Imperial

Plays: 6Px1.

After playing The Princes of Machu Picchu at Boardgamecafe.net, I mentioned that I had not tried Mac Gerdts' Imperial. That was almost like blasphemy. Everyone said it is his best game. Thus I soon had an opportunity to play this game, tutored by a legion of sharks.

The Game

There are six major countries on the board - UK is red, France is blue, Germany is grey, Italy is green, Austria-Hungary is yellow and Russia is purple. Any land territory or sea zone beyond the borders of these six countries are up for grabs. Players do not directly control the six major countries. Instead, they invest in them. Each country sells bonds, and players buy bonds. Whoever has invested the most in a country controls the country. If another player surpasses the current controller in amount invested, he becomes the new controller. We had 6 players. Our game started with every player holding bonds of two different countries, and every player being the controller of one country. The board is quite empty at the start of the game. The major countries only have a few factories each. The brown ones produce armies, and the light blue ones naval fleets. In this photo only France (at the time controlled by Jeff) had recruited some mercenaries, getting ready for some early game conquests. Most other nations went for factory construction first.

Those two thick cards on the left are the Italian and German bonds. The numbers in the middle of the cards (4M and 9M) are the prices of the bonds. The numbers at the bottom (2M and 4M) are the dividends you get paid when the country decides to give dividends. The big numbers at the top are victory point multipliers used at game-end. Every country will have a base victory point value at game-end depending on how well it does. The more you have invested in the country, the higher your multiplier. That German flag on the right means I am currently the controller of Germany.

Every round, every major country gets to perform one action, and this is of course decided by the controlling player. The action mechanism is the well-known Mac Gerdts rondel mechanism. Actions are listed on a rondel and every country has a pawn on the rondel. To execute the action you want, you need to advance the pawn to the corresponding action space. If it is within 3 spaces away, advancing is free. Any further than that, you (the player, not the country) need to pay. So there is a form of restriction, and this mechanism also creates a cyclical nature in country actions.

The actions are: build one factory, build armies and fleets, recruit mercenaries, move armies and fleets, tax, and pay dividends. Combat is very straight-forward. No cards, no dice. It's just a one-for-one trade. You kill one of mine, I kill one of yours. Sea battles are optional. If both parties agree, fleets can coexist. That's mainly because fleets also act as transports. Capturing a sea zones or minor country allows you to place a control marker. These markers give you income when you do taxing. You can never place control markers in the homeland of another major country. When you occupy the homeland of another major country, you will temporarily disable any factory you occupy. If you want to, you can spend three units to permanently destroy a factory, but that's rather expensive.

When a country taxes, it receives income based on the number of factories and control markers it has on the board. However during tax time, the country also needs to pay the wages of all soldiers, both the army and the navy. When a country taxes, its reputation improves. When one country hits 25 reputation points, the game ends. The bonds of each country held by players will be worth some victory points at game-end, depending on the country reputation. Cash in hand is also worth victory points. Highest scorer wins.

That track at the bottom is the reputation track. Austria-Hungary (yellow) is now leading.

One other important country action is paying dividends. This is when money flows from country to player. Dividend payouts are done from smallest to largest shareholder. If a country doesn't have enough cash to fully pay its investors, some investors won't get the full amount they are entitled to. In fact the largest shareholder needs to pay the shortage. So if you are controlling a country it doesn't mean you can easily milk it dry disregarding the smaller investors. If you are a majority shareholder, you need to balance between transferring money to your personal coffers and leaving enough money for the country to compete effectively. If the country does poorly, the bonds you hold will be worth fewer VP's at game end.

In the game we played, I started off controlling Germany (grey). My investments were focused on Germany and Italy (green). I invested a little in Austria-Hungary (yellow) and Russia (purple). There was once when I inadvertently became controller of Italy (this photo). I didn't mean to take over. I just thought Heng ran the country quite well and it was good investment.

The Play

There were six of us: Jeff, Heng, Kareem, Ivan, Vence and I. I think only Vence and I were new to the game. The rest were veterans. Throughout most of the game I kept muttering: I still have no idea what I'm doing. I understood the rules. It was the strategy that eluded me. I think the genre of shareholding games is my Achilles' heel. I can appreciate the strategic depth. It is just that when I play, I struggle to separate the welfare of the player and that of the company (or the country). I feel like I have multiple personality disorder. In Imperial you need to remember that victory belongs to the investor and not the country. You are a businessman and not a patriot. As I observed how we played, I found that Vence and I (the newbies) had a hard time putting down our patriotism. She backed UK while I rooted for Germany. Old dogs like Jeff and Ivan toyed France like a golden goose and made a handsome fortune from it. They didn't ruin France. Not at all. Jeff just manipulated France's fortunes deftly so that his profits was maximised. France was his tool. He was not a servant of France. France became quite rich, and both Ivan and Jeff, being the largest shareholders, were laughing all the way to the bank.

You do want "your" country to do well. When you are a majority shareholder, the country's reputation level will significantly affect your end-game score. It is just that you must never forget your ultimate objective is your own wealth, and not the country's standing. I find this quite a challenge (because I suck at these games!). The strategies are subtle and indirect. This is what makes Imperial so delicious.

