pick a game for my wife

My wife Michelle was my first boardgame kaki (gaming buddy) when I first got into the hobby (defined as the start of regular boardgame playing). At the time we had no kids yet. I was on a long work assignment in Taiwan and she went with me. It was around that time that I discovered German games. Prior to that I played some Axis & Allies games and Samurai Swords once or twice in a year, and Michelle had little interest in those. But German games, that was something that she could accept.

We played with my Taiwanese colleagues. After returning to Malaysia we played with whoever I could convince to play with us. Two children came along. Gradually Michelle drifted apart from my gaming friends. When friends come to play, she prefers not to play so that she can take care of the children. She would otherwise be annoyed if she keeps getting interrupted by them when in the middle of a game.

So now I have two quite mutually exclusive game circles - my wife, and the rest of the world (I do play boardgames with my children, but let's exclude that from this discussion). The rest of the world part has overlaps. Most frequently I game with Allen and Han. Then there's also Afif, another gamer whom I got to know via the internet (maybe I'm old-fashioned, it still seems spooky and a big deal to make new friends via the internet). And there's also Jeff, Heng, Jimmy, and the many other gamers who play at Old Town Kopitiam Cheras on Fridays. The biggest difference between these two circles is the wife circle purely plays 2-player games (including games that can support more than 2 players) and the rest-of-the-world circle usually plays 3+ players games (mostly 3). I have access to lots of new games with my rest-of-the-world circle. All being gamers, there is no shortage of new and interesting games to try. Where I now have a bit of a dilemma is the choice of games when playing with my wife.

Nowadays Michelle is less patient to learn new games, and we tend to stick to old favourites: Through the Ages and Race for the Galaxy, the former for when we have 2 hours to spare on weekends to sit down for some quality spouse gaming time, the latter for those half hour quick games when she feels up to it. I have been struggling to move on to some new games, since these regulars have been regulars for the past 3 years or so. Any suggestions?

Here's the gamer psychoanalysis profile of my wife:

• Favourites that have seen heavy play (roughly ordered by timeline): Carcassonne (168 plays), Ticket to Ride series (230), Mystery Rummy: Jack the Ripper (199), Blokus and Blokus Duo (71), Race for the Galaxy (383), Through the Ages (54), Agricola (54).
• Other games she likes: Le Havre, At the Gates of Loyang, Galaxy Trucker, Goa, Princes of Florence 2-player variant, Puerto Rico 2-player variant, Jambo, Hacienda.
• Games she dislikes:
  • Games about fighting and war, confrontational games, games where you need to attack and bring destruction to your opponent, games where you need to be nasty to your opponent. Our games of Through the Ages is by unspoken rule the peaceful variant. Noone plays Aggression or War cards. Thankfully military is still important for the colonies and for the events, so the game is still very playable. The same cannot be said for Sid Meier's Civilization where military is much more "undetachable".
  • Innovation - I had high hopes for this, and I like the game a lot too. But she finds it too confrontational - the part where your points cards can be robbed or discarded by your opponent.
  • Blue Moon - Too directly confrontational. I tried to convince her that it was just about pleasing the dragons, but she's smarter than that.
  • Lord of the Rings - the Confrontation - she actively hates this game. It even has the word "confrontation" on the cover!
  • Babel - This has a lot of destroying your opponent's towers and robbing your opponent's tribes.

I recently managed to persuade Michelle to play Twilight Struggle again, by saying my beautiful deluxe version had not been played yet and it was such a waste. She had played it once before. She didn't seem to dislike it, but she did not particularly fancy it either. She had lost the first game playing USSR. I let her play USSR again, which should be easier for beginners. As the game progressed, I worried whether I was going to lose her. She seemed frustrated by the game, or rather, by the learning experience. She struggled to digest everything and to optimise her card play. USSR got close to 20VP, but as the game progressed, the VPs shifted towards USA. Things started to look bad for USSR, as the USA score moved towards the teens. I became nervous that I might win the battle (win this game) and lose the war (getting her to like Twilight Struggle).

