gaming with the children

23 Mar 2013. I recently taught Shee Yun (8) to play Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation, and she liked it very much. The strategies are still slightly beyond her. To handicap myself, I ask her to randomly arrange my pieces before the game starts (but the identities are still hidden from her). It turns out that this handicap is not as big as I thought it would be. She has only beaten me once, when I played as the Light player. My Frodo was in a bad position and I couldn't get him out. I think the initial board positioning is more important for the Light player, because their character abilities are more specialised. Because of this game, Shee Yun kept asking me about the story of Lord of the Rings.

24 Mar 2013. Shee Yun requested to play Lord of the Rings the cooperative boardgame. This time even Chen Rui (6) wanted to join. This game is definitely beyond them, but since it is a cooperative game, I can still guide them along the way. It worked out well. They enjoyed themselves. Chen Rui didn't really understand the overall strategy, but she was happy enough. She knew she had to collect the sun, ring and heart tokens, and she understood it was bad to go near Sauron.

Such a game would intimidate many adults.

We played at the easiest level. We had some unlucky tile draws in the early game, but after that things went quite smoothly, and we eventually destroyed the One Ring quite comfortably. I tried not to dictate what the girls did, but sometimes they felt lost and asked me what they should do. I tried to present them their options and encourage them to decide for themselves. However I think the reminders and tips I gave probably influenced many of their decisions. Anyhow, all is good as long as they enjoyed themselves.

None of the hobbits were very near Sauron by game end.

This is the final scenario board - Mordor.

30 Mar 2013. We had another family outing to Meeples Cafe. This game is Sticky Stickz. Every turn, the active player rolls three dice, and everyone races to pick up the tiles which match what the dice describe, using sticks with suction cups at one end. The game ends when three stack of tiles run out.

In this photo, the dice specify that you need to pick up tiles with only a single yellow furball, and its expression must be one of shock. Some dice combinations give multiple criteria, e.g. either 1 or 2 furballs will do, or either green or blue furballs will do.

This is how you do it.

The components of Feed the Kitty are cute. You get a bowl, wooden mouse-shaped tokens, and two special dice.

On your turn you roll the dice and they tell you what to do. The bowl icon means you need to surrender a mouse to the bowl. The mouse icon means you take a mouse from the bowl. The arrow icon means you give your neighbour to your left a mouse. The sleeping cat icon means nothing happens. When all but one player run out of mice, this last player with mice wins. You don't immediately lose when you lose all your mice. You just don't get to roll dice temporarily. You may get a mouse from your neighbour, thus bringing you back into the race.

This game is like LCR. There is no decision-making at all. I guess it's OK for entertaining children. It's not something you want to play with adults, unless you're gambling, or you're drinking.

Chen Rui had two mice left.

What kind of expression is that...?

I explained Monster Chase to the children. This is a cooperative memory game. In this game a child's bed is being besieged by monsters, and the players need to work together to banish all the monsters to the cupboard. Every monster is afraid of a particular toy. These face-down tiles in this photo are the toys. To banish a monster, you need to flip over the specific toy tile that the monster is scared of. More and more monsters will appear, and the players need to keep them in check and not let them surround the bed on all four sides. If the child's bed is surrounded, the players lose. The players win by defeating all the monsters in the monsters card deck.

That's the child in his bed on the left, and a monster on the right. This monster is scared of books.

These three cards are a countdown timer. Whenever a player fails to find the right toy to banish a monster, one of these cards is flipped over. When all three are flipped, a new monster card needs to be drawn and placed on a vacant side of the bed.

The first thing that came to mind when I saw these cards was - "Draw me like one of your French girls".

We played Escape: The Curse of the Temple again, twice. This time we used a timer. We didn't use the CD, so our game was a little easier. With the CD, there would be some points during the game that everyone needs to return to the start tile. Anyone who doesn't loses a die. We used my watch as a timer. We also set a slightly longer time than 10 minutes. We still lost our first game, but we won the second one. This photo shows our first game. We were close. The remaining two adventurers were very near the exit when time ran out.

We also played Qwirkle. I had played it once before, and had found it not bad. It was Michelle's first time playing, and she immediately liked it. She asked me to buy a copy. When the lady boss says so, who am I to object? Never underestimate the charm of a Spiel des Jahres game!

