Caper: Europe and game reviews

 

I have written about Caper before. I played the physical game then. Caper: Europe is an updated version of Caper, and I played it online. It is mostly the same game with minor adjustments. The game seems to be doing well. It's getting a new edition after all. Had the first version not done well, the publisher wouldn't have started work on an updated version. 

Unfortunately for me, I didn't find the game interesting. It is certainly well produced and it looks great. The back-and-forth drafting means any card you don't use now will potentially be used against you by your opponent. Competition is not only around being stronger in the three locations. This is just one part of scoring. During the game there are several other ways to score points, and you need to consider them all. You want to collect sets of artifacts. You want to make use of specific cards which can score points for you. You must consider the unique powers and bonuses at each location. 

Another game which has a similar tug of war mechanism is Zenith, and that works much better for me. For me, I like that in Zenith you have a sense of building up something, e.g. choosing to advance in techs, and accumulating cards so that you get better discounts in future. In Caper: Europe, I feel I am reacting to the cards I draw trying to make good combos. My reason for a game not working for me is often the same - it doesn't offer me anything I haven't seen or experienced before. That is not a very good way of judging whether a game is good or not. It is only a measure of whether I have played something similar. I might like a game which many others don't like because they have played similar games and I have not. Let me diverge into a different topic. 

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I am always a little uncomfortable thinking about my blog posts as game reviews. The first problem is I often play a game just once. This might not be sufficient for me to give a fair review. Most of what I write should probably be called first impressions than reviews. Some game reviews by other bloggers and vloggers regurgitate the rules, which is not something I like doing. I omit many rule details, but I do write about some specific rules which I find interesting. 

When I write a blog post about a game, it is more of sharing an experience and introducing a game which others may not have heard of. I share why I like or do not like the game. If I help someone discover a game they like and enjoy, that makes me happy. One thing I have now come to appreciate is that generally there are no bad games. I have this appreciation after going into game design and publishing myself. Games as a product are designed to be fun and to make people happy. Most of the time they will work for the people they are designed for. There certainly are many games which don't work for me, and I can explain why they don't, but now I can better appreciate who they will work for. I can see what they have which makes them fun for their intended audience. There are no bad games, only bad fit games. You can easily imagine how Brass: Birmingham will completely kill the joy of game night if you try to foist it on a group of non gamers.

One awkward situation as I transition from purely a gamer to also being a designer and publisher is how I write about other local Malaysian games. In the past I never thought highly of local games. Now that I am friends with many local designers and publishers, it would not be nice of me to write poor reviews of my friends' games. I don't want to hurt their feelings. I often have my own games criticised, and it doesn't feel good to hear people say that your game is bad. It is something I have to learn to handle. I know I can't please everyone. I just hope I do please someone. I have now come to appreciate that in most cases I am not the intended audience of local games. That's why they don't work for me. But I want to talk about them, because I want to help my friends reach their intended audience. It's about finding the right game for the right person. 

I still do what I do. I'll tell you I don't like this massive hit of a game. And I promise to do my best to articulate why. Perhaps the reason why I don't like a game will be exactly why you will like it. 

clearing my game collection

For a long-time gamer, my game collection is not very big. I rarely sell games, because I find that troublesome. You need to take photos, count components, pack and post the games, or arrange to meet for COD. I'm too lazy to go through all that hassle. So my collection only grows and rarely shrinks. In 2020 I did one round of giving away games. I gave some to friends who were interested in the games. For some games, I feel if the chances of me playing them again are low, I'd rather give them to friends who would play them. An unplayed boardgame is a sad boardgame. In 2020 I also gave games away through a Malaysian Facebook community of boardgamers. The games I offered were all quickly claimed. I did have two conditions: you need to pick up the game yourself, and you will play it within a month and take photos of you playing it for me. I later realised that even making all those arrangements for people to come pick up the games was tiring. Many of those who took games did play them and send me photos. What was disappointing was some did not keep their word. I lost faith in humanity a little. So I no longer want to give games away to people I don't know. This time round, I made the first offer to friends, and they have claimed several titles. Of what remains that I want to get rid of, I will sell them as-and-when it's convenient for me, e.g. certain boardgame events when people can inspect and pay on the spot. I set a price not for the sake of making money. I just want people to appreciate the games. People have a bad habit of not valuing what they get for free. 

Many of the games I'm giving away or selling have been in my collection for many years. I feel a little sad to see them go, but I feel happy that they are going to people who will play them. 

 

Sat 16 Aug 2025 the Magic Rain team organised All Aboard Bites at Lalaport in Kuala Lumpur. Their flagship boardgame convention is All Aboard, and All Aboard Bites is a smaller scale public gaming event. It's a much more casual meetup. I went as a participant, just to play games. I brought some of my prototypes to be playtested. Several of the finalists of the Design and Play game design competition were there, and I played Twin Towers, Jam and Teh Tarik Game. I brought my own games (games I bought, not games I designed) - Yspahan and Municipium. I wanted to play them. However during the event whenever I was about to start a game, we usually had five players, but both these games support at most four. So I didn't manage to get them played. 

Of my own designs, I playtested Malaysian Holidays and Rebels of the Three Kingdoms. I continued playtesting the two-player variant of Malaysian Holidays. By now it is pretty stable, and I don't think I will make any more changes. It has remained the same after several playtesting sessions with different players. A slight downside is it is a little different from the 3- to 5-player game in how you choose cards. The holiday cards and taking a trip work the same way. Only the card choosing mechanism is different. 

