20 May 2019. The children had a gathering with friends. They met up for lunch, and then came to our home. Boardgames were not specifically planned for, but since they were available, and there were games which supported nine, the girls sat down to play. I was probably the most enthusiastic one, because I got to teach new people to play. I taught them The Message: Emissary Crisis, a secret identity team game. Players need to figure out who is friend and foe, and then by knowing this, help their teammates and stop their opponents. I watched them play a whole game, guiding them and reminding them of rules as they played. Some of them were very into it, a few were a little disinterested. At one point Shee Yun and Mui Yee figured out (or should have figured out) that they were on the same team (blue). Mui Yee sent a message, and Shee Yun accepted it. Everyone expected it to be a blue message, because collecting blue messages was their team goal. However when Shee Yun flipped over the message, it turned out to be a black one (bad)! Black messages get people killed. I am not sure whether Mui Yee hadn't figured out she was on the same team as Shee Yun, or she hadn't grasped the whole point of the game. I could imagine half the table mentally slapping their foreheads thinking "Mui Yee what are you doing?!". It was quite funny. Surprisingly the blue team eventually won the game. It might have been another "blur" (clueless) player handing them the victory.
Escape: The Curse of the Temple. Shee Yun did think about teaching her friends this game before the gathering. It is a relatively simple game and it is suitable for new players and non-gamers. They played this a few times.
Some of the girls had played Dixit before.
Since Dixit is more commonly known, I did not need to teach. The girls who knew the game taught those who didn't.
They lost the first few games of Escape (this is a cooperative game where the players win and lose together as a team) but eventually managed to win.
They were very focused because this is a real-time game.
Group photo.
4 Jun 2019. This Spirit of the Ancients, in my opinion, is the most OP (overpowered) card in Ascension. When you play this card, you may use the ability of any Lifebound hero in the whole Ascension game system. Now that the game has so many expansions, there is a huge number of powerful Lifebound heroes to pick from. In this particular game, I not only had Spirit of the Ancients, I also had two other crazy powerful Lifebound heroes.
The Lunar Matriach, whom I think of as Chang E (嫦娥) of Chinese mythology, gives you 5pts, and more if you spend money (OK, technically it's runes, but I always treat it as money because you spend runes to buy cards).
Vyrak the First gives you 10pts! He is expensive, at $12, but you may spend combat strength to buy him. This makes it a little easier.
6 Jun 2019. I asked Chen Rui to play with me a Dragon Castle expansion from the Spielbox magazine. Log from Meeples Cafe has been giving me Spielbox issues for a long time. I don't play as many games as I used to, and often the expansions in the magazine are for games I don't own or have not played. It's nice to have an opportunity to play an expansion from Spielbox.
We picked a dragon card and a spirit card which we hadn't tried before. This spirit card at the top lets you discard one free tile. If a tile you want is blocked by such a free tile, this spirit ability is handy. The dragon card at the bottom awards 1pt per temple built along the edge of your player board.
This is the other side of the expansion. The tiles are arranged in an S shape.
These are two other cards we hadn't tried before. This dragon card requires players to compare yellow, green and red icons on their player boards at the end of the game. Whoever has the most in each colour scores bonus points. The spirit card allows tiles of the same value to form groups. Normally groups can only be formed using tiles of the same colour (suit).
14 Jun 2019. Santiago is an old game, published in 2003. It is now out of print. Jeff has some in stock (Boardgamecafe.biz), and I couldn't resist grabbing a copy. I had played it before and I remembered it fondly. Now that I had bought a copy, I needed to get it played, at least once. If after buying it I only put it on the shelf, I would feel guilty. I managed to loop in four others to play with me. Five players is the max, and also the most competitive. This green plantation formed in the first round had much potential. There was still much space for expansion. Two players had stakes in it, and both would try to expand it.
The initial few plantations continued to grow. As the green plantation continued to grow, benefiting the grey and wood players, others would try to stop it. In fact the blocking had started in the lower left. Three tiles had dried up by now due to lack of irrigation. The red plantation benefited the purple player the most now. He had four cubes on it. The central yellow plantation and the blue plantation on the right both had three stakeholders, i.e. more than half the players. They had better chances of further growth.
The irrigation system mostly grew northwards.
At end game, the left and right halves made a huge contrast - very dry on the left half. Santiago has few rules, but once you get into the game, you find that there are many cunning moves. There are many nasty things you can do to your opponents, e.g. forcing them to spend their hard earned money, leaving their tiles to dry, preventing them from using their emergency irrigation, blocking off their growth. There are interlocking interests. Often you collaborate with one opponent in one area, but compete with him elsewhere. This game is in the style of the 90's and early 00's. There aren't many games like these now. It is elegant yet strategic, a clever design.
No comments:
Post a Comment