Meeples Cafe Merdeka Sales

Meeples Cafe is having a Merdeka Clearance Sales from today till 16 Sep 2013. If you live around Kuala Lumpur, check it out.

When I first went through the sales items list, I thought there were quite a few good titles, but didn't plan to buy anything. The only game that tempted me a little was Conflict of Heroes. It was 60% off! Then Allen sent me a message, asking whether I was going. I said no. He said if I were he'd probably ask me to help buy some for him. He didn't have transportation. Then I thought, what the heck, I'd drive him there myself. He was originally thinking of getting Reef Encounter. He ended up getting 5 or 6 other games as well. Oops. It was probably at least partly my fault. I kept picking up boxes and saying to him: hey this one is not bad, or, hey this is a reputable title (e.g. La Citta). Surprisingly the Martin Wallace name didn't work its magic this time. He didn't buy Steel Driver, Aeroplanes or Toledo.

I shouldn't be poking fun at him. I ended up buying Conflict of Heroes afterall. At RM115.60 (~USD35), it was quite hard to resist. And I bought two Android: Netrunner expansions too (which were not on sale) - What Lies Ahead and Future Proof. I'm planning to get Humanity's Shadow when it is restocked. These three are the expansions that many people recommend.

Part of the loot today, three mine and three Allen's (they came straight to my place for storage and rules reading).

My number of games acquired has been kept very low so far this year. I've only added Qwirkle and Android: Netrunner to my collection up till yesterday. But this month and next there will be many new games arriving - 2nd edition of Sekigahara, which I pre-ordered under GMT's P500 program, Axis and Allies 1914, Robinson Crusoe, and of course since I've broken down and bought the two Netrunner expansions, I might as well buy Humanity's Shadow too. There are a few wait-and-see games that I am thinking of buying if I'm well under my annual game acquisition quota - Cavum and Clash of Cultures. I wonder whether there will be any new and shiny games that will distract me from them. Afterall Essen is not far away.

First Train to Nuremberg

Plays: 4Px1.

The Game

Martin Wallace's First Train to Nuremberg is an upgraded version of Last Train to Wensleydale which actually contains two games. It has a double-sided map, one side for the Nuremberg game and the other for the Wensleydale game. Most of the rules for these two games are the same. The maps provide some differences and contain some rules exceptions. I have only played the Nuremberg side, so this will be based on just this map.

In this unconventional train game, players are small-time railway companies trying to build small train networks and keep them profitable. The economic environment actually cannot sustain any such small railway companies for long, and one key element of the game is to sell no-longer-profitable chunks of your network to two big railway companies. You have to play the sleazy salesman. But at the same time you are also a hero to the local businesses. They pool together money and ask you to build up a train network for them to improve the local economy. You do exactly that, while struggling to keep your small railway company afloat. You know your company won't last and you'll need to sell much of it off to the two big railway companies, but at least you will have helped the locals in getting themselves a railroad network.

Before the game starts, goods, passengers and protesters need to be set up semi randomly. Normally building a track costs $1, but if you need to cross a river, it costs $2.

Yellow cubes are mail, grey cubes are beer, green and red passengers want to go to stations belonging to the Green and Red companies respectively.

The game is played over a fixed number of rounds. Every round you can build tracks, buy second-hand trains (you can’t afford new ones), transport passengers and goods, and also sell part of your network to Red or Green (the two big railroad companies). Your profitability is adjusted every round, comparing the value of goods delivered that round and the number of tracks you have. So every round you struggle to deliver more goods (which are gradually depleted from the board), while the cost of maintaining your tracks grows as your build more tracks to deliver these goods. Thus the importance of selling off unprofitable sections of your network to Red or Green, to reduce your maintenance cost.

There are five currencies in this game, each used for different purposes. Every round you receive a fixed number of investment cubes from the locals. You will use these to build tracks, and also to auction for the other four currencies:

1. Government influence - This is used to determine turn order when building tracks, which is very important because you need to compete to reach the areas with many passengers or goods to transport. You also need to spend government influence when connecting to towns which have protestors. Not all the locals like trains.
2. Train influence (or rather, train companies influence) – This is used to determine turn order when buying trains (which you need to do every round if you want to transport anything) and transporting goods, and is also spent when buying trains.
3. Green influence – To be spent when building tracks from a station belonging to Green Company, and when selling tracks to Green Company.
4. Red influence – ditto.

This is one of the smaller game boards for buying trains and transporting goods / passengers. When you buy a train, you put your train marker on the locomotive you want. The trains indicate how many goods and passengers they can transport. Note: Some photos are courtesy of www.boardgamecafe.net.

