gaming (and space-trucking) in photos

29 Nov 2009. Through the Ages. I have not played this for a while, and still enjoy it a lot. This is yet another 2P game with Michelle. This seems to be the only way we play now. In this game, the Internet wonder gave me 36 points! 6 points for each of my labs and libraries, which were all Age III buildings.

29 Nov 2009. Galaxy Trucker with Big Expansion. We played with the new tiles (including the blue aliens) and with the Rough Roads expansion. In this particular game we had Defective Connectors (one of the Rough Roads cards), which meant connecting the components became much trickier. As much as possible we had to connect simple connectors to simple connectors, doubles to doubles and universals to universals. Normally you can connect universals no either singles or doubles. You are only restricted to not connect singles with doubles. With this card, every mismatching connection slows down the spaceship by one. Our game went very slow because of this.

Notice I only had 3 mismatching connections on the leftmost two columns of my spaceship. So my total speed is only 2, instead of 5. I was desperate enough to use the blue alien life support component (lower left side) as a connector. I had no cabin for the alien.

Michelle had 5 mismatching connections, which means her speed is only 1 - 4 from engines, 2 from the brown alien, and minus 5 for mismatching connections.

Michelle had one extra shield component (lower left corner) which she had "reserved" earlier but was unable to build into her spaceship. That's a $1 penalty. Also notice how many cabins (with 2 astronauts and the brown alien) that she had compared to mine. In this game there were very few cabins and we had to race to find them. With the Big Expansion, due to the additional tiles added into the component mix, you remove 25 tiles for every player less than 5. Only two of us played, so we had to remove 75 tiles.

There was a saboteur on board my ship, and it so happened he sabotaged this particular engine tile (see lower centre part). That's very very bad, because...

... it meant this whole chunk on the left side of my spaceship fell off. I have noone to blame except myself, for poor construction. There is worse news. The other Rough Roads card we had in play was the one where any components falling off from spaceships flying in front of you become large meteors flying towards you. I was in front, which meant...

... there were 10 big meteors speeding towards Michelle's spaceship. They eventually destroyed two thirds of her spaceship. It was all my fault...

Later on, on another adventure card, she was hit by another meteor or cannon fire (I don't remember which), and lost another big chunk of her spaceship. Hmm... now that I look at this photo, I wonder why she didn't choose to lose the smaller broken off part. Probably she made a mistake.

This was what remained of her spaceship.

And yet she (red) reached the destination first, scoring more money ($12) for first arrival. She also scored the $6 bonus for "most beautiful ship", because she had the least exposed connectors. She didn't have many components left to give her many exposed connectors. And what's even more amazing is, she won this game by $2!!! Where's the justice??! Maybe I deserved to lose because it was my fault for causing her so much damage. Karma. It's karma... 报应...

5 Dec 2009. Ticket to Ride: Switzerland. Michelle and I still occasionally bring out one of the Ticket to Ride games to play. Since we usually play 2-player games, our favourite ways to play are Ticket to Ride: Switzerland and original Ticket to Ride with the Big Cities variant that comes with the 1910 expansion. In Ticket to Ride: Switzerland, the Zurich area is almost always congested.

5 Dec 2009. Keltis. The board is randomly set up every time. This particular setup is rather unusual, because the tiles on the yellow track are all wishing stones. Unfortunately I did not have many yellow cards that game. Too bad.

6 Dec 2009. Through the Ages. Another game played with Michelle on a Sunday morning. We are usually quite peaceful and do not spend much effort on military. We rarely play Aggression or War cards. Our military are mostly for surviving events and grabbing colonies. So we usually can do better in infrastructure - science, stone production, food production, culture production etc.

I had 5 colonies in this game, and I had James Cook, which gives 2 culture per colony every turn. Unfortunately he died rather young (I think just 2 turns). He came up as the very last card in Age II, and the Iconoclasm event seeded by Michelle came up soon after he became my leader. Sigh. The Colossus is upside down because we had the Ravages of Time event, which "expires" one Age A wonder. It loses its effect and produces 2 culture per turn instead. My First Space Flight wonder is placed sideways because I failed to complete it. I miscalculated and was one turn short from completing it. My stone production wasn't very strong in Age III.

6 Dec 2009. Galaxy Trucker with Big Expansion. This was ship class IA. It can be oriented in any direction you like. It's a bad-luck ship. Look at the numbers surrounding it. In this game if you are shot at or a meteor flies towards you, you roll two dice to determine where you get hit. These numbers around the ship means no matter what number you roll, your ship will get hit. Those 4 astronauts lying down are frozen in a hibernation unit. You can wake them up if you lose some astronauts during the flight.

Michelle's class IA ship, with a different and more conventional orientation.

My class IIA ship. I employed a blue (cyan?) alien this time. The blue aliens all have different special abilities. This particular one that I recruited helped me sell red and yellow cubes at higher prices.

My class III ship.

Michelle's class III ship.

... which crashed and burned. Well that wasn't too bad. She still had half a ship left. Crashing and burning in Galaxy Trucker can be very brutal, because you can enter a downward spiral. Get hit once, and as you lose some components, your engine strength, or crew size, or firepower reduces, which makes you even more vulnerable in the next encounter.

This was the first time we played with the Evil Machinations expansion. Each player draws 4 Evil Machinations cards at the start of the game. These are special events. Before the building stage of each of the 3 flights, every player secretly selects one Evil Machinations card to play for that flight. These cards are shuffled into the adventure cards deck before the flight phase. I find that the effects of these Evil Machinations cards are not too bad. The Rough Roads expansion is tougher. But the Evil Machination cards can be sneaky, because for each of them only one player knows what to expect. So when you play with this, you probably want to watch how your opponents build their ships, to try to guess what they're up to.

6 Dec 2009. Carcassonne, with Inns & Cathedrals and Abbey and Mayor and some other small expansions. I played a lot of Carcassonne in my early days in the boardgaming hobby. Quite a number of friends whom I introduced it to bought it too. I still enjoy playing it once in a while.

Red fat boy (a.k.a. big meeple) threatening to take over a to-be-merged castle from the green mayor (I call it baggy pants). It was tough to find a tile that fitted in this, so eventually Michelle gave up and put down her abbey tile. Her fat boy was stuck here for quite some time. She probably should have freed her fat boy earlier.