This playtest session for Rebels of the Three Kingdoms was encouraging. When we were done and I started packing, the group asked to go again. That's a good sign. We had a dramatic end to our first game. In the late game, Kenny was the obvious leader, and no one wanted to team up with him because that would help him score points and reach the winning threshold. We all wanted to force him into the weaker alliance. When it was time to choose an alliance, he was completely isolated. We had a 4 vs 1 situation. Normally under such a situation the smaller team will lose. It's simply too big a gap. However, the four of us were careless and forgot one important detail - Xiahou Dun. This character, when facing an enemy alliance of double the size, helps his alliance win immediately. Kenny revealed his character, and it was Xiahou Dun. We should have been on the alert for this. When 4 of the 5 unused characters were revealed earlier that round, there was no Xiahou Dun, and we should have been wary that it might be in Kenny's hand. 

I received one good feedback from this playtest session of Rebels of the Three Kingdoms. One question raised by the playtesters was why Chen Gong? In history, Chen Gong was a strategist serving under Lu Bu. In the Three Kingdoms novel, he is a secondary character. I picked him to be one of the 10 characters in the game partly because I had Lu Bu, and partly because I was influenced by the Japanese manga Soten Koro / Beyond the Heavens. In the manga, Chen Gong still is a secondary character, but he left a lasting impression on me. Now I have decided to swap out Chen Gong, and swap in Zhou Yu. Chen Gong was character #1. From the gameplay perspective, when character #5 Sun Quan is in the same alliance as character #1, Sun Quan's strength would double to 10. Making Zhou Yu #1 would be perfect, because in Three Kingdoms, Zhou Yu was the genius military strategist who served under Zhou Yu, one of the three kings. Playtesting is super important because it helps you discover your blind spots. 

Sorry, Chen Gong

I made Zhou Yu a moustachioed guy

Recently I have been posting daily at my blog. I have been playing many new games on BoardGameArena.com, so there is a lot I can write about. All my posts are scheduled posts. Lately, at any time I probably have 6 to 10 posts in the queue to be published automatically. This post you are reading today was scheduled maybe a week ago. 

I write about every new game I play on BGA. Sometimes I play games I have played before. I don't write about those in detail, but I sometimes I share my new thoughts on them. 

My first play of Anachrony was with a physical copy. The mechas in the physical version are impressive. When playing on BGA, there is no more such visual impact. I did not find the game particularly interesting when I first played the physical copy. This second play hasn't changed my mind. I feel the game is complicated but I don't get much fun out of this complexity. I just find it tedious. Maybe this is a personal taste thing. 

Anachrony is worker placement game in which you collect resources and spend them to construct buildings and score points. This whole sentence sounds so generic and it can describe like half the heavy Eurogames we see nowadays. That basically sums up what I feel about the game. 

There is a more than 10 year gap since I last played Kingdom Builder. When the game was released, people paid attention because it was a design from Donald X Vaccarino, who designed Dominion, a genre-defining game. Kingdom Builder later won the 2012 Spiel des Jahres. I don't remember much about the game from when I played it many years ago. This probably means I didn't find it particularly interesting. However to my surprise I quite enjoyed my recent play. I had to relearn the game, exploring strategies, making mistakes and getting aha moments all over again. 

Every turn you must place 3 houses, but the terrain you can place on is determine by a card draw. There is randomness in this, and it seems you don't have much control. However you can actually put some thought into how you place your houses, so that no matter what terrain comes up next, you have something useful to do. So placing your houses actually takes some deep thought if you want to do well. This is certainly a much more strategic game than how simple a turn appears to be. 

Every game, out of the four scoring criteria, three are randomly drawn. Only castle scoring is fixed.

During the game, as you connect to towns, you gain special abilities that can be activated every turn. These can be very powerful. Some let you move houses (literally pick them up and put them somewhere else), some let you place extra houses. Now that I have played Kingdom Builder again, I find I really admire it. If you haven't tried this, find a chance to give it a go. 

When I first played 17: Diciassette I played it with two players, and I didn't think it works with two. Now I have played it with five, and it works much better. This should not have been a 2 to 5 player game. It should be 3 to 5. It is understandable that publishers want to put on the box as wide a player range as possible, the most common being 2 to 5. 

I first played Forest Shuffle online. Recently I played the physical version. Playing the physical version did not change my opinion. My opinion of the game started with being so-so. I saw it as just a lot of cards with different scoring conditions, and you are just trying to collect cards which combo well. Then as I played more, I warmed up a little to it because it has nice art, and set collection in itself is an enjoyable thing to do. And then as I played more, I reverted to my initial opinion. It's just lots of cards with different ways to score points. I understand why it is a successful product. I also understand why it's not my thing. Comparing the physical and digital versions, I prefer the digital version because the computer does the scoring for you. It is easy to see why others enjoy it. I witnessed myself first-time players clicking with it. They start deciding which animals and trees to collect, and then they start paying attention to what others are collecting so that they avoid giving away useful cards. They also quickly pick up the tactic of overflowing the board to discard cards which others want. 

Feedspot ranking: 48

 

A website called FeedSpot maintains rankings of blogs of various topics and categories. They have a boardgame blogs category. My blog is currently ranked #48. It's nice to be featured. For a long time I've felt blogging is rather outdated. People mostly watch videos now. It's nice to know there are still many blogs which are active. 

Chatting Rivers and Lakes with Tao

 

Brian Bankler from Tao of Gaming, a blog I have been following for many years, read my recent post on Rivers and Lakes, a business simulation activity I designed for my leadership training work. He was intrigued and contacted me to chat more. We did an interview through email exchanges. We went into more details about the activity itself, my experiences running it, and also the thinking processes behind the design. Here's our conversation. 

If you are interested in my leadership training, contact me. 