USA (me) was at 11pts.

USSR (Michelle) remained strong in Europe throughout the game.

This is the deluxe version, with a mounted board, and improved graphics.

Mexico had been hotly contested. It was right next to USA so I wanted to make sure it didn't fall to USSR, because that would be 1 extra point for Michelle.

Then on one turn she played both Red Scare/Purge and Quagmire.

Red Scare/Purge reduced the operations value of all my cards for the whole turn. Quagmire was a card that in the best case wasted one action and one medium-to-high valued card, and in the worst case paralysed your whole turn (6 or 7 actions!). I did manage to remove Quagmire, but only on the second attempt (i.e. 2 actions and 2 high-valued cards wasted). And since my operations values were greatly reduced, Michelle took control of Europe, and then played the Europe scoring card to win the game. Europe was already close to being controlled by her, so I couldn't stop her. Aarrgghh!!... She literally got up and did a victory dance. I guess 383 games of Race for the Galaxy have taught her about card combos.

Michelle controlled all the battleground countries in Europe. Soviet victory!

The game took about 2.5 hours, since it was a re-learning game for Michelle. I hope she will be willing to play again, when we have time for a longish game.

As for shorter games, we are still enjoying Race for the Galaxy (with all 3 expansions) very much. It is our bedroom game (no naughty thoughts please) - I put it in the bedroom so that I can quickly set it up to play at any time, without even needing to walk to my game shelf. However it would be nice if we can have another short game to turn to, just to break the monotony. Dominion is OK (she finds the constant shuffling tiring) but it's a hassle to setup and put away. Lost Cities has been played a lot and is not meaty enough. Here are some that I am going to try or am thinking about:

• 7 Wonders - I've finally managed to try this and I like it, just like 95% of the gamers out there. Some say the 2-player variant is quite a strategic way to play, although most say it is best with 3 or 4. I've pre-ordered this from boardgamecafe.net.
• Maori - A recent and less well-known game from Rio Grande Games, with individual player boards, and a little Carcassonne-like. Also pre-ordered.
• Jaipur - I just worry this will be too abstract, like Lost Cities is. We enjoy the theme in Race for the Galaxy and Mystery Rummy: Jack the Ripper.
• Haggis - Again, the themelessness worries me a little. Also we've never really got into climbing games or more traditional card games. The 2-player version can actually be played using a normal deck of cards, so I'm probably going to try that first.

On medium-length games, I guess we do have a decent selection. We don't play Agricola as heavily as we used to. There is a better rotation of medium-length games. But any suggestions are most welcome. I just discovered that there are some 2-player variants for Endeavor, which I recently bought, and they are supposed to be quite decent. So I'm going to try this on Michelle.

Suggestions?

Wars of the Roses: Lancaster vs York

Plays: 3Px2.

The Game

Distilled down to its fundamentals, Wars of the Roses is an area majority game. You try to control locations and personalities, which give you control points. These control points determine who scores victory points for each of the six regions on the board.

There are cities, towns, ports, nobles, bishops and ship captains that gradually come into play at the start of every round. Players simply take turns drafting them into service. They provide both income and control points. Money is important for raising troops for battle and for bribing and anti-bribing. Control points determine area majority and thus scoring. In the same round that a personality or location enters play, it can already be bribed away or attacked.

The game map. Set up and ready to go.

At the start of a round, cards are revealed, and then picked by the players one by one. We put the cards on the board so that it's easier to see which is which.

What's most interesting about the game is the secret planning phase, where you plan to attack enemy locations or defend your own locations, bribe enemy personalities to join your side or protect your own personalities from being bribed, and move your personalities around the board, which will impact where you can attack and the strength of your presence (control points).

The personal board and shield for secret planning.

The personal planning board is actually a mini version of the game board. You move your people on this mini map. You mark your assets with cubes or cylinders. You place soldiers where you want to attack of defend. You place black cubes on enemy personalities whom you want to bribe, and white cubes on your own personalities whom you want to protect from bribing.

