Glory to Rome

Glory to Rome is from a small publisher, and is most compared to Race for the Galaxy. Some people prefer one over the other, but I guess in general Race for the Galaxy is better liked, judging from the Boardgamegeek ratings. Those who prefer Glory to Rome to Race for the Galaxy often quote player interaction as the main reason, and I can see why. Indeed the player interaction is more direct.

Glory to Rome is a little tricky to grasp at first. Without even considering the player interaction, different aspects of the game are very interrelated so you really need to be able to see the full picture for everything to click. The game is about reconstructing Rome, and to construct a building there are quite a few steps involved, and even different ways. Things that you have have many implications. Thankfully the player board, which is also a player aid, is quite good. But still, it takes a few round of playing to really get a feel of what's going on.

In Glory to Rome, a card can be three things - a building, a building material, or a patron. At first it is a little confusing to see the implications of your actions. Every turn, the active player choose to play a character card from his hand to make use of this character's ability, and the other players can decide to follow suit by also playing the same character from their hands. Note the difference from Puerto Rico, San Juan and Race for the Galaxy - you need to have that card in your hand in order to be able to choose the role or to follow. So you are restricted by what you have in your hand and cannot plan ahead so freely.

The victory points come from 3 main sources - the value of the buildings you construct, the materials that you stash away in your vault, and majority in these materials. Constructing a building requires 1 to 3 material cards, but stashing a material card into your vault only requires 1 material card, which makes stashing away materials seem a much more lucrative option. However, the buildings have special powers, and also there is a limit to how much you can stash in your vault, which can only be increased by constructing more buildings. So that balances things out a bit.

The common pool in the background, and the player mat in the foreground. You stick cards under the four sides of the player mat, and each sisde has its own meaning. Your influence at the top is increased by having constructed buildings. Your clientele (or your "team") on the left allows you to perform extra actions. Your vault on the right stores materials that you have stashed away. Your stockpile at the bottom are materials that can be used for construction or for vault-stashing.

A close-up of the player mat, showing the 6 roles in the game. I find this a pretty good reference card.

There are 6 roles in the game. Similar to Puerto Rico, San Juan and Race for the Galaxy, they each perform different roles. They all form part of the supply chain to construct buildings or to stash materials into your vault. A patron allows you to recruit people into your team, allowing you to do multiple actions when those specific roles are chosen for a round. Labourers and soldiers take materials from a common pool and from unhappy opponents to your personal stockpile. Architects and craftsmen construct buildings using materials from your stockpile or from your hand. Merchants stash materials into your vault.

One important concept is the common pool. When you recruit people into your team, you take them from the common pool. When labourers and soldiers take materials into your personal stockpile, they also take from the common pool. The common pool is basically all cards used and thus discarded by all players. All cards are spread out face-up, unlike conventional card games where discards are stacked neatly and only the topmost card can be taken. This is an important aspect of player interaction. When you choose to play a role, you are putting that card into the common pool. It is important to pay attention to this.

I have played two games of this, and now that I have grasped the basic concepts, I am starting to explore the possibilities and strategies with the building powers. I would like to play this more. Unfortunately this is Han's game, and he's moving to a different town for 1.5 years because of work. So it'll be a while before I will get to play this again.

