Here I Stand

Plays: 3Px1.

My first game of Here I Stand took 9 hours, but I barely felt the time pass, or my hunger, until we forced ourselves to take a break to eat. I was ravenous when I noticed my hunger, and ate two servings. It was something cooked by Allen himself, so his wife would probably be shocked to learn that I had braved two servings. This is how absorbing the game is. Even afterwards I kept thinking about it.

The Game

Here I Stand is about the religious reformation in Europe, the rise of the Protestants. It is a Card Driven Game (CDG) and a wargame, designed for 6-players, and has the many aspects of multi-player conflict games - diplomacy, alliances, negotiations etc. The six factions are the Protestants, the Papacy, the English, the French, the Hapsburgs and the Ottomans. There are various non-player minor powers in the game, like Scotland, Venice, Austria-Hungary and Genoa. The main ways to win are gaining victory points (VP's) and conquering major cities (called keys). The six factions have very different ways of earning victory points.

The Protestants and the Papacy gain VP based on the religious beliefs of the locations on the map. Every city has two characteristics - what the main religion is and who has political control of the city - and they are independent of each other. E.g. technically Rome can convert to Protestanism while still under Papal rule. The Protestants gain VP for controlling Holy Roman Emperor (HRE) elector cities (all German), for Bible translation, and for disgracing Catholic debaters in religious debates. The Papacy can gain VP by building St Peter's Basilica and burning Protestant debaters as heretics. England gains VP by producing heirs, and by converting their cities to Protestanism. The game models King Henry VIII's progress from one wife to the next, each time hoping she will produce a healthy male heir. How's that for unusual? France builds art galleries for VP. The Ottomans do pirating for VP. The colonial powers (Hapsburgs, French, English) can do exploration, colonisation, and conquests to gain VP. Most powers also gain VP by conquering keys.

Game setup. The colours of the cities indicate the initial controlling power. Yellow is Hapsburgs, red is English, dark blue is French, dark green is Ottoman and purple is the Papacy. Grey is independent cities, i.e. they are up for grabs. Light blue is Scotland, pink is Genoa, orange is Venice, light green is Austria-Hungary. Squares are important cities, called keys, which are worth victory points. Circles are normal cities. 8-pointed stars are fortresses. The colour zones are language zones. Yellow is Spanish, blue is French, red is English, faded greyish brown is German, purple is Italian, natural coloured is other languages.

Components for the English player. Is this overwhelming or what. Later I discovered that some of these markers actually belong to the Protestant player, e.g. the English-speaking debaters in the top row (white square markers with a red strip on top).

The player mat for England summarises the actions available to the English player and the action costs. The starting monarch is Henry VIII, and he can be replaced by new monarchs. The marital status track shows that he is currently married to his first wife. All the pink counters are his potential future wives. The square markers are used for marking keys controlled by the English player. At this moment the English already controls four keys, so four markers have been placed on the map. When a fifth key is conquered, the next marker will be moved to the board, revealing the space on the mat, which may give more VP and 1 more card draw.

There is a separate sheet for recording the Protestant vs Papacy struggle. These counters are debaters. Papal debaters have a purple stripe and they are multi-lingual. Protestant debaters speak either German (brown), English (red, and I only have one now), or French (none yet). The partially shown Protestant Spaces Track below is for marking the number of Protestant cities. It indicates how many VP's the Protestants and the Papacy get.

Things that the factions can do differ and reflect history. Events on the cards, some mandatory, guide the game to develop in a generally historically plausible direction. They also force important historical events to occur, although sequence and timing may deviate from history, e.g. new monarchs, and the creation of a Protestant state (actually an alliance of German cities).

This being a CDG, on your turn you always play a card, to either use the number on it (ops value) to do actions your faction can do, or trigger the event on the card. Some events impact only one or a few factions. When you get something that doesn't impact you, you can still use it for negotiation, either threatening to unleash a bad card, or fishing for a good deal using a good card.