The game mechanisms are mostly simple. However I was quite amazed at how much the veterans could make out of these basic rules. At first I thought it was rather pointless to invade another major country's homeland, since you couldn't place any control marker and you couldn't make money from it. However, this happened anyway in our game. You can see in this photo that Italy (green) has invaded Austria-Hungary (yellow) and has disabled a naval factory (light blue). Austria-Hungary is now temporarily unable to produce fleets, and because of this Italy has a free rein in the Mediterranean Sea.

There is another example. I had thought it was too expensive to destroy another country's factory. It costs 3 armies. And then this happened in our game too. It turned out to be worthwhile because it set back the victim's expansion significantly. Yet another interesting observation was how some country controllers sent their troops to die just before payday, i.e. the tax action. Dead troops mean you save money. You don't need to pay dead soldiers in this game. Mutual destruction is actually a win-win situation for the shareholders of both the warring countries. This is such a mean game! Send the soldiers to die, and the politicians and businessmen shake hands and congratulate one another.

The round markers are the control markers.

Italy (green) is almost at 25 reputation points. The others are scrambling to catch up as much as possible before the game ends.

What I struggle with is how to tell whether a country is doing well, and whether things are looking up for a country. When you evaluate a country, it should not be based on whether the country will be growing stronger. It should be based on the Return On Investment. An already strong country may not give you much opportunity to make money. A humble country may have plenty of space for growth. Another thing to think about is the intentions of the current controller. If he is mostly done with milking the country, he may not be putting in much more effort to grow the country. Heng's mantra for Imperial is: invest wisely. A country's bonds can be held by multiple players. This creates interesting dynamics and complex relationships between players due to vested interests. Sometimes you collaborate, sometimes you compete.

The Thoughts

Imperial is a game with much strategic depth. It is complex not because of heavy rules or meticulous planning required. It is complex because of the intricate network of vested interests among players. The relationships between players are constantly changing as they grow their investment portfolios. If you are into this kind of shareholding games (e.g. 18XX games), you should try this. I'm rather weak at this type of games, so I still don't fully grasp Imperial. I think it is best with the full complement of players. This is when the network of vested interests is most complex and thus most intriguing. We played using some variants, which injected a little more money, and allowed more flexibility in buying bonds. This made the game more dynamic. Countries changed hands slightly more easily.

Hyperborea

Plays: 5Px1.

The Game

One of the hot new mechanisms at the 2014 Essen game fair was bag-building, which is actually just deck-building, except it uses coloured cubes in a bag as opposed to a deck of cards. Hyperborea uses this mechanism. Other games that I know of which uses this are King's Pouch and Orleans. I have not played those or read their rules though.

This is the background story of Hyperborea: Players are little kingdoms separated by a magical force field for many generations. They used to be part of a large, rich and advanced empire. An experiment many years ago went awry and almost destroyed the empire. Only small pieces of the empire survived, but they were separated by the magical force field which engulfed most of the empire. They developed in isolation and became very different civilisations. Now, the force field has suddenly collapsed, and the ancient lands, its ancient cities and ruins are accessible again. The kingdoms now rush in to grab all the goodies. This is where the game starts.

Everyone starts with a small kingdom at the edge of the play area, 3-tile sized. The unclaimed tiles in the central area all start face-down. A tile is flipped face-up once someone's unit is next to it. In this photo, most tiles have been flipped. Tiles have either cities or ruins. Cities let you execute actions by entering them, ruins let you collect treasures. Cities and ruins are haunted though (the grey pieces are ghosts), and you need to kill the ghosts occupying them before you can use them.

On your turn, you draw three cubes from your bag and use them to try to execute actions. Cubes come in 6 colours. On your player board you have 6 action categories, each offering two options. To execute an action you need to place the cubes of the required colours. Actions include moving, attacking, producing units, collecting gems (worth 1VP each), collecting development points (which can be traded for additional cubes for your bag) and claiming new technologies. The table at the centre of the player board is the development chart. Whenever a marker reaches a specific level, you can reset it to claim one or two cubes of the specific colour and put it into your bag.

If on your turn you empty your bag, at the end of that turn you get to do a reset, putting all cubes back into the bag so that you start afresh next turn.

These are the tech cards you can claim. There are always 8 available. If you choose to buy a tech, you may discard and redraw up to two cards before you decide which one to get. The coin icons at the top right corners of the cards are point values. Techs are mostly additional actions on which players can place cubes to trigger.

The tiles at the bottom right are the game end trigger conditions. In a short game, two conditions being met, whether by the same player or by two different players, will end the game. Meeting a condition gets you 2VP too. From left to right: gaining 5 techs, gaining 12 gems, getting all your units onto the board.

The Play

Ivan, Jeff, Laurence, Thomas and I did a 5P game. We were all new to the game. The max supported by the game is 6P.

The faction I drew was a matriarchal society, and my specialty was I could produce units (reproduce?) more quickly. During the game I picked techs which boosted my unit production even more. I intended to make full use of my ability to flood the board and control as many tiles as I could. Controlling tiles by having majority is worth points at game end.