This is the first game I bought in 2013. Almost a third of the year is gone and only one new game in my collection. Looks like I will likely meet my self-imposed quota of no more than 18 new games per year. Maybe I should try to go for 12 this year.

The Magic Labyrinth

Plays: 4Px1.

The Game

The Magic Labyrinth is a children's game with a memory element. It is played on an open grid with invisible walls. At any one time, one specific space on the grid, marked by a specific icon, is the goal that everyone tries to race to. Movement is determined by a die roll. The tricky part is the invisible walls. If you bump into one, you must go back to your starting corner. Whenever a player reaches a goal space, he collects a token, and after that a new goal space is determined. First to collect 5 tokens wins.

The way the invisible wall mechanism is implemented is quite clever. There are real walls set up under the game board. The player pawns have magnets beneath them, and a metal balls under the game board are attached to these pawns. When you move your pawn, you slide it along the floor. If you cross an "invisible wall", the real wall underneath the game board will block your metal ball, and it will fall off. Then you'll know you've hit a wall and need to go back to your starting corner.

The Play

Chong Sean, Chee Wee, Aaron and I played a four-player game. The early game was mostly trial-and-error trying to figure out and also remember where the walls were. The luck element is present, but good memory does help. I think we were either not very patient in trying to remember where the walls were, or we were simply bad at remembering. We still bumped into walls late in the game.

Chong Sean took an early lead, but others were able to catch up. In the end it was still him to first collect 5 tokens to win the game.

The Thoughts

It's a simple and well-produced children's game. Memory helps, but there is some luck in the die rolls which determine how fast you can move, and in the randomly determined goal which determines how far you are from it. I'm not a fan of memory games, so this is not really my thing, but I think this is a decent children's memory game. At least there is some skill involved.

Viva Topo! and Didi Dotter

Both Viva Topo! and Didi Dotter are children's games that I tried at Carcasean. Both are quite simple, so I'll write about both in the same post.

In Viva Topo! each player has a family of mice and uses them to collect as much cheese as they can. The game board is a circular track, with multiple stops. Each stop has four pieces of cheese, with the earlier stops having smaller pieces, and the last stop (i.e. finish line) having the biggest pieces. The mice race to collect cheese. They move by die roll. The pip distribution is 1, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Then 1 sides also show a cat, and the cat is the exciting part of the game. The cat starts rough halfway around the track opposite from the starting point for the mice. On your turn, you roll the die and move only one of your mice. If you roll a 1, you must also move cat. You need to move your mice quickly to avoid getting caught by the cat. Sometimes you need to settle for the smaller cheese pieces. If the cat is approaching, you may want to get your mouse to escape to an earlier stop. You get a smaller piece of cheese, but at least you mouse is safe now (once a mouse reaches a stop, it cannot move anymore).

The cat movement doubles in the later part of the game, cranking up the tension. The game ends when all mice have reached stops or have been caught.

The game board all set up and ready to go, for 3 players. The cat icons on the race track show the cat movement. The cat initially moves 1 step every time the cat icon is rolled on the die, but will later move 2 steps instead. The four corners are intermediate stops where mice can hide and claim smaller pieces of cheese. Each has two entry points. To claim the biggest cheese pieces a mouse needs to complete the full circle and get to the cheese castle at the centre.

The cat in Viva Topo! looks hungry.

At most four mice are allowed on any one space.

The starting box is a cosy mouse home. At this point one of Chong Sean's mice (blue) had reached the cheese castle and had claimed one of the biggest cheese pieces, but two of his mice were still at home. If the cat reaches the front door, they would be out of the game immediately.

The die. Two sides feature 1 and cat-face. The other four sides are 2 to 5.

Racing down the track. The cat is slowly approaching.

This little red mouse dived to safety and claimed a 2-segment cheese piece before the cat could catch it.

This is a simple and fun game. It's "only" a roll-and-move game, but there is actually some strategy in deciding which mouse to move. Should you focus on moving one or two mice to get them to reach the big pieces of cheese? Should you get a mouse to safety now or gamble on it being about to reach the next stop and get a bigger piece of cheese?

It's nothing deep, but there are some interesting decisions. It's quite exciting. And the mice (and cheese) are cute. I'm going to get a copy and I think my children (5 and 3) will like it.