The Play

First, sorry Afif, I had planned to rope you in for a game, but this session was arranged quite last minute, and I decided to be less ambitious and stick to a 3-player game and not try to shoot for 6 players. The game is playable 3 to 6, but is recommended for 3 or 6.

Han, Allen and I played this at Allen's place. As Allen and I started the setup, his father-in-law looked for a while, and gently commented, "This is a game for professionals" before leaving us to our crazy endeavour. Han played the Ottomans and the French, Allen the Hapsburgs and the Papacy, and I the English and the Protestants. We made quite a lot of rules mistakes, discovering and correcting some during the game, and realising some only after the game. But we did get a good feel of the game. Well, after spending 9 hours on it, there is no excuse for not doing so.

As King Henry VIII of the English, in the early game I tried to focus my energy on, ahem, producing a healthy heir. By default the English is headed for disaster, in having Queen Mary I as the next ruler. She is a devout Catholic and supports the Papacy, and if she comes into power, the English will suffer many disadvantages, including difficulties in converting to Protestanism, which is one of the ways the English earns VP. To steer the English away from this fate, I needed to be "productive". If I was half successful, I would at least get Queen Elizabeth I to succeed Queen Mary I and try to undo the damage. In the best case, I'd get a healthy King Edward VI, and Queen Mary I would never come to the throne. I managed to persuade the Papacy (Allen) to grant me a divorce with my first wife, which helped speed things up a little in my progression to subsequent wives and thus attempts at a good heir. I eventually succeeded in achieving the best result with wife #4. So no wife #5 or #6 as per history. Staying focused on switching wives was no easy feat, because this required using a very powerful Home Card (a permanent card held by a faction), which could otherwise be used for many other things. It was worth 5 ops points. While making babies, I had a modest secondary goal of subduing Scotland. I managed to strike a deal with the French (Han) to not interfere. It required me to declare war on the Hapsburgs (Allen), but I thought since I was protected by the English Channel, I would be quite safe. Unfortunately my campaign into Scotland was much more costly and took much longer than I had expected, mostly due to Allen playing the Unsanitary Camp card on me. A third of my troops died of diarrhea. Owww...! Allen managed to draw this Unsanitary Camp card 5 out of 6 game turns that we played! Han and I took turns to suffer diarrhea. Baaad...

How many games can boast a Henry's Wives' Pregnancy Chart? You roll a die every time Henry VIII marries a new wife, hoping to get a big number. Once you achieve the best result (healthy baby boy), Henry VIII remarries no more, which is the case in this photo.

The Henry's Marital Status marker will progress no further. Since I have conquered Edinburgh, a key, the fifth key space is revealed because I have moved the square marker onto Edinburgh.

The English did not do much other fighting. Partly because of diarrhea, and partly because later on they focused on converting to Protestanism. Since my other faction was the Protestants, the English proactively doing conversion also helped me. Playing as the Protestants, I had no country and no political control markers on the board at the start of the game. I could gain troops by converting HRE elector cities, but they couldn't move or attack or be attacked. My starting area, Germany, was all Hapsburgs-controlled politically. I knew that there was a Schmalkaldic League event that would establish a Protestant country sooner or later, which would create a state of war between me and both the Hapsburgs and the Papacy, so I tried to delay this event by being less aggressive in converting cities to Protestanism. The event required at least 12 Protestant cities, so I tried to stay just below that. I kept myself busy with Bible translation work, and with converting the 6 elector cities. Bible translation was slow, but whenever the New Testament was fully translated, or the Full Bible was translated, the Protestants gained a bunch of conversion attempts. I managed to delay the Schmalkaldic League event until the last possible moment, buying myself much time to prepare for it. However once the Protestant country was born, the Hapsburgs (Allen) came knocking. I did not have many troops and had a tough time holding them back. Now I realise it's partly because I had forgotten to add two army generals that should have come with this event.

The Protestants have converted all six HRE elector cities to Protestanism. Once converted, they gain some soldiers. The Reformation starts in Wittenberg, which is where Martin Luther (brown counter) is. Cities which have converted to Protestanism get their marker flipped to the white-centre side, e.g. Lubeck, Magdeburg, Leipzig and Worms in this photo.

