Ra: the dice game

Ra was one of my earliest home-made games, in my early days of getting into the boardgame hobby. At the time it was out of print. I spent a lot of effort to make my own copy, so that I could play it. The effort was very much worth it though, as I was able to introduce the game to my Taiwanese friends (I was working in Taipei then), and they all enjoyed it. We played many many games of Ra. Later they even found a copy from Germany and gave it to me as a gift. So Ra always has a special place in my heart.

This year Reiner Knizia came up with Ra: the dice game. I couldn't wait, and have already completed a home-made copy, so that I could play. What surprised me was how similar it feels to Ra, and yet how different it is at the same time. It is also very simple to teach (maybe I am biased, as I know Ra very well). The play time is super fast, although that may be because I've only played 2-player games so far.

The game is played over 3 epochs. You place cubes onto the board to compete in four areas - pharaohs, the Nile, civilisation, and monuments. Each of these aspects has a different way of scoring. Most score at the end of each epoch, except monuments, which only score after the 3rd and last epoch. How quickly an epoch ends depends on how quickly the Ra marker reaches the end of the Ra track. And all the above is done using dice.

There are 5 dice in 5 different colours. One side is a sun, and getting this usually means you are forced to advance the Ra marker (i.e. the timer). There are four sides corresponding to the four aspects of your Egyptian kingdom, and when you roll these, there are different rules in placing / moving your cubes on the board. Rolling "Niles" allow you to advance your Nile marker, but you need to have a Nile flooding in order to score the Nile track. You need three "Niles" to have a flooding, represented by placing an additional cube on top of your Nile marker. You need to roll at least three "Civilisations" in order to be able to place a civilisation marker, so this is not easy. If you have no civilisation, you lose 5 points. So it's good to have at least one to avoid this penalty. However to gain positive points from civilisation markers, you need at least three of them, which is also tough to achieve.

The last side of the die is a joker, and there are some rules restricting how you can use it. There are some special cases you need to remember too. Two jokers can be used for scoring an immediate 2 points, if you choose to use them so. Three suns, instead of advancing the Ra marker, give you an immediate 3 points. Four or five suns trigger a disaster for all other players, e.g. killing their pharaohs, destroying their monuments, etc. You get to choose the type of disaster. Oooh... nasty!

When playing the game, I think the basic principle is to maximise the number of cubes you get to place / move. Fully utilise your dice. Squeeze the most out of them. However you often need to consider the competition too. Players compete quite directly in the pharaoh, civilisation and monument aspects, so sometimes you need to make a less optimal move in order to hinder your opponent. E.g. to place a single monument cube to prevent your opponent from completing a set, even if you would have been able to place more cubes if you hadn't decided to block your opponent. In this sense I think Ra: the dice game has more player interaction than some other dice games.

The game also has the push-your-luck element, like many other dice games (e.g. Can't Stop, Pickomino). You have the chance to reroll some dice just once, and it can be an interesting choice whether to reroll hoping to achieve something better. Even after you have decided to reroll, sometimes you also have to think about which dice to reroll and which dice to keep. There are many such mini risk-and-reward considerations throughout the game.

Managing the pace of the game is another aspect. If you appear to be trailing, you probably want to delay the epoch end or game end so that you can catch up, so when you roll two suns on your first roll (which means the Ra marker may advance two steps), you may want to reroll all the other dice and hope for 3 or more suns (so that the Ra marker won't move), even if the three other dice in your initial roll give you something good.

In the first game that Michelle and I played, she completely destroyed me because of her monuments. I had good Nile flooding and good Nile scores , and was leading in score most of the game. However at game end, Michelle's score from monuments allowed her to jump far ahead of me. I should have competed with her more in building monuments and should not have let her score so much so easily. After that our games were more normal - scores were closer. In fact in our second game we drew at 35 points. I think the average score in Ra: the dice game can vary a lot. It depends very much on how often suns come up in die rolls, which impact how quickly epochs end. Our games last around 15 minutes.

Start of a 2-player game. I use cubes and one white die from Yspahan, and the black pawn and the four other dice from Manila.

Game end.

Game in progress. 1's represent suns. When you roll suns, you place them ahead of the Ra marker (black pawn, in my case). They mark how many steps the Ra marker will have to move (unless you later roll 3 or more suns in total).

I enjoy Ra: the dice game, but unfortunately this game will likely become one of my just-another-filler games, i.e. I probably won't play it very often. I like it more than many of my other dice games (Risk Express, Can't Stop, Monopoly Express, Pickomino), but being a hardcore gamer, fillers just aren't the type of game that I plan ahead to play. I need more meat. Fillers, no matter how good they are, do not provide the kind of satisfaction that I look for in a game session.