What you can do in the game depends a lot on how you manage these five currencies. This being a train game, the map play is very important – identifying the profitable locations, planning how to develop your network, thinking about how to block others, developing backup plans in case you don’t get the turn order advantage, competing to deliver certain goods which more than one player can reach. It is important to plan ahead. The game is quite tight. You need to maintain profitability, or at least try not to lose too much money. You need to plan for how to expand your network.

This smaller game board is for tracking various numbers. The eigher yellow boxes on the right show batches of influence that are auctioned to the players. The meters at the top are for tracking the influence levels of the players in the four types of influence. The three semi-circles in the middle are the player order indicators. The big circle at the bottom is for tracking profitability.

During the game you earn victory points for delivering goods (and passengers). At game end you gain bonuses for having good balance in the goods type delivered. This encourages you to have good variety in goods delivery. You also gain a bonus (or penalty) based on profitability, and you are penalised for any tracks that you still own (ouch).

The Play

Jeff, Kareem, Allen and I played a full four-player game on the Nuremberg map at Old Town Kopitiam Cheras. All of us were first-time players. The Nuremberg map has one special rule – when the two main cities on the map are first connected, all players who own tracks between these two cities gain a bonus. Kareem and Jeff grabbed this opportunity quickly and scored a handsome bonus.

The city of Nuremberg is made up of two halves, split by the river.

The box that we opened to play was missing the blue railroad tracks, so Allen had to improvise.

In the early game there was much space and we managed not to get in each other’s ways, but towards the second half as goods get depleted competition became more intense. Turn order to build tracks became more and more important, and I was in trouble because my government influence level was far far behind the other three. Auctions for the various influence types were civil at first, but became more and more brutal.

I did very well in profitability in the early game, delivering much beer. In fact I did better than I should, because the game limits your profitability to +5, so there is no point in going beyond that. However the profitability scale allows you to go to -13. Eeeee-vil. I was initially quite conservative about keeping my tracks. I tried to sell them off as soon as they became unprofitable (which was often immediately after I transported goods in the same round). However one downside of this was I had less flexibility when I built tracks the next round. So nearer to game end I decided to try keeping my tracks for longer. It did give me more flexibility. However it probably also caused me to lose a lot of money.

In the last round, I still frantically looked for a good path to extend my network. It was difficult, because I was last in track building turn order for most of the game. I did find one, and I had enough investment cubes to build the tracks, and I built them. In hindsight, I probably should not have done it. I didn’t sell my older tracks in the previous round, which meant I had two rounds’ worth of built tracks to pay maintenance cost for. My profitability plummeted. I didn’t have enough Red/Green influence to sell off many tracks. By game end scoring, I suffered a big penalty from a negative profitability level and also for the remaining tracks I had on the board.

In the last round Jeff did not build any tracks at all. He had done his homework properly and calculated that building tracks to deliver goods would actually cost him victory points. I need to learn to be less impetuous.

Final score: Kareem 23, Jeff 17, me 11, Allen 9. The in-game scoring went much higher than this. The end-game penalty was very severe.

End of Round 1. Kareem (orange) started from Furth in the north west. Allen (blue / cardboard shreds) started from the south west. Jeff (black) and I (purple) started from Nuremberg. He headed south, I headed north.

End of Round 3. Compare this with the previous photo and you'll see that many tracks have been sold to Red and Green. Also many of the goods and passengers on the board have been depleted.

The Thoughts

You need to do much forward planning in this game. You need to compete fiercely for the four types of influence. The game is unforgiving and you need to keep in mind the end goal (i.e. how the end game scoring is done).

I like the board play. I enjoy identifying opportunities, planning, executing, and adapting to changes / challenges caused by those pesky other players. This is certainly a challenging game. You need to compete in three different types of turn order (basic turn order, track building turn order and train buying / transporting goods turn order).

I have read some complaints about the game, which I agree about, but they are not big issues to me. There is no feedback loop for profitability. During the game, good profitability only gives you an advantage in basic turn order (which I feel is not very important) and does not give you more investment cubes in the next round. You receive a fixed number of investment cubes every round. You are rewarded / penalised for profitability only at game end.

The game setup is troublesome, but I think it’s a good way to randomise the board situation and make each game different.

I tend to play many Martin Wallace games, and this is one I like. Others I like include Brass, Automobile, Age of Steam. Like these other games, First Train to Nuremberg is tight and challenging, and it has its own uniqueness too. This is now on my list of games to buy if I don’t exceed my 20 games per year quota.

