Skyrise

The Game

Skyrise is an auction game with a spatial element. It is a reimplementation of Metropolys, which was first published in 2008. I own Metropolys, and find it a fine game. Skyrise is a major facelift plus some additions to gameplay. 

The game board has two layers. The bottom layer is mostly just a backdrop. It has the score track around the edges and spaces for four sponsors. The real game board is those plastic platforms on top of the cardboard board. How many pieces to use depends on the number of players. The platforms vary in details, so you can mix and match and fiddle with their positions to create different game boards. 

The edges of the platforms are sculpted nicely in a steampunk style. This is not only for the sake of being pretty. This affects gameplay. Notice that bridge which spans the two platforms. This means those two specific districts are connected for gameplay purposes. 

The most beautiful part of the game is these player buildings. Every player has their own set of unique buildings. They are divided into three heights - tall, medium, low. One of the buildings for every player is a wonder. For the green player, the wonder is that statue at the top right. 

There are numbers at the bottom of the buildings. Higher number means stronger. These numbers are used in the bidding / auction mechanism. The game is divided into two halves, and those buildings with a dot below their numbers only come into play in the second half. 

None of the players' building numbers overlap, so there will not be ties during bidding. Wonders do not have a number. They are just marked with a W. 

During setup, every district on the game board is given a token at random. In Skyrise you construct buildings in the districts. Every district allows one building. When you build, you claim the token. The game ends after everyone has built all their buildings. There are many ways your buildings score points for you. Some scoring criteria are consistent for all players. However there are also quite a few criteria that will vary between players. So districts usually have different values to different players. 

The bidding mechanism is interesting. This is the core of the game. When a round starts, the start player places a building (number side showing) in an empty district. This is where she proposes to build her building. If no one objects, the project goes ahead and the round ends. If someone objects, that player must then place her own building in a neighbouring district, proposing her building (with a higher number) instead. This can go on and on, until eventually no one wants to outbid, or no one is able to outbid. The final, highest valued building gets constructed. All other proposed buildings are returned to their owners. The winning player starts the next round. 

This is the player board. When you collect tokens from the board, you place them here. In the game there are districts in four colours. When you collect a colour token, you place it in the corresponding row. This modifies the value of districts of that particular colour that you control. Districts have a base value of 2 points. They can go up to 6 points. If you look carefully at this player board, you will notice that if you collect the fourth token of a district colour, you are devaluing that district colour from 6pts to 4pts. There is a reason for this. If you collect the 5th token, every token from then on is worth 10pts. As you watch what tokens your opponents collect, you will know which districts they are more likely to want. 

This is another way of scoring points. Everyone gets a different secret mission. If you fulfil it by game end, you score points as indicated. This particular mission requires that I control four yellow districts by game end. 

Here are some scoring criteria that are common across players. These cards are randomly drawn at game start. The scoring conditions here are: (1) The player with the most and highest buildings on each platform scores 5pts. (2) Players who surround blimps score 3pts per blimp surrounded. (3) Districts with windmills are worth 2pts more. 

There are four sponsors in the game, A, B, C and D. Their tokens are scattered around the board and you can collect them. However the values of the tokens are initially unknown. The values are on those face-down tiles next to each of the sponsors. Only when you collect a token, you get to check its value. 

The core mechanism of the game is straight-forward. The various scoring criteria create uneven values for the players. Everyone has the same number of buildings and will eventually place them all. Your job is to maximise the points you get from your building placement. 

The Play

The version I played was the deluxe version, so the experience was amazing. The core mechanism in the game was the same as Metropolys, so the game was immediately familiar to me. This simple core mechanism creates many interesting tactical plays. The first building proposal is often outbid, and the eventual building being constructed can be pretty far away due to the chain of proposals as players outbid one another. When you place a proposal, it might not be a district you want. You may be hoping to lead the chain of proposals to somewhere you truly want. Sometimes if you know your opponent is keen on a particular district, you can place a high valued building proposal next to it, and force her to spend her own even higher valued building. Sometimes if the surrounding districts are poor and you think no one else will be interested, you can use a low valued building to claim a district, because chances are everyone else will be willing to let you win. Dead ends are an interesting tactical consideration. As more and more districts are claimed, there will be more dead ends. Dead ends allow you to win a district using a low valued building, simply because there are no other available neighbouring districts for others to outbid you with. 

