Triumvirate

Plays: 2Px1.

The Game

Triumvirate is a 2-player-only trick-taking game. That sounds weird. At least I have not heard of "2-player-only" and "trick-taking" linked together before this. Surprisingly it works quite well. There's no simple way to give a brief overview of gameplay. I will forge ahead and describe the whole thing.

The deck has 27 cards in 3 suits (colours), numbered 0 to 8. At the start of the game all but five cards are dealt out. Like most trick-taking games, the leading player plays a card, and the other player must follow suit if possible. When you win a trick, you don't claim the cards. You just become the next leading player. The trick played remains at the centre of the table, to keep count of how many tricks of each colour has been played. The winning card determines the winning colour. When a colour reaches three tricks at the centre of the table, a hand ends. A disc of the winning colour is placed onto the gameboard. Each player secretly sets aside a card for potential scoring. Cards numbered 3, 5, and 7 are scoring cards. They are worth points if at game end the winning colour (the one with 3 discs placed onto the board) matches them.

So the game is played over a few hands. At the conclusion of each hand, a disc will be added to the gameboard, and two cards will be secretly removed from the game by the players. Players keep their hand of cards. Other cards, including those previously not dealt, are reshuffled and dealt out again, leaving three undealt (as opposed to five in the first hand). This means players can quite easily count cards. They can see all the cards that have been played in the previous hand. There is some uncertainty in those three undealt cards, so you can't be 100% sure of what cards your opponent may be holding. The cards that have been set aside by your opponent are an uncertainty too, but you can try to guess what colour your opponent is going for by his card play. Cards set aside need not be scoring cards. Non scoring cards can be set aside too, just that they won't be worth points, but they can help in manipulating the card pool, and maybe even in confusing your opponent.

The gameboard serves only one purpose - to track how many of the yellow, red and black discs are on it. The game ends when the 3rd disc of one of these colours are on the board. The green disc is for tracking the leading player. Allen and I scoffed at it. There are only two players. How hard is it to remember who the leading player is? However we soon realised that it was a good idea afterall. We kept forgetting who won the previous trick, especially at the end of a hand. We learned humility. The purple discs are to track wins. The game is short, so it is recommended to play 3 games consecutively.

Normal cards have their numbers in circles, scoring cards have theirs in squares. Zeroes are in hexagons and they are special trump cards.

When one colour has its third disc placed onto the board, the game ends. Both players reveal their secret cards, and only scoring cards in the winning colour count. Whoever has more points wins.

One special case is the 0 cards. Although they are smallest in their own colours, they trump over all cards of other colours. You can use a red 0 to trump a black 6, even if you have other black cards in hand. This is an important consideration during the game.

The Play

The rules are mostly simple, but the implications of your actions are not immediately apparent. The deck size is small so cards are easy to count, if you are willing to put in the effort. The two cards that are set aside at the end of every hand has a big impact to the card pool. It is tempting to set aside many scoring cards of the colour (or colours) you hope will win, but that will weaken the colour. Every round, by watching what cards come out, you can get a good feel of what cards are still in circulation and what cards your opponent have probably set aside for scoring. At least that was the case in my first game. I think at higher skill levels, players can better conceal their scoring cards and also confuse their opponents.

When I played, my approach was mostly quite tactical and short-sighted. I tried to save a scoring card to be set aside every round, and as the game end approached, I tried to push for the colour in which I had the most scoring cards. As I played, I realised that the card pool was greatly impacted by the cards that were set aside, but I never got around to experimenting with manipulating the card pool. I felt I have just scratched the surface of the strategies of this game. I felt there should be tactics in deciding how quickly to let a hand end, so that few cards are revealed. There should be tactics in holding certain cards from hand to hand. There should be tactics in setting aside cards which are not scoring cards. There should also be techniques in guessing what your opponent is trying to do.

The Thoughts

I would group Triumvirate with classic games such as Bridge. Rules are minimalistic, but there are many techniques and tactics involved. One thing that turns me off from these games is the effort required to play well. I always feel (but I may be wrong) that these games take significant effort to learn to play well and to better appreciate them. Something like Go, Chess. Triumvirate has luck, like Bridge, but there is much skill involved too. My gut feel is this is a kind of game that can be played competitively, and there are different skill levels that players can achieve. I feel nervous with these games because I always feel I'm not good enough, and I'm too lazy to put in enough effort so that I can get to a "good enough" skill level. It's quite chicken and egg. Compare this to Eurogames, even complex ones, or conflict games. Sure, these boardgames have many more rules, and they have strategy too, but they don't give me this bare, spartan, merciless feeling, like l'm a gladiator facing another gladiator both wearing only loincloths, and armed with short swords and no shields. Hmmm... how did such imagery come out of a little harmless looking card game...