Comparing Glory to Rome with Race for the Galaxy, I actually find that they feel rather different, despite the similarities and common elements that I can name. Race for the Galaxy is indeed a race. It is very quick. You decide on a strategy relatively early, and then the rest is just execution with some fine-tuning. Sometimes you change strategy halfway, but that's not common, at least from my own experience. Glory to Rome is slower, and you have time to plan and adjust and to change your plan. There is a lot of dependency on what is available in the pool at any one time, so you need to adjust your strategy accordingly. Your actions are also more restricted, so you need to adapt to what cards you get. Bad cards cannot be simply "used as money" like in Race for the Galaxy or San Juan. Some gamers do not like Race for the Galaxy because it can sometimes feel like the early card draws already determine the winner, and you can't really stop the runaway leader, because everyone is free to use any role (in San Juan you can't pick a role already picked by an opponent, in Glory to Rome you can't pick or follow a role if you don't have the card in your hand). I really do not mind that. You do sometimes need to guess the roles that your opponents will pick and make use of them, and I like the clean and efficient game design. I can easily play a few games of Race for the Galaxy back to back. Glory to Rome is so far so good. I've only played 2 games so I don't know whether I will like it more than Race for the Galaxy or not, which I have played more than 70 games of. I do know that I like Race for the Galaxy a lot. At the moment I can't really say whether one is better than the other. I find them quite different.

10 days in Asia (and Europe)

During this trip back to KK, I have played many new games at Carcasean, and the only one that felt fresh and was a bit of a surprise to me was 10 days in Asia. Well, that and the other game in the series, 10 days in Europe, too. There are four in the series, the other two being USA and Africa. It is not that the game or the series is especially good, but it is something quite different from everything else I have been playing. So it was a breath of fresh air for me, and I even ordered it from Chong Sean. I have played 27 games of these two games in the series, that I am now starting to get sick of them, and need to stop for a while before playing again. But I still think this is a nice game to own. It's suitable for new players. It's something quite different. It is educational and teaches geography, and is suitable for older children. Maybe I can play this with Shee Yun and Chen Rui when they are 8 years old or maybe earlier.

One thing which Chong Sean said that I found very true and very funny is that this game is like Mahjong. Indeed you are drawing tiles and trying make a winning hand. We kept using Mahjong terms when we played, like 单吊, 听牌, 吃胡, 拦胡.

In 10 days in Asia, you try to create a 10-day travel itinerary to win. Each tile in the game is a country or a mode of transportation. To make a winning itinerary, every tile in your hand must be connected to the tiles on either side of it. Adjacent countries are connected, i.e. you walk from one country to the next. Countries of the same colour can be connected by a plane of the same colour, i.e. you fly from one to the other. Countries bordering the same ocean can be connected by a ship sailing that ocean, and finally countries connected by the same railway can be connected by a train card. The setting up of the game is alread half the game. You draw cards into your hand one by one, and can choose the position to place the tile (but of course before you draw the next tile, and you can't change the positions after a tile is placed). During the game you draw a tile, replace one of your tiles with it if desired, and discard it to one of the three discard decks. And you repeat this until you complete your 10-day itinerary, or someone else does it before you.

This is a simple game. Easy to teach and quick to play. It teaches geography too!

10 Days in Asia

Close-up of the board. Countries with an asterisk have 2 tiles instead of 1.

Transportation tiles are usually good, but maybe not when you have 6 of them in your starting hand.

When I thought 6 transportation tiles in my starting hand was bad, then got this...

Michelle, Chong Sean and Han, at Carcasean.

10 Days in Europe

Han and Michelle. Chong Sean was kind enough to let us borrow this to try it out at home.

The map of Europe has 3 seas - the Atlantic Ocean, the Mediterranean Sea, and the Baltic Sea.

I had so many planes I thought I was building a bomber fleet in Axis and Allies.

When you have 10 countries and no transportation tiles in your starting hand, that's pretty bad too.

King Arthur The Card Game

King Arthur The Card Game was played at Carcasean. This is a Reiner Knizia card game. He has quite many card games making use of simply numbers and colours, and many of them are quite clever, yet simple. The other two that I also played at Carcasean are Trendy and Circus Flohcati. I will write about those too later.

In King Arthur The Card Game, there are 3 types of cards. I don't know the exact names of the cards so I'm just making them up here. There are enemy cards which come in different colours and numbers. There are knight cards, which come in 1's or 2's, and come in a different set of colours from the enemies. The knight cards are used to defeat the enemies. And the finally there are mission cards, which you claim using enemies that you have defeated, and they give victory points.