How do I decide whether a game is a filler or not? I thought a bit about this, and found that for me, one general rule to not be a filler is the game needs to have a proper board (i.e. the minimal-use board in Lost Cities does not count). There are some exceptions, e.g. card games that are non-fillers, or boardgames that I consider fillers. For me, games that are just above the non-filler line are China (so quick, but still satisfying), Pandemic (it is quite straight-forward and I don't understand why it keeps drawing me back), Mystery Rummy card game series, Sticheln (I usually play to a certain score or play a fixed number of rounds), Bohnanza, Blue Moon. Race for the Galaxy for me is firmly in non-filler territory, because I find it very satisfying, despite not being a long game. Roll Through the Ages is probably right on the borderline. Games I consider fillers are mostly card games and dice games. E.g. For Sale, Battleline, To Court the King. There are few boardgames that I consider fillers. They include Blokus, Blokus 3D, 10 Days in Asia (and the series). I'm pretty sure different people have different criteria for what constitutes a filler. Hardcore wargamers may think of my whole collection as fillers.

Let's get back on topic...

I find Ra: the dice game to be among the better dice games that I have played. It will probably be more interesting with more than 2 players. With 2 players, the competition for pharaohs is less interesting. The player with the most pharaohs earn 5pts, the player with the least lose 2pts. There is no middle ground. The available spots for civilisations are less. Each of the 5 civilisation spaces can only accommodate one player (the formula is one less than the total number of players). With 2 players, I think it's too hard to have all 5 types of civilisations. Maybe that's intentional. The other thing that I wonder is whether monument building becomes too easy. It is easier to build many monuments of the same type, because there is only one other player who can stop you. So your opponent must try to stop you, unless neither of you are spending much effort at all on monuments. I think the game does balances well with different numbers of players. Players are forced to compete no matter how many opponents they have. But having more players probably will allow you more flexibility to specialise or deprioritise certain aspects.

Aaaaand... This review is too darn long for a game so short. I'm rambling...

gaming in photos

22 Aug 2009. Pandemic. At game setup, Karachi was already infected to Level 3. I have some colleagues in Karachi. I hope they are OK. (sorry, lame joke...)

Michelle was the researcher (brown), who could give a card to another player even if they are located at the city depicted on the card. I was the dispatcher (purple but supposed to be pink), who could move another player's pawn or fly a pawn to meet another pawn. We did something illegal in Bogota.

This was what we did. Michelle spent her 4 actions to give me 4 cards, so that by the next turn I was ready to cure two diseases. I had thought that I only needed to discard down to the hand limit of 7 cards after the draw card phase of my turn. After the game I checked the rules again and realised that if you exceed 7 cards after someone else gives you cards, you need to immediately discard down to 7. Well, despite this mistake which benefited us, we still lost the game. We were playing at hard difficulty level.

This was how we lost. Too many outbreaks, and we ran out of black disease cubes.

Yspahan. This photo is very disorienting, because I was sitting at the "northern" edge of the board. The mix of the shading of the buildings drawn on the game board and the real shadows of the game components (green cubes and white pawn) causes confusion to the eyes.

I had built the building that gave addition $2 whenever you collected money. I was rich rich RICH! (yellow discs are coins)

Michelle on the other hand kept collecting camels. If this were Arabian Agricola she would have scored the full 4 point for the camel category.

Another probably even more disorienting photo. I quite like the board of Yspahan. It's beautiful.

Michelle won the game, and this contributed very much to it. She scored 22 points, plus 6 points from a special building, for the cubes she had placed in this district in Week 3.

Ticket to Ride. We played with the Big Cities variant that comes with the USA 1910 expansion. I kept all four of my initial tickets. All were big tickets, and all required connecting cities from east and west. This was the early game, and I found myself being blocked or threatened to be blocked by Michelle all over the place. Look and my green trains and you'll see how desperate I was. I had four disjointed segments.

Surprisingly, I went on to win the game. I had exactly enough trains to complete all four of my tickets, not a single one more. If I were short by just one train the results would have been disastrous. Michelle drew tickets near game end, and failed to complete a 16 point ticket, which was painful. She hadn't expected me to finish using up my trains so quickly. When she drew tickets, I was only a few cards away from being able to play my three 6-length routes and one 2-length route.

more Through the Ages errors

I have played Through the Ages 40 times. That's no small achievement considering this is a long game. It still take Michelle and I 2 to 2.5 hours to play a 2-player game. And I just discovered that we are still playing with some mistakes! I read through an FAQ at www.boardgamegeek.com and found these.