Triumvirate is very different from games like Lost Cities and Jaipur. In these other games, there are tough decisions to make, there is some strategy, but I'd argue that luck is more significant, and the skills involved are not as deep as Triumvirate. These games can be played in a rather relaxed manner, and still be enjoyed. I find that Triumvirate needs to be played in more intense manner to be able to fully appreciate it. It is suitable to be played with a regular opponent, so that both can explore the depth of the game together and play competitively.

boardgaming in photos

23 May 2012. Playing Troyes against Allen at BoardGameArena (BGA). It had been some time since I last played (I played a physical copy then), so I was rusty not only rules-wise but also tactics-wise. Needless to say I lost by quite a big margin. The BGA implementation of Troyes doesn't work quite correctly for my PC. You can see that some of the meeples are not positioned correctly. They should be on the shields on the cards, but are instead offset to the lower left. Has anyone experienced something similar at BGA or know what I can do to fix this?

24 May 2012. Gosu at BGA. I have a similar problem with Gosu. Notice that the round activation token should be on the second card of the bottom row, but is instead placed outside of my tableau area. In Gosu it's much less confusing though, since you don't have that many activation tokens to track.

2 Jun 2012. Dragonheart at BGA. With a hand of three Legolas (archers) and two ships, I didn't have much choice did I? Playing the archers would not get me much because there weren't many flying dragons to be captured. Playing those two ships would probably be worse, because that would set up my opponent to play the third ship and thus claim the stack of archers and knights.

A physical copy of Dungeon Petz, which I refer to as the pet shop game when I try to convince my wife to play it. This buffalo / snail creature had not been eating much but had been pooping all over the place. It had dumped twice in the other cage (the one above its current cage), and now it dumped twice again.

At the moment I still play with the basic rules and have not ventured to the advanced rules of using the double icons (e.g. the feeding and pooping icons on the green card). I still don't have many plays under my belt yet, and my plays tend to be quite far apart. In this most recent game, I found that setting up for a good sale can be a game winner. It's important to plan ahead and target a particular pet for a particular buyer. I received 27pts (about half my final score) for one particular sale in the last round. That was very satisfying. It had involved painstakingly growing and caring for a suitable pet for a few rounds, saving up the appropriate needs cards, and also very importantly having an imp book a slot on the stage (which can boost the points from a sale by 50%).

20 Jun 2012. Puerto Rico on BGA. It had been a very long time since I last played Puerto Rico. I still remembered most of the rules, but I was a little rusty on strategy. BGA has the 2-player variant, which is nice.

My island at game end. During the game I got myself many quarries, which let me construct buildings more cheaply. I initially went for a shipping strategy, since I started with a corn plantation and could produce corn without needing a production building. However I was distracted and never properly developed my production capacity. I produced a little corn (yellow), a little sugar (white), and a little indigo (blue). I constructed both the buildings that let me take a new colonist with a new plantation and a new building, which was handy. I needed to do this also partly because my opponent Allen kept taking the Mayor role. The game ended after I filled up my building slots. I had two big purple buildings, which gave me 15pts, and thus the win.

Allen's island. In the early game he constructed a building which let him take an extra random plantation during the Settler phase, so he was able to fill up his plantation slots quite quickly. I think in the early game he also didn't have a very clear direction. Eventually he was the one who went for heavy shipping. He produced much indigo (blue) and tobacco (light brown), and also a little corn (yellow). Unfortunately his cash flow was not as good as me (I had built both small and big markets, giving me $3 more per trade), and he was unable to construct any big purple building before I ended the game.

22 Jun 2012. Allen and I played Sekigahara again, this time switching sides - he played Tokugawa (black) and I played Ishida (yellow). This was relatively early in the game, on the western side of the map, near Kyoto. I had more blocks in this area, and was able to defeat his armies and push them back. In the lower right, I had captured one of his castles.

Mid game (Round 4 of 7). I sat at the northern side of the map, so the map is upside down. On the left side of the map, Allen's armies had previously captured both my yellow castles. However his armies vacated the leftmost castle in order to capture the resource location at the lower left, so the castle reverted to my control since that's the default allegiance. I quickly mustered one block to defend it. In the lower centre section, my army led by Ishida himself was besieging one of Allen's castles. On the right side, my forces dominated. The two boxes on the lower left are my recruitment boxes. I had 6 blocks waiting to be deployed in the normal recruitment box (left). The Mori recruitment box (right) is a special case and starts with these five predetermined blocks, as opposed to randomly drawn blocks. Mustering from here is much more costly than normal, each block costing one card. However if Osaka is attacked by Tokugawa, these blocks automatically muster to Osaka at no cost. Since things looked optimistic on the right side of the map (the Kyoto and Osaka area), I didn't expect to need to pay cards to muster these Mori blocks. I wanted to save cards.