The Schmalkaldic League event has occurred, and the Protestants have a state now. We played one rule wrong here. German cities that are still Catholic (e.g. Regensburg and Salzburg) should have stayed under political control of the Hapsburgs and not switched to Protestant political control.

The Hapburgs (Allen), French (Han) and Ottomans (Han) did much fighting. Han was aggressive in conquering keys. Using the Ottomans he also did piracy. The Hapsburgs were rich (had many cards), and were good at colonising and conquering, but the challenge for them was fighting multi-front wars. The French (Han) harassed them at the French-Spanish border and along the French-German-Belgian borders. After the Ottomans (Han) defeated Austria-Hungary, the Hapsburgs automatically intervened and had to fight that front too to protect their second capital Vienna. All-in-all, the Hapsburgs were kept rather busy.

The Ottomans are the only power which can build corsairs and can conduct piracy.

A big battle in south eastern France between the French and the Hapsburgs. Units in silhouettes are mercenaries. They are cheaper to recruit, but many event cards affect them, so it is more risky to use them.

The Papacy (Allen) spent time building St Peter's Basilica, and was particularly fond of initiating theological debates with me. I, as the Protestants, could not ignore the challenge and initiated some debates myself. Debates were risky business and the rewards were often not much, unless the victory was so overwhelming that the Catholic debater burned the Protestant debater as a heretic, or the Protestant debater disgraced the Catholic debater into retirement. Then the victor would earn VP. In the early game the Protestant debaters were overall smarter, and only in the later game the Papacy gained more debaters and the two sides became more equally matched. In total Allen managed to burn 3 of my debaters, leveraging his advantage that his Catholic debaters were multi-lingual, whereas my Protestant debaters were split into 3 language groups - German, French and English. I only managed to disgrace one Catholic debater. The Papacy could raise armies, but did not do much militarily. Allen focused on the religious battle against me.

The Ottomans (Han) were militaristic and this suited Han's style well. The Hapsburgs' (Allen) committed defense of Vienna halted his advance, so he switched his efforts to piracy in the Mediterranean and sending Suleiman (his Sultan and an exceptional general) to battle in Spain and Italy. The Ottomans even managed to conquer Barcelona, a key. The French under Han's control turned out to be less civilised than their historical version, never building any art galleries and instead went about fighting wars, expanding their borders. They conquered Genoa (a minor power), and even invaded Italy. The Papacy (Allen) did not excommunicate the French king. I think Allen just forgot, since he was so busy with his Hapsburgs. But he did remember to excommunicate my English King Henry VIII, the moment that London converted to Protestanism. Grumble grumble. I guess to the Papacy the religious war was more important than lowly earthly wars.

Enemy at the gates. Sultan Suleiman of the Ottomans is knocking at Vienna's door, but Charles V of the Hapsburgs have come to its defense.

The French (blue) invaded Italy to grab some of the keys (Milan and Florence).

The diplomatic status display. So many wars in progress now. The numbers in the table are ops points costs to declare war, which depend on who the two parties are. E.g. it is very costly for the Papacy and the Hapsburgs to declare war on each other because they have a close relationship.

The Ottomans have conquered Barcelona, and are now attacking Seville. The French are also advancing into Spain from the north.

By game turn 6, the Protestants approached 25VP, which was one of the winning criteria. With the English (me) performing conversion in English speaking cities, while the Protestants (also me) did conversion in French and German speaking cities, I was able to push beyond 25VP, so that even if the Papacy managed to Counter-Reform some of the cities, at worst I would fall back to 25VP at the end of this game turn. The other faction approaching victory was the Ottomans, but it was a different victory condition that Han was shooting for. If he could conquer just one more key, he would achieve an instant military victory. That last key he needed was Rome itself, the capital of the Papacy! It all came down to one final dice throw... and boom! Rome fell to Sultan Suleiman, a much more impressive victory than capturing Vienna, which in history the Ottomans tried but failed.