Didi Dotter has cute components too - 12 rubber eggs. Each egg is made up of two halves, which can be attached together because the flat surfaces have magnets. The flat surfaces also have matching drawings. When the game starts, all half-eggs are placed face-down on the table and shuffled. Then each player picks one half-egg and put it in his egg cup. The game is a real-time game. Once the game starts, players try to find a half-egg in the middle of the table that matches his own half-egg, or any of his opponents' half-eggs. Once you find a match, stick the two halves together and claim that egg by putting it in your egg holder. When your egg cup is empty, you can choose (a) whether and (b) when to refill it with a half-egg from the centre of the table.

Setting up the game.

A round ends when all matching half-eggs have been found. Sometimes two players may be holding the two matching halves of an egg. It that case noone gets it. When a round ends you check the matches that you've made. There are 11 types of birds in the game, and you need to have matched all 11 types to win the game. 11 round discs are used to track this. One of the eggs has drawings of a fox. That's a joker and you can treat it as any bird type.

The 11 types of fowl.

The game is fast and furious. You need speed. Good memory helps, and a bit of luck doesn't hurt either. Things get pretty crazy once the game starts. And it's over very quickly. Don't even think about stopping to ask a rule question. That's what happened to Michelle. Chong Sean and I were so absorbed in the action that we couldn't stop to think or to answer her. Needless to say, she came in last. Now that wasn't very gentlemanly of us was it? Well, we were just being kids. Our game ended after the 3rd round.

Chateau Roquefort

I played Chateau Roquefort with Han and Chong Sean at Carcasean boardgame cafe on 26 Jun 2009. This game is marketed as a children's game, but it can actually get rather thinky. It looks gorgeous, and it is quite unique. I haven't seen anything quite like it. There are elements of memory and puzzle-solving, also a bit of nastiness (if you want to play that way).

Each player controls 4 mice, and uses them to explore the castle to look for cheese. The castle is no ordinary castle. Rooms in the castle can shift positions. There are trap doors which will capture your mice. If two of your mice land on rooms showing the same type of cheese, you gain a cheese tile of that type. There are 7 types of cheese, and you need to collect tiles of 4 types to win.

On your turn, you are allowed to take 4 actions. An action can be moving a mouse one step, removing a roof, or triggering the room-shifting. The castle is initially all covered up and you need to remove some roofs to see the rooms inside. Roofs are returned to their positions at the end of a player's turn, if there is no mouse in the way. Thus the memory element - you need to try to remember where the various types of cheese are before the roofs go back. Also because the rooms can shift, it becames trickier to remember which piece of cheese has moved where.

There are 3 traps in the castle - which are basically holes. You are not allowed to jump across them. Well, actually you are, but you'd look silly. Your mice are not allowed to jump across the traps. If someone slides the rooms in such a way that a hole moves to where one of your mice is, that mouse falls through and is now trapped in the dungeon. You have one mouse less. It is possible that you accidentally cause your own mouse to fall through a trap. If you are leading, it is possible for your opponents to gang up on you and do a few consecutive slides to make you lose your mouse.

The beautiful castle of Chateau Roquefort.

The seven types of cheese. In the background you can see some of the roofs. On the lower right you see the room tile which can be used to slide the rooms in the castle. Push it in from one end, and another room tile will fall out from the other end. Then you use that other tile to initiate the next room-sliding.

Some spots on the board are safe from the traps. See the spaces without a lowered floor. That red mouse next to two traps is actually perfectly safe, at least as long as it stays where it is.

All mice wear silly smiles.

The game actually has a bit of Tikal / Mexica / Java feel to it. I am surprised that I am comparing it to these medium-heavy games. The similarity is, of course, the action point system. You have 4 action points, and you need to think about how to best make use of it. There can be many permutations of what you can do. Of course Chateau Roquefort is not as heavy as these 3 games in the Mask Trilogy, but it can be thinky in a similar (but less severe) way as them.

How heavy the game feels depends on how seriously you take it. All the components and the gimmicky feel point to a light gaming experience, which can indeed be the case. So, it is not advisable to play this with super competitive or overly serious people. The game may drag.

Sole Mio

I first played Mamma Mia at Carcasean, and thought it was a unique, fun and simple card game. Uwe Rosenberg, designer of Bohnanza is good at coming up with these kind of interesting card games. Later when I ordered Mamma Mia, I also ordered Sole Mio, a more advanced version of Mamma Mia, which can also be played together with Mamma Mia.