I’ll digress a little here. For 2011:

1. A la Carte (purchased)
2. Endeavor (purchased)
3. Haggis (I made a copy that can be played by 2 players as opposed to 2 or 3, by removing some cards from a normal deck of playing cards) (yes, that counts as acquiring a new game too in my book)
4. 7 Wonders (ordered)
5. Maori (ordered)
6. Race for the Galaxy: Alien Artifact expansion (will buy when it’s out)
7. First Train to Nuremberg (maybe will buy if quota not exceeded)

I’m doing quite well in managing my game acquisitions, and I’m considering dropping my quota to 12 games per year, i.e. 1 per month. Other games I’m interested to try: Cavum, 20th Century, Star Trek Expeditions.

bored gamer

Lately I find that there are fewer and fewer new games that really interest me. I follow many boardgame blogs and browse www.boardgamegeek.com all the time. Nowadays I often skip to just the final thoughts sections of articles. I don't have much patience to read through descriptions of game mechanisms. This is coming from a person who used to enjoy reading game rules. I think this is partly due to the increasing number of games being published. There is just too much information, so only games with some surprising element or some special element catch my attention.

Another reason is I've already played so many games, so I'm simply getting harder to please. I'm sure many recent games are good, but unless they offer a significantly different experience I'm usually too lazy to find out more about them. There are already so many good games that I'd like to play more of.

Here are some games that interest me.

• 7 Wonders - My only worry is whether I will dislike it because it is too light.
• Dominant Species - I like heavy games like Indonesia, Die Macher and Through the Ages.
• Sid Meier's Civilization (Fantasy Flight Games) - I am a big fan of the PC game series. Han is buying this so I'll have a chance to play it.
• Inca Empire - Complex game with network building and has an interesting tension between competition and cooperation.
• 20th Century - Just because Shipyard by the same designer was such a pleasant surprise.

I still maintain an Excel spreadsheet to keep track of games I'm interested in. I rate them by eagerness of buying, 10 meaning I'll definitely buy it, 4 to 6 meaning I'm unsure, 1 to 3 meaning I've decided not to buy it (to different levels of certainty).

Well, I complain about the lack of new interesting games, yet I still go over my 20 games per year quota. Sigh... I think I just have too many unexpected purchases. I bought 10 Days in Asia because it was on sale and it would be good for my children when they are older. I bought FITS for my children too. Really. OK, I can see all those eyes rolling.

I wonder whether I'm entering a plateau stage of this hobby, or even a slowdown stage. Hmmm... maybe I'll tell you after I play Civilization. :-)

stop buying games

I have a sudden urge to stop buying games.

I know it won't happen. But I am considering significantly lowering my self-imposed annual game acquiring quota. I have bought / self-made / been given 11 games this year. My quota is 20. I had vowed no new games until 2nd half of the year, which I think I will achieve, since it's already mid April now. My only must-buy game now is the Brink of War expansion of Race for the Galaxy. Two other close to must-buys are Axis & Allies Pacific 1940 Edition and Axis & Allies Europe 1940 Edition, the latter not released yet.

When I look at my collection (close to 200 now), I see many games that I like and have not been playing as much as I'd like to. So I really should be spending more time playing them. Most games get better and better as you play more and become good at it. I have so many games which I have not achieved this with.

Indonesia

One tip that I found most useful in controlling the game buying urge is this - procrastinate. In Oct 2009 (Essen time) there were so many new releases that I was interested in. Eventually I did buy some - Agricola: Farmers of the Moor, At the Gates of Loyang, Factory Manager - but for many others by now I don't feel much urge to buy anymore. Well, I am still interested to at least try Hansa Teutonica, but that feeling may wane too, the longer I wait.

Die Macher

I now have a stronger urge to play again many of the games already in my collection. When am I going to get a 4-player game of Indonesia? I should play Die Macher and Automobile again. How about doing a 5-player game of Samurai Swords? I should play Space Alert again before I forget all the skills. A marathon / campaign series made up of Axis & Allies games? Complete the Blue Moon tournament with Han (playing all combinations of all 8 races)?

Axis & Allies Guadalcanal

I have written a little program using Excel macros to check for games that I like and have not played for a long time. I should put it to good use.