Protestanism has spread in England and eastern France. The Ottoman army was beaten back from Spain, but they still had a token force holding Barcelona. The main Ottoman army is now invading Italy. The French have conquered Genoa (pink square now with a blue square marker on it). A Hapsburg army is now attacking the weakly defended Protestant cities in Germany. Edinburgh in Scotland has been conquered by the English.

The Papacy has taken Florence and driven out the French, but the Ottomans have landed in Ravenna, and conquered it from the Papacy.

The Ottomans preparing to attack Rome.

Rome falls to the Ottomans.

The VP chart when the game ended. Hapsburgs 14, Papacy 16, English 21, French 22, Ottomans 23, Protestants 25.

The Thoughts

Here I Stand is a very engrossing game. It is an ambitious design, and its scope is wide. It takes much time investment, not just in playing the game, but also in reading the rules beforehand. I don't think this is a game that you can teach someone else. Whoever wants to play must read the rules himself. There are many rules, but none is very complicated. It's just that there are so many rules you shouldn't expect to remember all. Just keep the rulebook handy when you play. The player aids are not just helpful reminders. They are necessities. One good tip to learn the game and to gain a clear overview is to read the 20-minutes overview article which can be found at www.boardgamegeek.com.

Playing Here I Stand made me think of a number of things. Do I play games for the fun experience or for the intellectual competition? How much luck is acceptable in a complex game? How much luck is tolerable in a 9-hour long game? In Here I Stand there is luck in the card draw (e.g. the Unsanitary Camp that Allen unleashed on Han and I turn after turn) and there is luck in die rolls. Many important events and battles hinge on drawing the right card or getting the required die roll. There are many events throughout the game so you can say that the luck in both card draws and die rolls evens out eventually, but I still feel that despite your best preparations, there is always a luck factor that you are dependent on. To my own surprise, I still enjoyed the game immensely, despite the diarrhea my soldiers suffered. There are still many decisions you need to make, and there is much you can do to work towards victory and to improve your chances of success. There is a Chinese saying, that it is for man to plan, but for heavens to grant success (谋事在人，成事在天).

We did a 3-player game, but I can see that the 6-player game would be the most interesting, because there would be more negotiations and interactions among players, and there won't be pairs of factions automatically being allied to each other. The English would have a dilemma when converting to Protestanism, because by doing so they would be helping the Protestants. In our game we intentionally avoided some actions which would not make sense thematically, although not forbidden by the rules, e.g. the French making an attack for the sake of helping the Ottomans on their next turn. However the 6-player game will likely take longer because of the increased negotiations, especially if players want to make secret discussions away from the table, which the rules allow.

Here I Stand is immersive and rewarding. Due to the width it is trying to cover, not all aspects can be presented in detail and some are more abstracted than others, e.g. the exploration, colonisation and conquest aspect. Some aspects are abstracted into a single event card, e.g. a revolt in Egypt. This means sometimes the outcome of an event comes down to a die roll. This is something you need to be ready to accept, knowing that in the wider scheme of things, a few bad rolls will not completely kill you, and there is still the multiplayer diplomacy aspect that you need to use to your advantage, e.g. allying with others to get your enemy off your back. In this sense multiplayer games are self-balancing. Everyone can try to work together to drag down an obvious leader.

The exploration, colonisation and conquests in the new world are more abstracted. The English (red) has explored the Mississippi River. The Hapsburgs (yellow) have explored St. Lawrence River and conquered the Inca. The French (blue) has circumnavigated the globe.

The Revolt in Egypt card is an abstraction of an off-board event impacting the Ottoman. The Ottomans are forced to commit soldiers to this card until the revolt is put down.

The CDG system works very well here. When you get your hand of cards, how do you make the most of the event cards, and how do you make the most of the ops points that you get. Do you use the event or the ops points? You have plenty of choices and also plenty of hard decisions. Even declaring war is no simple matter. It costs ops points, and you can only do it during a diplomacy phase, not any time you like. No sneaky betrayals.