1. Producing at improved mines / farms - After you play a more advanced mine (e.g. a 2-stone-per-blue-token mine), when you produce (assuming you have two 1-stone-per-blue-token mines), you can't place one blue token on the new mine technology. You must still place two blue tokens next to your two old mines. We had thought that we couldn't immediately "swap up" blue tokens that we had already produced, but could make use of the more efficient card from that point onwards. Now I realise that we have to upgrade our old farms before we can enjoy the benefit.
2. When Age III ends, you don't draw any more Age III military cards. This probably would have had little or no effect.
3. After gaining military cards from a new colony, you must discard down to your hand limit before you enter the civil action / military action phase. I am not entirely sure whether we have played this wrong, but at least now I know I need to watch out for these.

gaming in photos

2 Aug 2009. I taught Michelle a 2-player variant of Automobile which I found on www.BoardGameGeek.com. I think it was by Soledade, a gamer from Portugal. It is quite simple and doesn't require many additional rules or changes from the standard game. The game is definitely better with more players, but this variant is OK to play if you don't have enough players and are keen to play Automobile.

I used black cubes to block off some spaces on the board which are not available in the 2-player variant.

Cars had been produced, and we were starting to sell them now. Michelle loved choosing the Howard character, which allowed her to sell two extra cars. She also produced many cars, flooding the market. Talk about destructive and ruthless sales strategies. Because most of my cars were older models than hers, I was usually at the suffering end when market demand was less than our car production. Ouch.

8 Aug 2009. I had one thinner than usual car piece.

The difference is more obvious in this photo.

I really like the drawings of the cars on the game board. I don't know most of the car models, the exception being the Ford Model T.

The full game board. This was a 2-player variant game in progress.

15 Aug 2009. Ticket to Ride: Europe, the second game in the Ticket to Ride family, which I had not played in a very long time. This particular game turned out to be quite exciting, despite being a 2-player game. Michelle and I needed to connect to many cities which were close to each other. This was still early in the game and the tension was already building up.

A fan-like castle in Carcassonne (with Inns and Cathedrals and Abbey and Mayor expansions, although you don't see any tiles from the latter yet). This was the game that got me into Eurogames, and this was the game that started my game group when I was in Taiwan in 2003-2004.

Early game in Attika. We had a very resource-rich starting map, but most of the resources are covered up (i.e. used up) by now.

Since we played a 2-player game, I used the unused buildings as markers to cover my already-constructed buildings.

Near game-end. Neither of us ever seriously threatened to achieve an instant win by connecting the two temples. I won by being first to construct all my buildings.

16 Aug 2009. Jing Yi, Sui Jye and Chee Seng. China, my favourite Michael Schacht game, in play. We also played Automobile, Villa Paletti and For Sale. Automobile is still great. This was my secord 4-player game, my other games being the 2-player variant. I never quite liked For Sale as much as most other people. I never quite understood the strategy. I did try to apply some, but I still do badly at this game. I wonder whether I still don't get it, or you actually do not have much control in the game.

Villa Paletti. Sui Jye very carefully trying to remove a pillar while Chee Seng watched with glee (I guess he was hoping for the whole structure to crash).

Warriors of God

Warriors of God was the second game that Han and I played on 26 Jul 2009. This is a game about the Hundred Years War between the French and the English. Again, Han played the French and I played the English.

Warriors of God uses the same victory point system as Twilight Struggle. Every round (there are 12) both sides score victory points, but you only take note of the accumulated difference, and mark that accordingly, as opposed to tracking the actual score. If the point difference reaches 30, the leading player wins an instant victory. There are a few ways of scoring victory points, like controlling provinces, killing enemy leaders in battle, and capturing and holding enemy leaders.

The game is all about the leaders. You need leaders to lead troops and to fight battles. In fact, you need leaders to prevent troops from disappearing (or you can call it "being disbanded") and from being snatched away by enemy leaders. You also need leaders to establish control over provinces. Leaders are the most crucial aspect of the game. And they die all the time. In a way, it's funny. Every round new leaders will appear, and all old leaders (some may be just 1-round-old) will need to do a medical check-up thingy (a die roll) to see whether their "time is up". Leaders will live for at most 6 rounds. Because all your actions and planning pivot around your leaders, sometimes untimely deaths can really spoil your plans. Some complain that this is bad, but I like this. In the grand scheme of things, historical leaders do come and go frequently. I like how this more-or-less constant change in your leader portfolio forces you to be flexible and to not get too attached to any one leader. It makes the game quite dynamic. It creates an ebb and flow in the fortunes of the two nations at war. It is also funny to see how some big shot general die young before being able to do anything for his country (I imagine some stupid hunting accident). Even funnier when some old fart keeps going and going and going when you expect him to croak any minute.

Movement and battles are quite straight-forward. Most information that you need are on the leaders. Their rank determines how many troops they can lead. Their bravery determines the effectiveness of their troops - normally you need to roll a 6 to kill, but with a leader with higher bravery, you hit on a lower number. Their leadership (not sure whether this is the right term) determines the efficiency of their armies, i.e. how many units can fight at the same time, which translates to how many dice you can roll at any one time. There are some rules about special unit types, like knights, mercenaries, archers and gunners (canons) but they are quite simple. There are rules for sieges, which are also relatively straight-forward.