The basic gameplay is the same, which I have described in my previous post on Mamma Mia. However the there are many more pizza recipes now, and many of them have special and quirky rules. There are also some ingredient cards which have two ingredients instead of one, kind of like the double cards in R-Eco. There is a rule where you can ask for another player's help to complete a pizza. I don't this there is much point in this in 2-player games, since both the players will get to complete a pizza, but this will be interesting with 3 or more players.

I quite enjoy Sole Mio. It has some more variety than Mamma Mia. There is still a fair bit of luck in terms of what recipes you draw. But the game is quick and fun, so I don't mind that. The dilemma in deciding when to play your recipe card is sweet. I should try to play Mamma Mia Grande one day, which is a game mixing the cards from both Mamma Mia and Sole Mio.

many new games, Ticket to Ride Card Game

I have been playing many new games lately. Some are newly arrived purchases, and most are games I played at Carcasean boardgame cafe in Kota Kinabalu, Sabah. I am in Sabah for holidays, and whenever I am back, I always visit Carcasean to try new games. They are doing well. There have been boardgame cafes opening in Malaysia and then soon closing down. But Carcasean is doing well. The few times I was there, they were more or less full. And these were on weekdays too. Also their customers seem to be a less nerdy and less gamer-like than other boardgame cafes. They have wide appeal. I saw many young people, who look like secondary school students, and young adults, of both genders. It is quite a family-friendly environment, not at all like a hobbyist or specialist place. I am happy for them that they have managed to reach out to a wide market.

It'll take me some time to write about all the recent new games that I have played, so I'll probably just take my time to write about them one by one. Let's start with Ticket to Ride: The Card Game. Michelle likes the Ticket to Ride games, and I already own 3 games (original, Europe, Marklin) and 2 expansions (USA 1910, Switzerland). There was never much doubt that I'd buy the card game version. Now that I hear that the Nordics version will come out in English too (previously only available in Scandinavia), I am thinking of getting that too, especially since we really enjoy the Switzerland version, and this Nordics version is also 2/3 players only.

I have read the rules for Ticket to Ride: The Card Game before deciding to buy it. The first thing I noticed (and probably every other gamer also does too) is the memory element. I am usually not that fond of a memory element in games. First warning light. Then there is a nasty element of being able to force your opponents to discard cards. Second warning light...

This is how the game works. Similar to games in the Ticket to Ride family, you try to complete tickets by collecting train cards. You gain points for completing tickets, and lose points if you fail to do so. On your turn, you can draw train cards from a pool of 5 face-up cards or the face-down draw deck; you can draw ticket cards (and in contrast to other games in the series you can decide to keep none if none fancy you); and you can play train cards. Train cards that you play go to an exposed area first, called the railyard, and they are vulnerable until they get moved to your safe deck, called the on-the-track stack. Cards can be played to your railyard in 2 ways, either a column of a single colour with 2 or more cards, or 3 single cards of different colours. The tricky part is, you cannot play a colour if it is already on the tably (in front of another player or even yourself), except when you to a train robbery, by playing more cards of a single colour than the cards of that colour already on the table. This, is the "nasty element" mentioned earlier. On your next turn, you can save one card from each of the columns in your railyard, and move them to your on-the-track stack. At game end, you use these safe cards to try to complete your tickets. Each ticket needs one or more cards of various colours to complete. You cannot examine your on-the-track stack during the game. Hence the memory element.

I have played some 2 player games and one 3 player game. The first game was the most challenging, as I tried to remember all the cards that I have saved into my on-the-track stack, and trying to work out whether I have completed all tickets in my hand. Later I devised a method to try to keep track. I'm not sure whether this is a good way to play. Some say in this game you shouldn't try to do that, and should just play with a rough idea of what colours you have a lot of and what colours you do not have many of. However I couldn't get myself to not try to remember my colours. The method I use is whenever I save some cards, I try to see whether these cards complete a ticket. If they do, I take that ticket from my hand and put it face down in front of me. Then I don't need to worry about it anymore. If the newly saved cards only complete some tickets partially, then I arrange those tickets in my hand in such a way that the colours just saved are hidden behind other cards. I can't see them anymore, so I don't need to worry about them anymore. This method helped me a lot, but I often end up holding cards in my hand in a very very convoluted way.