Battles are simple. Every soldier kills one enemy and whoever has soldiers left wins. If two different players happen to attack the same location, the player who has a higher score attacks first and resolves the first battle against the defender. Whoever wins will have fewer troops left and will then have to face the second wave. So, like Power Grid and Inca Empire, there is a catch-up mechanism.

Bribes work in a similar way. You secretly spend money to protect your people from bribery. If someone else wants to try to bribe your personality, he would have to pay double of what you'd have to pay. Your anti-bribery incentive only protects against the first bribery attempt. If more than one opponent bribes the same personality, the last player to bribe gains the personality. Similar to attacks on locations, trailing players do bribing last.

Scoring is done at the end of every round. Presence in each region is compared and points are awarded. In the full four-player game, there is a parliament phase to elect the king, and players from the same side as the new king (York or Lancaster) gain bonus points. There are a few other ways of earning bonus points, e.g. having the most ships, controlling the most bishops. These are handled in a similar way as the largest army / longest road in The Settlers of Catan. This aspect creates another cause for competition.

The map of England (and Wales). Owned assets are marked with player colours. Those not marked are not owned.

Soldier head icons beside locations mean the basic defense values.

"Good girls go to heaven, naughty girls go to London".

The Play

So far I have played two games. The game starts slowly, since there aren't many locations and personalities at first. There isn't much to ponder over. You don't have much money to spend on bribery or battles anyway. Things get more interesting as the game progresses. There's more to think about when picking the newly available assets, in picking where to bribe/fight/defend, and in how to move your personalities to compete for control. The secret planning phase means there can be a lot of double-guessing. When I played I tried not to think too long. This is an aspect which can really drag if the players over-analyse. You'll never have enough money to protect all your assets or to make all the attacks that you want. So you need to be selective. I decided to mostly spend my money on offense, because it was just too hard to anticipate where attacks would come. Money spent on defense can easily be wasted when all the assets you protect don't get attacked/bribed. I spent on defense only when I knew I was counting on a particular asset to control a particular region that I wanted to win.

Maybe it was because I was the rules explainer, I did OK in round 1 (of 5), and then suddenly in round 2 things went very very bad. That was the result of being perceived as the biggest threat. One good thing is if you are very far behind the leading player, you can use a once-per-game French aid token, which gives you money depending on how far behind you are. I received $21 for this. That's how far behind I was. The money did help a lot. I even managed to bribe a very expensive noble, which I don't think anyone else expected. I gradually crawled back up, and later in the game it was Allen who fell behind and received a wagon of French francs.

In Round 2, I (green) was left far far behind.

Close-up of the personal planning board. I put money here as well just to make sure I counted my expenditure right.

Towards end game, we realised the importance of gaining the most points with the least effort possible, e.g. earning a second place score with minimal presence. We also prioritised, and even vacated some areas which we knew would be very difficult to win. The mobility of the nobles and ships was quite important. Also nobles tended to have very high control points. I won the game at 138pts. Han had 133pts, Allen 102pts. This was close.

Close-up of the northern region, just next to Scotland.

This little chart shows the tiebreaker sequence if players are tied in control points for a region.

You do your secret planning behind your own little castle. Every man needs a castle.

This place is so very very blue (Allen).

Battles breaking out. See those many stacks of soldiers. I (green) attacked York but was repelled by the defenders (blue). Allen (blue) had put additional soldiers to defend Pontefract, but noone attacked it.

Our second game was nowhere near close. Han focused on money-earning assets early (ships, towns, cities), and by mid game sprinted far ahead of both Allen and I. Allen picked up many mercenaries early, but delayed using them until mid game, when he launched many attacks simultaneously. However it might not have been a good idea, because by then he had lost most of his holdings except for some in the northen kampung (backwater) region, which scored very low. He fell behind in victory points and never managed to catch up. By the last round, Han was so far ahead that we knew it was hopeless to try to catch up. So I decided to instead focus my attacks on Allen, just to make sure he didn't overtake me. I spent all my money on bribing two of his very senior nobles, which he hadn't expected. By game end I was happy enough to retain 2nd place.