The enemies appear in groups according to their colours, and the biggest group size is four. To defeat an enemy, you play knight cards of the same colour that add up to the value on that enemy card. What's tricky with the grouping of the enemies is this: even if you have defeated one enemy in the group, you cannot claim it until the whole group has been defeated. There are some exceptions, e.g. you use double the knights to defeat the enemy, or on the next turn you spend the same number of knights to extract that already defeated enemy from the group. Doing these is expensive though, because you normally only draw one card at the end of your turn. If you don't do any other action (fighting an enemy or completing a mission), you can draw two.

One optional action that you can do is to release more enemies into the game. This can only be done when there are no more enemy groups with 4 enemies. You keep drawing enemy cards and adding them into the appropriate groups, until one of the groups has 4 members.

To claim the mission cards, which award victory points, you must "pay" enough defeated enemies to fulfill their criteria. Some mission cards require cards in specific colours. Some require cards with values adding up to a certain number. Some require cards of a specific colours and adding up to a certain number. Some even require cards with specific values. So the players are basically racing to fulfill the conditions as quickly as possible and claim the mission cards (and victory points as quickly as possible). Of course the players also need to be efficient and not waste their knight cards.

Mission cards at the top. The criteria are on the left margin, and the victory points in big font on the right. The red row of cards are the enemies. Usually the red enemies are more powerful. The coins are just markers for the players to remember who had defeated which enemy among a group which has not been all defeated yet.

In my hand are enemy cards which I have defeated (red 4 and green 2), and three knight cards. At this point I had only claimed 2 missions. The sea monster requires 4 cards of different colours as specified, and Excalibur needs a total value of 5.

More enemy cards

The game is alright. Quite a clean design (you wouldn't expect less from Reiner Knizia), and some interesting strategy involved. And also some cheering and groaning when the enemies are refreshed, especially when there are some enemy groups with a single enemy, i.e. easy pickings for the active player. There is also an interesting tension in guessing which mission your opponents may be targeting for based on what enemies they have defeated, and in the race to claim these missions.

I am amazed how many card games Reiner Knizia has that are based on just numbers and colours (or maybe I should call them suits), and how they somehow have the Knizia signature feel and yet are still unique.

Cuba

Another game played at Carcasean was Cuba. For most of the games I played at Carcasean, I had researched the rules and made rule summaries beforehand. So I was ready to play without needing anyone to teach.

Cuba suffers from being considered too similar to other games, i.e. being accused of lacking originality. Puerto Rico (especially so), Pillars of the Earth, Caylus. It has some original and interesting mechanisms, namely the plantation board, a 3x4 grid, and the bills that get passed into laws. Overall, I feel the same as other gamers, that the game doesn't feel very fresh, despite having some innovations. To me it feels like "another victory point generating game", basically converting one thing into another and eventually into victory points.

The game is played over 6 rounds. There are 4 new bills proposed each round, and 2 of them will be passed into law. These bills are revealed at the start of the round, and are voted on and enforced at the end of the round. The main activity of a round is the player actions. Each player has 5 roles from which to choose 4, and carry out the corresponding actions: collecting resources / products, buying or selling products / goods, constructing buildings, activating buildings (e.g. turning products into goods, collecting victory points, earning money), and shipping products / goods for victory points. Sounds familiar?

Let's look at the two more innovative aspects of the game, the bills and the plantation board. There are always a tax bill and a duty bill in effect, where you are expected to pay money and products respectively. You gain 2VP by fulfilling one of them, and 5VP by fulfilling both. That is actually a substantial amount of VPs. There are other bills which also award VPs, and others which have special effects on the game, e.g. a worker is only allowed to harvest one product. Winning elections and gaining the power to decide what bills to pass can be a big advantage. You may want to pass a new bill which is beneficial to you, or you may want to pass it simply because you want to cancel the old law.