Cities and ruins with units in them means they have been activated. The units are temporary locked. They are freed the next time you reset your bag. Once freed they may choose to immediately enter the cities or ruins again to use them again. Entering a city or ruin is a free action.

It is not hard to keep track of the cubes in your bag, unless you have collected too many. My policy was to keep the count low, because I thought it was more efficient. Easier to keep count, easier to plan which actions I would take. I would reset more frequently, which meant I could use the cities in my area more frequently too. The only downside was I would get fewer points at game end. Each cube was worth 1VP.

I also tried to keep my cube count a multiple of three, since every turn you get to draw three cubes. I wanted to avoid drawing fewer than three cubes on my last turn before a bag reset. This is a game in which you can calculate and plan down to very precise details. Combat is diceless and deterministic. As long as you are able to place the cubes to take an attack action, you kill the enemy unit. The only thing your opponent can do is to place a temporary defense token on his turn, but even so that token protects against just one attack.

You know what cubes you have. The only uncertainty is when you will draw which colours. So it's a matter of timing and order. You can plan how to use all the cubes in your bag the moment you reset it, if you want to. You can even think up multiple plans, to cater for different orders of cubes getting drawn. This is contingency planner heaven.

In a 5-player game, the starting positions are uneven. Thomas and I started slightly further away from everyone else, while Jeff, Ivan and Laurence were closer to one another. They came into contact earlier. On the surface this looks like a conflict game, but actually you don't get to kill others very often. The basic actions on your player board allows you to kill at most twice per bag reset, assuming you are willing to spend your cubes on those actions instead of others. Killing ghosts gets you 1VP for the first ghost, 2VP for the second, 3VP for the third, then 1VP again for each additional ghost. Killing player units normally gets you 1VP for the first one from each opponent only. So players will tend to race to be ghostbusters rather than fight each other.

This is the score pad. The ways you score points are: collect gems, kill ghosts, kill enemy units, gain cubes, achieve game end trigger conditions, claim techs, control tiles.

At game end, controlling a player start tile is worth 1VP. Controlling a tile in the main central area is worth 2VP, except for the single central tile which is worth 4VP.

The three cubes at the top left are the new ones I'll get to use next turn. I can draw them early so that I can plan ahead while others are taking their turns. This helps a lot in reducing downtime and keeping players engaged. Along the top you can see that I have collected one gem, and killed two ghosts. The grey cube is a waste cube. Whenever you claim a tech, you must claim a waste cube too. They normally just clog up your bag making it inefficient. However some techs accept grey cubes, so if you have many grey cubes, you probably want to consider getting such techs so that grey cubes can be useful.

The green faction's specialty is movement. They can ignore terrain effects. Normally it is harder to move into or out of swamps, mountains and forests. Unfortunately for Laurence who played green in our game, the terrain tiles drawn were mostly just plains, so his ability wasn't very useful.

The miniatures are nicely done.

Game end. Thomas (yellow) was the one to get the fifth tech. I (purple) was the one who produced all units.

The Thoughts

My first impression after completing the game was this has some Ameritrashy flavour. However the rest didn't think so. We discussed, and I realised I had been tricked by the plastic miniatures. All that detailed planning and cube counting I had been enjoying were all Eurogame elements. This is a Euro-style point scoring game, despite the conflict element. The conflict is not of the type where you want to obliterate your opponent (well, unless you want to do it just for the satisfaction). You kill mainly because of VP's, and the game incentivises you to attack ghosts more than it encourages you to attack other players.

Before I played Hyperborea, I didn't have high hopes. I was a little worried whether it was the kind of game where one unique mechanism has to hold up the whole game. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the setting and the mechanisms are well integrated. The bag-building is still at the core, but I feel the rest of the game comes together to form a consistent world, and is not just a jumble of scoring methods forcefully bundled together. The story and the setting is nothing particularly outstanding, but I like the sense of wholeness and how everything fits together naturally. I like the unique abilities of each faction, and also how the techs can further boost each faction and provide variability from game to game.

I enjoyed the game more than I expected. I like the forward planning of how to make full use of my bag of cubes. I like planning what coloured cube to add, and setting a direction for my little kingdom. Conflict is limited so I don't need to worry too much about others spoiling my plans. The interaction in the game is mostly in the form of racing to kill ghosts, to use city powers and to scavenge for treasures at the ruins. There is fighting over control of tiles, but since the number of attacks you can do is limited, you don't often get long protracted wars. They are lose-lose situations and no one wants to get into those anyway.

Hyperborea can be seen as a civ game too. There is exploration, there are techs, there is fighting. However there is no colonisation or city-building. The techs are mostly just additional actions being enabled. They give more options but don't alter the basic stats and costs of the game. I wouldn't call Hyperborea a "simplified" civ game. That would send all the wrong signals. I'll just call it a game with some civ-like features.

in photos: Small World, Can't Stop, Hanabi

I bought Small Word on the iPad when it was on sale during the Christmas period, planning to play it with Han and Allen, only to later discover that it doesn't have async mode. If we were to play together, we would need to be online at the same time. So I ended up just playing against the AI's a few times.

