boardgaming in photos: Innovation, Race for the Galaxy, Carcassonne

8 Oct 2023. I played Attika with younger daughter Chen Rui. This was quite a brutal game. I almost connected two temples, but Chen Rui cut me off. We had instances of starting new settlements to grab land and resources from each other. The more I play this game, the more I appreciate it. I have an urge to find an English version. Mine is German. The game was first released in 2003, and it has never been reprinted. That's a shame. It's a great game! 

13 Oct 2023. I played Innovation with Allen. I'll never tire of this game. This is Carl Chudyk's magnum opus. It is an evergreen in my top ten games. It's an unusual game, and also a little challenging to learn, but once you get into it, it is full of surprises and crazy situations. It's a wild ride. 

I had all five colours now, and four of them were splayed. 

I rarely get to ages 8 and above. 

In our game, this was the card which helped me the most - Industrialization. It didn't directly score points, but it helped me draw many cards to be added to my empire. More cards meant more icons, and that meant a much more powerful empire. I could bully Allen, I didn't have to worry about him piggybacking on my dogma powers, and I could piggyback on his dogma powers. 

I had so many cards! By now we had exhausted the Age 8 cards and we were going into Age 9. 

14 Oct 2023. I still play Race for the Galaxy against AI's once in a while. In this particular game I managed to score exactly 100pts. I normally play against 2 other AI players, and my winning rate is probably below a third. So I'm not actually very good at this. It's just that I usually take screenshots only when I win. Most of the time things are not that glamourous. 

The scores for this particular game wasn't high. What was unusual was I tied one AI for the win. We were both at 42pts. The tiebreaker in Race for the Galaxy is remaining hand cards and goods. We tied for that too, at 8. Ties are quite rare, especially when all three expansions are in play. 

15 Oct 2023. I did Carcassonne with my wife Michelle and younger daughter Chen Rui. Michelle and I are veterans, but Chen Rui is quite new to the game. Michelle knew I was the biggest threat and she kept persuading Chen Rui to gang up on me. 

In this photo, Chen Rui (black) was first to start a castle in this area. I (green) was next, placing my meeple on the castle on the left. I placed a regular meeple, so that if Chen Rui and my castles merged, we would both score points for the combined castle. Later Michelle (red) created a new castle on the right. She placed a big meeple, which had the strength of two meeples. If her castle merged with ours, her big meeple would overpower both of ours, leaving us no points. I told Chen Rui, see what your mom is doing to you; you should listen to dad. 

Eventually Chen Rui the newbie won the game. Michelle and I had been too busy tripping each other up.  

The highest scoring castle in the game was this one completed in the early half of the game. It had a cathedral, so it had a x3 multiplier instead of the usual x2. This single castle scored Chen Rui and I 63pts, which was huge. It was very hard for Michelle to catch up. However Michelle did manage to share that very lucrative central field with Chen Rui. I wasn't able to work my way in to neutralise them before the game ended. 

3 Nov 2023. I visited boardgamecafe.net (physically in Cheras) to buy some Exit games. My family likes them. Now some of them contain jigsaw puzzles. I got myself one, to see what it's like. I had not visited the BGC physical store for quite some time, and took the opportunity to browse. There were so many new games I hadn't heard of before. I bought the latest version of Through the Ages and also the expansion New Leaders and Wonders. Michelle and I used to play a lot of Through the Ages. We had a lot of fond memories. Let's see if I can convince her to revisit this. I'm going to ask the children to try this too.