The other innovative aspect is the plantation board or the player board. It has a 3x4 grid, with a warehouse in one corner, and various fields producing resources or products. When you use your worker to collect resources / harvest products, you move your pawn to a desired location, and he collects / harvests from all fields in the same row and column. Now, if you use your foreman to activate your buildings (which have to be built on top of your fields, forcing you to lose fields), you cannot move your pawn and you can activate the buildings also in the same row and column (or you can activate any one building). This forces you to choose and plan carefully - fields or buildings, where to place your pawn, what order to play your worker and foreman. I find this rather restrictive. I can understand the intention (else there would not be enough tension), but I just feel too restricted. Maybe I need to play more to be able to manage this aspect better.

The good looking board. Ships waiting for products / goods on the left, bills and laws (passed bills) at the top, market in the centre, score track on the outside of the town.

The player board. The cubes are resources. The octagonal pieces are products. In this game it is important to be clear about resources, products and goods. Resources are water, rock and wood. Products are citrus fruits, sugar cane and tobacco. Goods are cigars and rum.

The buildings.

There are many buildings available in the game, and you won't be able to build more than 6, so that means you really need to decide your strategy early. I randomly decided to pursue a turn-sugar-into-rum-and-ship-it strategy, which, unfortunately for Chong Sean, clashed with his. Han focused on money generating buildings, and then VP generating ones. At game end, Han won with 57VP, Chong Sean had 56VP, and I had 54VP.

I don't mind playing Cuba again to explore it more, but I don't need to own it.

El Capitan

El Capitan is another game played at Carcasean. This is an old Wolfgang Kramer game reprinted with a new theme, with beautiful artwork by Mike Doyle. You sail to different cities to build warehouses and fortresses, and you earn money in three main ways - for having a majority of warehouses in individual cities, for having warehouse presence in many cities, and for having fortresses (which reward more for cities which have the most warehouses). Each turn you can choose to sail to another city or stay put, and then you must build something, OR you go to the bank to take a loan if you don't have enough money to do what you want. Sailing costs money, and so does building. The interest rate of the bank is quite high, but you can't really avoid taking loans in this game, you just have to manage it, deciding how much to take and when to pay back (the later, the more costly, of course).

This is mostly an area majority game, and it feels semi-cooperative like China, where you need to follow the crowd. A city will pay out more if it has more warehouses, so it takes more than 1 player to make a city a profitable place to do business. But if there are too many warehouses, the profitability will drop. This is an interesting balance. Also sometimes some older warehouses will get shutdown when a new one is built. This is quite unique and allows for nasty moves to mess up your competitors. At game end, the richest wins.

The quite nicely done gameboard by Mike Doyle, showing the 9 cities, the proliferation payout chart on the top right, and two spaces for the loan cards on the bottom right. Above the board are the two types of navigation cards that are used for traveling between the cities.

Han and Chong Sean

One of the navigation cards. This one allows you to travel from Marseille to Napoli (or vice versa), and costs $2. In the background are the warehouses (house-shaped) and a fortress (cylinder), the start player tile, and the back of a loan card, showing that I owe the loan shark $30.

A close-up of the board

In our game, I suffered from the fate of the early obvious leader. I was at the receiving end of the nasty moves. I was the first to have warehouses in all 9 cities, but at game end, I was also the only one who could not maintain this level of proliferation. This has a big impact, because the difference in money earned is big - $30 for 7 cities, $45 for 8 and $60 for 9. Han played a good game, focusing on the fight for majority only in certain cities (I was spreading about too much), and won the game at $221. Chong Sean had $218 and I was last at $209.

I find El Capitan to be just an OK game. Nothing very special, but well crafted. It is of medium weight. Some interesting decisions. Low luck, strong player interaction (I guess this is inherent in area majority games).

