boardgaming in photos: The Palaces of Carrara, Hanabi, Love Letter

6 Feb 2015. This is my copy of The Palaces of Carrara, which Jeff helped to bring all the way back from Germany. This was the first time I played with my own copy. Previously I played Chong Sean's. I taught Allen, Ivan and Sinbad. I had played twice before. I emphasised the importance of watching out for an expectedly early game end. I lost rather badly the first two times because I didn't grasp the tempo of the game. It turned out that I did even worse this time! I not only came last, I hadn't even perform a single scoring action when Ivan ended the game. Talk about not heeding your own advice...

8 Feb 2015. I played Pandemic: The Cure with the children. I felt we won rather easily again. I was starting to feel cold towards the game because it felt too easy. This was on normal difficulty. We had not tried the hard difficulty. More recently I played again with only Chen Rui (8), and finally we suffered our first loss. We also played at normal difficulty, but this was the first time I played the game with only two players. I wonder whether it is harder to beat as a 2P game (my previous games were all 3-5P games), or we were just rather unlucky (we did roll many biohazard icons). Or maybe I have been lucky in all the previous games I've played. I was rather happy to have finally lost. Perhaps the game deserves more plays.

Shee Yun (9) likes this game. I have been telling the children I should teach them the original boardgame version, but we still have not managed that.

15 Feb 2015. Playing Machi Koro again. We all like it.

20 Feb 2015. I managed to play quite many games during the Chinese / Lunar New Year holidays. This is Hanabi, a cooperative game where you can't see your own hand of cards and need to rely on clues given by others. When Shee Yun saw this hand, she said it was very hard to give me a clue, and she had to take a photo to show me afterwards, after the game ended.

I have played Hanabi quite a few times, but only recently realised a rule mistake. It was Shee Yun who pointed it out after she read the rules herself. When a player manages to play a #5 card, the team earns one clue token. I have always missed this. Clue tokens gained this way can be a great help. I guess I'll say I have been playing ironman rules all this while.

Shee Yun trying to give me a clue. We are using my mum's mahjong table back in my hometown.

We played my self-made copy of Adventure Time-themed Love Letter. We used dice from Roll for the Galaxy as score markers.

If not because of this Adventure Time version found on BGG, I probably would not have bothered to try Love Letter. Even if someone else had introduced it to me, I might not have found it interesting. The original artwork (of the AEG English version) is rather boring to me. So yes, I admit I am shallow. The theme and artwork influence how much I enjoy this game. Actually I don't even watch Adventure Time and I don't know those characters. My children do. I didn't even know BMO is pronounced "Bee-mo" instead of "B-M-O". So, really it's just the artwork that got me, not the theme.

The number of points you need to win differs depending on the number of players, but when we play, we usually just play to three points regardless of the number of players. If we feel like playing more, we just reset scores and play another game.

The #2 card in my hand can be used to peek at another player's hand card. However the players on my left and opposite of me have both played the #4 card to protect themselves, so I can only use the #2 card on the player to my right, if I choose to use it.

Chen Rui (right) probably had her card guessed correctly by Shee Yun, which meant she was out of the round.

23 Feb 2015. I persuaded my mum to play with us. She is always a little intimidated by the games we play. They look complicated to her. I convinced her that this one really was a simple game. So we played. And had much fun. The text was too small for her, so I asked her to just memorise the card powers by the numbers. Here's what happened in one of the rounds we played:

Ma used a #2 card to peek at Chen Rui's card. When Chen Rui's turn came around, instead of using the card which Ma had seen, she played the card which she had just drawn (risky move). It was a card which allowed her to compare hard cards with another player, and whoever has the lower card in hand is eliminated from the round. Chen Rui did win the contest. The loser's card was a #5. #8 had already appeared. So I knew her hand card must be a #6 or a #7. Then Ma's turn came around again. She happened to have a #1 card, which allowed her to guess another player's hand card. If the guess was right, that player would be eliminated. She declared she was guessing that Chen Rui's card was a #7. It was wrong! I looked at Ma and asked her - you have just seen Chen Rui's card and know what it is, you didn't have to guess. She started laughing. (Silly) mistakes were made.