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.