This was a two-player game against Michelle. It was game end and we were checking how many tickets we have completed. I had many leftover jokers (bottom right), and I should have drawn more tickets or kept more tickets drawn.

There are the six big cities cards, showing the bonus points to be awarded.

Some ticket cards with the train cards used to complete them.

Another important aspect in the game is connections to the 6 big cities. No doubt this is inspired by the Big Cities variant that came with the USA 1910 expansion. At game end, 6 cities award points to the player(s) who have most tickets connecting to them. I have not really worked out a strategy on how to maximise my points from these cities cards, other than trying to complete as many cities as possible. During the games, trying to complete tickets is already taking up all my brainpower and I have not thought about the big cities much. Maybe one thing that can be done is focusing on certain colours, because each big city has a colour and tickets connecting to that city all have that colour. Another thing is when drawing tickets, to choose many short tickets, preferbly the ones going to the big cities that you are focusing on.

The nastiness that comes from train robbing turned out to be fine for me. I think without it, there will be too little player interaction. In Ticket to Ride, there can be some nastiness when you claim a route that your opponents need, sometimes even when you don't need it yourself, you are doing it just to harm your opponents (损人不利己). How (intentionally) nasty you want to play is up to your group, and Michelle and I prefer to play without intentional nastiness, i.e. if we do need the connection we will compete for it. Similarly in Ticket to Ride: The Card Game you can decide how nasty you want to play. You can hoard some colours or a lot of jokers (locomotives), and wait until an opponent plays a big column of cards, before you play that same colour, and discard all of his/her cards. This can be devastating. You can play just a little nasty. When you opponent plays 3 cards of different colours, you then play 2 cards or more of one of those colours, to discard just one of his/her cards. You can play tricky nasty. Play single cards, tempt your opponent into playing a column of a single colour to discard one of your single cards, then play a bigger column to discard his/her column. You can play no nasty. If you opponents have cards of a colour that you want to play in front of them, you wait until they are all saved before you play the same colour. Michelle and I play the mildly nasty way, i.e. focusing more energy on our own tickets than actively trying to hinder each other. I like this train robbing aspect. It makes the decisions much more interesting. If you play 3 singles of different colours, the risk of losing all three is small, but since they are single cards, they are more vulnerable, and you cannot play jokers this way. If you play a big column, it is riskier, because even if your opponents do not have enough cards of the same colour (and jokers) to discard it immediately, they can wait until it has shrunk a bit (after some of the cards have been saved to your on-the-track stack). Since it takes several turns to save all the cards in the column, your opponents may even draw some cards of the right colour so that they can attack you before all your cards are saved. So basically you can play safe by doing 3 single colours, or you can play aggressively using columns. Columns are offensive weapons, but are also risky and can be counter attacked.

Some say that the game reminds them more of Mamma Mia that the Ticket to Ride boardgames. I think it is more similar to its boardgame predecessors. It is just the memory element that makes people associate it with Mamma Mia. You still have your own stack of cards that you try to complete your tickets with, not a common pool like in Mamma Mia. Also there is no timing element like in Mamma Mia. The order in which cards are played into your own stack is not important. Mamma Mia is a simpler game, and is also one that I quite like. Comparing them, I'd say there is more luck in Mamma Mia, it is simpler, lighter and quicker. There is an interesting brinkmanship in the game. Ticket to Ride: The Card Game has a bit more planning and is slightly more complex, with more things to consider. You can see what cards your opponents are picking, and there is more strategy to consider. To me there seems to be less luck too. In Mamma Mia sometimes you feel the planets are aligned for you, and yet sometimes you also feel that you are cursed for generations. In Ticket to Ride: The Card Game you feel you have more control.

So, overall a worthwhile purchase. It's something that Michelle would play, which I also enjoy.

Frank's Zoo, Notre Dame, Carc Discovery, Mamma Mia

I am back in Kota Kinabalu again, and took the opportunity to visit Carcasean boardgame cafe again. Chong Sean, the owner, told me that for the past few weeks business has been very good, probably because Chinese New Year is approaching and more people are on holidays. Quite often they have a full house from 9pm onwards. I visited Carcasean on Tue 5 Feb 2008, and indeed quite many tables were occupied that night, a weekday night. I went there around 7:15pm and was lucky to be the only customer at the time, so Chong Sean could sit down to join us to play. He taught us Frank's Zoo and Notre Dame.