There are many ways to score points, so evaluating a particular district is tricky. You have to consider how much it is worth to you and also how much it is worth to each of your opponents. You want to score more points. You also want to prevent your opponents from doing so. 

The wonder mechanism is something new which did not exist in Metropolys. Wonders can only be used in the second half. At the start of the game, you get three wonder powers. At mid game, you must discard two and declare the power you are left with. When you build your wonder, you apply this power. Wonders give instant wins. The only restriction is you may not start a round with a wonder. It can only be used to outbid someone else's building. The moment you place a wonder, you win that round immediately and the wonder gets built. Wonder powers are all related to scoring points based on a specific criteria. You want to set up the board situation as best you can to maximise the power of your wonder. 

These stunningly beautiful pieces are score markers. 

At game end, the first player to construct all buildings gets 10pts, and the second gets 4pts. Talk about being overproduced! 

Every building of every player is unique. Much time, money and effort has been spent on making this game breathtakingly beautiful. 

The Thoughts

Skyrise may appear complicated but it's actually an accessible mid-weight game. The core mechanism is solid and provides an interesting play experience. Skyrise is a bit more complex than Metropolys, not in terms of the core mechanism, but in terms of the various scoring criteria. There are more than I'd like. I think it could have been somewhat simplified. However, comparing the two, I like Skyrise better. This is purely comparing gameplay, without considering the components and artwork. The scoring criteria in Metropolys are not varied enough, I feel. So I welcome the additional mechanisms in Skyrise. 

I would describe the deluxe version as overproduced. The game certainly doesn't need to be that pretty. But I'm not complaining. The standard version looks decent. However if you compare the two, it looks boring. Aaah we are all spoiled by these deluxified boardgames. 

When Metropolys was first released, many complained about how ugly the board was. It was functional, but ugly. The board in Skyrise is gentler to the eyes. My only complaint is the white and the yellow districts look quite similar. The white is a lighter yellow. I made a wrong play because I confused the two colours. 

Asian Board Games Festival Malaysia 2024 - convention report

The Asian Board Games Festival (ABGF) was run in Malaysia for the first time on 20-21 Jul 2024. It was run in Penang. Many game designers from Kuala Lumpur made the way to Penang to be exhibitors. There were also quite a few visitors who traveled all the way there from KL. That is amazing. It's a four hour drive at least, unless you drive very fast. 

This was the first time I used my red Cili Padi Games desk mat. I'm quite pleased with it. Jon told me that he used to use a desk mat too, but has decided not to now, because his logo design is a bit complicated and is thus visually distracting when playing games. He's going to work on a new desk mat design. Mine should be alright, since my logo is simple. 

The tables are not very big. I had originally intended to display more of my games, but due to the table size eventually I only displayed my two published games Dancing Queen and Snow White and the Eleven Dwarfs. I did demo my unpublished prototypes though. 

ABGF was held in conjunction with a bigger event, the George Town Festival, which was from 19 to 28 July. 

This is Tradition and Innovation, my latest game design project. The festival was an opportunity to get my games playtested with new players. The design criteria for this project included being playable by primary school children and lasting no more than 30 minutes. So the overall design is simple. When I put together the game, in my mind I told myself this wasn't really the kind of game I like, because it was too simple for me. I was making the game for others to like, not for myself. During ABGF I managed to get Tradition and Innovation played by many different groups of different sizes (testing different player counts). One pleasant surprise was it created quite a few dramatic moments. In one particular game, we came down to the very last card draw in the very last round, which would determine whether the leading team would win, or the game would end with no winner. That was a nail-biting experience. Now I'm more excited about further developing the game. Maybe with some adjustments or additions I can make this a light strategy game which I would be keen to play too. I have also thought about turning this into a training activity that I can use in my training work. There is a moral-of-the-story thing behind this game. It is not a cooperative game. It is a team vs team game. However there is a message about greater good vs selfishness. 