Small World is a very Euro wargame (which is an oxymoron). You establish empires and expand them, and every turn you score points based on how many territories you control. As your empire runs out of momentum, you can retire it to start a new one. Your old empire still scores points, as long as it is not yet wiped out by your opponents. Battles are mostly deterministic. Only when you are short of armies for a final attack you roll a die to see if you get some free reinforcements. So the game is much about board positioning, deciding who to attack and who to leave be, and picking the empire (each has unique abilities) which best suits your ambitions.

Can't Stop was free around Christmas time, so I downloaded it. This is a simple push-your-luck game. I have played it before. Despite the simplicity, you are constantly forced to decide whether to be content with what you have gained so far on your current turn or to gamble your achievement on the possibility of gaining even more ground. You are constantly torn between greed and conservatism.

26 Jan 2014. The children asked to play Barbarossa. I, of course, am happy to do so. I didn't want to make my sculptures too hard, but I think I went too far the other way and made them too easy instead. My sculptures are white - needle, lemon and milk. Even before the game started the children were already giggling and pointing at the lemon. They already knew what it was. Is it that obvious? "Milk" was too simple too. In fact Shee Yun thought it was "carton". I underestimated her.

31 Jan 2014. I asked the children to teach my mum to play Hanabi.

It was a challenging exercise, because it was not exactly easy for Shee Yun (8) to organise the rules of the game in her mind, and then communicate them in a clear and structured way. Maybe this is one form of extra-curricular training I should give her - teaching games rules. Needless to say Ma was rather confused. I had to add some clarifications after Shee Yun was done.

We played using a mahjong table, which Ma usually uses for gin rummy or mahjong rummy.

This was the only game we played when we were back at my parents' home in Kota Kinabalu during the Chinese New Year period.

We scored 18pts, which is not spectacular, but not too bad either. Full marks is 25pts.

Chen Rui (7) said she wanted to sort the cards when we were packing up, so I let her do it.

Kemet

Plays: 2Px1.

The Game

Kemet is a multiplayer wargame set in a mythical ancient Egypt. Players are small nations vying for power. They build pyramids and discover new technologies to boost their abilities. They attack each other and capture temples for glory. The first player to reach 10 victory points wins.

VP's are gained by making successful attacks (successful defenses give no VP), by controlling two or more temples at the end of a round, by sacrificing units at the Sanctuary of All Gods, and by buying certain techs. The above are permanent VP's that you can't lose. You also gain temp VP's for each temple or control Level 4 pyramid (the max level) you control, but if you lose control of these, you also lose the corresponding VP. There are a handful of ways to score VP's, but being peaceful is not an option. You need to raise armies and send them out.

You get five actions per round, and your options are listed in three rows on your player board. Players take turns taking one action each, and whenever you take an action, you cover the appropriate icon on your player board with a marker, making it unavailable for the rest of the round. During a round you must use actions from all three rows. This is how the game imposes restrictions on your actions. Actions you can do include raising armies, marching (which will lead to battle if your army meets an enemy army), collecting money (I think the game calls it life points or something, but I just think of it as money), upgrading a pyramid, and very importantly, buying a tech tile. Tech tiles is the most important part of the game. There are 48 of them, 16 in each of the three colours. Red tiles are mostly offensive techs, blue defensive, and white economic. It is these tiles that give character to your nation and give you the needed edge over your opponents. You adjust your strategy through them, and try to make the most of them to help you win. E.g. one of the blue tiles gives you two extra soldiers when you build an army, one of the red tiles increases your army size limit from 5 to 7, one of the white tiles give you extra income at the start of every round.

The most eye-catching aspect of this game is surely the mythical creatures. You get them when you buy certain techs, and they accompany your armies and assist them in battle. Creatures never die. If the attached army is wiped out, the creature just goes home and waits to attach itself to the next new army.

The map, together with the tiles, are probably more important elements that define the game than the creatures. The creatures are afterall just a subset of tiles. The map in Kemet has few spaces. Everything is near everything else. Every space on the board is only a few steps away. This is because of the obelisks. You can teleport an army from a pyramid (your base consists of three spaces which allow building pyramids) to an obelisk by paying $2. This is a game that encourages offense, not just because only successful attacks give 1VP, but also because the map design makes every space easily accessible.

Battles are resolved via a simple card play. Strength is determined by army size, the single battle card played, and other special abilities from tiles and creatures. The loser, if he has any soldiers remaining, may choose to retreat to an adjacent space, or sacrifice all survivors and turn them into money. The latter is not uncommon, because leaving a weakened army on the board only invites further attacks. Successful attack = 1VP!

That fortress with three pyramids is a player's base. Troops are raised there. The pyramid colour and level determine what techs you can buy. The building on the right is one of the temples. This particular temple gives $5 at the end of a round, but you need to sacrifice a soldier to gain this benefit. One interesting thing about this temple is it is at a dead end. It has an obelisk (dark blue pillar with a golden tip), which means you can teleport troops in, but there are no bridges or crossings you can use to get off the delta it is on.

