My copy of Rebirth is a special memento, because it is a signed copy. I had queued for about an hour for Reiner Knizia's autograph at the Essen game fair 2024. I had played a demo copy at the fair before I bought my own copy. Since returning to Malaysia, I did not play my own copy for more than half a year. I only managed to get it played recently. Younger daughter Chen Rui and I did a two-player game.
The board is double-sided. One side is Scotland, and the other Ireland. The Scotland map is easier, so we started with that, since Chen Rui had not played the game before. Since it was a two-player game, some areas of the map had to be blocked off. We used the red player tokens for this.
Playing Rebirth again made me appreciate the skill and art of the master. What you do on your turn is deceptively simple. You are just placing that one tile you have in hand. Its type restricts where you are allowed to place it. You don't have a plethora of options to give you analysis paralysis. The game moves so briskly that I feel rude to pause to take photos. Despite the apparently simple choices, you do have to think strategically. This is not a game of maximising individual turns. You have to think about your long term goals and how to maximise your end game score.
When I taught the game, Chen Rui asked, "Is this like Carcassonne?" My first reaction was, "What?! That can't be. This is obviously more like Through the Desert." However when I thought further about it, I realised she was probably right. You draw a random tile every turn, and what tile it is limits where you can place it. In Through the Desert, you get to choose whichever camel you fancy.
I bought a used copy of Whale Riders, also a recent Reiner Knizia title. I had played this before and I enjoyed it. When I noticed Ivan selling his copy in the Board Game To-Go Facebook group, I shared my earlier blog post hoping to help him promote the game. Eventually I couldn't resist and I bought it myself.
This time I played with both the mini expansions. This was Chen Rui's first game, but both the expansions are simple, and the game itself is pretty simple too, so I felt she would be able to handle it. The first expansion is the missions. You set up four random missions at the start of the game. Whenever anyone fulfils a mission, they claim it. Missions give you either money or points (pearls). Money is for buying goods, which eventually you use to fulfil contracts and gain points.
The second expansion has a bigger impact to gameplay. Everyone gets to pick a superpower. The one I picked (that rectangular tile in the middle) let me fulfil contracts with one resource fewer. Since I fulfilled so many contracts, this power saved me a lot of resources. The superpower Chen Rui picked allowed her to buy tiles with only one resource for free, even when they are priced at $3. She made good use of it and took lots of single-resource tiles.
I only recently realised that I could play
Regicide on
BoardGameArena.com, and it was free! I played quite a few solo games. It is still not easy to win. My win rate is probably around 25%. I'm keenly anticipating
Regicide Legacy, which has a release date of July 2025. I have pre-ordered a copy, and I hope it reaches Malaysian shores soon.
I played Lost Ruins of Arnak with Han and Allen. We have played this before. This is a game I still have not played a physical copy of. I remember it as a mostly typical heavy Eurogame, nothing ground-breaking. My opinion hasn't changed. However it is an enjoyable game, and this recent session was fun. It is definitely a game worth trying.
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