I am reminded of a PC game that I used to play, Europa Universalis II. The PC games covers an even longer period, and also has events which make the game very rich in historical detail. Now I am tempted to boot up this old game again.

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Buy from Noble Knight Games. Status: in stock (at time of this post).

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collection snapshot Dec 2011

Once in a while I take photos of my boardgame shelves (May 2005 to Jan 2008, Apr 2009, Sep 2010). Browsing this history of my boardgame shelves is like browsing old photos of my own children, I let out a contented sigh. Oh how much you have grown. As I compare this set of photos taken in December 2011 against the previous set taken in September 2010, I find that my collection hasn't changed much. It's partly because of my self-imposed annual quota of acquring games, and also because I'm too lazy and too sentimental to sell / trade / give away my games. One notable change is my home has become a holding location for some of Han's and Allen's games. Our default place to play is my home, and we play quite regularly, so it's convenient to keep at my home games that we intend to play.

My boardgame library is the upstairs foyer of my two-storey home. My wife and I do keep other things here too, like my comic book collection (mostly Chinese versions of Japanese manga), our novels, photo albums (from the days before we started using a digital camera), empty cardboard boxes (kept just in case they will be useful one day), and the massage chair, which we sometimes call the electric chair.

This is the frontal shot

This is taken at an angle from the left side. You can see household supplies like toilet paper and shampoo in the lower right corner.

From the other angle on the right. Right in the middle you can barely see a standing lamp, shyly hiding in the narrow space between the two shelves. It lights up the room with a warm orange light if we turn off the flourescent ceiling light. On the left you can see my overflowing manga collection. I don't buy much nowadays, but since I never trim it it will only grow, albiet slowly in short spurts.

For the zoom-in's, let's go from left to right. You can match these against the "big pictures" above.

This is not the children section. It is the playable-with-young-children section. Admittedly some games are more for them (6 and 5) to "play with" rather than "play", e.g. Scrabble (although they do make words out of the tiles), DVONN. There are other games they play (some needing rules simplification) but are not here, e.g. At the Gates of Loyang, 10 Days in Asia, Wasabi!.

The white box is my first ever boardgame review copy ColorMonsters, so although I find the game poor, I will always keep it. My sister lugged Civilization: The Boardgame (Eagle Games version) all the way back from Melbourne, so even if the game is poor, I will not get rid of it. Advanced Third Reich was bought more than 10 years ago and never played. I was not a hobbyist yet then, and had thought it was something like Axis & Allies. Same theme right?!! How hard could it be?! At the time I could not even finish one third of the rules. Maybe it's time I try again. Wilderness War was bought a few years after Advanced Third Reich, just as I started becoming a hobbyist. It is still unplayed, but I think I will be able to handle it now. Uberplay, publisher of China and Hansa was a good publisher. They went out of business. I still miss them sometimes, and am glad I have my copy of China, which I like a lot.

Undermining and Jab on the lower right are Allen's games, which I have read the rules for but have yet to teach him.

Aaaah... my 1980's releases of Samurai Swords (previous version was Shogun, recently published version is Ikusa) and Axis & Allies. Newer purchases are usually put at the lowest shelf in this photo, so that they are more visible and I will play them more. 2011 acquisitions include First Train to Nuremberg, Endeavor, 7 Wonders, Maori, 51st State.

The lower two shelves contain Han's and Allen's games. Some are my homework (to read rules). I realise that my Axis & Allies games are rather scattered. Maybe I should do something about it. Hmm... I realise I have nine Axis & Allies games. I think it's the box size differences that's making me not shelf them together. The Galaxy Trucker box at the bottom actually contains Allen's copy of 18AL.

