June this year I visited Taiwan with my family. Taiwan was where I got into the boardgaming hobby. I first learned about the world of German games there. I became a fan. That was in 2003. I worked and lived in Taipei from 2003 to 2004. After falling in love with boardgames, I also introduced them to my colleagues. We used to play over lunch time, hurriedly finishing our meals. I remember once when a public holiday was declared due to a typhoon, we ended up meeting up to play, because that typhoon turned out to be less severe than expected.
Well before the trip I arranged to meet up with my Taiwanese friends. Unfortunately many of them were not in town when I was there. Only Crystal and Jessy were able to meet up. The last time I visited Taipei was 10 years ago, in 2015. I hope the next time won't take another 10 years.
We played Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves
In 2004 when I visited a night market it Taipei, I bought some cheap plastic chips similar to these above. I sometimes use these when the boardgame I play uses paper money. For example Power Grid. I have been using my cheap poker chips for more than 20 years. In recent years, they play a new role. I use them when designing and playtesting games. By now, a few of the poker chips have gone missing, but most of them are still there and they still work fine. I don't really need to buy more. I bought these two sets above mostly out of nostalgia. These two use a different colour scheme from my old sets.
During the trip when I have the opportunity to visit bookstores I check out their boardgame sections. I ended up buying these games above. The one at the lower right was bought at a museum in Kaohsiung. I did not research boardgame stores in Taiwan and I did not plan to visit them. I considered visiting Witch House, which was where I learned about German games more than 20 years ago. I used to play games there regularly. However I found out that now they only have boardgame time on weekends. The only day I could visit them was a Wednesday. So eventually I decided not to go.
Of the four games above, I have played them all by now. They are all in my queue to write about. In the past ten years I have not been buying many games. At least not by gamer standards. However in the most recent few years, I have started buying more again, and the reasons I buy games have changed. I no longer buy just because I think it's a game I'll like. Sometimes I buy a game because I want to see how other people design and produce a game. I buy because I too am a designer and publisher now, and I want to learn. The game is reference material. This time in Taiwan, I bought games not just as games but also as souvenirs. In different places, and with different people, who have different personal experiences and histories, you get different kinds of games. The games are a snapshot and a reflection of a time and place, a culture, a society. I find that uniqueness fascinating.
Elfenland is an old game by Alan Moon of Ticket to Ride fame. It was the 1998 Spiel des Jahres winner, 6 years before Ticket to Ride won it. I checked my records, and the previous time I played this was 2007. In 1998, there weren't any heavy Eurogames like we do now. When playing games from the late 90's, I find them clean and simple, yet strategic and smart. They feel like a breath of fresh air. You don't get overburdened by too many rules and subsystems. I wonder whether I'm just being the nostalgic old fart.
Elfenland is played over four rounds. Your goal is to visit as many cities as possible. You place transportation tokens on paths. This opens them up for us, and at the same time also determines the modes of transportation you must use. To travel, you spend cards, which are the various modes of transportation - dragons, clouds, rafts, unicorns, boars and so on.
I have played a physical copy of Pax Renaissance before. This is a game about the Age of Renaissance in Europe. The board is divided into 10 major kingdoms. You buy cards which allow you to do all sorts of things, like taking control of kingdoms, changing them to republics (or back), creating armies, initiating wars, influencing religions and so on.
There are four ways to win. As you manipulate the political scene in Europe, you must think carefully which one to go for. While you work towards that, you need to remember to stop your opponents from achieving their goals too. Achieving a winning condition doesn't mean you immediately win. The victory condition needs to be enabled first, by buying a comet card. Comet cards only start appearing in the second half of the game.
I was pretty extreme in this particular game. All the cards I bought were for the western half of Europe. I had no influence in eastern Europe, but when I had so many cards for the western half, I could do many many things every turn. When you take an action to activate cards, you must choose either east or west.
At this point 5 of the kingdom cards had been claimed.
This winning condition is globalisation.