This was probably the most memorable moment of the game. My 6-block army attacked Allen's 5-block army, which was a newly formed army consisting of some blocks hurriedly marched in from the left side of the map along the coastal highway, and some newly mustered blocks. Allen had another army nearby, and I didn't want to let his two armies merge and become much stronger. Little did I know that he had been meticulously planning for this battle. This was the first time I engaged this particular army, and I was surprised that it was a mostly cavalry army. Allen had been saving up on special attack cards, which meant he made full use of the cavalry charges. Every cavalry icon gave +2 strength and also enjoyed a +2 strength bonus for every previously played cavalry icon. This meant the cavalry icons themselves contributed (2 + 4 + 6 + 8 =) 20 strength! My army was soundly defeated and only one block survived and hastily retreated.

After dealing me a crushing defeat, Allen marched more troops towards my turf. I decided I could not let those Mori blocks wait idly in Osaka. I spent four cards mustering four 3-mon Mori blocks to Osaka, and then had them advance to Kyoto together with other blocks. Needless to say, hotels and inns were all fully occupied that evening. At this point, Allen had captured many resource locations and castles, and if he could hold on to them, he would win by the end of Round 7 by having more points than me. So I must take the initiative to bring the war to him and to wrest control of some resource locations and castles from him.

One other way I could win was by killing Tokugawa in battle. That would give me an instant win without needing to count points. My 8-block army caught Allen's 5-block army led by Tokugawa himself in Kiyosu. I came extremely close to killing Tokugawa. I defeated his army, but unfortunately was just one strength point short of being able to kill all five blocks. The lone Tokugawa block survived, and after that ran away towards Edo (his capital) with his tail between his legs. Since this was the last round and I only had one more movement phase, I would not be able to catch him.

The great Tokugawa Ieyasu narrowly escaped death and took a break at Hakone castle.

We came to the last movement phase of the whole game, and it was my movement phase. We counted our point values. Allen had 18pts, I had 9pts. I would need to take 5pts from him to win the game. His forces on the right side of the map were diminished, but mine would be stretched too to try to capture so many locations. I could capture a castle (2pts) and a resource location (1pt) which were undefended. I used whatever else I could spare to attack two resource locations held by Allen's troops. I managed to defeat his army in Kuwana (upper left). So now it was all down to this last battle in Kyoto, my 5-block army against his 4-block army. Just... one... more... point!

Allen had some Loyalty Challenge cards up his sleeve, but thankfully whenever he played one, I had the right cards to prevent my blocks from defecting. In fact in this whole game we didn't have a single defection. As this final tense battle drew on, I totalled my strength points, and it came to exactly the same as Allen's! Since he was the defender, he won ties. I could not kick his army out of Kyoto. This was the aftermath of the battle. We both lost troops, but he held on to Kyoto, and won the game 14:13.

designer diaries

Do you enjoy reading designer diaries? These are often long essays, sometimes even series of essays, that are usually written by new (or relatively new) game designers, describing their labour of love from initial idea to publication (or attempted publication in the case of Kickstarter projects). Designer diaries seem to be a new thing that many people are doing, a trendy thing, much like Kickstarter projects. I find that most of the time I have very little interest in them (TL;DR, heh heh...). In fact I'm getting tired of seeing so many such designer diaries being released. Sorry that this sounds negative. This is probably due to my overall jaded-ness with the quantity of new boardgames. The designer diaries that I'd be interested to read would be those by designers whom I already know and like. Also I would probably be more interested in the designer diary of a game that I have played and enjoyed, because I'd be interested to find out the thought processes behind the design, and the story of how the game came about. I remember Agricola had a designer diary. At that time there weren't many such designer diaries. I didn't spend much time reading the Agricola designer diary, and only went back to read it after finding that I liked the game a lot.

I wonder whether people write designer diaries mainly because they feel these will help promote their games, or because they enjoy writing their own stories. Everyone (more or less) likes to tell his own story right? I'm a blogger. I know. :-) To me, there are other better ways of promoting a game. Now I know many marketing snippets can't satisfy hardcore gamers. These are often just flavour text, or marketing-speak. What I would consider more informative and interesting are photos of game components and brief descriptions, and also a round overview. The gameboard and some key game components can tell much. They set the tone of the game. Highlighting a few key aspects can give a good feel of how the game works. A picture is worth a thousand words.

Something like this. The game is co-designed by Tom Lehmann, designer of Race for the Galaxy. Eventually I decided I probably won't be buying Starship Merchants, but hey, at least I read the whole article.

Sat 23 Jun 2012: A few fellow gamers shared their views and suggestions at BGG.

Ticket To Ride: Asia

I own most of the Ticket To Ride expansions and spin-offs, and when I heard about this Asia expansion map I was quite excited, because I live in Asia. However I was disappointed to find out that of the two Asian maps, one requires at least four players because it's a team-based game. I usually only play Ticket To Ride games against my wife, so there's little chance of the team game getting played. So, as often is the case, my justification for buying it is when my two kids grow up we will be able to play the team game as a family.