Civilization (Gibson Games edition, a much less expensive edition on eBay) at the top right was my first ever eBay purchase, but I still have not played my own copy after that purchase. I think I actually like it more than Sid Meier's Civilization: The Boardgame (Fantasy Flight Games edition), although it is quite long, because it tries to do less and I feel it is more successful in creating an epic empires-rising-and-falling feel. I do like the FFG version, but I find it more like a sprint than a marathon. Ranking civ games I've played, I'd go Through the Ages, Civilization, Sid Meier's Civilization: The Boardgame (FFG), Sid Meier's Civilization: The Boardgame (Eagle Games).

Should I add the new Ticket to Ride maps to my collection? My wife likes the series. However for both the map expansions, only one side will be useful to me, because one side of the Asia expansion is for 4 players and I usually only do 2P games with Michelle, and one side of the India expansion is the Switzerland map which I already have.

The Lord of the Rings box contains both Friends & Foes and Battlefields expansions. The Dominion box contains Seaside. I have quite a number of home-made games on the top right.

Other than the four children's games on the top left, the rest are Han's and Allen's games.

Planet Steam is getting good visibility because of its unwieldy box size.

why we keep buying boardgames

Oh I like this article at the Superfly Circus very much. It's about buying games. The points discussed remind me of the game taster post that I wrote in 2010, where I decided that I can tell myself it's OK to be a game taster, that it is okay to buy, learn and then play a game only a few times, or even just once. Self-acceptance is a wonderful thing.

A Few Acres of Snow

Plays: 2Px2.

The Game

Martin Wallace uses the deck-building mechanism (from Dominion) in this game about the French and Indian War (that's what the Americans call it, but others have different names), which is part of a global Seven Years' War between the British and the French. In A Few Acres of Snow, the combatants fight for superiority in North America. Both sides start with some settlements, and a deck of cards. Almost all actions in the game are executed by playing cards. You start with a pre-constructed deck, and will add cards to it to customise it. The game ends if a capital is successfully sieged, or if one side uses up all village pieces or all town pieces. In the latter case, victory points (VP's) are calculated based on locations settled and successful attacks.

There are two types of cards - location cards and empire cards. Empire cards are similar to action cards in Dominion. Both the British and the French have their own pool of empire cards from which they can buy cards, and there is also a small common pool of empire cards. Money is in the form of physical coins and are not treasure cards in your deck like Dominion. Location cards are added to your deck whenever you settle a location. A location card can be used as long as you still control that location and it is not besieged. In case you lose that location, the card becomes useless but still stays in your deck, clogging it up.

The starting setup. The French is blue, the British red. Only one third of the board is really needed for the game pieces, the other two thirds are just space for cards. The three green-border cards on the left are the common pool. At the bottom left and top right corners of the board are the player-specific pools of cards.

Some of the British cards. These are 0 cost cards, but you must also consider the non-financial cost of diluting your deck with more cards.

Every turn you have two actions. If you spend cards for your actions and end up with fewer than five, you always draw back up to five, without discarding any card. This means you can hold on to cards that you want to save for the right opportunity to use them. In fact, there is also a Reserve pool where you can save cards, so that they don't take up space in your hand, but it costs $1 to reclaim a card from the Reserve.

The longer box is the Reserve box, where you can place up to 5 cards. You can bring them into your hand with at any time with no action cost, but with a financial cost of $1 per card. I have nothing in my Reserve box at this moment.

The types of actions can be overwhelming at first. There are money-earning actions, and money is mainly used for buying empire cards. You can settle empty spaces on the board, and upgrade them to towns (which give double points). You can fight. There are two ways to fight. Some cards let you raid nearby enemy settlements, and if your opponent doesn't have cards to stop you, you destroy and claim his settlement piece (which is worth victory points). Some cards let you siege an enemy settlement. Sieges are a tug of war affair. When you commit to a siege, the cards committed are set aside, and both sides try to play military cards to try to win. You win when you have achieved a significant enough strength difference, and your opponent is unable to reduce the gap. A siege can be a very long stalemate, which means cards can be committed and stuck for a long time. It can be good or bad. Good because you thin your deck making it more effective, assuming you don't desperately need those tied-up cards; bad because you do desperately need those tied-up cards.