The Play

Han and I had scheduled a game session when he was in town recently. We played Sekigahara. We knew 2P is not an ideal number for Kemet, but we were curious so we went ahead anyway, just to see what it was like. We played the short game (8VP instead of 10VP).

The first thing I found was the techs are cheap. There really is no reason to not take advantage of them. The cheapest ones are only $1. The game is all about offense. Each successful attack is 1VP, which is a lot. Even it the standard game, that's 10% of the VP you need to win. The game is also a race to capture temples. The action selection mechanism restricts you somewhat - you can at most raise armies once and march twice in a round, but generally as long as you prioritise and plan ahead a little, you won't feel restricted much.

Han went the warmonger path, mainly going for the offensive techs, while I leaned towards economy. At one point I made more money than my treasury could hold (there is a limit of $11). What a waste! I should have made sure I did not have too much left over from the previous round. Our game was many cycles of back-and-forth attacks - he attacked me to score 1VP, then I attacked him with a new army to score 1VP, then he attacked me with yet another new army, and so on. I think things are less interesting when there is only one other player to whack. There is no balance of power or ganging up or temporary alliances to think about like in 3P (or more) games. Most of the time when I lose a battle, I let all the survivors die instead of getting them to retreat to an adjacent space. If I kept them around, they would just be low-hanging fruit for Han.

Han had more VP from attacks, and I had more VP's from controlling temples. The game was a race to score points. It might be because we were playing the shorter version, but I suspect even in the standard 10VP game, players would have to always keep in mind the goal. There is no time to waste. You need to keep up the pace and not fall behind. I like this sense of urgency and being on your toes.

In the end I was first to reach 8VP, but Han could almost have done it in the same round. Just before I claimed victory, we backtracked a little, because I thought he could have picked another action and beat me to 8VP. It turned out that he couldn't, because he had already used that particular action (buy a tile of a particular colour) earlier in the round. He actually also had an army in position to attack one of my armies, but he had used up his movement actions that round. I had thought the action mechanism in this game was not very restrictive, but surprisingly it turned out to be crucial in determining victory, at least in this game.

The elephant is one of the mythical creatures. Players only have one type of soldier. However every player has a different sculpture for his soldiers, which is a nice touch.

The Thoughts

One 2P game is not the best way to experience Kemet. I think the game will be much more interesting with more players. This is a Euro-wargame. The core mechanisms, the pace, and the leanness are all Euro, but this game has direct, in-your-face aggression. It's Brazil football (soccer) team - it's all about offense. The game encourages you to attack, and treats your soldiers as nothing but cheap tools for gaining VP's. The tech tiles and the combos they make are the crux of the game. You must make good use of them. In a 2P game there is a lot to choose from, but I imagine in 5P games there will be a rush to buy them, and if you don't get what you want, you will need to adjust your strategy accordingly.

Risk Legacy

Plays: 3Px7.

In the interest of not revealing spoilers to those who don't want to read them, I'm doing things a little differently with this post. I'll do the overview, then share my thoughts, and only after that share my experience with Risk Legacy.

The Game

Risk Legacy is an enhanced version of Risk, the main new concept being that the game and game components will change permanently as games are played, some being modified by the players, like marking the board and adding new elements to it, some being revealed bit by bit as certain conditions are met and players are instructed to open some sealed envelopes. Risk is a mass market game, so I won't describe the basics. Risk Legacy uses the basic earth map. Its winning condition is based on victory points, i.e. controlling headquarters, completing missions and trading in resource cards. There are different factions in the game each starting with different special abilities, and additional special abilities can be introduced as the game is played. The game is expected to stabilise after 15 games, i.e. no further modifications to rules and game components.

When you open the game box, you will see six envelopes sealed off, with instructions on when to open them. Inside them you'll find narratives about how your world has developed, and you'll get new rules and new game components.

Preparing for the first game. Naturally I picked green, my favourite colour. Before your first game you already get to choose one from two special abilities (that green sticker already attached to the faction board). The unchosen ability is forever lost. You are asked to destroy that sticker. The four cards are resource cards. Each card has one coin value by default, and before the first game, everyone gets to pick four cards to increase the coin value to two. I picked Indonesia because my home state of Sabah (which is in Malaysia, not Indonesia) is depicted here. The game pieces are HQ (star shape), 3 armies piece (wolf rider) and 1 army piece (warrior). Scar cards have stickers which you can add to the board.

This is another faction. They are desert dwellers. The sculpts are different for each faction.

I was fooling around with game pieces. No, in Risk Legacy your armies do not walk on water.

This was our first game, so the game board was still very "clean".

