescope icon means only 6's can be placed on them. In the little grid you can see a telescope under 6. When you roll a 6, it has the telescope ability. Actually by now I have added a telescope under 4, so 4 works too for me. 

Wayfarers of the South Tigris is a complex game. You want to earn resources and buy cards efficiently. You want to improve your abilities so that you are less restricted by die rolls. In some aspects you will compete with other players, for example if you have the most comets, you score more points for your comet cards. Sometimes you just want the same cards, so you will be rushing to grab the right cards. All this while you must keep an eye on your journaling progress. You need to plot your path and plan several rounds ahead how you will fulfil those upcoming conditions. 

My player board / tableau near game end

The dice placement and worker placement in this game is mostly solitaire. You place dice in your own playing area. When you place workers at the common board, they don't block others. So the player interaction is not so much the blocking type, but the racing to grab stuff type. When you are first to reach certain spots in the journaling progress track, you get a benefit. And then sometimes you fight over the same cards. I would say overall the gameplay feeling is low interaction. This is a complex game to digest and work out, and it is challenging. This is very much the kind of game for gamers who like heavy eurogames. 

Soda Smugglers

 

Soda Smugglers is a game by Reiner Knizia. It is arguably a cleaner version of Sheriff of Nottingham. Saying this sounds a little disrespectful to both games. However you can't deny the similarity. The core idea is the same, just that the execution is a little different. 

The box opens this way. 

Every round, one player is the customs officer, and the others are travellers. As a traveller, it is legal to bring one bottle of soda. But that's only going to get you 1 point, and that's not a lot. You want to smuggle more bottles in order to score more points. Every round each traveller draws five cards. Cards in the game have 0 to 3 bottles of soda. Of your five cards, you will use only three. You reveal one face-up and offer it as a bribe to the officer. The other two are bags you intend to carry across the border. 

The officer may accept one of the bribes. That means the officer scores points, and the player whose bribe is accepted gets to score both his bags. The officer may peek at specific bags. Eventually the officer can decide to stop a player suspected of smuggling. That player's two suitcases are checked, and if he is indeed bringing in more than one bottle, the officer confiscates both the suitcases. However if his luggage is legal, the officer must pay him $2 instead. 

That's basically the game. Everyone gets to be the officer twice, and the game ends. Richest wins. 

Money in the game are bottle caps. 

One bribe, and two suitcases.

Officer action tokens for accepting a bribe, inspecting a bag, and making an arrest

This is a game about greed. If you want to get ahead, you need to be greedy. There is much player interaction because you will be persuading the officer to take your bribe and let you pass, or you will be persuading him to arrest the other guy, or maybe you will be trying to trick the officer into falsely accusing you so that he must pay you a fee. There are several possible scenarios. You may offer a handsome bribe and tell the officer that you are fair and you want everyone to win. You may offer a low bribe and explain that times are bad and you are already offering as much as you can afford. It might be true, or you might actually have two full bags of soda. Sometimes even if you offer a good bribe the officer might just decide to arrest you anyway simply because you are leading, or because he has a grudge. In that case, maybe you want to bring just one bottle and set a trap for him. This is a game with some player psychology. 

I would say Soda Smugglers is indeed more streamlined than Sheriff of Nottingham. However I didn't find Sheriff of Nottingham complicated. I thought it worked perfectly fine. Soda Smugglers is even easier to teach. This will work well with casual gamers and non gamers. 

Money!

A full bag!

boardgaming in photos: cats, Kyoto and Essen

This is a giant version of Counting Cats, the latest game from local Malaysian publisher Meja Belakang. Haireey is now using this copy to run game demos. It's a great idea. This is a game of literally counting cats. It is a children's game and casual game designed with his young son in mind. You want to be first to count correctly the number of cats of a specific type. So this is also a speed game. 

A Game of Cat & Mouth also features a cat on the cover. This is a 2-player dexterity game. 

You use a mini catapult which looks like a cat paw to fling balls into your opponent's court. If you get all the yellow balls in your opponent's court, you win. If you look closely, along the cat's mouth are three white balls that can be knocked off. If you get them all into your opponent's court, you win too. The cat's nose is a hole. There's supposed to be a black ball in it. This black ball is an instant win condition. If you knock that black ball off, you win immediately. 

I found out that Sekigahara is getting a digital version. I have not played this for a long time. It's a wonderful game. I should play again. I recently watched a Youtube video of the designer Matt Calkins talking about the game, and I found it very interesting. 

I'd love to say that my game Pilgrim Poker has gone to Essen, but that would be a misrepresentation. Helmer from Norway wanted to get a copy (and one more for Hilko), and asked whether I was going to Essen this year. I wasn't, unfortunately. However Jeff helped me to bring the games to Helmer. Now as a boardgamer, there is a golden rule - don't ask your gamer friends to bring games back from Essen for you, because gosh they are going to have lots of games they want to bring back too. But bringing games to Essen, that is acceptable to ask. 