Sometimes leaders are captured when they lose a battle. You can decide whether to pay a ransom for their release. If you don't, your opponent will score victory points for holding your leaders. You can hope they'll die in prison (not that it's something you'd do in real life, I presume), because when they're dead, they don't give your opponent any more victory points.

The game board is made of paper and not mounted, which is a pity. But otherwise it is nice and functional.

Some of the reminder markers (top row) and special units (middle and bottom rows).

The top row are the generic units. The middle and bottom rows are mercenaries. Five provinces produce mercenaries.

England, with its starting forces, lead by King Edward III. The "0" on the top left means these are the starting leaders. The stars are their rank. They can lead three times the number of units as the number of stars they have. The number on the left side of their flag/shield is the bravery rating (roll a hit at a smaller number when fighting), and the number on the right is their leadership (I think) rating (can roll more dice at the same time). The round marker is a control marker.

When the game started, we didn't have much idea what to do. There weren't many leaders on the board, and there was little that could be done with so few leaders. We fought here and there. Then Han saw the importance of establishing control, before I did. He started working towards this. Establishing control is important because it gives you victory points every round, it allows you to hide in a castle if attacked (i.e. you can decide to have a siege), and any leaderless army in the province cannot be "stolen" away by your opponent. This was one of the three reasons that I lost the game eventually. I was never able to catch up in victory points per round.

The second reason was sieges. Both of us forgot about sieges in the first few rounds. We fought every battle on the field. The English did quite well in the early game, and I had brought a huge army to Paris to try to take the French capitol. Halfway through the battle, we realised that we had forgotten completely about the option to siege. The first round of fighting didn't go well for the French. We decided to bend the rules and allow the French to start a siege then (normally the defender must declare a siege before fighting starts). The English failed to storm the castle, and had to retreat. Paris was safe. Unfortunately London wasn't. This was the third reason of my loss. I had intentionally vacated my home base to tempt one big French army to attack it instead of moving to defend Paris. Since I had control over England, the French army wouldn't have been able to gain control over England quickly. I had expected to be able to fight it off soon. Unfortunately my plan only half worked. The part about luring the enemy worked. The part about kicking the enemy away didn't. Oops. The French squatted on London and later even gained control.

Sieges are an interesting decision. It can be tempting to hide in your castle, because it is hard to storm a castle. The attacker needs a strong commander (with high bravery) and gunners (cannons) to have a decent chance. However, hiding in your castle can be risky. If the attacker gets lucky, you will lose all your troops. It is probably worthwhile for an attacker to attack even if he thinks the defender will avoid battle and start a siege, because if he gets lucky, he will eliminate the whole defending army without losing any troops. There was one turn when I made three seperate attempts at different locations to storm castles defended by Han. Unfortunately, no success.

Controlling the enemy capitol gives an extra victory point. Combined with the earlier control that Han had already achieved over other provinces, I was unable to catch up or turn the tide. We didn't manage to complete the game because I had another appointment. We only played 6 (out of 12) rounds, but it was clear the English was in a rut, and I conceded defeat.

One funny thing that happened in our game was our first kings both lived very long. They both lived until Round 5. They outlived many other younger leaders, even Joan of Arc, who died young (but maybe not as young as in real life). We had some leaders who died pretty young. I had one young Irish joker who died on me when I was expecting to have him establish control over Ireland for me. Leaders can help you establish control over their home province easily.

There was one round when many of our leaders died (maybe there was a plague?), leaving few leaders and many leaderless armies. The board dynamics changed significantly. That's one thing about the game that I find very interesting and exciting. You really need to have a strategic plan, and not rely too heavily on individual leaders or tactical victories. Leaders are short lived. Province control is more lasting. Usually.

Turn 4, and the map was a little crowded at this time. It doesn't seem like much, but this was probably the peak period in our game when we had the most number of leaders. Later on a whole bunch of them died (of the plague probably) and Han and I each had about 4 leaders remaining.

The battle of Paris, with the English being the aggressor, of course. The English have longbowmen, which let them roll more dice. Many English leaders themselves lead longbowmen (the leader chit itself is considered a military unit and not just an individual).

The end of the game. The French control 4 out of 5 red-bordered Level III provinces, the most lucrative ones, because they provide the most new troops, are hardest to control or siege, and provide the most victory points.

I really like Warriors of God. It is a very interesting recreation of the Hundred Years War. There can be a lot of drama and surprises and unexpected twists of fate. It gives you a high-level, sweep-of-history feel. As a wargame this is not complex. I don't have the stomach yet for "real" wargames, but Warriors of God is accessible enough for me.

The game comes with two scenarios. The one we played had Joan of Arc. The other one has Robin Hood. Interesting? Just remember not to get too attached to your leaders.