I taught Dancing Queen many times. 

Cedric wore a dragon hat while teaching his dragon boat game. His booth was right next to mine. 

Haireey is from Penang so he was back at his home turf. His Meja Belakang brand colour is light blue, so he has a different tablecloth that stands out among the crowd. 

The festival ran 10am to 10pm both days. For those 12 hours most of us exhibitors had no time to rest. Almost every table had a non-stop flow of people wanting to play. I didn't really have time to eat. I ate burgers halfway through teaching games. Even toilet breaks were barely possible. I wanted to visit other booths and try other designers' games. There was a designer from Vietnam and I was curious to try her game. Unfortunately I simply did not have time to visit others. The other reason was since they were so busy teaching their games to visitors, it wouldn't be nice for me to take up their time. After the event there was a gathering for exhibitors at Kohii boardgame cafe to play one another's games. Too bad I couldn't join as I had to leave for Kuala Lumpur by then. 

The Asian Board Game Festival was initiated by Daryl Chow and Nick Pang of Origame from Singapore. They are an established publisher now and have many titles under their belt. Their games have reached many countries. The Malaysian ABGF was organised by Choon Ean (Kaki Lima, Bansan) from LUMA and her team. It was a successful event and we are all looking forward to the next one. We still need to work hard to spread the love of boardgames in Malaysia. It is still a pretty niche hobby and most Malaysians know nothing about modern boardgames. We still have a lot of work to do. 

Chee Kong's booth was on the 1st floor. Mine was on the ground floor. Normally for boardgame events we would worry that the ground floor would get decent foot traffic, but the 1st floor would get little. In our case, the 1st floor booths were just as busy as the ground floor booths. It was amazing. 

The minimum player count for Snow White and the Eleven Dwarfs is seven. Often when I exhibit at events it is hard to get enough players. Not many visitors at events go in groups of seven or more. At ABGF, we had enough visitors that it was easy to bring together different groups to play. I managed to demonstrate Snow White quite a fair bit. My booth didn't have enough chairs and some of the players had to stand. Thankfully they only needed to hold one card throughout the whole game, so not having a seat wasn't an issue. Whenever any visitor asked to play Snow White and didn't have enough players, we just turned around and ask other visitors whether they wanted to join. Most of the time we could quickly find willing dwarfs. 

Photo credit: Kee Sit

Day 2 of the festival, a Sunday, was Poon Jon's birthday. All of us sang him a birthday song at the mall. It must have been unforgettable for him. 

Photo credit: Tropical Spice Garden

The day after the festival, a Monday, some of us exhibitors visited the Tropical Spice Garden. This is probably the most zen group photo I have ever been part of. 

I had a great experience at the ABGF. One thing that I truly appreciated is to be able to connect with  people in boardgame related businesses in the north. Boardgame cafe owners, bookstore owners, retailers. It is a joy to be in the company of fellow enthusiasts who are also working hard promoting boardgames in Malaysia. I hope boardgames in Malaysia continue to grow, and bring joy and connections to many more people. 

Siege Storm

The Game

Siege Storm is a 2-player head-to-head battle card game with a fantasy setting. You each have your own deck of 34 cards. Every card is a fighter. Cards are also your basic currency - gems, which you need to spend to play cards. Your deck is your life points. Your goal is to make your opponent exhaust their deck before you do yours. It's a fight to the death. 

The game box has two compartments for the two decks that come with the game - a good guy deck and a bad guy deck. Seraphia and Styxia. The game has expansion decks so you can play with other factions. 

The factions have different card backs. 

