boardgaming in photos: Pandemic Iberia, 10 Days in Asia, R / Braverats, The Mind, Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle, Ascension

15 Feb 2019. I played Pandemic: Iberia with Benz, Ruby, Xiaozhu and Edwin. We did the variant game, using the advanced yellow disease. In this game, the yellow disease wasn't active in the early game. Other regular diseases kept us busy. At this point we were in the southwest corner containing the black disease. If I remember correctly, we gathered there also because we needed to pass cards to one another. Huelva was a terminal station of the railway network we built, from which we could get to many other cities quickly. Later in the game, the yellow disease attacked and spread very quickly, catching us unprepared. We soon lost the game because we couldn't contain it.

The advanced yellow disease spreads faster than regular diseases. Whenever a port city is infected with a yellow cube, all neighbouring port cities also get infected.

16 Feb 2019. Charles, Yee Fon and Thean playing 10 Days in Asia. During the Chinese New Year period we had a BBQ at Kwe Long's new home, doing a housewarming plus New Year celebration. I brought a few games (red plastic bag in the background), but this was the only one we pulled out to play.

15 Mar 2019. This time playing Pandemic: Iberia we tried the advanced black disease. Whenever a city with no black cubes is to be infected, it immediately gets two black cubes instead of one.

We built the black disease hospital in the southeast, and we linked our railway network all the way here.

We won this game. We managed to research all four diseases, as indicated by the four microscopes. The yellow disease was the last one we researched. We had enough surplus actions to waste, so we all congregated here at the yellow hospital to celebrate our victory, with ribbon cutting and champagne.

23 Mar 2019. I bought five Ascension expansions at one go - Dawn of Champions, Dreamscape, War of Shadows, Gift of the Elements, and Valley of the Ancients. Currently I play with just these. I bought them simply because I wanted some variety. I have been playing Ascension more or less daily for a few years, well exceeding a thousand games played. I find these newer expansions just so so. Ascension is fine without them. Some are OK but not really necessary. Some are a bit tedious to me.

This above is a temple card from Valley of the Ancients. There are three temples in this expansion, one big and two small. The big one is worth 10VP, and the small ones 5VP each. Some cards show a temple icon. When you activate such an icon, you get to claim the corresponding small temple. If you activate the icon when already owning that small temple, you claim the big temple. The Temple of Life in this screenshot also grants 2 Runes.

If you defeat this monster you get to claim both the small temples at one go.

This monster has the keyword Rally. The Rally keyword is followed by a faction name or "monster". If the next card to enter the card row is of that faction or is a monster, you claim (or defeat) it for free.

15 Apr 2019. Zee Zun made a copy of R / Braverats with a Baby Metal theme. He gave me a copy. He is a big fan of Baby Metal, a Japanese heavy metal band. R is a microgame with only 16 cards. My own copy is self-made too, with a Star Wars theme.

28 Apr 2019. It had been a while since I last played Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle. Prior to this I had done 4-player games with my colleagues, and 2-player games with elder daughter Shee Yun. We only made it up to Game 3 (of 7) then. Playing with four was much harder than playing with two. We didn't even manage to beat Game 2. With two, Shee Yun and I beat even Game 3 with ease. It was only then I realised the game difficulty varies much due to the number of players. Searching the internet confirmed my suspicion. Many others feel the same. Now I'm getting my wife Michelle and younger daughter Chen Rui to play as well. Cooperative games work well as a family activity - no competition and no hard feelings, and there's a healthy gotong-royong spirit. Three of us did Game 1 and Game 2, and won easily. They were meant to be tutorial games. I asked Shee Yun to join us for Game 3, and I expected a much bigger challenge due to the number of players. To my surprise, we beat the game comfortably too. I thought we must have played some rule wrong, but as far as I could tell, we didn't. Throughout the game we reminded one another to resolve villain effects and hero effects. Perhaps it was easy simply because we were a strong team? Let's see how things go when we move on to the subsequent games. I hope to be able to go all the way to Game 7. Starting at Game 4 we'll see the use of dice.

9 May 2019. Sometimes I eat lunch at the office, ordering food delivery. I'm usually done eating in 10 minutes, and have time to spare. One lunch break I taught my colleagues to play The Mind - Carol, Xiaozhu, Edwin, Benz and Ruby. They took turns playing since the game supported only four. I didn't play and just enjoyed watching them play. They loved the game. It was funny to watch them play. Once when I wasn't around and they played, Benz who was not playing at the time caught the others using a dubious strategy. They intentionally asked the player with the highest card to play it, which triggered a foul and the loss of one life, but in exchange everybody could discard all their cards, and they could advance to the next level. Strictly speaking this is not against the rules, but I think it's against the spirit of the game. Benz forbade them from doing it again.

In one particular game they played, this happened. Three different people had 3, 4 and 5. This was very difficult to play right. Immediately after the round started, all three of them got ready to play their cards, but when they saw others being just as keen, they knew they were in a precarious situation. When they played all three cards successfully, everybody cheered.