The Thoughts

The concept of letting players modify the game permanently is a novelty, a gimmick, but it is fun. Aspects of the game being gradually revealed is fun. There are new rules, changes to rules, and new gameplay elements. Cities will get added, territory properties will be modified (e.g. becoming harder, or easier to defend), faction abilities will change, continents will be named. There is a story line developing through the series of 15 games being played, which is aligned with the rules changes. However you need to keep in mind that this is still Risk, just with some improvements. It is still about breaking one another's control of continents over and over, accumulating many resource cards to exchange for troops to make big attacks, and dice luck being able to spoil the best laid plans. But it is also about waiting for the right moment to strike - after you have enough resource cards to swap for many armies and before your opponent strikes a fatal blow. It is also about trying to appear weaker than you are, and persuading others to fight. For players who are familiar with the game, there is careful manoeuvring and positioning before launching a major attack. It can be tense.

Allen's HQ (red) was in Great Britain, and had been conquered by me (green). Han's HQ (beige) was in Argentina, and was also under my control. My own HQ (green) was in Indonesia and was captured by Han (beige). What a mess. Allen's faction (red) had been wiped out, but since there was at least one unoccupied territory, he could reenter the game.

The purple faction had cool tanks (3 armies piece).

In the foreground you can see spaces for writing the names of the winners. Han won the first two games.

One concern I have with the game is it seems to encourage players to start from the same locations, which might make each game feel similar. At the end of a game, you get to add some good stuff to the map. Very good stuff if you win, moderately good stuff if you lose but are not eliminated. Once you add a city, in future games, only you may place your HQ in this city. So there is incentive to start here, and in subsequent games you are somewhat encouraged to add more good stuff in that general area, which compounds the problem. I'm not sure whether this is commonly experienced. It happened in the campaign I played, and I intentionally did weird stuff, even some not beneficial to "my" starting area, hoping to mix things up a bit and prevent the games from becoming scripted or static.

Risk Legacy has been a fun journey of discovery so far. There were some stale moments, e.g. some games got into long stalemates with nobody being able to control any continent, but those tend to be earlier in the campaign when the game was still quite bare. As more elements were added, this happened less. Our games were all 3-player games, and they reminded me of Romance of the Three Kingdoms, where the three kingdoms maintained a delicate balance of power, always keeping one another in check. There was much cajoling, pleading and convincing others to fight. We were all sneaky. Sometimes A intentionally refrained from attacking C to conserve his armies, forcing B to do it on his turn which is just before C's turn, because otherwise C would receive a big continent bonus. Alliances formed quickly, when the third person threatened to win, and also dissolved quickly, when one ally found a convenient time and location to launch an attack. All in a day's work.

Risk Legacy is suitable for casual gamers, because it is not that different from regular Risk. For gamers, it is still fun as long as you set your expectations that it is not really that different from regular Risk.

SPOILER ALERT

The Play

I realise I have already described what it feels like when playing the game, so this will be just the spoiler section with more photos.

Fortress Europe. Both Northern Europe and Southern Europe had fortresses built. Allen had also added a minor city in Great Britain. We made a mistake in our first two games. When placing the initial troops, they must all be placed in one territory together with your HQ. We thought we could take turns placing one army into any territory. That's why you see some of my purple armies in Africa and some in South East Asia, and they are disconnected.

We were keen to open new envelopes, and sometimes intentionally took actions that lead to meeting the conditions required, even though some of them were against our best interests in winning the particular game we were playing. In one particular game, I (red) amassed a huge army group and invaded Alaska from Asia. I intended to fight my way through North America and South America to eventually reach Han's capital at the southern tip of Argentina. However when fighting in Western United States, we had the opportunity to have 3 missiles used in the same battle, so we did it. It wasn't that critical a time to need to use missiles (which convert die rolls to 6's), but we wanted to see what surprises the game had in store for us. And the surprise turned out to be this - the nuclear fallout sticker now applied to Western United States on the game board. The nuclear explosion wiped out half my troops, stunting my progress. Western United States became a danger zone, with the fallout sometimes killing nearby troops, unless you play the newly introduced faction - the mutants.

Because of the nuclear fallout, the Western United States resource card had to be destroyed. It was lost forever. Oh what a feeling to tear up a game component.

The mutant faction that appears mid way through the campaign. They have special abilities which are quite different from other factions. There are four grey patches on the right covering additional special abilities. Only one of them will eventually be scratched off to have that special ability come into play, when the appropriate event cards are drawn and acted upon.

When this event card appears, the mutant faction gets to decide how it wants to mutate.

I named the South East Asian continent after my wife. In future games, whenever I controlled Michellia, I would gain 3 bonus armies instead of 2. That new connection between Madagascar and Western Australia was created by me, because I completed a special mission that allowed me to do so. South East Asia (oops, I mean Michellia) has always been the easiest to defend continent, having one single choke point in Indonesia. By creating another route, I hoped to shake things up a little.

I named a major city after my elder daughter.

I named a minor city after my younger daughter.

More and more cities have sprung up (blue stickers). Typically my starting area is South East Asia, Allen's is Europe and Han's South America. This game they started in their usual locations, but I (orange) chose to start in Japan, just to be different. I had a major city in Japan. Han (beige) became lord of the southern hemisphere, expanding his empire eastwards to Africa and then to South East Asia, the route to South East Asia made much easier because of the new sea connection. Allen had control of Europe, and was poised to wreak havoc in Han's territories by having just placed a huge army group in the Middle East. I controlled neither Asia nor North America. It was a strategy to appear weak, but it turned out to be so effective that I became rather weak for real.