In that particular game session Han was really on fire, winning game after game and by big margins. Allen and I joked that he must be wearing red underwear (it is a superstition that red underwear brings good luck and negates your opponents' good luck). Final score: Han 177, me 106, Allen 82.

See the two black cubes near the top left. I spent all my money to bribe two high ranked nobles belonging to Allen.

Game end. I (green) was not the winner. Han (yellow) was the winner. He had almost lapped Allen (blue). Complete slaughter.

The Thoughts

Although I generally don't fancy area majority games, I enjoyed Wars of the Roses well enough. The secret planning and double-guessing (of attacks, defenses, bribes and also very importantly movements) is the most unique part of the game. It's not all about lucky guesses. You do know roughly how much money your oppenents have and from looking at the board you can try to guess where they may want to compete. The choice between offense or defense is interesting. Offense is expensive, but defense can be a complete waste of money if you don't guess right. The overall package is pleasant and interesting.

I have thought about designing a game with a betrayal element. You manage a group of characters to do various tasks for you, but other players can bribe them away from you. You can spend resources to make them stay loyal to you. I never went far with the design. I think Wars of the Roses implemented this loyalty / betrayal aspect elegantly.

I think the game will be best with 4 players, because of the additional aspect of electing the king. There is a little team play aspect.

RoboArena

The developers of an upcoming iPhone game, RoboArena, contacted me about their game. It is inspired by RoboRally, which I have not played before, but know a little about. They are looking for supporters for their project. If your are interested, take a look at a preview of the game. To support them in their kickstarter project, go here.

Disclaimer: They did offer me a free copy of the game when it is released.

buying habits

I set myself a quota of gaining no more than 20 games every year. "Gaining" includes buying, receiving games as gifts, home-manufacturing games. I don't remember when I came up with this quota, maybe about 2 - 3 years ago, but I know I have not met my target for the past three years. However having a target does help to keep me in check somewhat.

Let's go through again the list of mantras that I came up with to dissuade myself from buying games:

1. You don't need to own every game that you like.
2. You don't need to play every good game.
3. You need to play more of the good games that you own.
4. Wait until your interest wanes.
5. Don't impulse buy.
6. Will you play the game more than 5 (or 10) times?

So far in 2011, I have been a good boy and have only bought 2 new games, A la Carte and Endeavor. I know I will definitely buy the upcoming Race for the Galaxy Alien Artifact expansion. That makes 3. So I think I will finally achieve my goal this year. In fact I think I was close last year. Quite a number of games were bought for my children, some that could already be played, some to be played when they are older - Viva Topo!, 10 Days in Asia, FITS, Ubongo. ColorMonster was a review copy. Wizard was a gift because I helped with the rules translation to Malay. Funny Friends and Planet Steam were rewards for translation work. There weren't many games in my friend's inventory that I was interested in, so I picked these two which I had some mild interest in. I probably wouldn't have bought these two games myself.

A la Carte

I play most frequently with Han and Allen, both of whom also buy games. We still have a long list of games not yet played, so there is no shortage of new games to play. We have also been doing some repeat plays, which promoted longevity of games, and also let us enjoy and appreciate these games more (this is the Game of the Month concept). E.g. 4 plays of Sid Meier's Civilization, 3 plays of Merchants and Marauders, 2 plays of Liberte. Our tastes in games overlap, so sometimes they buy games that I am interested in, and I try-before-buy, and buy only if I really like them that much that I feel the need to own a copy.

Allen and Han. We were playing Wars of the Roses: Lancaster vs York.

With a long list of new games waiting to be played, I feel no urgency to buy games. Also, I find that it is harder and harder to come across new games that captivate me. Not that there are no or few good games among them, just that I feel quite contented with games I own and games I have access to. At the moment I'm just keen to try 7 Wonders and Dominant Species (and Allen has already ordered the latter).

I have enjoyed the recent repeat plays of games. They allowed us to explore the games in depth. Familiarity with the games also meant we could play very quickly. The games were intense, because the decisions to time ratio was high.