Email: cs@simplifypeople.com

Website: simplifypeople.com 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hiewchoksien/ 

boardgaming in photos: friends and celebrities

During Chinese New Year this year I brought Attika back to Sabah, but didn't manage to get it played. I decided to put my foot down and brought it to the table. I (green) was sloppy and let younger daughter Chen Rui (blue) score a sudden death victory. She used her buildings to connect the two temples. She had planned this patiently. She amassed cards. She played the new land tile at the bottom right. She then quickly constructed two more buildings to complete the connection. I should have been more alert and stockpiled some resources. Then I might have been able to stop her. Or perhaps I needed to place the tile myself and block her path. Attika is a wonderful game. 

We played a second game, since the first one ended so quickly. This time Chen Rui (blue) got stuck in a bad position. Her starting buildings were those two at the top left, and they were quickly surrounded by my (green) buildings. She lacked resources to help her build, and also space. 

I (green) dominated the centre, forcing Chen Rui (blue) into two groups of buildings. She had to start a new group to be able to expand. 

4 Mar 2023. I met up with Edwin, Ruby, Xiao Zhu and Benz. They are my Pandemic team. We completed Pandemic Legacy Seasons 1 and 2 together. We are ex-colleagues and used to all work at a mobile game company. Since it was a game company, we had the perfect excuse to play games at the office. It's aah... training.  

We met up at Starbucks in Technology Park Malaysia. It was a quite place and we could stay and play the whole afternoon without being chased away. There was only a handful of other customers. We played Ticket to Ride: Japan. We had wanted to play it for a long time, but never got around to arrange a time. I also taught them Carcassonne. 

When playing Ticket to Ride: Japan, I replaced some of the shinkansen (bullet train) pieces with these souvenirs I bought in Japan. The game came with 16 shinkansen pieces but I only had 6 mini train souvenirs, so for the other 10 pieces I still had to use the standard trains that came with the game. Using these pretty pimp-up pieces distorted our game somewhat. We all raced to build shinkansen tracks because we wanted to use those pretty pieces. Once the 6th piece was used, the motivation to do shinkansen tracks suddenly plummeted. 

10 Mar 2023. I did a gathering with my BNI friends Jessyca, Nicole, Preston and Susie. We played the original Ticket to Ride. 

I brought out Through the Desert, which I had not played for a very long time. This was one of the earliest games I bought, about 20 years ago, when I got into the boardgame hobby. 

This is an eye-catching game. 

Taluva isn't a huge hit, but by now it is on its third edition. For a hobbyist game that's very successful. I like the game and am happy it is doing well. I'm always a little torn when I teach this game to new players. It is an open information strategy game, where experienced players tend to have an advantage over new players. I feel bad about beating the newbies too soundly. It would be like bullying them. I feel lousy and they don't enjoy the experience either. This time, things went the opposite direction. I not only didn't win, I made a mistake which gave the eventual winner Jessyca the victory. Gosh I need to do some self-reflection on why I did so poorly. 

10 Mar 2023 was the official launch of the Vivae Board Game Cafe Ampang branch. I was invited to showcase my game Dancing Queen. I also brought other prototypes to be playtested. There were a few other local game designers at the event. 

I had a chat with one of the customers who tried Dancing Queen, and found out that he was a reader of my blog! He once bought a game and couldn't figure out how to do the setup. He Googled and my blog was the first entry to show up. He commented on my blog post to ask about the game setup. I have been blogging since 2007, but I don't often run into readers. When it happens I can't help feeling that little bit of narcissistic pride. Sorry, I'm but human. 

Dancing Queen is now released, but whenever I get a chance to demo it, I still carefully self-inspect to see how I can further improve the way I introduce and teach the game. How do I make it easier for the players to understand the game, to see the hook and to enjoy themselves? I find this is a very important skill for game designers to learn. I still keep fine-tuning how I teach the game. Sometimes I omit a rule when teaching, and only explain it when the relevant situation arises during play. 

The guest of honour that day was Tian Chua. I don't meet celebrities often so by the next day I was already showing off on social media. This photo was taken when I explained to him how Snow White and the Eleven Dwarfs worked. I look like a conspiracy theorist foisting his postulations on an innocent bystander. Tian Chua listened intently. When I later explained Dancing Queen to him, he asked intelligent questions. He wasn't just humouring me. That is something I respect. The way he asked for clarifications made him sound more like a gamer than a muggle. A closet gamer? 

Municipium

The Game

Municipium is a 2008 game from Reiner Knizia. It was published by Valley Games, which had a bit of reputation during its days. They managed to secure rights to two long out-of-print classics, and the gamer community was lucky to see these back in print. One of the games was Die Macher, and the other Hannibal: Rome vs Carthage. Valley Games often used art and design from Mike Doyle. I used to follow his blog. His style was unconventional. Some of the games with his design work had some useability concerns, but the art was bold and fresh. 

The copy of Municipium I bought was a second hand copy. I saw someone selling it on Facebook and decided to get it on a whim. This is an out-of-print game and not easy to come by. I later realised that Allen my regular gaming buddy who lives a 5-minute drive away from me actually has a copy. I had completely forgotten that. Anyway, I'm happy to own this rare game from Knizia. 

The setting in Municipium is a colonial town of the great Roman Empire. The town is developed and administered following the Roman governmental template, which means you need to have a temple, a bath and other such buildings that civilised people have. Players are powerful families in town, vying for influence. You send your family members to mingle with folks at the various buildings, hoping to gain influence over the citizenry. There are four classes of citizens (in four different colours) and you need to charm all of them. Whenever you collect a set of citizens in four different colours, you swap them for a coin. Whoever is first to collect his fifth coin wins the game. 