When we opened the last sealed area on the game tray, we were pleasantly surprised and greatly amused to find --- Aliens (white)! This game is crazy. It was the green faction, the supposedly most primitive faction, who collaborated with the aliens and brought them into the game. In this particular game they were treated as one faction, but from the next game onwards they will be separate factions that players can choose. Aliens have their own unique abilities, and they love attacking cities.

Risk (revised edition) on the iPhone

Plays: 4Px9 (against AI's)

The Game

A review of Risk? Is that necessary? Risk is a mass market game that many game hobbyists frown upon as something they have grown beyond a long time ago. In 2008 there was a revised edition released, and this is my experience with this revised edition. Well, actually my experience is based on an iPhone application called Dominion (not to be cofused with the deck-building game). It is supposedly very similar to Risk (Revised). I have not played the physical game, so I'm not 100% sure.

Most of the elements in old Risk are still in new Risk. On your turn you gain troops, place them, then attack. The dice rolling combat resolution remains the same. You also do one reinforcement at the end of your turn (move some soldiers from one territory to another connected territory).

Let's talk about some of the new stuff. The new winning condition makes a big difference. You need to achieve 3 objectives while holding your capitol. You pick your own capitol territory at the start of the game. A number of objectives are also randomly selected at the start. Objectives are in the nature of being first to achieve a certain condition, e.g. conquering 6 cities in one turn, controlling 20 territories, controlling a certain continent, and controlling two enemy capitols. Claiming an objective also gives some bonus, e.g. extra dice in battles, defense bonus. However on your turn you can at most claim one objective, and you will have to forfeit claiming the successful conquest token (which is accumulated to be exchanged for extra soldiers).

There are cities now, which give additional soldiers. The iPhone application also comes with multiple maps like Europe, Australia, even the Arctic circle.

The map of Europe. The icons on the left are the objectives and also the corresponding rewards.

This is the South East Asia map, but it actually covers most of Asia, including as far west as India and Pakistan, and as far north as Mongolia and Japan. I (green) have achieved three objectives, but have not won yet because my capitol (at the northern edge of the map) is being occupied by Blue.

This screen lets you easily see various useful information, like the number of territories controlled by each player, the number of cities, the number of soldiers, etc.

The Play

So far I've played a few games each on the classic world map, Europe map and South-East Asia map. Games are very quick. The interface is well done. I hide the die rolls to further speed things up. The AI's are so-so though. They come in different difficulty levels, but even at the hardest level they are not hard to beat. All my games have been 4-player games. One thing I'm thankful about is they didn't make the AI's harder by giving them bonuses or by handicapping the human player.

The objectives make a big change to the game. They give direction to the players. You need to think about which ones to go for and you need to plan. You also need to watch out for what your opponents may be trying to achieve, and try to stop them. The objectives let the game end when it is still interesting. The game does not drag on and on when things start to get tedious and it is less likely for players to get stuck in long boring stalemates.

The Thoughts

I think the revised version of Risk (assuming this iPhone app is a good representation) is a big improvement. It is still not a very deep game, so don't expect one and you won't be disappointed. It's not exactly simple, but simple enough for non-gamers and casual gamers to easily learn. It provides a decent multiplayer war game platform which allow for diplomacy, negotiations, alliances, backstabbing etc.

I like the objectives because they help to keep the game length reasonable and they give many interesting short-term goals to the players.

revisiting Samurai Swords

I bought Samurai Swords in 1998 I think, and I have a lot of fond memories of it. That was before I got into the boardgaming hobby in a big way. I only played the game at most a handful of times a year, and every time I wanted to play it, I had to make arrangements early with a group of friends and allocate a full day for it. I have not played it since getting into the hobby in 2003. I simply never got around to revisiting it. When I learned that a new version, renamed Ikusa, was coming out (and it already has by now), I told myself I must find time to revisit this game. So on 31 Jul 2011, I finally did.

It was a full 5-player game (the ideal way to play), with Allen, Han, Azrul and Soraya, and here's how it went.

• Red - Soraya
• Orange - Azrul
• Purple - Han
• Blue - Allen
• Green - me

Note: In real life, north is more or less in the direction of the upper right corner of the gameboard, but for ease of reading I'll treat the upward direction of the gameboard as north, right is east, left is west, down is south.

This was the start of the game. Provinces were randomly distributed, but players could decide which six provinces to reinforce with local garrisons and where to put their three armies, i.e. they could decide which area to use as their power bases. My (green) provinces were scattered everywhere. I decided to try to concentrate on Kyushu (medium sized island in the west) and Shikoku (the other medium sized island next to Kyushu), placing one army on each. I later placed my third army at the eastern tip of Honshu (main island), because no one seemed to be interested in that area and it might be easy pickings.

Han (purple) had a good cluster in eastern Honshu. He reinforced those, but for army placement (if my memory and eyesight don't fail me) he placed two in western Honshu and one in eastern Honshu.