There is only one card type in the game. They are all fighters. The number at the top left corner is the cost to play a card. You pay in gems. Your cards are gems. That means to play a card, you will have to discard other cards from your hand. The number at the bottom left is the attack strength, and at the bottom right corner the defense strength. There are two powers in the centre. The action is what you can perform immediately by playing the card as an action. If you play the card as a fighter, the action can also be triggered after three rounds. The passive ability takes effect as long as the card is in play and face-up. 

This game lets you to do deck-building. A playable deck requires 34 cards. You get more than that number of cards for both the factions. Some cards are marked and they are the recommended deck for beginners. Once you get familiar with the game you can customise your deck. Duplicate cards are allowed. 

A game is set up like this. The three cards at the centre represent the front line. You can send fighters here to hold ground. The purpose of holding ground is simply to allow a fighter's passive ability to remain in effect. The three stacks on the right are your draw deck, just that it is split into three. This is for the sake of providing a visual cue for how many life points you still have. You always draw cards from the top deck. When one deck runs out, you move on to the next one. 

The space between the front line column and your health bar column is the marching column. This is where you deploy fighters and where they advance. You always deploy a fighter at the bottom position. Every turn, your fighters move forward one position. When they advance from the top position, you must decide what to ask them to do. You have three options. You can get your fighter to storm the opponent. The action of the card is triggered. Your fighter also attacks your opponent or one of their fighters. Or you can position your fighter to hold ground, i.e. to camp at a front line position. Or you can convert your fighter to play a support role. From that point onwards, it gives you a discount when you play cards. 

These are the core mechanisms of the game. Not very complicated. The cards have various abilities, and that's where things get more interesting. The various card abilities define the characteristics of the factions. 

The Play

When playing a game of this nature, I can't avoid comparing it against Magic: The Gathering. I'm a newbie in Magic. I have only tried it a few times. Siege Storm has a different core system, but I consider it a similar kind of game. Every turn you will draw cards and thus deplete your life points. You can look at this as a benchmark. You need to play your cards well to deplete your opponent's life points efficiently. Much more efficiently than 2 cards per turn. 

One difficult decision you have to make in the game is which cards to play and which cards to sacrifice as payment for the card you play. This is similar to Race for the Galaxy. This is sometimes quite painful. Another decision which can sometimes be tricky is whether to play a card as a fighter or as an action. The action would be immediate and impactful, but if you play the card as a fighter and wait three turns, you will have more options. You can storm, i.e. launch an attack. You can have the fighter hold ground, i.e. extend its passive power. You can create a supporter, i.e. long term discount. If you play a fighter, your card is exposed and you are giving your opponent time to prepare to respond. If you see a powerful attack coming, you probably want to deploy a high defense fighter as a shield. 

You won't be able to play all cards. Some will be spent as payment. 

Now my opponent has two fighters on his marching path and one of them is about to strike. I only have one fighter on my marching path, newly deployed. This is in preparation for the impending attack. 

The face-down card at the bottom left is a support minion. This was a fighter which had completed its march and I had chosen to turn it into support. Horizontal placement means I have used its discount power this turn. I will reset it to vertical orientation at the start of my next turn. 

To play well you need to be familiar with your deck, and your opponent's as well. It will help you plan and strategise. The luck of the draw will affect how you play. You need to be flexible. You do know what cards you have in your deck, so you can anticipate what will eventually come. It seems to me in the early game you should send fighters to hold ground (so that you enjoy the long term passive abilities) and also to play support (so that you get discounts for the rest of the game). These seem to be simply sound preparation and build up. There are some cards which let you launch early and effective attacks, which is contrary to this general strategy. Probably there will be more different tactics with other decks. I am only scratching the surface now. 

The Thoughts

If one-on-one battle card games is your thing, Siege Storm is worth checking out. It's short and sweet. It's pretty. I'm not really into this genre, so at the moment I have only taken a quick taste. There is certainly more of it I have not seen or appreciated. I think you'll need many more plays and also you need to fiddle with the deck-building aspect to fully enjoy the game. The two factions in this base game are quite different and have their unique styles of play. The good guys can heal themselves by moving cards from the discard pile back to the draw deck. They also have some expensive but powerful angels. If you get rich enough, deploying an angel can deal a killer blow to your opponent. The bad guys have some disposable but quick and strong units which can be sent on early suicide missions, messing with the opponent's tempo. I checked BGG and there are four other faction decks which have been released. 