Waterloo

On 26 Jul 2009 Han came over for a 2-player wargame session. Not that it was what we had intentionally planned. The few potential players all couldn't make it, so it was just the two of us. Coincidentally he had two new 2-player-only wargames, so the timing was perfect. We played Waterloo and Warriors of God, both wargames involving the French and the English, from different eras.

Waterloo is a new game from Martin Wallace, designer of Automobile which I had just played the previous weekend, but this is a completely different animal. It is, of course, about the famous battle where Napoleon suffered a defeat. One player plays the French, and the other plays the Allied forces (English, Dutch, Germans, and a separate army of Prussians). The game plays over 9 turns, each representing an hour, from 12noon to 8pm. The French wins by conquering a town on the Allied side of the board, or by killing 13 Allied units (excluding cavalry and Prussians). The Allies win by conquering a town on the French side of the board, or by killing 16 French units (excluding cavalry), or by simply surviving until the end of the 9 turns.

You have 4 types of units in the game - infantry, cavalry, artillery and leaders. They all behave very differently, and there are many different rules that make them very unique. The game flow is quite unique and interesting. Every turn, each player has some discs in 3 colours, that are used to execute different types of actions. You don't take turns to use these discs, instead you get to use 2 to 5 discs, before passing the initiative to your opponent. The tricky thing is you don't know how many discs you get to spend at any one stretch, but your opponent does. He will tell you only when you have used up your discs allowed for that stretch. Consecutive actions are important for setting up positions and then executing a big assault, but you can't be sure how many consecutive actions you'll get. So do you gamble that you will have enough actions to execute a master stroke, or should you be conservative and plan for a surer but less spectacular move?

Another interesting thing that you can do is deliberate time wasting. You probably want to do this only if you are the Allied player though (who wins by surviving until game end). A turn ends if initiative passes to a player who no longer has green action discs. So you can deliberately use up your green discs quickly, to force an earlier end of turn. I did this on turn 1.

The actions allowed in the game are what you would expect - different types of movement, artillery fire, formation changes, assaults etc. Assaults are a key part of the game. This is when infantry and cavalry rush in to an enemy occupied space to fight, and this is where most people get killed. There is a very specific combat resolution procedure you need to follow to resolve an assault. Formations are mostly applicable to infantry. Normal formation allows movement. Defensive formation prevents movement but allows your infantry to switch to square formation if attacked by cavalry, which is important. However square formation is bad when you are being shot at, because you are standing very close to your fellow countrymen like bowling pins.

The game feels quite realistic. You do feel like you are in the shoes of the commanders of that famous battle. The game is also a bit complex, especially in the different behaviours of the different troop types and the procedures for combat resolution. There are so many reference tables to look up, and so many modifiers for die roll results. It is daunting. All these modifiers are realistic, no doubt about it, but there is a lot to remember. So it will take some time to get used to and to remember. The reference sheets provided are handy. You will keep needing to refer to them.

The game starts with the French outnumbering the Allies, and the Allied infantry all in defensive positions. The French has better artillery, and also has more leaders, who improve the effectiveness of their army. Leaders allow troops in the same area to be activated twice, or allow troops from two adjacent areas to be activated at the same time. On Turn 4 (i.e. 3pm), Prussians start appearing at one side of the board. They would be a much needed reinforcement. They bring two more leaders onto the board, so that both sides will have the same number of leaders (if none are killed yet). The Allies get fewer action discs for the first 4 turns, and only get the same number of action discs after the Prussians arrive.

The starting setup. The French (various shades of blue) initially outnumber the Allies (red, orange, green). The three strong points between the two armies were held by the Allies, and all Allied infantry were in defensive positions (represented by being lying down). The Prussians (black and grey) line up at one edge of the board. They don't come on board until Turn 4.

The Allies. The pink horseman is a leader.

The French army. The light blue horsemen are the leaders. Dark blue units are the elite French Imperial Guards.

The Prussians.

The indisposable reference sheet (two-sided).

Our game started with Han (as the French) aggressively attacking the strong points at the centre of the board which started off being held by the Allies. The initial assaults were not very effective though. I brought my troops from the back up to the front, to hold up the front and to counter-attack. The battle quickly turned rather bloody. Unfortunately it was mostly the blood of my soldiers. It didn't help that I drew quite a number of "5" tiles during Han's initiatives, which meant he could spend 5 consecutive actions to mobilise and attack. I think it was only the end of Turn 3 when I conceded defeat. Han was already positioned to destroy one more of my artillery units at the start of the next turn, which was the 13th and last kill that he needed to win. So my Prussian units never had the chance to turn up for the party!