Sometimes I have less urge to try new games, and I yearn to bring out some older games (Samurai Swords anyone?). I still have not learnt the strategies in Euphrates and Tigris.

So I tell myself it's OK to miss some good, or even excellent games. Antiquity is a game that I think I will like a lot. But it's very expensive. But then there are just too many good games out there, and one should not try to own or even play all of them.

I am also cutting down on buying expansions to games that I like, because I don't play the base games or expansions that I already own that much. E.g. Grand Hameau expansion to Le Havre, Gamers' Deck expansion to Agricola, the many Power Grid expansions, Age of Steam expansions, Innovation expansion. The base games plus expansions that I already own are already more than enough for me, based on the frequency that I'm playing these games.

Power Grid, a game a like a lot but have not played for soooo long. The recent tournament organised by Jeff (boardgamecafe.net) made me itch to play again. I'm not a tournament person, so despite following the session reports loyally I didn't sign-up for any of the qualifiers.

One game that I have some interest in but will likely not buy is The Resistance. It's a Werewolf-like game, with undercover traitors among the players attempting to secretly sabotage the group's missions. One important difference is noone gets eliminated during the game. This game is only suitable for a big group, and I rarely have that.

I consider myself a lucky gamer. I have regular game sessions. I don't lack games that I'm keen to play. I don't really need to buy many new games, so I shall be very selective and limit myself to buying those that, as a figure of speech, I feel I can't live without.

The Speicherstadt

Plays: 2Px1, 3Px1.

The Game

The Speicherstadt means the warehouse district. In this game, a number of cards are available for purchase every round. Players use a unique system to buy cards, and they use these cards to score points.

Everyone has 3 pawns, and takes turns placing them into queues to buy cards. Being at the head of the queue means you have priority to buy the card. However the price of the card is equal to the number of pawns in the queue at that time. If you can't afford it or refuse to pay that much, you leave the queue, and the next guy now may buy the card at a slightly cheaper price.

There are a few different types of cards. Some give goods, some let you convert them to money, some let you convert them to points, some give points directly, some give points at game end depending on other criteria. One type of card that you can collect is the fireman cards. During the game there are 4 times that a fire card will be revealed, and when this happens, the player with the most firemen scores points and the player with the fewest firemen gets penalised.

The game ends when the deck of cards run out. Most points wins.

The deck of cards is divided into four seasons, starting with winter and ending in autumn. I like the card backs.

Ship cards come with 3 random goods drawn from a bag.

The Play

I have played a 2-player game and a 3-player game. The queuing mechanism is innovative (I hesitate to call it a bidding mechanism). Money is very tight. Every round you earn $1, but other than that money is hard to come by. If you don't buy any card for one round, you earn an extra $1. Other than that you mostly need to rely on claiming some goods to sell to earn money, and you also need to have the right cards to sell them at $1. Without the right cards, you sell 2 goods for $1.

A 2-player game.

At the top is a market card that everyone gets at the start of the game. You can convert 3 goods to any 1 good, you can sell 2 goods for $1, and you can store 1 good here.

A long queue.

The queuing mechanism creates some interesting and sometimes painful decisions. You want to be first in line to buy a card you like, but people queuing behind you will make that card more expensive for you, and often they can make it more expensive than you can afford. There are certainly opportunities for some nasty moves. You are always counting how many coins your opponents have. Usually it's 3 or less. Money is that tight.

Being start player feels like a significant disadvantage. Good thing it rotates. Due to how tight money is, people who queue first often end up not being able to afford the card.

There are various ways of earning points. The one that seems to give the biggest scores is the contracts. You can claim contracts, which specify a certain number of goods that need to be delivered and the number of victory points awarded when fulfilling the contract. Contracts that the players have committed to determine which goods will be contested over.

Firemen on the left, traders in the middle who allow you to sell goods for $1 each, and a contract on the right.

3-player game in progress.