Asian Board Games Festival Malaysia 2024 in Penang

 

Just three more days to go! It's happening this weekend! This is the first time the Asian Board Games Festival is happening in Malaysia, and it will be in Penang as part of the George Town Festival. ABGF will be 20-21 July 2024, at 1st Avenue Mall. If you are in Penang this weekend, come visit me! My stall is on the Ground Floor.

My bags are packed. I realise after taking this photo that I look like a drug dealer or counterfeit currency dealer, with my goods packed like this in a suitcase. But then maybe selling games is not all that different from selling drugs. I've been an addict for 20 years.

Come play with me this weekend! In addition to Snow White and the Eleven Dwarfs and Dancing Queen, I will also be showcasing other new games in development. See you in Penang!

The Secret Flower

The Game

The Secret Flower is a microgame from Singapore, by Daryl Chow and Daniel Lee. It is a cooperative deduction game. There are only 16 cards, numbered from 1 to 16. One of them is randomly removed face-down. The others are distributed to the players. Your goal is to find out the missing number. That is the secret flower. Every card features a different flower. The challenge in this game is you may not freely communicate information you have. You can only communicate through card play. After a fixed number of actions, everyone must be able to guess the secret flower correctly for you to win. 

During game setup, other than the secret flower, the rest of the cards are dealt out to players based on the player count. Some of a player's cards are to be placed face-down in a row before them, in order from small to large number. The other cards are held in the player's hand. During the game these cards will be played as actions. 

In addition to the number, a card has two other properties - whether it is herbaceous or woody, and what colour it is. The card also has a question. You pose the question to a specific face-down card belonging to a player in order to obtain and share information. 

During the game, players take turn playing cards. When a card is played on one of your face-down cards, you answer the question. This is how you share information with your teammates. When a card is played, the card itself also contributes to public information, because it is now exposed. You know what number it is, so you can rule it out as the secret flower. Once all cards are played, the players must immediately and simultaneously declare what they think the secret flower is. You win together only if everyone gets it right. 

This is a 2-player game in progress. The secret flower is in the middle. Cards which have been played as questions are face-up and tucked under the cards they are posed to. You can pose a question to your own card. This is for you to share information about your card to others. Also, a card can have more than one question posed to it. 

This is the card back. It is designed this way so that it also serves as a reference card. All 16 cards are listed here, showing their colours and also whether they are herbaceous or woody. 

The Play

So far I have only played this with 2 players. Jon likes this a lot and recommended it to me. The moment I started playing, I decided I needed to take notes. I used Jon's smartphone which has a stylus to take notes. I wrote down all 16 numbers and crossed out those I had seen. I also took notes when I managed to narrow down the possibilities of some of the face-down cards. It's possible to keep all this in your head, but I am too lazy to do so. 

The game is a process of elimination. You are not really meant to guess the secret flower. You go through a logical process to calculate what it is. If you play well, you should be able to work out what it is without needing to resort to guessing. One challenge though, is everyone must be able to work it out, not just one person. This is a game of logical reasoning. 

The icon in the top left corner indicates whether the card is herbaceous or woody. Along the edges of the card are the possible answers to the question on the card. 

I am guessing the 2-player game is easier than the 3- to 5-player games, because at the start of the game you'll have seen almost half the cards in the game. With more players, you initially have access to fewer cards. There will be more you need to figure out. 

The Thoughts

This game is a clever idea. It's short and sweet, and it gives your brain some exercise. This is a deduction game, so you do have to do some work. It is a group puzzle solving activity. You start with limited information. You need to work out how best to use the questions you have to uncover as much information as possible, so that everyone can work out the secret flower. 