We started with Frank's Zoo, a quick card game. This game is played in a series of hands, and in each hand, each player races to get rid of all cards in his/her hand. A hand ends when only one player has cards remaining. All other players score points based on the order in which they went out. Within one hand, players play tricks, with the person winning one trick starting the next trick. A trick is started by having one player play 1 or more cards of the same animal. The next player can continue the trick by playing the same number of cards of another animal which can beat the current animal (e.g. fox beats hedgehog, elephant beats lion, killer whale beats seal, mouse beats elephant), or by playing the same animal but one more card of it than previously played. You can pass, and passing does not stop you from playing card the next time your turn comes. The trick continues until everyone passes. The player who played last wins the trick. The only thing you gain (at least in the basic rules) is the right to start the next trick, which is often not an insignificant priviledge.

There are 5 of each type of animal in the game, the exception being 1 joker, and 4 mosquitoes. A single mosquito can be played together with an elephant, and be considered an elephant. Chong Sean told us that there is a German idiom about mosquitoes and elephants, which is why there is such a special rule in the game.

The game plays very much like Big Two (a.k.a. Cho Dai Dee / 锄大D in Cantonese). You try to use your big cards or powerful combinations to win a trick, so that immediately following that you can get your small cards out (e.g. the mosquitoes or the small fish). The "Dee" (i.e. Twos, which are the most powerful cards in Big Two) in this game are the killer whales, which no other animals can beat. So killer whales can only be beaten by a higher number of killer whales. The "food chain" is not exactly straight-forward. There are two main branches - land animals and sea animals - but they do have some overlap. If I remember correctly, the mosquitoes and the crocodiles appear in both the land and sea branches. Not all smaller animals are beaten by all larger animals. Some animals can be beaten by more animals than others, and it is not directly dependent on size. One interesting twist is the hedgehog can only be beaten by the fox and not by any other larger animals. This makes the hedgehog-fox link in the food chain an important factor to consider. Sometimes it is important to keep a fox handy in order to beat the hedgehog.

I found the game just so-so. It is quite a light game and can be played as a quick filler. The food chain theme is interesting and applied well. However, I don't need to own it. Maybe I feel that way because of the similarity to Big Two, which is probably more interesting, and can be played with a standard card deck.

Notre Dame is a game I have been wanting to try. I was a little reluctant to play this at first, because Elaine is very new to boardgames, and this is a medium-weight game which she may find overwhelming. She did struggle with it, but she was a good sport and did her best to play well. She beat Simon, who has definitely played more games than her. Chong Sean taught us how to play but did not play with us, because he has played this very many times (200 times he said, but I'm not sure whether that was just a figure of speech or he meant it literally).

Notre Dame is primarily about card drafting. Each player has 9 identical cards, each giving you the power to do something different. Every round you draw 3 cards from your deck, choose one and pass two to your left neighbour. You'll receive two cards from your right neighbour, and you must choose one and pass the other to your left player again. And finally you will receive one last card from your right neighbour. With these 3 cards that you end up with, you are allowed to play two in that round. There is a total of nine rounds in the game, which means you will use your card deck 3 times.

There are four main resources in the game - money, cubes, victory points (VP), and rats. Rats are a negative resource. Get too many of them, and you'll be penalised (you lose 2 VPs and lose one cube from your most populated district). Cubes signify how much effort you have put into the seven districts of your board. You need cubes to take the actions allowed by each of your seven districts, and to increase the magnitude of the actions you are allowed to take whenever you use a district. E.g. the first time you use your VP district, you place one cube there and gain one VP. The next time, you add another cube, and you gain 2VP (because you now have 2 cubes). So, the benefits are cumulative. You have only 4 cubes at the start of the game, so you will need to earn more cubes from the general supply. Money can be used to buy victory points, but the most important use (I think) is to pay for the service of one of the three characters who appear every round. These three characters appear semi-randomly throughout each of the 9 rounds of the game, and it only costs $1 to obtain the service of one of them, which is usually very much worth it.