I got this lovely postcard when I was at the TOBE game fair in Taipei. I don't remember how I got it though. I think Michelle got it when I was doing demos of my games. This may not look like it is boardgame related, but if you look closely, this Guesthouse Bokuyado in Kyoto is a guesthouse that offers boardgames! If you are a gamer and you have plans to visit Kyoto, check them out! 

Red Notice

Red Notice is a two player game of cat and mouse. The criminal and the international police agent race around the globe. The criminal wins by cashing in a total of 1,000,000 in cheques. The agent wins by catching the criminal a third time. 

The world map is divided into six regions. The location of the agent is public information. However, that of the criminal is secret. The criminal’s location is only exposed when she performs certain actions. The agent knows where she is at that point in time, but when she starts moving again, her location becomes hidden again. 

During the game both agent and criminal are able to collect cheques. Cheques are the winning condition for the criminal. They come in specific colours and they can only be cashed in in matching regions. Whenever the criminal cashes in a cheque, her exact location is exposed. The agent also gains a benefit, for example a permanent road block. The agent can cash in cheques too, and she gains a benefit whenever she does so. As the game progresses, the agent gets more and more advantages that help her catch the criminal. 

This action board is how players compete to perform actions. Every round you have three tokens to place. You have your own pool of tokens, and this pool is the same as your opponent's. However every round the three tokens you draw are random. You can place your token next to any of the four action cards and on either side. Tokens are placed face-down and they are only revealed after all have been placed. You compare your token values against your opponent's. If you have the same value, you each perform only the action shown on your side of the card. If you have a higher value, you get to perform the actions on both sides, but your opponent still performs the action on their side. If only you have a token next to a card, you perform both actions. Your opponent doesn't get to perform any, since they don't have a token at all. 

Now there is a Pow token, which beats all number tokens. If you have played this, you remove your opponent's token. So you will get to perform both actions, and your opponent none. 

The actions in the game are moving, drawing cheques, cashing in cheques and security related actions. On the action cards there is also a wild icon. If you win that, you can choose any action. The security action differs between players. The agent can set up road blocks or radars. Radars cover a whole region. When the criminal enters a region, the alarm goes off, and the radar is removed. When the criminal performs the security action, she collects security action points. These action points can later be used to disable radars and roadblocks. 

In the screenshot above you can see black and white radars (large discs) and roadblocks (crosses). The white ones are the normal ones. Black ones are permanent and they come from the agent's upgraded abilities. This screenshot above is the perspective of the criminal, because you can see the criminal (purple pawn) in South America. The agent is the orange pawn and she is in Africa. 

This is a game in which the tension keeps building. I played the criminal first, and I felt the pressure escalate. At first I felt it was a little unfair. Why did the agent get upgrades regardless of who cashed in a cheque? Why was the net closing in on me and I had no relief at all? Only after having played more I understood this was a better balance, in addition to being more exciting. The only time the criminal gets any relief is when she is caught for the first and second times. You have two identity cards you can burn when you are caught, and they give you some actions, e.g. moving to a new location ignoring roadblocks and radars. Being the criminal was a tense experience. I had to work hard to stay ahead of the agent. The cheques I drew somewhat determined where I needed to go. But some places were riskier than others, and sometimes I decided not to even attempt certain regions. 

Strictly speaking there was no time pressure. I could play carefully and keep a safe distance away. Although the agent gained an upgrade whenever either of us cashed in a cheque, there was no other mechanism that forced me to rush. Sometimes it was the temptation to rush for the win that made me take risks. 

The action selection mechanism creates unpredictability. You can't plan your actions precisely. You don't know when your opponent will play the Pow token. You need to put some thought into placing those tokens. 

When I switched to play the agent, I realised how difficult it was to catch the criminal. I should have been more aggressive in cashing in cheques myself, to build my arsenal of weapons. There is much variety in the agent's tools, which can create different board situations. The criminal has several different identities, but only two will be used each game. These create replayability. I think it is fair to call this the grown up and married version of Scotland Yard. 

Playtesting: Inheritance and others

I recently started working on a prototype called Inheritance. What lead to this idea was a game Buddhima showed me. It was a game from Taiwan in which players had to close their eyes, and the sense of touch was used. I thought it would be interesting to try making a game that limited sight, and used touch. I had another prototype that did both, but it didn't seem interesting. It just felt like Werewolf. As I toyed further with the idea, I thought about how people in a coma could still hear the people around them talking, and sometimes they hear the truth and learn the true nature of these people. 

The backstory of Inheritance is something out of Hong Kong TV dramas. The rich business tycoon has just suffered a stroke, and he knows he needs to name a successor in his will. But who should he hand his business empire to? Is that person capable enough to run the business? Is the person loyal to the family business? Is that person his trueborn son or daughter, or in the case of possibly handing the reins to his wife, has she been faithful in their marriage? The tycoon has a secret goal, e.g. he may want to give the company to a person who is capable, and he doesn't care about any other factors. Each potential heir has a secret goal too. Most of the time they just want to be named successor. However sometimes there is someone who just wants to see the world burn. They win if the company is given to someone who is either disloyal or incompetent. 