There are 7 buildings on the board. The temple is at the centre. The other six surround it and are linked by a circular path. The temple is accessible via two of the buildings. Your family members travel along the paths to the various buildings. Every player has exactly 7 family members. What you do on your turn is simple: take two steps and play a card. You may get one family member to take two steps, or you may ask two family members to each take one step. As for playing a card, you either draw one from the common draw deck to play immediately, or you play one of your three personal cards. Personal cards are single-use, so you better save them for when they are most effective. Cards in the game have a number of different effects, e.g. letting you use the power of a building where you have more family members than everyone else. 

One card effect is advancing the praefect, i.e. the large white pawn above. The praefect always moves one step clockwise along the circle of buildings. Whenever he stops, he gives out a favour token to whoever has the most family members at the building. Favour tokens are just like citizens, except they are jokers and can be treated as any colour. 

Every building is associated with one of the four citizen colours. Whenever citizens of a particular colour are added, they must go to a building of that colour. Once a building has three citizens, it is "harvest" time. Whoever has the most family members gets to claim two of the citizens. The player with the second most family members gets the third citizen. Generally this is how you collect citizens. 

You will always be competing to have the most family members at as many buildings as possible. You need this to win citizens and also to trigger the building powers. The temple at the centre is for tiebreaking. When the game starts, the tiebreaker priority is set based on family members at the temple. Once the game gets going, this priority is only updated when the temple power is triggered. Ties do happen frequently, so it is often important to fight at the temple. OK that sounds wrong and blasphemous. 

These are the personal cards. Everyone gets the same three cards. They are generally more powerful so use them wisely. 

When your family member wears a crown he has the strength of two family members. One of the buildings crown your family members. This is a form of investment. If you invest early in strengthening your family members, it can give you a significant advantage for the rest of the game. 

Once you have a set of four citizens, you must trade them in for one coin. The winning condition is 5 coins. 

The Play

When I first read the rules the game felt a little complicated. Each building has a different power. There are a few situations that can be triggered by player actions and card effects, which need to be handled in specific ways. There are quite a few different card powers too. However once I started playing, I found the game pretty straight-forward. It's just move two steps and play a card. 

Municipium is at its core an area majority game. You compete to have the most family members at the various buildings at the right time, i.e. when the building powers are being triggered, and when there are enough citizens to get distributed. Everyone only has seven family members. If you want to be strong in some buildings, you will be weak in others. Priorities priorities priorities. 

The praefect moves in a somewhat predictable manner, so players naturally gravitate towards competing at the next building he will visit. This is a tactical aspect of the game. The game has both strategic and tactical elements, and you can't ignore either. You need to worry about your overall board position because it's important for your general success. Yet you must not neglect the small tactical wins because they do add up. 

The Thoughts

Municipium was never particularly popular. It is a medium weight game. I think the lack of popularity is partly because it is in an awkward niche. It is not simple and welcoming enough to appeal to people who like light and casual games, and it is not the kind of heavy Eurogame that attracts the hardcore Eurogamers. The artwork probably detracted from its appeal. At first glance the board looks rather dull. I find it a game with character. The building powers are interesting and combine to create a coherent and unique experience. They are not just random powers thrown together to create a problem for players to solve. You can make clever combos from building powers. I always enjoy games that provide opportunities for smart play. This is a game with high player interaction. 

I consider myself lucky to land a copy of Municipium! 

Off-topic

Now that my own game Dancing Queen is released, I sometimes receive Paypal notifications about incoming payments. One recent transaction puzzled me. The amount wasn't right. I checked my order sheet and there was no such game order. Only when I checked the transaction details on Paypal I realised this was not an order at all. It was a long-time reader supporting me and buying me coffee. I have been blogging for about 15 years now, and it has always been just sharing my personal journey. Nothing particularly ambitious. It is always rewarding to know that I have brought joy and useful information to others. Thank you to all who have been supporting me and to Bay-Wei Chang! 

Email subscription (Feedburner) will be disabled

The email subscription widget I use for this blog will no longer function from July 2021 onwards. Feedburner is stopping this service. If you are subscribed to this blog using email, you will no longer receive emails. 

One option is following this blog on Facebook. I'm trying to figure out an easy way to embed another email subscription widget. Does anyone have any recommendation on a painless way to get this done? 

10 years of blogging

I have been doing this for 10 years, since July 2007. In the early days of getting into the boardgame hobby, I hungrily devoured all sorts of boardgame-related content I could find on the internet. I regularly read blogs maintained by others, like Mikko Saari, Bruno Faidutti. I enjoyed The Games Journal, and I fondly remember that Greg Aleknevicus wrote great articles. My motivation for starting a boardgame blog myself was boring. Put simply, it was just for record-keeping. I wanted a place where I could organise my boardgame experiences - the photos I took, the stories I lived, the friends I played with, what I thought about the games. Till now this hasn't changed. I enjoy record-keeping. This blog is still very much a personal journey. Nothing ambitious or profound.

Blogging is, in my opinion, out of style. My blog readership is declining. Boardgame hobbyists prefer to consume content in the form of videos. Some bloggers successfully switched to become vloggers. There are vloggers who never were bloggers. Some people do a mix of video and text content, e.g. the folks at Shut Up & Sit Down. I have never considered vlogging. Too much work. Blogging is something I can do at a leisurely pace. I write using Google Docs. I write when I have free time and when I feel like it. I don't need any elaborate preparation. There is some work in taking photos, transferring them to my laptop, editing them, organising them, uploading them. However I enjoy taking photos anyway (again, also because of how I like record-keeping), so I don't mind the effort. The other reason I never considered vlogging is I don't like the format myself. I don't watch many vlogs. I prefer reading text because I can skim text quickly. I can jump to sections which interest me. With videos, the vlogger dictates the pace.