Throughout the game, the cards you get let you do various actions in various districts on your board, which let you manage one or more of these four resources - money, cubes, rats and VPs.

That is how I would summarise the game, but of course in the game itself there are many more mechanics and details which I have omitted describing. When playing the game, the end goal is to maximise VP. In the process, you'll need cubes and money to improve your "engine" and strengthen your strategy. At the same time, you need to manage the risk of the rat plague. There is some planning in the game, which is an aspect in games that I like. The game feels a little solitaire, because you rarely directly hinder your opponents, and also probably because we were all new to the game. The two main aspects of player interaction that I see is the card drafting and the carriage. The carriage is a game piece that each player has one of, and it can move around the game board, including visiting other players' districts, to collect special reward tokens. If multiple players do the carriage action a lot, then there will be competition for these special reward tokens. The card drafting is the bigger aspect of player interaction. You should observe what your left neighbour is doing and avoid giving him/her cards that he/she will find useful. You should observe what your right neighbour is doing and expect what kind of cards he/she will not need and will pass to you, and then plan your strategy accordingly. However, in our first game, we were too occupied with learning the game and managing our own actions, that we didn't really pay much attention to what others were doing. I guess after more plays this aspect of the game will become more important.

Elaine and Simon learning to play Notre Dame. Look at how much fun they are having.

Me and Chong Sean, who decided not to join us and just teach us, knowing that he would slaughter us. He is holding in his hand the hunchback of Notre Dame, which is the start player marker in the game.

Notre Dame is in the centre, and there are three player boards surrounding it, one for each player.

The black cube on the track with 0 to 9 is the rat level. Go beyond 9, and you have a rat plague. You will lose one cube from your most populated district, and 2VP.

I won the game with a big margin, because I've read about the game before and already have a general idea, and of course also because I'm a veteran boardgame player compared to Elaine and Simon. Also, they misunderstood the power of the "trusted friend" card. This card allows you to move your trusted friend to a district, then treat your trusted friend as a cube, and execute the action of that district. This trusted friend card is effectively a joker card, and can be quite handy. They didn't realise the card allows an action execution, and thought it only allows movement of the trusted friend. No wonder I received this card from them quite often. Elaine came in second place, doing not bad for a boardgame beginner playing this medium complexity game, beating Simon, who had played quite a number of boardgames with me, although not being a gamer.

I enjoyed the game, even though I feel I have not fully appreciated it yet, because I was still playing with a rather solitaire approach. I have not started paying attention to what others are doing and have not been selecting my cards taking into account this information. The game may be even more enjoyable when I reach that level. Notre Dame was on my potential buy list, and after one play, is still on the list. This is yet another very "euro" game, like Pillars of the Earth, but somehow it feels less same-ish than Pillars of the Earth. I enjoy the fact that since you always only have at most 3 cards to choose from, you are not bogged down by too complex a decision tree. This does mean there is some luck in terms of what cards you draw, but I feel there is still more planning and reading your opponents than luck. So, this is a game I'll gladly play again, and it just may graduate from potential buy list to buy list.

Next I played Carcassonne: The Discovery with Simon. I didn't realise I have never played any of the Carcassonne games with him before. As a Carcassonne newbie, he struggled a little to find places to match his tiles. He had not even started to think of strategy or tactics yet. It was mostly a learning game for him. He was at a huge disadvantage, because it was a 2-player game. Normally, if a whole group of newbies play in a 5 or 6 player game, with one or two seasoned veterans, the newbies will not fare too bad, because with more players, luck factor is higher. In our 2-player game, I tried not to play too brutally (like I usually do with Michelle), and just tried to score for myself. But I still lapped him (i.e. >50pt lead) quite quickly.

Carcassonne: The Discovery, a 2-player game with Simon.

A close-up of the game.

This was my second time playing Carcassonne: The Discovery, the first time was not too long ago, also at Carcasean, but with Michelle. That time it was a surprise discovery to me, because I enjoyed it much more than I had expected. It even made it into my potential buy list. However, I'm not so sure now. Maybe I need to play this against another veteran player to make it interesting. I still find that Carcassonne: The Discovery plays rather differently from other Carcassonne variants, and I think I still like it more than the other variants. However now I'm not sure whether it will be so enjoyable to warrant purchasing a copy. Maybe I should try it again with Michelle before I decide.