And let's see whether I can hit 15 games acquired in 2010.

buying games

Self-control when buying games is a recurring theme at my blog. I keep telling myself about this, and despite some successes in curbing my buying habit, I still feel I could have done better. Now that the year end is approaching, I start looking at all the stats about my boardgame hobby that I have been meticulously recording. I had set a loose target of buying no more than 20 games a year. I am at 19 now (not counting 2 self-made games), so I'll meet this target if I can hold off buying any more games until end of this month. I do have some games on my definite-buy list now, e.g. Agricola: Farmers of the Moor, Axis & Allies Pacific 1940, but I can hold off for a while.

Here's a list of things I need to remind myself of. Maybe this will be helpful to you too.

1. You don't need to own every game that you like. If a friend has it, play his/her copy, or borrow it if you really feel like playing the game. I am working on convincing myself I don't need to buy Dungeon Lords ...
2. You don't need to play every good game. So what if you don't have the opportunity to play one particular game that you think you will love? Don't you already have lots of other games that you love that you're not playing much? So...
3. You need to play more of the good games that you own. For me, games like Die Macher, Power Grid.
4. Wait until your interest wanes. Procrastinate. When you hear of a certain new game, you can get very excited about it. Put it on your watchlist. Let it cool for 6 months. If 6 months later you still feel hot for it, then go for it. The wait will also allow you to read more reviews. Early reviews tend to be positive.
5. Don't impulse buy. "Don't marry a person you can live with. Marry a person you can't live without". Something like that.

Here are my 2009 purchases and what I feel about them:

Happy

1. Le Havre - (11 plays) I like it a lot, almost as much as Agricola. I wonder why I haven't played this more. Somehow it didn't have an addiction period or hot game period like Agricola did. Maybe it's the number of cards in Agricola.
2. Axis & Allies anniversary edition - (2 plays, but both PBEM games and not using my physical copy of the game) I have a soft spot for the Axis & Allies family. That all I need to justify this purchase.
3. Automobile - (8 plays)
4. Civilization - (2 plays before I bought this on eBay, 0 after) Need to find the right group and a right time (i.e. long enough). Kind of like Die Macher. This doesn't work with 2P.
5. Keltis - (20 plays)
6. Wasabi - (17 plays)
7. Space Alert - (3 plays) Need to play more to have a more solid opinion. I can't even beat the Level 2 (of 3) tutorials yet. This one also needs a right group. My wife doesn't like it.
8. Indonesia - (1 play) Want to play more. This probably needs 4 players. And 4 hours.
9. Pandemic: On the Brink - (11 plays) Excellent value for money.
10. Galaxy Trucker Big Expansion - (1 play before I decided to buy it, 2 after I had it) After many games of Galaxy Trucker, this expansion becomes necessary to keep the game challenging and brutal.
11. Race for the Galaxy: Rebel vs Imperium - (18 plays) Buying this is as natural as eating rice (to a Malaysian).

Unsure

1. Mystery Rummy: Bonnie & Clyde - (21 plays) I didn't realise I have played this many times. Good game and good addition to the Mystery Rummy family. But I don't seem to play it much now. Our default card game is Race for the Galaxy. Used to be Mystery Rummy: Jack the Ripper.
2. Metropolys - (1 play before buying it, 6 plays after) It's quite unique. Haven't played much recently though. Well, at least it passed the 5-plays-in-1st-year-of-purchase mark.
3. Barbarossa - (1 before, 0 after) Bought a used copy. Anticipating playing with my children when they are older.
4. Um Reifenbreite - (1 before, 3 after) Chong Sean gave me an offer I couldn't resist. I think this is the only race game in my collection. I don't fancy race games. One good thing is I have played this (albeit with much simplified rules) with my 4-year-old daughter.
5. Kakerlaken Poker - (1 before, 1 after, and both being 2P games, the "least good" way of playing I think) I intended to buy this piggy-backing on Chong Sean's game order, but afterwards he declined my payment and gave it to me as a gift. This is a game good for bigger groups and for non-gamers. I don't have such occasions often, so this becomes kind of an on-standby game.
6. Rabbit Hunt - (1 before, 2 after) Interesting first game. So-so second game. Need to play more.

Unhappy

1. Monopoly Deal - (4 plays) Impulse buy. I bought it using a gift voucher, which I should have spent on something else. The game is not bad, but nothing really draws me.
2. A Game of Thrones LCG - (4 plays) One I wanted to like, because I love the books. I haven't given up on it yet. I don't think 4 plays is enough to confirm I don't like it.

I feel a bit better after writing this down. It seems I didn't do too bad in 2009. Hopefully in 2010 I have more in the Happy list and less in the Unsure and Unhappy lists.