That means for now I've only played the Legendary Asia map, and cannot write about the Team Asia map yet. The Legendary Asia map is mostly just Ticket To Ride on a different map. There is an element of TTR Europe - one of your start destination tickets is a long route (you can choose whether to keep it). I don't like this element because there are only a handful of such long routes and you'll soon know all of them. I think if you play a competitive game, this aspect is good because you need to prevent your opponents from guessing your card and blocking you. You also want to guess your opponents' cards. However I prefer a more relaxed play style with TTR, so I'd rather have more variability.

The bottom destination card, Ankara - Colombo, is one of the long routes. As usual, the Days of Wonder graphics design is top-notch. The game comes with card racks, but they are mainly meant for the team game, not for helping you hold cards.

Mountain spaces are a new concept. When claiming a route with such spaces you must pay extra trains. These extra trains earn 2VP each. Using them depletes your train supply more quickly. You need to be careful not to run short of trains to complete all your destination tickets. However using mountain routes can also help you force a quicker end while your opponent is unprepared.

I have only played a few 2-player games, so I don't have a good feel of how different this map is from other maps. At the moment it feels about the same. TTR Switzerland is still my favourite TTR map, but that's because I mostly play with two.

I may need to wait a few years before I can experience the Team Asia map. I'm looking forward to that, because the team rules look quite interesting. Maybe I should already start the kids on basic TTR (USA map).

This is the Legendary Asia side of the board. The bottom right corner is for placing trains that have been spent to claim mountain routes.

The biggest flaw of the game is --- there is no Kuala Lumpur! Surely it makes much more sense to add Kuala Lumpur and remove Singapore (cue cheers from Malaysians and jeers from Singaporeans).

Gosu

Plays: 2Px3.

I'm well on my way to sample most of the games at BoardGameArena (BGA). Gosu is yet another game I've played for the first time at BGA. Since Race for the Galaxy is one of my favourite games, Gosu caught my attention when it first came out, being a card game with a tableau concept. Also the designer is a Magic: The Gathering champion. I never got around to try it, but now that it's conveniently on BGA, I must not miss it.

The Game

In Gosu, players build up armies of goblins, taking turns adding goblins, using their special abilities, mutating them, and drawing new goblin cards. In each round, players take turns until everyone passes, then a great battle takes place, which is basically a simple comparison of army strength. Whoever is strongest gains one point. After that a new round starts. Whoever reaches three points first wins the game.

You get a hand of cards at the start of the game, but after that there are no more free card draws. You get two activation tokens every round, which can be used to draw cards. Some goblins' special abilities allow card draws. However these are usually quite limited, so you need to play efficiently and squeeze the most out of your limited resources.

Goblins come from five different clans, and consist of three levels - soldiers, leaders and heroes (with strengths of 2, 3 and 5 respectively). Playing your first soldier is free, and so is playing any soldier of a clan you already have in play. Playing a leader requires it to be matched by one soldier of the same clan, and similarly a hero must be matched by a leader of the same clan. However playing a soldier of a new clan costs two cards, which is a lot. So it is expensive to have many clans in play, yet often, depending on your initial hand, it may not be easy or desirable to stick to one clan. Each player has a 5x3 grid to play goblins, i.e. at most five per level.

Every goblin has some special power, some taking effect when they come into play, some when an activation token is spent on them, some when they mutate, and other situations. Some effects kill opponent goblins, some neutralise them for the current round, some let the player draw cards. Players must make good use of these powers to gain an advantage over their opponents. Some powers get boosted if your points are behind at least one other player. This is a handy catch-up mechanism.

The mutation concept is spending cards to replace an existing goblin. This is usually costly, but can be useful when your slots are full, or you want to make use of an ability that triggers only upon mutation.

The Gosu interface on BGA is simple and clean. Flipped over cards are temporarily disabled for the current round. Their strenghs do not count, their clans and levels are ignored. A card with no other cards above it or to its right are vulnerable and can be killed by a goblin with the kill ability. So at the moment I (left tableau) have three such vulnerable cards, and Han (right tableau) has two - the rightmost card of each row.

Of course it's quite impossible to read the tiny text on the cards, so you need to hover your mouse over a card and a pop-up will appear. The discard pile at the bottom is open information. I wish there were a way to sort the discard pile, e.g. by clan or level. That would make it slightly easier to browse.

The Play

The one thing I remember most about playing Gosu is how limited your resources are after the first round. A lot is at stake in the first round. The composition of your army is largely determined in the first round. You have to decide which clans and which goblins to use. You need to consider flexibility in future rounds, not just winning the first round.