In hindsight, as the Allies I probably should have played defensively or even retreated, giving up the three strong points. I should be employing every delay tactic to wait for the Prussians to turn up. I win automatically after Turn 9, so there no urgency at all. If I keep moving injured soldiers from front to back, and sending fresh ones from back to front, I could probably last much longer. I suspect this is the "right" way to play. Otherwise 13 kills (or 16 kills) would be rather easy. I think Han and I have been playing Waterloo with an Axis & Allies mentality, where units often fight to the death.

We also seldom did artillery bombardment. We mostly went straight into deadly assaults, like bloodthirsty barbarians. Napoleon probably would be turning in his grave watching us play. But at least Han changed history and the French army won the day decisively.

I made one very expensive mistake in the game. I made one assault with overwhelming force, but underestimated how devastating cavalry could be to infantry. Halfway through that particular assault, I had 5 infantry remaining, and Han had 1 cavalry remaining. However, because my infantry couldn't hit that lone cavalry, they suffered tremendous losses, due to morale checks. It was a painful lesson on how different cavalry is and on how they can and should be used. Martin Wallace was successful in capturing the different characteristics of the different troop types. I think Waterloo captures the feel of Napoleonic warfare quite well, although the designer himself stated that he took liberty with some details of that battle.

At this stage two of the three strong points have been conquered by the French. The fighting on my right flank inflicted much injury to the French (represented by blue cubes), but I also lost units, and lost ground.

Some of the dead soldiers idling and chatting about old times.

The end of the game. My right flank had collapsed.

My main gripe with the game is the many look-ups I need to do, and the rather complex turn sequence and combat resolution procedures. Seasoned wargamers may find this simple though. Other than this, I find the game to be very thematic. I'd gladly play this again, and I'd want to play the Allies again, at least to see whether I can survive longer. I'll definitely be employing a different (and hopefully better) strategy next time!

Automobile

On 18 Jul 2009, two new players joined a game session at my home for the first time, Keith and Simon, both my colleagues. I have played games with them before separately on different occasions, but this was the first time they came for a game session. Han was also in town and came to play. I recently received Automobile, the new Martin Wallace game about the early car industry in America, a complex Euro game. This was the first time I have ever pre-ordered a game by myself. I was keen to play, but struggled about whether I should be introducing such a complex game to new players. Eventually I couldn't resist the urge to play it. But I did start with a medium complexity game - Traumfabrik (a.k.a. Hollywood Blockbuster / Dream Factory), as warm-up.

I have not played Traumfabrik for a long time. I have a home-made copy, which I made (with much effort) a few years ago before the game was reprinted. I quite enjoyed the game. I should play this more often. Keith and Simon enjoyed the game too. I think the movie-making theme helps draw them in. Han won the game decisively. He had one very good movie that won lots of awards. He had 90pts and the rest of us had 69pts, 68pts, 68pts.

One pleasant surprise was a few days later Simon asked to borrow Traumfabrik so that he could try it with his wife, whom he described as having a fear of boardgames. Simon likes trivia / word / party games, so maybe Grace dislikes boardgames only because she doesn't like trivia / word games, which rely on your knowledge in certain fields and your language skills. Eurogames tend to be quite knowledge- and language-independent, so maybe this will be an entry point to recruit a new gaming partner.

An old photo of my home-made Traumfabrik.

On to Automobile. We started Automobile at 10pm. Explaining the game probably took 20-30 minutes, and the actual game (first time for all of us) took slightly less than 2 hours. We ended at 12:20am. Automobile is an economic game about producing and selling cars, and, of course, making money. There are only 4 rounds in the game, and you don't get many actions each round, but every decision that you make has implications. Even turn order can have big implications. So you need to plan ahead and think about what you want to achieve.

There are three types of cars - high price range cars, mid range and low range. They have different demands throughout the 4 rounds, and you have to decide which range(s) you want to compete in. There are three ways to sell cars - (a) via Howard, a super salesman, one of the characters in the game, (b) via your network of distributors, and (c) to the general public. Each round there is a fixed number of cars in each price range that can be sold via distributors. So using distributors is a more predictable approach. However, because the number of cars that can be sold this way is limited, if the players employ too many distributors, some of the distributors will fail to sell, and will get fired (which is a bad thing, of course). There is also an interesting mechanism which slightly restricts the types of cars a distributor can sell. If a distributor is experienced in selling luxury cars, he will be able to sell mid range cars too, but not the el cheapo cars. Similarly if a distributor is experienced in selling el cheapo cars, he can sell mid range cars, but not posh cars. If a distributor is experienced is selling mid-range cars, he can sell cars of all price ranges.

As for selling to the public, at the start of every round, each player secretly draws some tiles with numbers on them ranging from 2 to 5. These numbers together determine the demand of the general public. This means you have partial information only. So you have to think carefully how many cars to produce. You can observe how optimistic or pessimistic your competitors are, to guess what kind of tiles they have in their hands. If you produce too few cars, less than what you would have been able to sell, you miss the opportunity to make money. If you produce too many cars, more than what you can sell, you lose the money that you have spent producing the cars. Cars in this game are like bread. By the end of the round, any that are unsold go bad and you have to remove them from the board.