My current watchlist. Not the full list, just the higher ranked ones. Darn... that's already 17 out of 20 slots for 2010. Trim trim trim.

1. Agricola: Farmers of the Moor (buy)
2. Axis & Allies Pacific: 1940 edition (buy)
3. Axis & Allies Europe: 1940 edition (not out yet) (buy)
4. Race for the Galaxy: Brink of War (not out yet) (buy)
5. Power Grid - Factory Manager
6. At the Gates of Loyang
7. Campaign Manager 2008 (not out yet, I think)
8. Dominion: Seaside (I don't have Dominion: Intrigue though)
9. Times Square
10. Greed, Incorporated
11. Hansa Teutonica
12. Twilight Struggle
13. Homesteaders
14. Dungeon Lords
15. Warriors of God
16. Carson City
17. Power Struggle / Machtspiele

Already ordered. Oops... I'm actually already over 20.

1. Funny Friends
2. Planet Steam
3. Keltis - Die Erweiterung
4. Tales of the Arabian Nights

what do jaded gamers look forward to?

I became a hobby gamer in around 2003-2004. My addiction to www.boardgamegeek.com started at that time too. Having been buying games, reading about games and playing games so much for the past 5 years, I sometimes find myself a little jaded, a little tired of recurring themes in games, recurring game mechanics, recurring arguments and complaints at BGG, recurring inside jokes. Quite often when I read game reviews, I just skip to the conclusion paragraph. If it sounds interesting, I go back to start at the beginning. Maybe it's information overload.

Many games get published every year, and there is a lot of information on the internet about them. However I find that it is becoming rarer and rarer that a new game would interest me. Sometimes just looking at a few pictures of a game and reading a few comments of it are enough to turn me off the game. I can't even muster the will to read a review. Don't even talk about going through the rules (which many game publishers now post onto the internet - a good thing). I'm probably being completely unfair to these games, not giving them a chance at all. Games like Royal Palace, Stone Age, Diamonds Club, A Castle for all Seasons, Finca. These are all mostly getting positive reviews, but I simply can't muster much interest. I probably sound like a Euro-bashing Ameritrasher. Even with new Ameritrash games, there aren't many that interest me either, and I don't name them here because I don't even remember their names.

Being picky about games is good for my wallet. However, despite this so-called jadedness, I still have a lot of games on my watchlist, and I don't think I will be able to meet my (probably too unrealistic) target of buying only 12 games in 2009. I'm already at 10 games bought. Maybe 20 is a more realistic target. Games that interest me usually satisfy one of these conditions:

1. ... has something unique - a mechanic, a theme, etc. Space Alert is a real-time and cooperative game. Tales of the Arabian Nights, a game where you build a story. Somehow, I don't really have a Friedemann Friese game hot on my watchlist at the moment, although he's famous for quirky themes. I do have Fauna in the lukewarm section of my watchlist, and, pardon my snobbishness, it was there before it got the Spiel des Jahres nomination.
2. ... is an expansion of a game I like. Race for the Galaxy: Rebel vs Imperium, 2nd expansion to my most played game. Keltis expansion - the one with the alternate board. There are many spin-offs of the Keltis brand, Reiner Knizia's first SdJ-winning game. Galaxy Trucker expansion. Tribune expansion. Pandemic: On the Brink.
3. ... is by a designer I like, and is of a type of game that I like. Automobile by Martin Wallace, which the designer himself likes a lot. However somehow his After the Flood and Waterloo do not interest me much. Le Havre by Uwe Rosenberg of Agricola fame, which I have already bought. I'm also watching his upcoming Gates of Loyang.
4. ... is something new to me. I'm thinking of getting into some simpler wargames, thus Conflict of Heroes. I have played two block wargames (admittedly probably at the easier end of the spectrum), Hammer of the Scots and Crusader Rex. Should I try Rommel in the Desert?

Chicago Express is a game that I'm interested in but can't quite categorise. It's sounds interesting to me, in that the rules are simple but their interaction is complex. This is a game that's quick but the decisions are tough.

I wonder how long these games will last until they gradually drop to the lukewarm or cold sections of my watchlist. My watchlist has more than 130 games, because I rarely delete games from it. They just gradually get downgraded. It's good to hold off buying games, because sometimes after waiting half a year or more, some games will become less interesting compared to when I first heard of them, and they will be downgraded. Less games to buy. Money saved. Newer games also tend to push older games down the list. So it's good to procrastinate.

Umm... I hope I'm not making anyone's wallet bleed more than it should by naming so many games here...