From Round 2 onwards, you will have limited actions. You only get two new activation tokens every round, and often you don't carry over many cards from the previous round. However despite the few actions, if you play well, they can be very effective.

The discard pile is open information, which is handy if a goblin ability lets you pick a card from there. Hero goblins, although strong, have powers that may help all players, so sometimes you need to think twice in case they end up helping your opponent more. I had one particular game where I was in very very bad shape, but I came back from a 0:2 deficit with very few cards in hand, to compete in a 2:2 final showdown. It was because my opponent Han had played a hero goblin that let me draw some cards, which turned out to be a life-saver for me. In the end I lost the final great battle, but it was a dramatic turn of events from a rather hopeless situation.

Hanging back from an early lead seems to be a viable strategy, because of how some special abilities become stronger if there is another player having more points than you do. I have not played enough games to fully appreciate this strategy, but I think it is quite viable.

I'm not sure how I managed to afford four different clans in this game. Each clan has a different card border.

In this game we were mostly focused on one clan. I mainly played the black clan and Han the white.

The Thoughts

Gosu definitely has that feel of "how to make the most out of what you are dealt", similar to Race for the Galaxy. So far from the few games that I have played, I have not seen particularly powerful combos, but I have seen how some individual powers can be very effective if used well. Often it is interesting to pick a few special abilities among many to use. You must choose which clans to go for. Once you play the soldier of a clan, you are committed to this clan to a certain extent.

Compared to Race for the Galaxy, Gosu is minimalistic. Other than the cards, you only have the (shared) advantage token and your own two activation tokens to fiddle with. There is a lot of text to read the first few times you play, but once you get past that and get familiar with the goblin special abilities, the game is brisk and tight. I'd say this is a gamer's game, not something a casual player would have the patience to learn. However I don't think it is particularly deep either. The scope isn't wide. Goblin powers mostly centre around killing goblins, neutralising them, drawing cards, and playing around with the advantage or activation tokens. However the powers are interesting to wield and there are plenty of interesting decisions to make in the game. So I think Gosu is a wonderful short game (I wouldn't call it a filler) for experienced players. In that way it serves a similar purpose as Race for the Galaxy. Gosu plays faster and is more tactical (vs strategic).

Dragonheart

Plays: 2Px6.

The Game

Dragonheart is a two-player-only card game with a bit of psychology element, where you often find yourself baiting your opponent to do something you want him to do, or bluffing him into not doing something you don't want him to do. Each player has five cards, and every turn you play as many cards of one type as you want, then draw back to your hand limit. There is a simple board which shows where each type of card must be played, the number of cards that can be played, and the effects of playing the cards. In most cases playing cards let you claim another type of card already on the board. These claimed cards are worth point values, based on the numbers on the cards.

Some examples: Playing a Flying Dragon card(s) lets you claim all Treasure Chest cards (if any are on the board). Playing a third Archer card lets you claim all Flying Dragon cards, after which the Archer cards are moved to the stack beneath the Ship card space. Playing the fourth Dwarf Miner card (bottom right) lets you claim all four such cards, including the one just played.

There is a dragon token in the game, and whenever you claim any Petrified Dragon card, you claim this token too. The token holder's hand size increases to six, and the token is also worth victory points at game end. So this is something very much worth fighting for.

The game ends after the ninth ship card is played, and whoever has the most points wins.

The Play

Han and I played this at BoardGameArena (BGA). It is very quick to play, even when playing a few games at one go. The game is simple, but quite fun. You must play at least one card every turn, and sometimes that is tough, because you don't want to set up scoring opportunities for your opponent. You have to pick the least bad option, or hope that he doesn't have the right card to claim what you are going to play. It is possible to do card counting. Each player has his own deck of cards.

Sometimes you play a card to lure your opponent to claim it, so that you can in turn claim the card he has just played. Sometimes you are merely tricking him into thinking this way, so that he hesitates to claim the card you have just played. Some card types require multiple cards to be played to take effect, and often you want to hold multiple cards of these types so that you can suddenly fill up the slots while your opponent is not expecting it. However holding cards will tie up the slots in your hand, making you less flexible.

Timing can be very different from game to game, depending on when the players draw Ship cards and when they play these cards. Scores are hidden, so you only have a rough idea of how well your opponent is doing. Manipulating the pace of the game can be critical.

What cards your opponent may have constantly keeps you in suspense. In one game, when it was my turn, I had the choice of playing a Knight card to claim a number of lucrative Troll cards, or playing two Ship cards to claim a very big stack of used Archer and Knight cards. If I did the former, the Knight card would go to the accumulated stack too. I had to gamble whether Han had two Ship cards in hand. If he didn't, I could earn not only those Troll cards, but also the newly played Knight card, and all the other accumulated Archer and Knight cards, when I played my two Ships on the subsequent turn. I was behind in points, and I thought I probably needed the boost. So I went for the Trolls first. Alas, Han did have two Ships! Aarrgghh!!... Greed is not always a good thing...