Make You Gunfighters

Make You Gunfighters is a game that I played at Carcasean. Chong Sean, the boss himself, taught us the game. In fact, he played with us every time we visited Carcasean. I think most customers are not hardcore gamers, so he probably doesn't get many opportunities to play gamer games face-to-face. Well, Make You Gunfighters is not a gamer game by any stretch. It is definitely a filler.

This is a Japanese game (hence the strange title), in a small box, with very cute graphics. It's about teams of cowboys fighting it out. You win by killing all your opponents, or by robbing enough money from thost that you kill. Chong Sean told us usually the game ends with one team standing. I guess when you are having so much fun shooting at one another, who would bother playing bean-counter.

The game somehow feels thematic and abstract at the same time to me. There are six locations in the game, and each card in your hand shows one of these locations. They represent your cowboys being at those locations. Each turn, you can shoot, or you can run. When you shoot, you show one of your cards, and target one opponent. He must discard all cards of the same location. This represents your cowboy being at the same location and killing the opponent's cowboys who are also there. However this means you have revealed your location to other players. When it is their turn, they may in turn shoot at you by showing the same location card (i.e. they too have cowboys there). That why you should try to run. To run, you discard one card, and draw another, representing one of your cowboys running to another location. And apparently your cowboy doesn't have much sense of direction and doesn't know where he is going (you don't know what card you'll draw), and may end up in the same place (you may draw the same location).

You may earn money when you kill an opponent's cowboy, if the discarded location card of the killed cowboy shows some dollar bills in the corner. You can spend this money on buying special cards. Most are beneficial, but some are not. E.g. I bought one, and it made me lose 2 turns. What luck...

There are also superpower cards (or pity cards, depending on how you look at it). When you are down to your last cowboy (i.e. last location card), you draw one of these cards, which usually gives you a special power that boosts your survival chances. Unfortunately for me, when I was down to my last cowboy, I drew the "Hard Liqour" card, which says, literally, "No effect whatsover!" Is it any wonder that I was the first to get eliminated?

Some location cards, with cute arkwork. It has both English and Japenese (kanji), not Chinese.

The back of the location cards on the left, and the "pity" card on the right. Unfortunately the "pity" card that I drew was a joke. A coin at the bottom. It's just a thin cardboard piece, quite difficult to pick up.

The game board, which you don't really use, is just paper. It tells you that if you are located at the plaza, you can shoot at people at the four different locations (usually you only get to shoot at people at the same location as you are). However, if you are at the plaza, your enemies in those four locations can also shoot at you.

I played a 3-player game with Chong Sean and Han, which Han won. 3 is OK, but I think this game will be even more fun with more players.

Make You Gunfighters is a funny little game. Good for some casual games with non-gamers, and also a funny filler for gamers. Gunfighting sound effects recommended.

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.

playing Pandemic with myself

I first played Pandemic in March. It was Han's game. There aren't many cooperative games (the ones that immediately come to mind are Lord of the Rings, Shadows Over Camelot and another one about saving the earth from environmental disaster which I can't recall the name of), but there seems to be a trend lately that more and more cooperative games are being released. Two upcoming releases are Chinese Ghost Story and Red November. I quite liked Pandemic, and later decided to buy a copy myself. It's simpler than Lord of the Rings and will probably be easier to teach to non-gamers. And I quite like the game itself too. Han said it had lost its shine for him, so he sold me his copy. Since then, I have played 7 more games of it.