There is an interesting concept of obsolescence. There are many different models of cars, and it is always better to be producing newer models. They usually sell quicker, and they give you less loss cubes (an abstract concept in the game, which I'll talk about soon). However the cost of building factories for producing newer models get more and more expensive, but the profit margins for selling newer models are no larger than those for older models. So when to spend R&D (research and development) on developing new models, and when to close down old factories, are interesting decisions. Are you willing to spend the money and (limited) actions just so that you can be producing the new and shiny models? Sometimes this is needed to gain a competitive edge. Sometimes this may even be necessary for survival.

One abstract concept presented in the game is the loss cubes. You gain loss cubes if you are forced to fire your distributors, if you are unable to sell all your cars, and if you own factories of older car models. At the end of every round, you lose some money per loss cube, and this loss rate increases from turn to turn. The only ways you can discard some loss cubes are closing factories and making use of some of the character powers. During the game I was probably overly worried about the loss cubes, which affected my decisions. I probably should have worried less about them. However, one mustn't completely ignore them. In Round 4, the amount you have to pay for loss cubes may be the difference between winning and losing.

The game allows you to take up to two loans. At first it didn't seem necessary. You start with $2000. But by mid game we gradually realised that you do need to borrow money to make more money. The automobile business is an expensive business. So much money is tied up in your assets - your factories. You need money to fully utilise the production capacity of your factories. Soon all of us had to take loans at some point in the game. Money is quite tight. For whatever amount that you earn in one round, you use most if not all of it to buy factories and produce cars in the next. Cash flow is very important. Be prepared to beg from the banks.

Competition among the players happens in many aspects of the game. Your distributors fight over limited slots to sell cars. Turn order is a constant consideration. Sometimes you want to go early, sometimes you want to go late, and sometimes you want to do both! E.g. going early gives you first choice for Executive Decisions (an aspect of the game that helps you sell more cars or allows you to close a factory), but going late allows you to build factories later which means you will likely be able to build newer models. There are six characters in the game who give you various benefits, and your choice of character determines turn order. So sometimes you are torn between getting the turn order you want and getting the character you want.

You have the chance to cut your price, which can help you sell cars faster, but at a smaller profit margin. Sometimes it can be painful to have to make that decision. You do not have full information about the market demand. If you cut your price and manage to sell all your cars while others fail to do so because demand turns out to be low, you'll be laughing at your competitors. But if you cut your price, and later find that there is sufficient demand for everyone to sell all cars anyway, you'll be kicking yourself. If you decide not to cut your price, you have to worry about losing sales to an opponent who cuts his price. It can be a game of chicken.

There is a lot to think about in this game, and yet you have very few actions. So it's quite an intense game. However, at the same time the actions that you do are intuitive and logical, so Automobile is easier to grasp than Brass, another recent Martin Wallace game which I like a lot. That one can be a little tough to grasp at first.

Simon, Keith and Han.

Small white cube - R&D cube. Reddish rown cylinder - Chrysler's special ability reminder marker. Green rectangle - my car factory. Brown rectangle - parts factory. Black square tiles - demand tiles. Green cars - cars (what else?). Green head-and-shoulder - distributors.

The gameboard looks a little busy, but every single thing on it serves a purpose, and it is very practical and functional. The outer track are the car models that you can build in the game. You build your factories and produce your cars on these spaces.

The drawings of the cars are very nice.

The view from where I sat. At the centre are the distributor pieces. Han (yellow) and I (green) competed fiercely in the mid-range (orange) and low-range (black) markets. Keith (blue) focused on the high-end (silvery blue) market.

At the start of our game, most of us had not much idea what we were supposed to be doing, probably except for Han. At least he started with a strategy of trying to go last in turn order, so that he would be building a factory later, and thus would be building a factory for a newer model. My first factory, which I had built on the 3rd space, suddenly seemed so obsolete. I had 3 car factories and 1 parts factory on that space. Then during the Executive Decisions stage of the round, I closed down my factory, which surprised everyone. In hindsight, that was probably a bad move and not a bold move (well, maybe a bold bad move). I was overly afraid of loss cubes and obsolescence. From Round 1 to Round 2, I earned a total of $100 (when you close a factory you don't recover the full cost). That's 5% (start money is $2000). Baaaaad investment.

Han and I competed in both mid-range and low-range cars. Keith was the first to go into the luxury car market. I think he sold either very expensive or very cheap cars. Simon joined the competition in the high-end market, and also had an interest in the mid-range market. The mid-range market was a killer. I produced too much and was burned in Round 3. We kept underestimating (or maybe underproducing for) the low-range market. There was a slight overproduction in the high-range market only in Round 4.