Discs are towns, cubes are villages. The mother-and-baby icon is a settler icon, and such locations require a settler card to be played if you want to build a village. Purple hexagons show the VP value, which is doubled if by upgrading your village to a town. Modes of transportation between locations include sea, river, road (between Fort Halifax and Kennebec, on the right) and Indian tracks (dotted lines, which can only be used for raiding).

The deck-building in A Few Acres of Snow creates delay and uncertainty in when you draw the cards you need and have bought. Like Dominion, you are restricted by what you draw, but you are not forced to discard your hand at the end of every turn. In fact, you can't simply discard any cards you want. You spend an action to discard a useless card. Managing useless cards, i.e. keeping your deck effective, is an important aspect of the game. When you settle a location, you must take the corresponding location card. You will need it to further expand from there, but once your borders have pushed further forward, you may find that this location card becomes effectively useless. The Governor card can help to remove cards from your deck, but the more important consideration may be whether you want to settle this location in the first place. Too-quick expansion leads to ineffective decks.

Like many Martin Wallace games, there are multiple ways to end the game - by using up your village pieces, using up your town pieces, or capturing the enemy capital. Going the village route means low quality expansion (towns are worth more VP's), and the town route means much effort required in upgrading. Military aggressiveness can impact these, because players would be capturing each other's pieces. Capturing the capital is harder to do, but is a valid strategy.

The Play

Han and I played two games back-to-back. I picked the British because I remembered it being easier to play. In the first game we both played slow-and-steady, gently exploring the game. I settled Halifax on my right flank, because it was worth victory points, but was quickly beaten back, and I never dared venture into that region afterwards. The slow and steady approach seemed to favour the British, which had more settler icons on cards and could settle and upgrade settlements more quickly. Although I lost some battles, I managed to force the game end by upgrading my settlements to towns. We thought I would win by a wide margin, but it turned out I only won by four points. I think it was because although Han's French did not have many towns, the towns were worth many points.

The black disc under Albany is a fortification. It prevents raids, and also provides a defensive bonus if the settlement comes under siege.

The French settlements are approaching Albany, which I have upgraded to a town. I need to be prepare to defend it against attacks.

I find that conducting sieges is a long and grueling exercise. If you want a swift victory, you need to have accumulated many cards with military power. However that's risky too because if your opponent plays an ambush card, you will need to remove a military card from your deck (and military cards are often expensive). There are some cards that you can use to cancel ambushes, but then keeping them in your hand means they are occupying space.

The two sides play very differently. The French start with slightly more cards, giving the ability to do more things. They also start with an infantry unit while the British start with none. However the British start with more money and a thinner deck. That means they have options in deciding how to initially customise their deck, and also a thinner deck means a more nimble and more predictable deck. Even when the same location is settled, the benefits gained are different depending on whether it is being settled by the French or the British. The empire cards available to the two sides are different, both in card availability and card count. The French tend to have better relationships with the Red Indians, they can do pirating, and they tend to do better in fur trading. The British tend to settle better, and are usually better at making money.

In the second game that Han and I played, we played the same combatants. This time Han's French started very aggressively, focusing much on the military aspects. He dictated the pace and I had to keep buying infantry to be able to keep up. Thankfully I was able keep him at bay. However I was mostly reactive in the early game. Later on he started expanding aggressively towards Detroit, a high VP location. He managed to settle Detroit, but the problem was all those location cards he gained en route clogged up his deck. I had some success with raiding and claimed some of his village pieces. That caused a big problem for him. He could end the game easily by placing his last village piece, but at that point his VP's were less than mine. He could not build another village to get closer to me to make it easier to raid my settlements. He would need to upgrade a village to release a village piece back to his pool first. So he was quite stuck. In contrast with history, I was the one successful in raids. Also in contrast with history, Han's French was making money like they own a mint - they were indecently rich. Unfortunately for the French, they were never quite able to draw the right cards at the right time, and they had few military successes. In the late game I was able to launch an attack on Port Royal, an originally French village, and conquered it. The game ended with a British victory again, this time by a larger margin.