Having played a total of 10 games, all at normal difficulty (5 epidemic cards mixed into the player cards deck, i.e. what I used to call the good deck), I have only won 2 games. This game is tough to beat! It was a very intriguing game for me. Each time I lost the game, I was keen to figure out what I did wrong and how I could have done better. I have even played four solitaire games, using two random characters each time. Every time I lost, it was because of too many outbreaks, or running out of cubes of a colour (i.e. the disease had spread too much). So I probably hadn't done a very good job in containing the spread of the disease. It the most recent game which I finally managed to win again, I made it a point to treat cities which have 3 cubes in them, i.e. on the verge of an outbreak. When I won the game, I was at 7 outbreaks total. One more outbreak before I find all 4 cures, and I would have lost again. So the short term goal of containing the disease (as opposed to the long term goal of finding the cure) probably should get more weight than I usually give. No doubt my luck was (I think) slightly better than average in that game, but I think some of the decision that I made in that game saved me from losing. There were a few times when infections occurred at cities which used to be just one infection away from an outbreak. If I hadn't treated those cities earlier, I would have had more outbreaks.

Still, it was a race against time. In that game, I needed to quickly find the last cure to end the game, because there were more and more infections and I couldn't treat all the heavily infected cities quickly enough. The infection rate increases as the game progresses, so the tension builds. I have a feeling that the game will play differently with different numbers of players. With 2 players, it is probably more difficult to treat diseases quickly, because you can't be at too many places at the same time.

The end of my second victorious game of Pandemic. The operations expert (green) and the scientist (white) met up in Washington so that the scientist could pass the blue Washington card to the operations expert, and then the operations expert cured the last disease. On the right you can see that 3 epidemics have occurred. The Osaka infection card on the top right was removed by the Resilient Citizens special action card, i.e. there will be no new infections at Osaka unless spread from neighbouring cities. I had used all 6 research lab pieces (the longhouses).

I was at the 7th outbreak, so this was a close one.

When I play Pandemic I prefer to stack up the disease cubes like they are skyscrapers. Saves space. Many players complain that the board is too small / the pieces are too big / there is not enough space. It is not too bad for me, but sometimes it is a bit annoying when the city name you are trying to find is hidden behind or covered by a game piece.

One thing that I wonder about Pandemic is whether for a significant number of games it is simply impossible to win, no matter how well you play. This is just a suspiscion and not an accusation. And even if it is true, it doesn't mean the game becomes pointless or not fun. I have this suspiscion because sometimes it seems I would have lost anyway no matter what I did. But then maybe I have not figured out the right tactics / strategy yet. Even if this is true, I still find the game fun. When it is impossible to win, I would try to see how close I can get to winning. But of course I wouldn't know it is impossible to win beforehand. If I know there is some chance of winning, even if it is just 20% (that's the odds based on my 10 games played), then I'm happy enough to play and to take the challenge. I guess it's a bit like buying lottery. It is exciting and fun, even when the odds are against you, because you know it's not impossible to win either.

I also think Pandemic has good variability. There are the different roles that the players will get. There are 4 different diseases, and there is a spatial element tied to the diseases (the red disease is in Asia, the blue in North America and Europe etc), so the distribution of the infections, the order they come up, and the intensities all make each game different. Sometimes you need to use cards to fly all over the place because the cities threatening to have outbreaks are very far away. Sometimes infected cities are so near that they cause chain reactions. Sometimes the disease that you can quickly cure has not spread much and you can eradicate it easily too (i.e. no more infections of that disease even if you draw cards for it). Sometimes you cannot even spare the effort to eradicate or even treat a cured disease.

So I'm pretty happy with Pandemic, and will definitely play more. Maybe I should play some more games with 3 or 4 characters.

not a game?

Michelle recently used the Wyeth (children's milk powder) bonus points to redeem an educational toy for the children. It is a puzzle game called Safari Hide & Seek. There are four squares on the game board, each consisting of 9 spaces in a 3x3 grid, and most of the spaces have animals in them - lions, gazelles, rhinos, zebras and elephants. There are four plastic jungle pieces in different shapes which can be placed into the squares in different orientations to hide some of the animals. The game comes with 48 challenges, in 4 difficulty levels. A challenge is basically a specific combination of animals, e.g. 2 zebras and 2 lions, and you need to place the 4 jungle pieces onto the board in such a way so that that exact number and combination of animals is visible. I found this quite interesting and not as simple as it looks at first glance.