Sometimes it feels like blogging about boardgames is a bigger pastime for me than playing boardgames is. Sometimes I spend more time blogging than playing. I play less in recent years. I still have ongoing Ascension and Star Realms games on my phone, but sometimes it can be weeks between joining boardgame sessions at Boardgamecafe.net. Recently when I had a long list of boardgames to blog about, I felt there was no hurry to play more new games because of that glut of content. The five-years-ago me would be alarmed at such blasphemy. Something is not right! Boardgames is supposed to be about playing, and not about writing. Sometimes when I almost run out of new boardgames to write about, I feel a higher sense of urgency to join the next game session, so that I will have new content. This is so upside down. This is actually what made me think of writing this article; not the fact that it has been 10 years.

Eventually I conclude that this is not wrong. It is my pastime. I am free to decide how to spend my leisure time as long as I am not hurting anyone.

I have once tried to make money from this blog. I signed up for the referral program at Noble Knight Games. If I successfully referred a customer who then made a purchase within one week, I would get a small fee. I did make some referrals which led to sales. OK, maybe not "some". It might have been just one. The total fee never reached a threshold which would justify the trouble and cost of sending it to me. After a while I stopped inserting links and ads. I tried setting up Google Ads, but Google's bots automatically rejected my application, likely because I had too many links at my blog (I create a label for every game I play). So, my blog went back to serving just my original purpose - a scrapbook of my fond memories.

I started a boardgame blog in Chinese in 2010. My mother tongue is Mandarin. There are some expressions in Chinese which I can't find equivalents of in English. I decided to write in Chinese too because I enjoy expressing myself in my native language. It meant double work. My content is mostly the same between the two blogs. Now my process is I write in Chinese, and then I write in English while referring to the structure and the content already written in Chinese, and finally I publish both posts simultaneously. I don't read blogs in Chinese nor do I follow any boardgame websites in Chinese. I am too used to reading boardgame content in English. I make up my own Chinese words for concepts and terms which are originally in English. The Chinese language boardgame community probably has different terms. Avid readers of Chinese boardgame content will find my Chinese blog queer.

I can probably proclaim myself the #1 boardgame blogger in Malaysia, but only because people don't really blog anymore nowadays. My boardgame kakis Jeff and Heng used to blog, but are not very active now. One interesting side effect of having this blog is this - occasionally newspaper journalists contact me to interview me. I think it's simply because when they google for boardgame experts or authorities in Malaysia, there is little to find other than my little blog. This sounds sad, but I think boardgames is growing in Malaysia. Else there wouldn't be journalists bothering to write about it. There are more boardgame cafes now. Boardgames is not mainstream, but it is not as niche as before. It's just that people just play and don't worry about writing about it.

Auto-posting to Facebook is important, I feel. I use dlvr.it. My volume is small, so it's free. I just need to set it up once, and after that it's worry-free. Sometimes I get questions from Facebook. I think I get more there than on Blogspot, where the blog actually resides.

One thing that still annoys me is spam posts. Blogspot does try to help, but some still get through. Once in a while a legitimate post gets held up. I don't monitor comments held up as possible spam. Because of this, there was once I approved a legitimate comment more than a year after the poor guy posted it. Sorry. I do receive notifications for posted comments, and when I see a spam post being auto-approved by the bots, I cannot resist coming personally to exterminate the spam post.

What's next for this blog? I expect it will be more of the same.

What do you like or not like about my blog? Do you find it useful? Informative? Entertaining?

link: Bruno Faidutti - reviewing reviews

This article from Bruna Faidutti really struck a chord with me - Reviews. I too dislike giving games a number rating, and I think the most valuable part of a game review is what the writer thinks of the game - why he likes it or why he doesn't. Who would like the game and why? That's the reason my standard format for blogging about games has a Thoughts section. It is for the convenience of those who wish to literally "jump to conclusions". That's what I like to do.

reviewer bias; game taster mood

Should a game review specify whether the game being reviewed is one the reviewer bought / asked for / sought out, or one that someone else suggested or was a review copy sent in cold by the publisher? To expect this caveat in every review sounds absurd. Where I am coming from though is the reviewer's personal bias. I wonder how that can be communicated. Readers can only grasp a reviewer's personal bias if they have been following him and paying attention for a long time. Sometimes they don't know it despite having read many reviews. For me, I only have vague ideas of what kind of games a few game reviewers like, from among the many reviewers whom I follow. I read too widely to remember who is who and who likes what. I wonder whether it's possible for a standalone review to communicate the reviewer's personal bias, so that the reader is better informed and reads the review in the right context.

Many times I am tempted to tell people not to trust me blindly, because I find that I tend to be biased towards the games I buy (or seek out to try etc) and against those others buy. The former almost always gets a positive impression while the latter more often than not gets a lukewarm response. This can be explained easily. Naturally I only buy or seek out games that I think I will like, so it is no surprise that I do end up liking them. And since I'm a jaded old fart of a boardgamer, most other games do tend to get automatically categorised as booooring or been-there-done-that by me.