The heirs have default traits - whether they are capable, loyal or trueborn (or faithful). For example the first wife is capable and faithful, but she is not loyal to the family business. However these default traits may not be the true traits, because of trait cards that are drawn by each heir. The default traits are only what appear on the surface.

An heir's trait cards are placed face-down before them. Heirs can peek at trait cards of other heirs, and openly discuss (*cough* accuse). They can reveal their own cards. They can reveal cards of other heirs. They can give cards to other heirs, potentially modifying their traits. Heirs will jostle to influence and expose one another's traits, and try to convince the tycoon to name them successor. Every round, the tycoon has only one opportunity to look at one trait card of one heir. After that he must write his will. At the end of every round, the tycoon rolls a die to see whether he suffers a second stroke. If he does, he... well... the game ends. The will is read, all goals and traits are revealed. The player or players who fulfil their goals win. 

I was pleasantly surprised by the reactions of my friends who playtested this with me. They loved the drama and the roleplaying. Whoever played the tycoon had to speak unintelligibly, and maybe drool a little. I am excited to work on this. It still has several problems that need to be fixed. I am only testing the four player game now. I need to get this to work at four players before I further develop it for other player counts. I hope this project goes far and eventually gets to a publishable state.  

ButtonShy Games is running their annual competition, with a theme of fear. I thought about using the Shaolin 18 Bronze Men. This would be perfect because ButtonShy makes 18-card games! The fear would be that of Shaolin apprentices facing the formidable 18 Bronze Men, a team of elite warrior monks who assess your martial prowess. This is fictitious and it is from Chinese martial arts novels. The real Shaolin Temple has a fighting technique with a similar name, but it is not the same thing. I playtested my prototype, but it didn't seem interesting. I'm not sure I will continue working on this. 

Jon's potential entry for this competition is more promising. And it is difficult to win. It is a cooperative game about not drawing the ghost card and stripping the deck until only the ghost card remains. It is a challenging puzzle. Players cannot communicate. You try to avoid having to draw a card without knowing what to expect, because it just might be the ghost.  

This is Haireey's racing game prototype. It has been through quite a number of versions. This is a game with some Magical Athlete vibes. I have played two of the most recent versions, and they are a little different. I like both. The earlier one is a bit more strategic. You need to decide which die roll ranges to bet on. Different ranges have different probabilities. Two dice are rolled. Safer bets mean a higher likelihood of moving your car, but it won't move far. If you go for riskier bets, a successful roll means moving far. 

The latest prototype has 3D printed buses by Hwa Siang. 

The the most recent prototype, the core movement mechanism is changed. Every turn only the active player gets to move, and everyone else tries to guess how far he will try to move. Everyone plays a card at the same time. The active player gets to move, but the movement range is reduced based on how many other players guess the correct number. 

The most fun part of the game are the unique player powers. Every player gets to use two powers and they all sound crazy. They are always on powers. One of my powers forces other players starting from  the same space to move backwards instead. 

Rasis brought a new version of his rice field game, Sawah Padi. I have played earlier versions of this, and it is nice to see how the design has improved. The grasshoppers, birds and scarecrows are all still here, but they are handled a little differently. 

The buttons are rice planted by players. If there is a grasshopper in a field, the rice score nothing. The same happens if there is a bird. However if you have both bird and grasshopper, the bird prefers eating the grasshopper and the rice is spared. Scarecrows defeat birds, but they don't help with grasshoppers. 

This is Red Chamber Rummy. It has found a publisher. The plan is Specky Studio will publish both this and Rebels of the Three Kingdoms. They will be part of a set, as both are based on well-known Chinese literary works. I am very happy with how Malaysian Holidays turned out. That was my first collaboration project with Specky Studio, with me being purely game designer and them taking the publisher role. My next two games will be illustrated by the same artist, Lim Chi Qing, and I eagerly look forward to her art. 

This photo above is a horrible hand. 0 (Jia Baoyu) is normally a useful card, but when you have four of them that's not helpful. This is not poker! 

I playtested with Allen and Yee Ling, and we tried the base game and both the main variants. The duplicate meld variant was fun. We made good use of the bonus for making melds that have already been played. At one point I played the 4th set of the 39 meld. A humble 1-point meld was now worth 4 points instead (see below)!

The storytelling variant is a little more complicated and there are more components to manage. I am still thinking about whether the fun is worth the effort. It is novel though. With this variant, every time you make a meld, you check it off a list. The melds in the game are chapters in Dreams of the Red Chamber. Checking off a meld means that chapter has been written. At specific points, e.g. the 4th chapter being written, or the 6th chapter, whoever plays that meld scores a bonus. These bonuses create opportunities and dilemmas for the players. If you have a not-yet-played meld, should you wait and only play it when it will score a bonus? But keeping cards in your hand also means you are potentially sacrificing an opportunity to make more melds.