I realise there is some similarity to Snow White and the Eleven Dwarfs. 

Ticket to Ride Legacy - The Finale

I started the 12-game Ticket to Ride Legacy campaign in November 2023. When I was about halfway through, I wrote about it. That was up to Game 7, or Year 1865 to 1883 in game terms. Now that I have completed the campaign, I'll make some addendums. Not a lot to add. My impression is generally the same. This is a fun legacy game. The new mechanisms added from Year 1886 to 1898 are interesting. I will mention a little about the post-campaign game. After you are done with the 12-game campaign, you will still have a playable game. There will be no more changes to the game components. Many of the campaign game elements will no longer be in play, but some do remain. Some remain and work slightly differently. Now you play with a map which you have highly customised throughout your campaign. This is effectively having your own personalised Ticket to Ride map with its own history. 

I personally am not too enthusiastic about the post-campaign game. If I were to play a Ticket to Ride game, I'd probably pick another variant. The post-campaign game has a larger map than the original Ticket to Ride. There are more cities and more tickets. You can think of it as an advanced version. It keeps some elements from the legacy campaign which don't exist in the original game. Most of these additional elements are not very interesting to me. So my copy of the game is more a souvenir than a game. I do think the enjoyment I gained throughout the campaign is well worth the price. Ticket to Ride Legacy is now a finalist for the 2024 Spiel des Jahres. It would be great if it eventually wins. It will introduce the legacy game concept to many more people. 

~~~~~

SPOILER ALERT: If you have not played the game and you think you might play it, proceed no further. If you have completed the campaign, or if you are sure you won't be playing, read on. 

We had a big gap between our 7th and 8th game. We went back to my hometown in Sabah for a family holiday. I brought the game so that we could resume our campaign then. We managed to complete the campaign over the holidays. 

The dining table at my parents' home in Kota Kinabalu is a traditional round Chinese table with a Lazy Susan. That doesn't work quite well for playing boardgames. So we used mahjong tables. They are not big enough so we had to use two. 

These are the treasure map cards which help when hunting for treasure. When building routes in the Sierra Madre region, you can choose to buy a map, or attempt to find a treasure. When you use maps to help find treasure, you must use maps with different alphabets. Duplicate maps don't help. 

This is one of the long distance tickets. 

We were halfway through the campaign when I realised we had missed an important rule. Whenever you build a route which connects to a major city, you get to draw a train card from the top of the deck. This is a great rule! And I missed it! This makes connecting to major cities attractive, and thus also competitive. I love that this makes players feel they are getting a good deal. I imagine the reason for this is to speed up the pace. With a bigger map, the game may become draggy. This little bonus helps mitigate this. 

I enjoyed converting towns to my company towns. When doing this, I got to stick my company sticker onto the towns. From then on, anyone who connected to my town had to pay me $1. It wasn't a lot, but it felt good. Claiming towns isn't something you can do any time you want. You only get to do this at certain events or when an employee allows you to. I kept employing the Vice President game after game because he was the one who would let me claim towns. In the campaign every player gets a little sticker sheet with town stickers. I managed to use up all my town stickers just before the campaign ended. That was highly satisfying. 

After the campaign ends, the company towns still remain in play in the post-campaign game. However they now work differently. You don't get to make money from other players. Instead the company towns become third party towns. Anyone who connects to any company town must pay $1 to the bank. I had built many company towns throughout our campaign, which meant in our post-campaign game we would be paying $1 to the bank more often. Michelle and the girls told me I was making life difficult for everyone. Hey you can't fault me like that. How would I know this would happen? If I did, well, I probably would have done it anyway. Because stickering is fun. 

This board section is the Haunted Wastes. It is mountainous, so many routes are tunnel routes. To build tracks here for the first time, all the cards you use must have the pickaxe icon. Not all train cards in the game have the pickaxe. All locomotives (jokers) have the pickaxe. Often when building tunnel routes locomotives will be needed. It is difficult to collect many colour train cards with pickaxes. Tunnels are tough, but you gain a reward the moment you build a tunnel route. How much money you earn is written on the route. This is a one-time bonus. Once you apply your colour stickers over the route, this becomes a normal colour route. You won't need pickaxes for it anymore from the next game onwards. 