Han was first to build a distributor network, and soon we all started to see the benefits of a reliable sales channel. Competition was fierce in Round 3, and distributors started losing jobs. Things stabilised in Round 4, since no one wanted to escalate the distributor war.

The final scores were close and were mostly around $3000, which I suspect is not very good. Hopefully we'll do better in the next game, when we have a better idea what to do.

I think Automobile is a good buy and I am glad that I had pre-ordered it. I hope to get this played more often, which can be a challenge since I usually only have 2 players. There is a 2P variant, which I hope to try soon. If it works well enough like the Brass 2P variant, then I'd be quite happy.

Rabbit Hunt

Rabbit Hunt was an unexpected discovery. I have read about this game at Bruno Faidutti's website, but it didn't trigger enough interest for me to want to try it. Then on 5 Jul after playing Minion Hunter at Carcasean, I asked Chong Sean to suggest a quick game, and he brought out Rabbit Hunt.

This game is designed by Taiwanese designer Pan Shen-Yang, who also designed Fuzzy Tiger. Players are farmers, each having 3 rabbits. You try to hide your 3 rabbits from the other farmers, while trying to hunt down theirs. If all three of your rabbits are caught, you are out of the game. When time runs out (i.e. the card draw deck runs out), if you have any rabbits remaining in your hand, you lose. If a winner hasn't been determined yet by this point, then you check who has caught the most rabbits. Tied? Then check who has the fewer of his/her own rabbits caught. Tied again? Then check who has a remaining rabbit closest to the barn.

This all sounds rather complicated, but the game is actually quite simple. Just remember your goal is to hunt down the others' rabbits, and to keep yours from being found.

The game starts with the barn set up at the centre of the table, and 6 cards placed surrounding it, representing the field around the barn. You have 3 rabbit cards in your hand, and 5 more cards. On your turn, you place one card face-down, growing the field area, and then you do two actions. You can do any combination of the following:

1. Collect 1 carrot.
2. Draw 1 card.
3. Move your farmer by paying carrot(s). If your farmer lands on a face-down card, turn it face-up and do what it shows (sometimes good, sometimes bad).
4. Pay 3 carrots to look at an opponent's hand.

You need to think of when to place your rabbit card. Place it too early, and it may be caught by your opponents easily. Play it too late, you may lose the game, or you may be penalised. There are some event cards that cause you to lose all your carrots if you have not yet placed all your rabbits. There are some event cards that force all players to show their hands. If you happen to have placed one or more rabbits between two such events, your opponents will know that the cards you have placed during that time contain rabbits. So there is a bit of psychology in the game. You need to guess where your opponents have placed their rabbits, and when you place yours, you have to pretend to be not nervous at all. It's fun and exciting. There is also a memory element to it, not just in remembering the positions of the cards placed by your opponents, but also the cards you placed yourself. It's rather difficult to try to remember every move, so you'll probably have to settle for just a rough idea.

My green rabbit is trying to disguise itself as a tree.

In our 3-player game, Han, Chong Sean and I were rather conservative and held the rabbit cards in our hands for quite long. Only when the draw deck started to dwindle (and the field started to grow rather big) we reluctantly started placing our rabbits. Chong Sean and I found each other's rabbits first. Later Han also caught another one of mine. I was only one rabbit away from losing instantly. Then I made a lucky guess and caught Chong Sean's 2nd rabbit. I'm not sure why. I just had a gut feel it was that card, and I was right. I was leading 2 vs 1 vs 1, so the best strategy would be to quickly end the game by exhausting the draw deck. There weren't many cards left.

Han and Chong Sean saw it coming, but thankfully they couldn't stop me or find my third and last rabbit. Then in a surprise last move, instead of exhausting the draw deck, I took an irrational move, and moved by farmer to a new space instead. And I caught one of Han's rabbits! I must be possessed by some hunter spirit that day. I looked at my hand in awe and muttered, "Hand of God" ("神手！"). I just had this gut feel, and it turned out to be right. So I won decisively at 3 vs 1 vs 1. Still, it wasn't a rational thing to do. If my 3rd rabbit were caught, I would have lost.

Towards game end.

Rabbit Hunt is a light fun game. If played with 4 players, it must be played as a team game. With the psychology / bluffing and memory element, if a player decides to think too much / remember too hard, the game can certainly drag. But hey, this is a game about catching Bugs Bunny, not defending Earth from space invaders, why ssso ssseriousss? The winning conditions and the various card events can take a little while to remember, but once you get past that, you'll realise the key to the game is just as the title suggests - go catch bunnies.

I bought this game. It's something different. Now I really doubt I will meet my quota of 20 (maximum, of course) game purchases in 2009. I'm already at 17, and Essen is not even here yet.