Allen (blue) and Soraya (red) had scattered provinces like me. Allen had one army near the western end of Honshu, one on Shikoku, and one in the north eastern part of Honshu. Soraya had one on Kyushu (to my dismay), one in central Honshu and one in eastern Honshu.

Azrul (orange) had a moderately good concentration in the central south part of Honshu and Shikoku. He placed two armies in this area, and the third one in the western part of Honshu, which was not far away.

First round. Only Azrul and Soraya built castles, Azrul in north western Honshu to protect his army, and Soraya in central Honshu to protect hers. In the first round no one was allowed to attack armies, which gave an opportunity for daimyos (feudal lords who are also generals leading their respective armies) to gain experience and to establish their areas of power. Not a lot happening yet this round.

Round 2. Right off the bat, Han (purple) attacked and destroyed 2 of Allen's (blue) 3 armies, utilising ronin. Ronin are mercenaries, which can be very useful. When you levy regular soldiers, you can only add one soldier per province, but when hiring ronin, there is no such restriction. The downside is they will leave your service at the end of the current round; but still, using them at the right time can be very decisive.

Killing off the 2nd army of a player can be a risky move. When the 3rd army of a player is destroyed, that player is eliminated, and whoever kills the 3rd army gains all his lands and all his remaining soldiers. The winning condition of the game is to own 35 provinces at any point in the game, so you must be careful not to let any opponent easily gain a bunch of provinces.

Han built a castle at the western tip of Honshu to protect his army. Allen's army on Shikoku left the island and came to the central south area of Honshu. He destroyed one of Azrul's (orange) armies, and now had a castle. Shikoku was now fully taken over by Azrul. I (green) was on my way to monopolise Kyushu. Soraya (red) was creating a more consolidated presence in central and south eastern Honshu.

Although Allen (blue) had lost 2 armies, he still had many provinces, and since he only had one army to spend his money on, it became one monster of an army. Still, with only one army, and his provinces being mostly quite far from this army, these provinces were gradually eaten up by others. I (green) sort of managed to achieve my initial goal of owning the north eastern tip of Honshu. I had lost all my other holdings on Honshu. I now had two armies in Kyushu (western-most medium island), and had destroyed Soraya's army, so it was a matter of time for me to completely take over Kyushu.

Final round that we played. We only had 4 hours, and decided to end the game after this round. See that fortress (i.e. upgraded castle) at the centre. That was built by Soraya (red) to protect her last remaining (and weakened) army, but the army had now been destroyed by Han (purple) and the fortress taken. In this round Han had spent money to bid for turn order, so that he could be first to go and could attack Soraya's army before anyone else did so and also before it moved out of reach. When Han gained Soraya's provinces, he had a total of 31, only 4 short of the required 35 to win. Azrul (orange) did small and distributed attacks, and by game end he owned the second most number of provinces. I (green) preserved all three of my armies for quite long, but I made some rash attacks and lost many men, and eventually one of my armies too. Han was the only one to still have all 3 armies (although weakened). Azrul and Allen both had one army at game end.

Although we didn't have an official winner, Han was the obvious leader and MVP at this point. So all hail the daimyo killer!

At the start of the game, there were three armies in this four province island of Shikoku! There must be gold or something.

In a 5-player game, there would be some vacant provinces during game setup. Coincidentally two of them were right next to each other. See how this attracted the greedy people. Four armies in this area!

There were many armies in this area.

One of my armies. The flagbearer piece is used to mark the experience level of the daimyo. The flag also matches the army piece on the gameboard. An army can hold at most 15 soldiers, including the daimyo himself. In this particular army I have (top to bottom, left to right) 1 daimyo, 1 bowman, 2 swordsmen, 2 gunners and 2 spearmen.

This was the first big army-to-army battle when Han (purple) attacked Allen (blue).

Allen's last remaining army. At one point it was fully fleshed out with 15 soldiers. The lazy grey guys lying around in the background were his ronin.

Our lonesome ninja was never hired throughout the whole game. A ninja could be used to attempt to assassinate a daimyo. If successful, the army is immobilised for that round, and another soldier in the army will be promoted to the position of daimyo. If the assassination attempt fails, the ninja can be used by the intended victim against the original master. The ninja can also be used to spy on one opponent's spending plans in the following round (if not used for assassination).

The last battle of Soraya's (red) last army. Han (purple) spent money on securing first in turn order, and planned his attack path this way (strictly speaking you only need to declare the first attack, but of course everyone knew he was aiming for the red army). Only experienced daimyos can attack more than once per round. The most experienced daimyos could attack four times!

This particular game that we have played had much action in the early game, but kind of sputtered out later. We fought much and lost many men, causing us to be short on soldiers, and armies became weak too. A little anti-climatic. We rarely bid for turn order, and no one wanted the poor ninja (maybe he didn't do enough advertising). We did make good use of ronin. There were some castles built, but not many.

The first thing I thought after the game was it is not really all that great afterall, now that I have been exposed to many other games. Not that it's a poor game, just that it is not as awesome as I used to think it was. I'm still happy to play it if I get the chance, but it is now mostly a nostalgia game for me, an old friend whom it is good to catch up with once in a while.