This is the ghost train. When a game starts, you place it at a specific spot. Whenever anyone builds a white route, roll the ghost die to move the ghost train. If the ghost train stops next to a route you have claimed, you are cursed by it. You draw a curse card and it takes effect indefinitely until you disable it. It even carries over to the next game. Thankfully it is not too difficult to remove the curse. You only need to sacrifice some train cards. The curses are not all severe. Most seem to be inconveniences rather than disasters. 

This particular curse disables your employee. Ungrateful fella...

When the tunnels came into play, I finally understood why there were pickaxe icons on some cards. There are pickaxe icons in the card corners - such a considerate graphic design. If you hold your cards fanned, you can easily see the pickaxe icons. 

My green train pieces are sometimes a little confusing because each train piece looks like two pieces. Each piece is two small carriages linked together. 

I was trying to build a black tunnel, and it was not easy to collect enough black train cards with pickaxes. I had to use locomotives. 

Building tracks here is risky, because you may be visited by the ghost train. That little space next to the track with a bone icon is a parking spot for the ghost train. 

The first time I successfully found lost treasure, I earned $36. Later we found out that the treasure value would keep diminishing. 

This was when the fifth and last treasure was found. 

Advancing to California!

The mechanism introduced in California was the bridges. You earn $2 for building a track with bridges. However this comes with some risk. Earthquakes happen and may damage the bridges. Routes with damaged bridges don't help you complete tickets. In order to repair bridges, you have to keep unused locomotives in hand when the game ends. 

One of the earthquake events

If you build a tunnel route here you will earn $10. 

All five face-up train cards were blue! Younger daughter Chen Rui was the blue player, but at this point she wasn't collecting blue train cards. 

This is how treasure hunting works. To succeed you need to draw 10 cards from the deck without revealing any skulls. Treasure maps help you by cancelling skulls you draw. Each map cancels one skull. Of the 10 cards drawn above, only three have skulls. There are enough treasure maps to cancel these skulls, so the treasure is found! 

Finally we had a complete map. This was at the end of the Game 10. So Game 11 and 12 were played on the complete map. 

When the Cascadia region was revealed (north western region), it triggered a gold rush. In the following game, we were all kept busy bringing people there to look for gold. 

This is a claim card used during the gold rush game. Every player gets one such claim card. A destination is specified, together with five starting cities. Your goal is to connect as many of these starting cities as possible to the destination city. Each time a starting city is connected, you scratch off one of the gold nuggets on the right to claim a reward. 

I played the gold rush successfully and managed to connect all five of the starting cities. During a gold rush, it is not the gold diggers who make money, it is the clever shovel sellers who make money. 

 

In one particular game I earned this much cash. Indecent! This included cash from the gold rush and also from finding lost treasure. I was filthy rich. 

This was a new mechanism introduced in the last two games of the campaign - the train timetable. 

The timetable is a grid showing all the cities on the completed map. This is a bingo game. You have two games to try to cross off as many cities as possible. You cross off a city when you connect to it. For every completed row or column, you earn $10 at the end of the second game. 

I did poorly in this. I didn't make any money from it. Not a single row or column was completed. Elder daughter Shee Yun was most successful in this, making $70. She had completed her tickets early, and had the luxury of taking time to deliberately complete rows and columns. My tickets were challenging and kept me occupied. I only managed to get them completed near game end. 

This particular employee is the psychic. Every turn you may take a look at the top card of the draw deck. This seems powerful, but I'm not sure in practice whether it is as useful as it sounds. I didn't employ her. Chen Rui did, and she did seem to enjoy using the psychic. 