The game plays very fast. Sometimes you do need to think a bit when placing your pawn, but the actions for the rest of the game are simple. The cards are simple.

The Thoughts

I didn't like the 2-player game, and the 3-player game was only slightly better. I think the game will be better with more players, but I'm not keen to find out. This feels like a game built around one new mechanism - the queuing mechanism. The types of cards available and how they work all feel too familiar and they bore me. They feel rather JASE (Just Another Soulless Eurogame). I'm afraid this game didn't click with me at all.

Merchants and Marauders

Plays: 3Px3.

The Game

Merchants and Marauders is a pirate game. Or is it? The backdrop is the age of piracy in the Caribbean, but to raid and plunder or to adventure and trade is entirely up to you. Merchant or marauder, something in between, or both at the same time?

You start the game with a small ship. You can sail around the Caribbean and do all sorts of different things. You can buy and sell goods, raid merchants, attack others' ships, complete missions, follow up rumours. You can upgrade your ship to fight better, carry more goods, etc. You can even buy a new different-class ship.

Four types of ship sculpts, from left to right, galleon, frigate, flute, sloop.

At the start of every game you draw a random captain character to play, and every captain has different strengths, weaknesses and special abilities.

Four European countries have presence in the Caribbean - the English, the Dutch, the Spanish and the French. Each port belongs to one nation, and you can enter port only if you don't have a bounty of that nation. That means even if you decide to be a pirate, try not to antagonise too many nations, else you won't find many welcome ports. You do need ports because you buy and sell goods there, you recruit crew, repair ships, hear rumours, gain missions etc. Being a pirate also means that the navies hunt and fight you, and if you happen to have a bounty of a particular nation, their navy will prioritise hunting you down compared to other pirates.

The game board. Each port has a flag indicating controlling nation, a token indicate one goods type in demand, sometimes a token indicating a type of ship upgrade available for purchase. Every seazone has some special rules, which adds some flavour and character to the game.

Things are not necessarily safer if you're a merchant. Other than the four navies, there are also two non-player pirate ships on the board hunting non-pirates. These six non-player ships ensure plenty of interaction. It may not always come to sea battles, but the locations of the ships and the characteristics of their captains, and their relationships with you, affect your decisions on where to sail.

To win the game you need 10 Glory, which can be gained in many ways, like winning sea battles, making big trades, affording bigger ships, completing missions and, most humourous of all, burying treasure. You can stash away cash at your home port and every $10 is 1 Glory.

Coins are big and nice. Every player gets a treasure chest for stashing gold.

Various types of cards used. The dice have numbers 1 to 4, and then two skulls. Skull faces usually mean success when you need to roll dice.

The Play

Allen, Han and I have played 3 times. In our first game we all chose a sloop as our first ship. You have two choices, sloop or flute, the former more suitable for pirating and the latter for trading. I think at the start we were all keen to do some pirating, since that was the fun thing to do. However in the early game our ships were small and weak so we had to do some honest pick-up-and-deliver trading to raise funds to buy bigger badder ships.

I was slower than the others in my ship replacement. I spent some effort on chasing rumours and attempting missions to gain Glory. I had good Leadership and Scouting abilities which helped with these.

Game in progress. Brown ships on those suftboard thingies are the navies.

There wasn't much battling. Buying and selling seemed convenient and less risky. When Han eventually turned pirate, he attacked merchant shipping. These were handled in a simpler and more abstract way, so it wasn't a proper full-fledged sea battle. Allen also attacked merchants for the quick money. At one point we had to remind him not to antagonise too many nations lest he ran out of welcome ports.

All four navies are on the board by now, and one of the non-player pirates too. In the top left you can see that England and Netherlands are at war.

When a sea battle finally occurred, it was me, still the honest merchant, being attacked by the non-player pirate. I had a decent ship, but my captain's Seamanship really sucked. The battle dragged on and on as my ship took more and more damage. Sea battles are very brutal. Once engaged it is very hard to flee unless your opponent has poor Seamanship. The two parties keep inflicting damage to one another until one ship sinks or flees. It is possible to board your opponent, and when this is done successfully the battle changes to a crew battle.