The Thoughts

Dragonheart is simple, but has interesting decisions. In fact it has downright difficult decisions, like those you have to make in Lost Cities. There is some luck in the game, and if you keep getting the right cards at the right times, you will win. I don't think it's a problem, because most of the time you have interesting decisions to make and there is skill required to play well. Each player having his own deck of cards reduces the luck element somewhat.

I like the bluffing and baiting aspects of the game. Often you need to try to read what your opponent is thinking and what cards he may be holding. I enjoy this psychological element. Dragonheart is a juicy little gem.

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Noble Knight Games - Buy, sell and Trade! New and Out-of-Print RPG's, Board Games, Miniatures, Dungeons & Dragons

concise reference sheets updated

I have just added a batch of games to my concise reference sheets. New games added, and games updated are:

1. Antiquity (only typo correction)
2. Confucius
3. Hammer of the Scots (rules v2.0)
4. Nature of the Beast
5. Nightfall (rules v1.2 - with Blood County expansion)
6. Ninjato
7. Ora et Labora
8. Paths of Glory
9. Power Grid: The First Sparks (correction)
10. Rommel in the Desert (updated to include more details)
11. Sekigahara
12. Ticket To Ride: Asia
13. Tournay

boardgaming in photos

6 Apr 2012. Tower of Babel is a lesser known Reiner Knizia design. It looks a little drab, but is quite a clever medium weight game. Rules are actually light-weight, but strategy is definitely medium-weight. On your turn you only have two options - to build or not to build. However, behind that there are many considerations and sub-options, e.g. which wonder of the world to work on, which type of resource to use, etc.

The two main ways of scoring are (a) being majority contributor at completion of a wonder and (b) holding many resource tokens at game end. The former requires careful manipulation of timing because wonders completed later score higher, but when the game ends, incomplete wonders score much less. There's a push-your-luck element. The latter often forces you to make the tough decision between letting another player claim the token and letting him become a bigger contributor in wonder construction. Tower of Babel is a game of few rules, but subtle strategies and tricky decisions.

8 Apr 2012. Maori. Playing with all the advanced rules makes this a satisfying medium-weight game. It becomes more challenging and requires careful planning. It has the rather overused multiple ways of scoring aspect, but I find the spatial element fun and engaging.

All trees must point north, so tile placement is trickier. However you choose tiles from a grid and don't blind draw.

11 Apr 2012. I downloaded Blokus on the iPhone for free. This is the two-player Blokus Duo which is included in the app. I have only played one game and cannot yet tell how good the AI is. I find using touch-screen controls to manipulate the pieces too cumbersome compared to physical-touch manipulation of real game pieces, so I never bothered to play a second game.

18 May 2012. Ora et Labora. This was probably the first time I used building actions to score many points. In my previous games I largely neglected this aspect and focused on only buildings and settlements. One of my buildings, the House of the Brotherhood, let me buy 10VP for $5, and I had used it four times.

My monastery (yellow banner cards) and monastery town around it. That piece of hillside land at the bottom right was wasted. I never managed to build anything on it before the game ended. Money down the drain.

19 May 2012. Caylus at BoardGameArena (BGA). I recently started playing some boardgames at BGA with Allen and Han (who is working abroad now). Games at BGA are real-time / live games, unlike the PBEM-like format at SlothNinja. We scheduled a virtual boardgame session to meet up online to play, using Skype for banter and rules questions. This was a first for me.

The user interface at BGA is quite good and easy to learn. I struggled more with remembering the rules of Caylus.

Mid game. All but one wooden buildings have been constructed. I've never managed to learn to play Caylus well, and will need more plays to improve my game. One thing that's stopping me is the game is a dry cube conversion exercise. The setting doesn't excite me at all. There are other shallower games that excite me more. I will need much will power to look past that boring setting in order to learn the intricacies and strategies underneath. It'll be a challenge, with so many other attractive games singing siren songs to me.

21 May 2012. Kahuna, a clever and confrontational two-player game. I was black and Allen was white. This was Round 1, and we were still establishing our power bases.

Round 3, and competition was fierce. Allen had destroyed some of my bridges and removed my control over some islands. Thankfully I still managed to control one island more than him at the end of Round 3, and I won by tiebreaker.

21 May 2012. Stone Age. Another game played against Allen at BGA. I had played this before, but it was quite some time ago and I had forgotten many details. Playing it as a two-player game seems to be less interesting than with more players though.

One thing good about playing at BGA is the computer does all the maths for you. I lost by a big margin, 288 to 202.

