boardgaming in photos: Clans of Caledonia, Hanamikoji, Molly House, Caylus, Regicide

I took a screenshot of my list of games in progress at BoardGameArena.com. Just a snapshot of a moment in time. I spend much time in front of my computer, both for work and leisure, and I always have a browser tab with BGA open. Whenever it is my turn for one of the games I'm playing, a tiny triangle is animated at the tab. When I notice it I happily click to take my turn. 

I recently taught younger daughter Chen Rui to play Hanamikoji on BGA. This is such a lovely game. Only four simple actions per round, but boy they really make you pause and think! So much agony. We started with the standard game, but also tried some variants. The core rules are still the game, but the four action tiles are different. Hanamikoji has become a modern classic and I think that is well deserved. 

Caylus, arguably the first worker placement game. It was highly popular when it first came out. It popularised the worker placement mechanism in boardgames. I own a physical copy of this and so far it has survived every purge even though I have not played it for a long time. It is a milestone game in the modern boardgame history. 

The game takes quite long to play in asynchronous mode. I made several embarrassing blunders, e.g. claiming a spot to exchange money and cloth for a favour, and forgetting that I'm only getting that piece of cloth at a later building activation. It's fun to revisit an oldie. From 2005. 

I almost played Clans of Caledonia when I was back in my hometown, and now I have actually played it online with a different group of friends. This is another game with a long gap since I last played, so I had to relearn the whole thing. When I play such games, one thing I do is I reread my own blog post about them. It helps give me a brief summary and a strategic overview. At least I hope this helps avoid stupid mistakes from my previous plays. 

I took the MacKenzie clan, which specialises in brewing whiskey. I earned some extra money for brewing whiskey, and if I stored and aged them, I could make extra money too. 

There is contract fulfilment, and buying and selling goods affecting their prices. 

I played A Feast for Odin. I had many occupation cards but I didn't know how to utilise them well. They seemed to be useful only for very specific situations. I ended up not playing most of them, and for some I only played them for the four points. 

I played Molly House. This is quite a difficult game to learn to play because the rules are unusual. Although I have played it before, I still don't quite grasp the game. The first game we played ended abruptly with the following results. We didn't manage the gossip pile well, and there was a major crackdown. Everyone lost. 

When you chat on BGA, they are quite strict about the language you use and will warn you if you use potentially inappropriate language. So we couldn't joke about these results, which people familiar with contemporary Malaysian politics would probably make fun of. 

I thought I was getting pretty good at Regicide. I am currently not subscribed to a paid membership on BGA, but this is free to play, so sometimes I play it solo. I feel I know all the important tactics and I feel I apply them well. Sometimes I win comfortably and confidently. Yet sometimes I get into a losing streak. This is such a great game! Regicide Legacy will be reaching Malaysia soon, and I'm looking forward to that.