I checked on BoardGameGeek and was surprised to find that this game has not been added to their database. So I quickly snapped some photos, and prepared to add this game. After I had filled in all the details, and had written a concise description of it, I suddenly read in the small print of the rules that you are not allowed to add solitaire / puzzle games. *sigh* All that effort for nothing. I was just about to click Submit. Well, since BoardGameGeek says this is not a game, I decided to post the information here instead at my own blog.

The packaging.

The back of the packaging.

The side of the packaging.

The game itself, with the four jungle tiles placed in such a way that exactly four lions are showing.

The game "board" without the jungle tiles. A total of 6 lions, 6 gazelles, 5 elephants, 5 zebras, 5 rhinos, and 9 blank spaces.

The four jungle tiles, which look roughly like a "U", a small "q", a capital "R" and a capital "H".

The rules, at the top, is just a 4-page, single-fold sheet. The challenge booklet is of good quality. All can be stored inside the game board, which is actually a box.

The inside of the challenge booklet. Solutions on the left (of the previous challenge), and challenges on the right. This is the easiest level.

Another challenge, this one from the 2nd hardest level.

2008 favourites

Since getting into the boardgame hobby at end of 2003, I have never really thought about what my favourite games were each year. I have read other gamers writing about their favourites each year, and I enjoyed it. However I have never thought about my own favourite games for any particular year. For 2008, it occurred to me that I already have 2 favourites. Of course this may change, since we are only in June now, but this is the first time I have this feeling about favourtes. My criteria for qualifying as a "2008" game is quite loose. Not by published date. Not really by purchase date either, or first time played, but first time played is probably the closest thing to what I can call a criteria. My 2 favourite games are Through the Ages and Race for the Galaxy. Ticket To Ride: Switzerland would be third.

So far Race for the Galaxy is my most played game in 2008. Almost hitting 50 plays now. I have played Through the Ages 7 times, and that's a lot of time considering this is a long game. Han, Michelle and I played a Full Game of Through the Ages last weekend, without the non-aggression variant that Michelle and I use. I learned a few more rules mistakes that I have made (even after having played 6 games - I guess once you have assumed that's the right way to play, you don't really read the rules again and won't realise you've been playing wrong). Firstly, when sacrificing your soldiers in battle to double their strength, you lose those yellow tokens permanently. You don't return them to your yellow bank. Same thing applies when sending your people to colonise. Now that is painful. There is no easy way to add yellow tokens to your yellow bank once you lose them. In the Full Game, you also lose 2 yellow tokens permanently at the end of Ages I, II and III, so suddenly population and food matters much much more. In our game Han and Michelle almost used up all the yellow tokens in their yellow banks. We struggled to produce enough food to grow our population. With this, it seems that the Fast Food Chain is not as overpowered as I had thought, since it is actually not that easy to have that much population. But it is still very powerful. Han built it and scored 21 pts I think.

Correction, 25 Jun 2008: I checked the rules again, and found that I didn't make a mistake afterall. When sacrificing units, whether to colonise or in a military conflict, the yellow token doesn't get removed permanently. It only goes back to your yellow bank.

The other mistake I made was when a building is destroyed, the yellow token is not returned to the yellow bank. It gets returned to the idle worker pool. So in this case, the effect is less severe than I thought. You don't need to grow your population again. You just need to spend the stones to build that building again.