My captain was good at crew battle, but since she had lousy Seamanship, I couldn't successfully board my opponent. Eventually I barely managed to flee the battle. My ship was full of holes.

Immediately after that I saw Han and Allen converging towards where I was. Sharks smelling blood in the water! I wouldn't believe them if they told me they just happened to need to sell some goods at a port nearby.

My player board. My captain is a Dutch lady with excellent leadership (4) but lousy seamanship (1). That little English flag meant I was outlawed by the English. I actually didn't attack any merchant shipping. I think I got the bounty due to failing some mission.

It didn't come to any player-vs-player battle. Han had accumulated enough cash to reach 10 Glory. Neither Allen nor I had even half of that, but Allen did have some cash in hand which he could convert to Glory by returning to his home port to bury treasure.

For our second game, we again started with heavy trading. The game became even more like a pick-up-and-deliver game! We were quite lucky with our card draws and even managed to do many big sales that gave Glory in addition to the big profit.

We did turn pirate eventually, after upgrading to bigger ships. The lucrative merchant ships were hard to resist. I was keen to do some battling, perhaps to avenge my lousy fate in the first game. I hunted and found a non-player pirate. Although I had good odds, the scoundrel managed to flee. What a waste.

Wanting to have some fun, Allen came to attack the same pirate, and even managed to sink it! Hey! That was supposed to be my prize! Allen had been doing well in trading, being able to do more of those Glory-gaining big sales than both Han and I. Immediately after Allen's victory over the non-player pirate, Han came after him before he could repair his ship. A nail-biting sea battle ensued.

Although Han had the upper hand (undamaged ship plus better Seamanship), as the battle dragged on, it became costly for both. It was a bitter fight. Trying to flee is difficult, and each attempt to flee means forgoing a chance to do damage to your opponent. Things got pretty bad and out of desperation Allen had to attempt to flee. He was as good as captaining a raft at that point. To our surprise, he managed to flee before getting sunk. He made a beeline for his home port which happened to be just in range, buried his gold, and won the game with 10 Glory! That was a narrow escape.

A nail-biting battle between Allen (blue) and Han (yellow).

In the third game that we played, we all followed a similar approach of early trading and quickly upgrading our ships. This time I was quite lucky with my trading, and made many Glory-scoring big deliveries. I tried to do some rumour-chasing, but was not successful. Allen attempted a mission of searching for a boy kidnapped by native Indians, but he kept failing it after many tries. Maybe the natives are racist or sexist - Allen's character was a Japanese lady I think. Han also had an Oriental captain, a Chinese guy of English nationality. I guess from Hong Kong? Wait... Hong Kong wasn't under British rule yet at the time was it? Anyway, it reminded me of Chow Yun Fat in Pirates of the Caribbean. Han upgraded his galleon and armed it to the teeth, buying grappling hooks, grapeshots, chainshots and a few other upgrades. He was getting ready for some big-time action. He had started attacking merchants, gaining some bounties.

One of the mission cards. There are always 2 available on the board.

My trading business did so well that I won the game before Han could do any ship-to-ship battles. It was a battle-less game! For three games I have wanted to do some pirating. This time I had hoped to at least fight the non-player pirate ship, but my trading business kept me so busy and distracted me so much that I had won before I could stop myself. Arrgghh... greed is bad! Now I can only retire to brag to my grandchildren about selling spices as opposed to fighting pirates. What would they think of me?!

The Glory track is in the foreground. All Glory is tracked here except for gold that has been stashed away. Stashed gold is 1 Glory for $10.

The first time ever that I was able to put money into my piggy bank.

The Thoughts

I enjoyed Merchants and Marauders very much. I'm not a particular fan of the pirate theme, but I like how thematic the game is and how everything makes thematic sense. There are many details and many rules, so expect to need to refer to the rules in early games. A good ref sheet is provided for each player.

