boardgaming in photos

1 Mar 2013. Playing Fearsome Floors at OTK (Boardgamecafe.net). We did a full 7-player game, and there was a massive traffic jam at the entrance to the dungeon. In this game the players try to get their people to escape from the dungeon, starting from the entrance at one end of the dungeon, and leaving from the exit at the other end. There is a monster in the dungeon which will chase after the people and eat them if it catches them.

When the monster reached us, it was like a Christmas feast for it.

This is a simple game, but I badly mangled the rules when I taught the others the game. I have played it before, but it was quite a long time ago, and the reference sheet I had made many years ago was a bit too summarised for me to remember how to play properly. Eventually we had to restart the game. Sorry guys... Once we got the rules right, the game went very smoothly.

8 Mar 2013. It has been a while since I last played A Few Acres of Snow, a game I enjoy a lot (maybe because I actively avoid learning too much about the allegedly game-breaking Halifax Hammer strategy). This time I played the French and Allen the British. As is customary for me when I play the French, I started with a military focus. The French has an infantry in their starting deck, while the British don't. I quickly burnt Pemaquid (the red square at the centre of this photo with no game piece) to the ground.

The game pieces in this photo are a special upgrade done by Allen. He bought these village and town pieces separately. The pieces that come with the game are discs and cubes.

This game turned out to be quite a funny story. I had some initial military successes, while Allen focused on building new settlements. Later Allen's economic engine ran smoother and smoother, while mine struggled. He could afford to buy more infantry and other fighting units than me. We then brought the Red Indians in, using them to ambush each other's infantry. And then of course came the priests and Indian leaders which poached the Red Indians from each other. I knew my military campaign was doomed, and I wouldn't be able to defend against Allen's attacks if he put his mind to it. I hurriedly switched to work on settlements, hoping to catch up to Allen's progress and overtake him. Building settlements and upgrading them to towns are harder for the French, but the French locations tend to have higher VP values. In the late game, I counted and found that if Allen ended the game by building his last town, he would actually lose because I would have a higher VP total. I still had a few more towns to go if I wanted to end the game that way. It was a race against time. I needed to end the game before Allen's military crushed my hopes. Thankfully I was able to do so, and I won the game.

After the game, Allen told me that he actually had no infantry left in his deck when he decided to switch to an offensive strategy. I had been harping on how much stronger he was militarily that even he didn't realise he was not much better than me. I didn't realise my Indians had removed that many infantry units from his deck. It took him one full cycle of his deck to realise he didn't have any infantry left. Only then he started buying infantry again. And of course he kept very quiet about it, not wanting to reveal his weakness. We had a good laugh after the game. Noobs!!

15 Mar 2013. Playing Innovation with Han and Allen. Han returned to Kuala Lumpur from a one-year overseas work assignment, but was immediately posted to another out-of-town assignment, this time in Johor Bahru. Looks like the three of us won't be returning to those regular 3-players sessions just yet. Innovation is the only game that appears on all three of our top-10 lists (done early 2012).

I had a good start in this particular game, managing to score three consecutive achievements for Ages 1 to 3 (bottom right). Just the Innovation base game already provides a lot of variability and replayability. I still have not felt the urge to get the expansions yet. Maybe it's because I don't play Innovation as often as I would like to.

16 Mar 2013. This figure is some warlord character from the Lost Legion expansion of Mage Knight: the Boardgame. It looks good, but the wilting flagpole and sword need to be fixed. The expansion comes with a few new scenarios. The one that we played had this guy returning from exile (or something like that), bringing a horde of monsters, and trying to find and capture a hidden city. We had to prevent that from happening, and also defeat this warlord and his army before time ran out.

The actions of the warlord character are determined by card draws from a card deck especially prepared for him. He will move in a particular direction, recruit more monsters, or attack a nearby hero, depending on what card is drawn. The reference card at the lower left shows what he does depending on the card draw.

The expansion also comes with a new player character - a hot lady.

I had not played Mage Knight for quite some time and had forgotten some of the rules details, but once we got the game going, it felt very familiar, like an old friend. The expansion seems to maintain the flavour and feel of the game, just providing more variety in every aspect. Of course the new scenarios are a welcome addition too. Unfortunately we did not have enough time to complete the scenario we played. We only reached about halfway because we had spent quite some time remembering the rules and checking the rulebooks.