When I play a game which I seek out to try, I am emotionally invested, because I have spent the effort reading about it, researching it, reading the rules and usually also making a rule summary for it. That adds to my personal bias. So. Don't trust me too completely. I don't trust myself entirely.

~~~~~

I find that I have been in a game taster mood lately. I think this is the after effect of Essen 2014. I normally don't consider myself a boardgamer who chases after the latest releases, but recently quite many at-least-moderately-interesting games have popped up in my boardgame circle, so I thought why not do some tasting around. I have been reading rules and making rules summaries slightly more than usual. I am enjoying this spurt of game tasting, and I'm quite content to play many of these games just once. Some of them are actually quite good, and deserve multiple plays. However it doesn't bother me too much that I may not play them again. This is contrary to my normal mantra - play fewer games and play them more times. Maybe it's just a phase which will pass, or a fancy that comes and goes.

I have been thinking about the current state of the boardgame industry, or at least boardgame as a hobby, to be like a pop industry. Many games are hot for a short time, and then forgotten. People quickly move on to the next new hotness. Boardgames are made to last many plays, and when you think of them being as short-lived as fireflies, it is hard not to feel sad. This tragedy probably applies only to hobbyists and not muggles. If you are a hobbyist, you will likely be paying attention to the many many many games that are being released every year. You want to try so many different titles, it results in you constantly jumping from one game to the next and never quite stopping or revisiting older games much. If you are a muggle, you will probably be content with just a handful of mass-market games and you get lots of plays from each game. Come to think of it, many muggles are already doing what I always tell myself to do.

One other way to look at the boardgame hobby is this: it can be a one-time consumption hobby, i.e. like watching movies or reading a book. In most cases you watch a movie or read a book just once. That one-time experience encapsulates all that the content creator wants you to see and feel. Now boardgame designers don't intend their creations to be just one-time affairs. Boardgames definitely have more replayability than books or movies. However, as a boardgame hobbyist, I don't think it's a sin being a taster. If you can afford it, and you are not hurting anyone (including yourself) in the process, who is to say what's the right way to enjoy your hobby?

Panamax. I quite like it and enjoyed my first game very much, but somehow I don't feel any hurry to play again or any urge to buy a copy.

my 2014

2014 has just ended. It's always fun to look back at what I've played throughout the year, and remember the happy times spent with friends and family. I'm going to skip the long boring lists, stats and charts this time. Let's start with what I have played in 2014.

What I Played

I've had 763 plays of 132 distinct games. That's higher than the previous year. These are my fives and dimes.

1. Ascension (483 plays in 2014) - Ascension, my LRT (train) game, has surpassed Race for the Galaxy to become my most played game, at 836 plays in total. I have 762 plays of Race for the Galaxy. The next is Dominion at a distant third - 314 plays. All my Ascension plays are on the iOS. I have not played the physical copy once. I own all the expansions on the iOS. The latest one, Realms Unraveled is quite interesting. I bought it only recently. Many crazy powerful cards. Also it contains cards which transform when specific conditions are met.
   
   
   

   Ascension with the Realms Unraveled expansion.

   
   
2. Escape: The Curse of the Temple (18) - Most were played with Shee Yun (9). I bought it with its two expansions because younger daughter (Chen Rui, 8) asked for it, but in the end it was Shee Yun and I who played it the most. It's a good family activity. It can be quite challenging when you add in the more difficult modules.
   
   
   

   Escape: The Curse of the Temple

3. PitchCar (12) - Another fun family game, and a dexterity game. Allen lent me his set, and it turned out to be pleasant surprise.
   
   
   

   PitchCar

4. Android: Netrunner (9) - I think I have more or less given up on it. It's a lifestyle game which takes commitment to truly enjoy. It's not something you can play casually, in my opinion. To quote Yoda, it's a "do or do not" thing - there is no "try". I still hold on to my base set and first expansion cycle, hoping for the day that I will jump back in. It would be rediscovering the game all over again.
5. Loopin' Louie (9)
6. Chicken Cha Cha Cha (8)
7. Pickomino (8)
8. Love Letter (8)
9. Templar Intrigue (8) - All played in the same sitting. A game where you play the people. You need to be able to act, and you need to lie convincingly.
10. Race for the Galaxy (7) - The new mechanisms in the Alien Artifacts expansion felt clunky, and I didn't like them. Maybe I should just play with the new cards but without the alien artifact module itself.
11. Spot It (7)
12. Mat Goceng (7)
13. Uno (5)

Most of the games above are short games played with the children. Let's look at another way of measuring - by time spent:

1. Ascension (483 plays, 241.5hrs)
2. Robinson Crusoe (4 plays, 8hrs) - I quite like it. I still have not played all six scenarios in the base game.
3. Paths of Glory (1 play, 8hrs) - Finally, I managed to get this played. It has been sitting on my shelf for a few years. Allen and I did not manage to complete the game, but we did manage to get about halfway. So we managed to get a good feel of this classic. It is a little daunting, especially because of the many rules exceptions. However the basic structure and rules are not very complex, and if you put some effort into understanding why the exceptions are there (they are all for historical reasons), it all makes good sense. I encourage anyone on the fence on this game to take the plunge. It is a rewarding experience.
   
   
   