This game really tells a story. It's like Tales of the Arabian Nights, but with much more control. The rumours, missions, events all contribute to the story. I guess after a while you'll see all of them, but the order of appearance and the different combinations will make different stories too.

Trading seems to be generally the easier way to win, based on the few games that I have played. However in a way I don't really mind that. I'm enjoying myself too much with the very open system and with the many choices I have. I'm happy that I have the choice to do pirating if I want to, even if it is more risky and it is more difficult to win. Well, I do need to remind myself to start pirating before the game ends. I still haven't done any pirating after three games! This is not supposed to be Age of Steam.

One thing I'd like to do is to set a higher goal for winning, say 15 Glory. I think I have been enjoying myself too much that the games felt a little short and seemed to have ended too abruptly. When a 2-hour game feels short, that means you're having a good time.

boardgaming in photos

30 Mar 2011. Race for the Galaxy. This Imperium Planet Buster is from the 3rd expansion Brink of War. This is basically the Death Star in Star Wars. It can destroy a whole planet. And my wife played this on me, busting one of my planets to smithereens. This was the first time ever that I suffered from such a fate.

My tableau. After getting my planet blown to bits, I hurriedly played the Universal Peace Institute to bring myself to negative military strength, so that I could not be target by the Death Star anymore. By game I actually still managed to win, mostly because of the 6-dev card Pan Galactic Hologrid, which gave me a lot of bonus points for novelty goods (blue) worlds.

Michelle's tableau. Our scores were 60 vs 53. She went for a military strategy but unfortunately did not draw many valuable military worlds at all.

3 Apr 2011. Through the Ages. There was a period when this blog had tons of photos of this game. It is still the go-to long game for Michelle and I. This is Michelle's civilisation.

In this game Michelle invested a lot on colonisation, but she was very unlucky with her card draws and never drew many colonies. She had the Colossus which helped with colonisation, and also Cartography, which also helped. But she only managed to get two measly colonies the whole game.

My civilisation. I struggled with both stone and food production in the early game. Nikola Tesla helped me a lot in production towards the late game.

The other part of my civilisation.

This was the end of Age III, and before the resolution of the last four event cards. I (white) was ahead in science rating and military strength, while Michelle (red) was ahead in culture rating. Michelle was 12pts ahead of me.

After resolution of the last four event cards, I won by 7pts!

The last four events. Three of them benefited me more - for stone production, military units and government and special blue technologies. Only one benefited Michelle more - for happy faces. Through the Ages is a game that Michelle often loses at, but she is always willing to play.

9 Apr 2011. I've always liked Attika. Nowadays when Michelle and I play, we are never able to connect two temples, and games always end with completing all buildings.

My copy is the German version. I bought it in Taiwan. "Brunnen" means "Well".

9 Apr 2011. San Juan. Being such a big fan of Race for the Galaxy, San Juan should be quite obsolete. But it is different enough that once in a while I still bring it out and I still enjoy playing it.

10 Apr 2011. Keltis expansion. Michelle and I had not played this for some time, and it gave us quite a challenge. It is much more challenging than the base game. It feels very different. Definitely not meant for casual players.

In the expansion you are not limited to one pawn per path, because there is no concept of single paths anymore. The various paths criss-cross one another. I am a little tempted to get Keltis Oracle, which is quite strategic as well, at least the iPhone version, but then I don't really play the base game or expansion all that much, so I'm holding off.

15 Apr 2011. My second game of Inca Empire, this time a 3-player game with Han and Allen, who were both new to the game. The 3-player version played quite well, better than I had expected. 4-players is still best. With 3-players, the pilgrimages are excluded. Some other event cards are excluded too.

16 Apr 2011. Another game of Through the Ages with Michelle. This was my civilisation. I missed out on the Age II lab, but my Age II libraries helped me to maintain a decent science rating.

James Cook helped me tremendously. 5 colonies meant 10 culture points per turn!

Michelle's civilisation. She went culture-heavy quite early, with her theatres.

Her wonders were culture focused too. Aristotle is still her favourite leader. The only colony that she had was due to Columbus' special ability.