End game situation. Stone Age is a pleasant worker placement game, and I can understand its wide appeal. It has resource collection, a little civ building / development, set collection, and dice. It sits comfortably in the medium-weight range, and is something that a wide variety of gamers can enjoy. I guess in a way it's like 7 Wonders. Smooth to play, easy to learn, and sits in a pleasant middle ground. What Stone Age lacks for me is an interesting quirk that draws me. The design almost feels too safe. I'd happily play it, but would not request it. In comparison with 7 Wonders, I find that 7 Wonders can be played at a deeper strategic level (e.g. carefully considering others' tableaus and wonders), and I am often presented with interesting and difficult choices (multiple cards I want but must pick only one).

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Noble Knight Games - Buy, sell and Trade! New and Out-of-Print RPG's, Board Games, Miniatures, Dungeons & Dragons

Confucius

Plays: 3Px1.

The Game

Confucius is another game that Allen, Han and I played at SlothNinja. None of us have played it before. The unique part of the game is the gift obligation mechanism, where if someone has given you a gift, you have to be nice to him and you are restricted in certain actions. Confucius himself is actually not in the game, and in fact has been dead for hundreds of years at the time period of the setting of the game, the early Ming Dynasty in China. Players are powerful families competing for glory by contributing to the nation's military expansion, by sending expeditions to distant lands, and by exerting influence on government ministries.

There are many types of actions in the game and each round every player receives a number of action cubes depending on the number of gifts given and received. Most actions require one action cube, but usually if you want to take the same action more than once in the same round, you pay two action cubes instead. Some related actions are paired so that they incur this penalty too. The game forces you to spread out your actions and to plan ahead.

You can raise armies and send them on conquests. The military aspect has a cooperative element. There are three foreign lands available for conquest. There is a countdown timer for when each is due to be conquered, and if a large enough army cannot be deployed in time, no victory points can be gained. It is usually difficult for a single player to raise and send enough armies to conquer a foreign land by himself, so a bit of cooperation is usually required. There is a danger of wasting your effort if noone else is participating. At the same time there is also competition for the better rewards, so deploying earlier than your opponents is desirable.

You can build ships and send them out on exploration voyages. There is no time limit here, and it is a simpler race for the most lucrative distant lands to discover. One tricky part is you can buy at most four junks (ships) at one time, but a successful voyage needs five. That forces you to take more actions.

Bribing officials, thus making them "yours", give you benefits, e.g. discounts when raising armies, building junks or bribing other officials. When all officials of a ministry are claimed, a ministry scoring is done to determine who becomes minister and who becomes secretary. This is not a simple majority comparison. Anyone not in contention must lend his support to one of the two leading players, so even if you have the most officials, another player with fewer may gather support from others to overtake you. There is an exam mechanism, which is basically a one-on-one competition to place a loyal official in one of the ministries. Every round, at most two players can enrol a student for exams. At the end of the round, every player must contribute tuition money to one of the students, and whoever has more money for tutors "wins" the exam.

The board is quite big and I need two screenshots to show everything. In this screenshot, the top left section is the exam section. Candidates can be placed in the red or orange circles. The tile is the post in a specific ministry being fought over. The middle section is the actions table, showing all the things you can do. The top right section is the score track and the gift status summary. My colour is yellow, and the table shows that I have received a value 1 gift from the green player, and I have given a value 1 gift to the green player and a value 2 gift to the purple player.

The lower half are the three ministries, the Ministry of the Army, the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Public. I (yellow) have bribed four officials at this stage. The victory points for winning the minister and secretary posts are shown in each ministry.

The other half of the board. The top left section is the military conquest section. The nine Great Wall of China boxes are the timer, marking number of rounds completed, with soldiers on the 4th, 6th and 8th rounds indicating the deadlines for conquering the three foreign lands. Round 4 is still in progress but the first foreign land tile has been conquered and turned face down. Allen (purple) has one army ready for deployment. The top right section is the expeditions section, with five distant lands to be discovered. One of them has been discovered by Allen (purple) now. He has four ships in harbour and one at sea. Han (green) has seven ships in harbour, ready to sail.

The lower half is the player status. Squares are action cubes remaining. Gifts not yet purchased, gifts purchased and not yet given, and gifts received are shown here. I (yellow) have given one gift each to Han and Allen, and have received one from Han. This screen also shows money cards (called Confucius cards) in hand.

The money system is interesting and challenging. You are often cash poor and you often need to spend many actions on making money. Also you can't carry over more than four cards (cards are both money and licenses), so you can't hoard money for a series of big moves. Every round you have to be careful how you spend your money so that you don't end up bankrupt or short of money when you desperately need some. Money cards in the game are either $1/3L (3 licenses), $2/2L, or $3/1L. You can use a card as money OR as licenses, never both. You need licenses to raise armies and sail ships. You need money to deploy armies, to build ships, to take exams, to bribe officials and to buy gifts. As long as you have need of both money and licenses, every card is good, because low money = high licenses and vice versa.