The last game we played was Mamma Mia, and Chong Sean was able to join us for this game. This is a simple card game with a memory element. Each player has 8 pizza orders, and over three rounds (the draw deck being exhausted 3 times), compete to make the most number of pizzas. Each player has 7 cards, and on his turn, he must play one or more ingredient cards of the same ingredient (pineapple, olive, salami, pepper or mushroom), and then he may play one order card. He should play the order card when he is confident that there will be enough ingredients in the stack (a.k.a. the pizza deck) for him to make his pizza. He can add ingredients from his hand. One the draw deck is exhausted, the round end scoring starts.

The pizza deck (I'm not sure whether this is the correct term, Chong Sean also calls it the oven) is now turned upside down and cards are now drawn in the same order as they were played into the pizza deck. Ingredient cards are laid out according to type. Whenever an order card is drawn, the owning player tries to complete the order using ingredients already drawn, plus any number of ingredient cards from his hand (if he has the right ingredients). If a player fails to make the pizza, the order card is returned to him at the bottom of his order deck.

So in this game there is a memory element, because you need to remember what ingredients have been put into the pizza deck, and whether there is enough for you to make a pizza. However, I find that the memory element is not as big a factor than the brinkmanship element. Whenever you play some ingredients into the pizza deck, you will need to worry about whether the next player will play an order card and use up "your" ingredients. On the other hand, you also try to use the ingredients played by your opponents. Sometimes it is an interesting dilemma between playing your order card now or later. If you play too early, there are not enough ingredients, and you will need to keep more cards or hope to draw the right cards before end of round, so that you can play the right missing ingredients from your hand when it is time for scoring. If you play too late, your opponents may play their order cards before you, and thus use up the ingredients before you can do so yourself. I find that the memory element is smaller than I had expected. It is more about hand management and planning. It is more about set collection.

I quite enjoyed this game, and have now put it on my potential buy list. I think this can be a good game with 2 players too, which is always a plus, because that means I can play this with Michelle. Michelle prefers card games because they are quick to setup and quick to play.

games for children

My daughters are only 2 years 4 months old and 6 months old, but I have already bought some children's games to be played with them. The games are meant for slightly older children, but I have already started playing Gulo Gulo, Dawn Under, and Villa Paletti with Shee Yun. In fact, Gulo Gulo is the game I have played the most so far in 2007. I don't use the full rules. I create simpler rules to be used when playing with her. In Gulo Gulo, a game about flipping over tiles and stealing eggs from a nest without triggering the egg alarm (not allowing the thin stick to fall down), I use fewer tiles, and I get rid of the end game tile stack which randomises when the last tile (purple) will appear. In Dawn Under, a memory game about picking the right coffin for the right young vampire to sleep, I also use fewer vampires. I completely omit the rules about the rat plague, the garlic and the stakes. In Villa Paletti, a Jenga-like game, where players build a tower higher and higher by removing and reusing pillars from lower levels, I make up a rule that you roll the die and the die dictates what coloured pillar you must move. Players are not assigned a specific colour anymore, differently-shaped pillars do not have different point values, and there is no one sole winner, there is only one sole loser (whoever collapses the tower). Simplified rules make it easier for younger children to grasp the rules and to enjoy the game.

Dawn Under

Villa Paletti. 13 Sep 2006. Shee Yun was 1 year 6 months old then.

In my games with Shee Yun, I usually make the decisions for her, since she is unable to do it by herself yet. I also prompt her to take her turn (or stop her from taking an extra turn when it's not her turn). She enjoys the games. Somestimes she asks for the games, but sometimes she loses interest halfway before finishing a game.

Sometimes she also plays with my other games which are not children's games. She just plays with the components. She likes to pour out the pieces, and mix them up. Unfortunately, she usually doesn't bother to pack things up after playing.

On my recent trip to Port Dickson I had the opportunity to play Gulo Gulo and Villa Paletti with Ricky's two girls (6 and 3.5 years old). They enjoyed the games and were keen to play. Lok Mun (6) even created her own game and own rules on the spot, using the components of Gulo Gulo. I played along, although I had no idea how it was supposed to work.

Gulo Gulo

I look forward to the day that Shee Yun and Chen Rui are old enough to play the real "adult" games. Maybe something like Category 5, Carcassonne, or Blokus.