   Paths of Glory, a classic wargame about World War I.

4. Android: Netrunner (9 plays, 6.75hrs)
5. Axis & Allies 1914 (1 play, 6hrs)
6. Civilization (1 play, 5hrs) - It was good to bring this out again. We did a 5-player game. It was epic. Disasters abounded. We crashed and burned. But all in an epic manner.
   
   
   

   My fellow Civilization players who stayed up with me until 4:30am - Kareem, Jeff, Damien and Ivan.

7. Escape: The Curse of the Temple (18 plays, 4.5hrs)
8. Agricola (3 plays, 4.5hrs)
9. PitchCar (12 plays, 4hrs)
10. Glass Road (4 plays, 4hrs)
11. A Brief History of the World (2 plays, 4hrs)
12. Sekigahara (2 plays, 4hrs) - I finally won for the first time in forever. I love this game.
13. Roads & Boats (1 play, 4hrs) - This has all the Splotter trademarks. If you like Splotter games, you'll like it. Do be warned that it is tedious. And it's strategic, and long, and unforgiving, and unapologetic.
14. Indonesia (1 play, 4hrs) - Played on Sloth Ninja, 4 players. It took months to complete our game. I should play this face-to-face.
15. Race for the Galaxy (7 plays, 3.5hrs)
16. Mat Goceng (7 plays, 3.5hrs)
17. Die Macher (1 play, 3.5hrs) - It was great to revisit this classic. I had hoped to do a full 5P game, but we only managed to do 4P. Still, it was a good session. I have been enjoying organising these longer, heavier and more fulfilling game sessions in 2014.
    
    
    

    Die Macher

18. Le Havre (2 plays, 3hrs)
19. Heroes of Normandie (2 plays, 3hrs)
20. Age of Steam (2 plays, 3hrs)
21. Wilderness War (1 play, 3hrs) - This was one of my record holders for longest unplayed game - about 10 years. The setting is a rarely used one in boardgames, and I find it quite interesting. It is a card-driven game, and it tells a good story.
    
    
    

    Wilderness War, about the French-Indian War - Britain and France fighting for supremacy in North America, prior to the birth of USA and Canada.

22. Level 7 [Omega Protocol] (1 play, 3hrs) - This was a very memorable game session. We had a 4-vs-1 game. I was on the good guys' team. I didn't have to teach or manage the scenario as the game master, so I could sit back and enjoy the ride. And what a ride it was.
    
    
    

    Level 7 [Omega Protocol]

23. Cuba Libre (1 play, 3hrs) - So much story and character in this game!

The One-Long-Game-A-Month Exercise

One thing I did in 2014 was to plan ahead to play one game which was hard to bring to the table every month. The game selected was not necessarily a very long one. I just compiled a list of games I wanted to play, which I had not played for a long time. Some games were difficult to bring out because they needed a specific player count and a long play time, i.e. something you needed to plan ahead for. Some games were difficult to arrange to play because of the rules complexity and the need to prepare beforehand. This exercise worked out quite well for me, and I managed to play quite a few games which I otherwise would not have played till now. I didn't manage to make it every single month, but I'm happy enough with the results. Here are the games I managed to play thanks to this conscious effort.

1. Paths of Glory (first play)
2. Roads & Boats (first play)
3. Axis & Allies 1914 (first play)
4. Wilderness War (first play)
5. Francis Tresham's Civilization
6. Die Macher
7. Hammer of the Scots
8. Axis & Allies Guadalcanal
9. Sekigahara: The Unification of Japan

I had hoped to play again A Few Acres of Snow, Antiquity and a 5-player game of Age of Steam, but unfortunately these didn't work out. Here's hoping for 2015.

Game Acquisitions

Here are the games added to my collection in 2014. #1 to #8 are all gifts from Allen. Thanks, bro!

1. Glory to Rome - This black box edition is a grail game and I am one lucky gamer.
2. Plato 3000
3. Templar Intrigue - A microgame.
4. Coin Age - A microgame.
5. Burgoo - A microgame.
6. This Town Ain't Big Enough for the 2-4 of Us - A microgame. Yet to play.
7. Town Center - Yet to play the expansion maps.
8. Tooth & Nail: Factions - Yet to play.
9. Mat Goceng - A review copy.
10. Love Letter - A self-made copy with an Adventure Time theme. I had more fun with it than I expected. Good for playing with children.
11. The Palaces of Carrara - A very decent Kramer / Kiesling game. Pacing is very important.
12. Bottle Imp - This is an old game and a good trick-taking game. Just before the year ended, I decided I wanted a copy in my collection. This is the kind of game purchase that I want me to be doing. Don't impulse-buy. Don't get easily attracted to the new and shiny. Buy something that has stood the test of time, something that you still like after the novelty has worn off and the hype has died down. Good boy.
13. Tragedy Looper - I quite enjoyed this. 1 play so far. A deduction game, and something very different. The anime / manga graphic style is not my thing, but the gameplay is good. This game set my heart racing. It can be very tense.
14. Race for the Galaxy: Alien Artifact - I bought it because I'm a fan of the series.
15. Escape: The Curse of the Temple - I bought it because Chen Rui (8) asked for it.
16. Escape: The Curse of the Temple, Quests expansion - Ditto.
17. Escape: The Curse of the Temple, Illusions expansion - Ditto.
18. Android Netrunner: Trace Amount - I wanted to complete expansion cycle 1.
19. Android Netrunner: Cyber Exodus - Ditto.
20. Android Netrunner: A Study in Static - Ditto.

I have considered buying Panamax. I quite like it. I still haven't made up my mind. Maybe I'll leave a quota slot for it in 2015. Another game I have thought about buying is A Few Acres of Snow. I do like it a lot. Mythotopia doesn't interest me because of the generic setting.

New-to-Me Games

1. Paths of Glory (first played on 16 Feb)
2. Love Letter (18 Feb)
3. Okiya (28 Feb)
4. Roads & Boats (7 Mar)
5. Quarriors! (12 Mar) - Didn't like it.
6. Nations (14 Mar) - A decent civ game which should not be compared to Through the Ages but unfortunately everyone is doing it.