Game 12 was the finale, and the story needed to come to a conclusion. The major thread was Mama O'Connell, notorious gangster. It was time she was hunted down to face the law. In Game 12, after you complete a ticket, you can reveal it to use it to look at clue cards, or to attempt to arrest Mama O'Connell. In our game, only Shee Yun and Michelle made an effort to look for Mama O'Connell. They were able to complete some tickets early. My tickets took a long time to complete, so I could not compete at all in this. Although Shee Yun was first to embark on the hunt, Michelle beat her to locate Mama O'Connell. Every player only has one chance to attempt to locate Mama O'Connell. You have to declare where you think she is. If you are right, you claim a big reward. If you are wrong, others will know which city to rule out, and you are not allowed to make a second attempt. Michelle's attempt was the first one in the whole game, and she got it right. 

After the campaign ended, the story cards directed us to look under the box insert. This was where we found more components, including the rulebook for the post-campaign game. This rulebook lists the components to be retained for the post-campaign game, and those to be retired permanently. 

These grey route stickers were provided for us to stick on track beds which were still unclaimed by the end of the campaign. These tracks would become normal generic grey routes. You can use any colour on them. 

The post-campaign game is called Ticket To Ride 1901. These are the game mechanisms which remain:  

• Shares: It works in the same way as the campaign game. If the route you claim is in the colour of one of the face-up shares, you claim that share. When the game ends, you compare share ownership to see how much extra money (i.e. points) you earn. 
• Employees: During game setup, players each claim an employee in reverse player order. Some employees used during the campaign game are retired. 
• Events: Similarly, some are retired. 
• All tickets: During the campaign, tickets which were fully punched were retired. Now all tickets come back into play. The 1901 game has a very thick tickets deck. During game setup, you draw 5 tickets instead of 4, and you must keep at least 3. 
• Piggyback: This mechanism stays. You have one emergency parachute in case you get completely blocked off. 
• California bridges and earthquakes: They are still there, but I don't find them particularly interesting. 
• The big cities: Whenever you connect to a big city, you draw one train card from the deck. I like this one. 

These game mechanisms no longer exist in 1901: 

• Circus: The stickers have all been used, so naturally this doesn't come back. 
• Tunnels: Unclaimed tunnels have been converted to normal grey routes by now. 
• Ghost train and curses: The unhappy ghost has found peace now. 
• Robber: Not that he was caught. He got tired of people stealing his stash so he decided to retire. 
• Train schedule: This was done only across two specific campaign games. 
• Gold rush: This was done only in one specific campaign game. 
• Lost treasures: We've found them all. 
• Hole puncher: This was my favourite thing. In the post-campaign game, components no longer change, so of course we are not going to punch any more holes. 

I have not actually played the 1901 game, so maybe I should not already decide I'm not going to enjoy it as much as other Ticket to Ride variants. The reason I think I won't like is as much is I don't find those mechanism which are retained very interesting - the bridges, earthquakes and shares. I have not yet tried how the game feels with all those tickets though. 

This was the scoring process at the end of the campaign game. We scored our share holding first (left). Then we added all the other elements. The biggest component of the final campaign scores was still our game end scores of those 12 campaign games. 

The final game looked pretty epic.

These eight employees were retired at the end of the campaign. I am going to miss the Vice President the most. He was the one who helped me add so many company town stickers to the board. The gambler was an interesting employee. During game setup, you place one of your tickets under her. This ticket scores double at game end. That's a great deal. There is some risk though. If you fail to complete that ticket, the penalty is doubled too. 

At the start of the campaign, these two pages in the campaign game rulebook were 90% blank. As we played through the campaign, we kept adding stickers. These two pages are all about what you need to do when you build tracks. This looks intimidating, but it isn't really that complicated. The various sections are related to different mechanisms introduced during the game, and not all are in play at all times. Mechanisms come and go during the campaign. 

This particular story card is read when the famous robber retires. When our campaign game ended, the story deck was used up, leaving an empty space. We decided to put this particular card here, with the legendary bandit riding off into the sunset. This was apt. A fitting ending to a fun journey.