In our game, Han sprinted ahead on the culture track from the start and never looked back. We never managed to catch up. He set up some mutually beneficial pacts with Michelle too. Neither Michelle nor I set up any pacts. This was the first time I saw a pact in play. This was only my 2nd 3-player game. Other games were 2-player games. Han was military strong, and I kept competing with him in military strength. Michelle was a bit lax in military, since she trusted the gentlemen at the table wouldn't bully her (at least not too much). And we didn't (not much anyway). Michelle was culturally 2nd place most of the game, closer to Han than to me, because I was always a distant third. At one point Michelle had 4 colonies and James Cook as her leader, who gave 2 culture per colony per turn. That was scary. Thankfully near the end of the game I was able to catch up and overtake her on the culture track, although just barely. Michelle says that I am always like that - always "come from behind". I guess I do tend to emphasise on building a strong infrastructure to give myself a strong foundation to be competitive in the late game. In Through the Ages, I find that falling slightly behind in culture doesn't matter, because at game end, many culture points are awarded based on other aspects of your civilisation, e.g. infrastructure, science, military units, etc.

In our game of Through the Ages on Sat 21 Jun 2008, the starting card row had lots of yellow cards - action cards that give one-time bonuses / special actions.

Michelle and Han, nearing the end of Age I.

Michelle and I have played so many games of Race for the Galaxy that I can even come up with some meaningful statistics. Most game recorded were 2-player games. Only a few were 3-player games (with Han). Winning scores range from 23 to 65, average 35.9, median 34. Losing scores range from 13 to 44, average 26.6, median 26. Difference in score between winner and loser can be as big as 38, average being 9.3, and median 7. The very high scoring games were all using consume strategies. I have now found that the consume strategy can be very powerful. It is more tedious to set up, since you need to have some production worlds, you need to have good consume worlds, and you need to spend actions producing goods before consuming them for points. However once all is set up, the victory point chips just keep rolling in, unstoppable. Well, this may be because we always play the advanced 2-player game, i.e. you can choose 2 roles per round. So you can do Consume and then Produce for the next round. The consume strategy may not be as easy in 3 or 4 player games.

Race for the Galaxy, 21 Jun 2008. I won with only 6 cards, the least number of cards I have ever won with. For those who have played this game, this is obviously a consume strategy - 22 victory points scored.

Another win with the consume strategy, this one focusing in particular on novelty goods (light blue).

22 Jun 2008. My highest ever score so far, 65pts. This is also a consume strategy focusing on rare elements (brown). My luck with the cards was simply amazing. I had so many rare element cards. I had both Mining Robots and Mining Conglomerate, which the Mining League rewards you for. I had three 6-cost development cards. I also had the Tourist World, which helped tremendously with the consume strategy.

I have developed a convention for recording games of Race for the Galaxy. I record the results of all my games played. For Race for the Galaxy, I started with my usual convention, but it has since evolved to have its own convention. It started with something like:

fyv31, hcs29

which means Michelle won the game with 31 points, and my score was 29 points. Then it became:

FYV cards 19, special 10, chips 2 = 31
HCS cards 23, special 5, chips 1 = 29

which breaks down the points earned from normal cards, special 6-cost development cards, and victory point chips. Next:

FYV cards 19, special 10, chips 2 = 31 (13 cards)
HCS cards 23, special 5, chips 1 = 29 (11 cards)

I added the number of cards played by each player onto their tableau.

FYV cards 19 (13), special 10 (1), chips 2 = 31
HCS cards 23 (11), special 5 (1), chips 1 = 29

Number of cards moved to after the score of the normal cards. And I also specified the number of 6-cost development cards.

FYV[4] cards 19 (13), special 10 (1 - new galactic order), chips 2 = 31 (mostly military)
HCS[1] cards 23 (11), special 5 (1 - galactic federation), chips 1 = 29 (military)

Finally I added the start world in square brackets after the player name. I listed down the name of the 6-cost development cards. I usually describe the general strategy used. Sometimes I added a paragraph below to describe interesting aspects of the particular game.

Non gamers (and probably gamers too) will think I'm crazy.

In a recent game of Mystery Rummy: Al Capone and the Chicago Underworld, after I had done my first card draw, my hand had 10 evidence cards of different colours, and 2 gavel cards. There are only 11 different colours in the game. Needless to say, I lost that hand. The rummy god doesn't like me.