This was the second game we played. Han (French, blue) had expanded all the way to the left. On the right, I had conquered one of his start locations Port Royal (red cube on blue box).

The Thoughts

The deck-building mechanism is a very appropriate tool to represent the French and Indian War. The delayed effects, the uncertainties, the challenge in organising anything coherent, and also the inefficiencies when over-stretching oneself are implemented well. Despite the many possible actions in the game, on your turn you don't really need to consider all of them. Just taking a look at your cards and your board position will help you rule out many actions that you can't take yet anyway. So again the deck-building mechanism shows its usefulness - reducing choices and speeding up the game. Many aspects of the war are represented in the game, and the two sides play very differently. I really feel the theme in this game. Now I'm tempted to bring out my unplayed copy of Wilderness War, a Card Driven Game and wargame about the same war.

One worry that I have is how replayable the game is, since the starting condition is always the same, and there are probably a few general broad strategies that both sides can pursue. At the moment I still feel there is much to explore. So far there has been no attempt at capital conquering. Also I think the randomness in the card draw will force players to adapt to the situation, as opposed to strictly following a formula. There is one almost unbeatable British strategy that experienced players have found. The designer may introduce rule changes to address it. I only read about it after playing two games. My temporary solution is simply to not use that strategy.

To summarise using a bunch of keywords and phrases: tense, thematic, asymmetric, excellent artwork by Peter Dennis (one of my favourites), deck-building not for the sake of deck-building.

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Buy from Noble Knight Games. Status: restocking (at time of this post).

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boardgaming in photos

20 Nov 2011. The Bottle Imp, which many call the best 3-player trick-taking game. I have only played one hand, i.e. not even a complete game, so I won't write much about it yet. So far I can see that it is indeed very clever. Every hand everyone will score points except for one player who will score negative points. So it's about carefully winning tricks worth points and avoiding being the big loser of a hand. It reminds me of the feeling when playing Sticheln, which, come to think of it, is an excellent card game that I have not played for so long.

10 Dec 2011. Han and I were planning to play War of the Ring, but unfortunately due to a last-minute change he couldn't make it. The last time I played this was a very long time ago, and upon bringing it onto the table again, I was amazed at how well-produced it was. A new edition just came out I think. I hope they maintain the quality.

This photo is the Fellowship of the Ring. 8 pieces instead of 9, because Sam is always with Frodo, so they are the same piece.

The bad guys. The plastic used is sturdier than that used in Middle-Earth Quest, a more recently published game also based on Lord of the Rings. That one came with quite a number of broken bits.

The bad guys are marching in.

The box is very full.

This box size is very justifiable. This is not the double-sized box (double of the commonly found Ticket to Ride / Dominion square box). It is actually shorter than the square box, and only about one third wider.

24 Dec 2011. It has been quite a while since I brought out this home-made copy of R-Eco. I played it with Wan and Shan. Clever little card game.

First Train to Nuremberg. I liked it the first time I played it, and delayed buying it for about 6 months. Only when I was sure I wouldn't hit my 2011 game acquisition quota I ordered the game.

This is the most fiddly part of the game. The game pieces are quite small, and you have to fiddle with them quite frequently.

This time we (Wan, Shan, Han and I) played the Last Train to Wensleydale side of the board. This side seems to be more restrictive. Two thirds of the map are valleys with few goods to deliver. I was blue, and at this point had already sold off 4 tracks to the green company, thus coverting my blue tracks to green ones.

On the board, green is flat land, brown is hills, yellow is valleys.

Near the end of the game. Wan was black, Shan orange, Han purple, I blue.

Han, Shan, and Wan deliberating who to outbid.

One thing that I like a lot, in addition to the gameplay, is the graphic design of these periphery game boards. The one on the right showing trains is very nice too. And the main game board is definitely an improvement over the previous version which some call a dissected kidney.

25 Dec 2011. Famiglia. Every gangster is unique.