7. Axis & Allies 1914 (16 Mar) - Jeff and Heng thought this was the best in the series. I thought it was good, but didn't feel it was exceptional. We did have a great full-day session with it though.
   
   
   

   Axis & Allies 1914

8. Napoleon (25 Mar) - An oldie, but a decent one.
9. Shadow Hunters (28 Mar)
10. A Brief History of the World (29 Mar)
11. Wilderness War (4 Apr)
12. Kashgar (11 Apr)
13. UGO (11 Apr)
14. Duel of Ages II (2 May)
15. Cuba Libre (27 Jun)
16. VivaJava: The Dice Game (18 Jul)
17. Istanbul (18 Jul) - Didn't click with me.
18. PitchCar (28 Jul)
19. Plato 3000 (2 Aug)
20. Heroes of Normandie (15 Aug)
21. Wildcatters (22 Aug) - A game about the oil industry. It has character. The only pity is it heavily uses area majority, which is a mechanism I personally don't like. If you don't have an unusual dislike for area majority, check it out.
22. The Palaces of Carrara (16 Sep)
23. Las Vegas (16 Sep) - A fun and interactive game. Low to medium complexity. Very clever.
24. Mord im Arosa (16 Sep)
25. Terra Mystica (19 Sep) - Finally I understand why the fuss. It's a decent game.
26. The Builders: Middle Ages (19 Sep)
27. Take It Easy (21 Sep)
28. Dragon Parade (21 Sep)
29. Bananagrams (21 Sep)
30. Level 7 [Omega Protocol] (26 Sep)
31. Coin Age (28 Sep) - I still don't understand the fuss, and I'm now too lazy to bother.
32. Mat Goceng (28 Sep) - I like this secret identity game from Indonesia. I think it works best with 4 or 5 players. Unfortunately it didn't click with the folks I usually game with.
33. Templar Intrigue (3 Oct)
34. Legacy: The Testament of Duke de Crecy (16 Oct) - An enjoyable game in which you build a family tree.
35. Impulse (17 Oct) - A Carl Chudyk design which warrants more exploration.
36. Glass Road (24 Oct)
37. Burgoo (26 Oct)
38. El Gaucho (31 Oct)
39. The Staufer Dynasty (7 Nov)
40. Panamax (7 Nov) - A game I like a lot. Something different. Something not run-of-the-mill.
41. Imperial Settlers (14 Nov) - I prefer the older, less pretty and less polished 51st State. I sound like a grumpy old man waving my walking stick and going, "Back in my days we had a proper 51st State!"
42. Genji (5 Dec)
43. Historia (12 Dec)
44. Tragedy Looper (19 Dec)
45. Eight-Minute Empire (19 Dec)

I don't have any clear favourites among these new-to-me games. Here are some that I like: Paths of Glory, Wilderness War, Panamax, Tragedy Looper, Roads & Boats.

Other Thoughts

I am glad to have revisited: Hammer of the Scots, Die Macher, Civilization, The Message: Emissary Crisis, En Garde, Axis & Allies Guadalcanal, Amun-Re.

I hope to revisit in 2015: Clash of Cultures, The Great Zimbabwe, Le Havre, Automobile, Brass, A Few Acres of Snow.

I have played quite a fair bit of Hearthstone on the iPad, but I don't count it as a boardgame, so I don't keep detailed records. I consider Hearthstone the first time that I have really got into a collectible card game. I have played a few hundred games I think. Being on the iPad and having such a wide player base make playing it very convenient. I quite like the game. I have now stopped, only booting it up once in a long while. It has been satisfying to get a little into the metagame level of a CCG. I'm not a strong player, reaching at most Level 17 or so (bottom level is Level 25), but I have had fun.

I Kickstarted the digital version of Twilight Struggle on the iOS, because one word - Playdek. Hopefully this will be delivered in Mar 2015.

I still mainly play at the open gaming sessions organised by Jeff and Wai Yan at Boardgamecafe.net, and at Allen's place (all those photos with a yellow tint). Sometimes I play at home with my children Shee Yun (9) and Chen Rui (8). In 2014, Shee Yun had 105 plays of 43 distinct games, both slightly lower than 2013. In addition to many rounds of Escape, we also played Robinson Crusoe together, which was fun. Her most played games were Escape, PitchCar and Love Letter. Chen Rui had 113 plays of 40 distinct games, both these were higher than 2013. Her most played games were PitchCar, Love Letter and Loopin' Louie. Her favourite games include Pickomino, Chicken Cha Cha Cha and Barbarossa (the clay-sculpting and guessing game, not some wargame on Operation Barbarossa).

My wife Michelle played much less in 2014 - 33 plays of 20 distinct games. Most played: Race for the Galaxy and Mat Goceng (because Chen Rui likes it and it needs a 4th player to be more fun). Michelle used to be my #1 gaming buddy, but has been gradually drifting away from boardgames. Her preferred pastime is reading.

I still spend much of my hobby time on blogging - 85 posts at this blog in 2014, and 81 posts at my Chinese boardgame blog. Some posts that I like:

• Comparing how the same wars or battles are presented in different ways in boardgames.
• Game sessions: Paths of Glory, Axis & Allies 1914, Roads & Boats, Wilderness War, Civilization, Die Macher, Axis & Allies Guadalcanal, Hammer of the Scots.
• My limited appreciation of Android: Netrunner - something I want me to read, with the hope that I'll get back to it some day.
• A breakdown of how I spend my hobby time.
• A snapshot of my collection as at Oct 2014.
• There are no bad games. There is always a right occasion and a right audience for a game.
• Which generation are you from?

I don't have anything profound or new to say for 2014. It has been a good year of gaming for me personally. In particular I am quite pleased with having planned for and managing to play a few classics and a few longer strategic games. I continue to fall behind in chasing after the latest releases, but I don't really mind. I don't worry about the ones that got away. You can't catch them all. It's not worth the effort when many excellent games are still sitting around waiting to be played. I still have not played Russian Railroads (DSP winner + IGA winner + KdJ recommended), which I do have some interest to try at least once. I do get plenty of opportunities to try out new games because of the friends I game with. I always have topics for my blog lined up, and I savour taking time to think about and to write about the games I play.

Here's wishing everyone a great 2015 ahead - with plenty of games to play, and plenty of friends to play them with.