Now, the gift system. If you receive a gift from someone else, you have to smile and say thank you, even if you are now tied down with lots of obligations. If the giver has a student taking an exam, you must pay money to him, even if your own student is in the same exam. If at a ministry you already control the same number (or more) of officials than him, you can't bribe more officials. When a ministry is being resolved, and you do not have enough officials to be in contention, your officials must support him. These may not sound like much, but they are actually quite critical. There are ways to absolve yourself from such obligations, e.g. returning an even bigger gift, voluntarily giving him one of your officials, but they are often costly. The gift giving / receiving aspect is also important in determining the number of actions you have for a round. You can have 3 to 5 actions, and every action cube difference can have a huge impact.

The game ends after Round 9, or when certain conditions are met, e.g. all ministries being resolved. The player with the most points wins. There are only 3 main ways of earning victory points - conquering foreign lands, sailing to distant lands, and winning the minister and secretary posts.

The Play

When Han, Allen and I started playing, we were a little lost as to what we should be doing. We also misunderstood a number of rules. But we forged on, and learned some things the hard way. The early game seemed rather uneventful, especially compared to the recent nail-biting games of Tammany Hall also played on SlothNinja. I focused on military, Allen focused on sailing, Han initially did some military, and then shifted to sailing. We only bribed enough officials to gain the discounts, and didn't really compete for majority at the ministries yet. Due to gift relationships, Han and I had more actions, and Allen was disadvantaged due to having fewer actions. It is possible for two players to give each other gifts of the same value, which results in mutual obligations.

We found cash flow to be a constant juggling act. It was dangerous to run out of money, because you'd be stuck with few options until you make some money. It was impossible to carry over much money to the next round due to the hand limit. You don't want to have surplus money because wasting money is painful.

Around mid-game, I got myself stuck with the military aspect. Han and I both raised armies to conquer the first of three foreign lands. He didn't raise any more armies after that, but I continued to do so for the second foreign land. Allen invested in an army, and I thought he was going to participate in the conquest. However it turned out that he was actually using that army for a special emperor reward card. Having committed myself to conquering the second foreign land, I couldn't bear to back down and waste all previous effort, so I proceeded with the expensive venture, needing to spend more action cubes than I expected. I barely made it, managing to complete the second conquest before time was up. Needless to say, I didn't go anywhere near the third conquest.

In the Ministry of Finance (centre), the purple marker with a tiny "S" means this official is secured, and noone can take him away from his owner. You can spend money to secure the loyalty of an official. In this case this official was Allen's student who won an exam, so he's by default already 100% loyal to Allen.

In the military conquest section, Allen's army (purple) has been used to complete a side mission to earn him two points. I (yellow) had to painstakingly build my own armies to complete the conquest of the second foreign land. In the expedition section, four of five distant lands have been discovered.

At this moment I have many cards in hand, but I will be needing them to deploy my armies. For the second foreign land, it's $7 per army, which is very expensive. Near the top right, you can see Han (green) holding two emperor reward cards. These are special one-time-use cards awarded when you complete a voyage and also sometimes when you deploy armies.

In sailing, Han came from behind to launch more ships than Allen, discovering three distant lands to Allen's two. One thing good about distant lands is each gives an emperor's reward, as opposed to only some spots in the military conquest section.

Towards the second half of the game, there was not much left to do in the conquest and exploration aspects, and competition gradually heated up in the bribery game at the ministries. This was when the tension intensified. This was also when I realised how big an impact the gift obligations had. When you have an obligation to another player, it means you can't further grow your influence in a ministry if you already have as much influence as he does. The exam aspect also became prominent at this stage of the game. It may seem expensive and risky to spend actions and money on exams, when you may not gain anything in the end. However the reward can be big, because the winning student can be used to remove another player's not-yet-loyal official at a ministry. This means you are decreasing an opponent's influence and increasing your own at the same time. That is a very powerful move. Gift obligations can greatly affect exam results, because if you have an obligation to your opponent in an exam, you must fund his student's tuition and not your own! Needless to say, your student will be rather upset with you too.

Han's candidate (green) and mine (yellow) competed in the exams.

Compare this screenshot with the previous one, and you can see that Han's (green) winning student has displaced Allen's (purple) No. 2 official in the Ministry of Public (right).

The military conquest and expedition sections are now being ignored, since whatever can be claimed realistically has been claimed.

Somehow my students were the laziest, always coming last in exams (well, you are either first or last, since there are at most two candidates). Allen's students won three exams and Han's won two. I did poorly in competing at the ministries, and only managed to win one post, while Han won three and Allen won two. At game end, Han won by a big lead at 31pts, while both Allen and I had 21pts.

The officials in the Ministry of Public are all claimed now, which means there will be a ministry resolution at the end of this round. Han (green) has three officials and is in the lead. Allen (purple) and I (yellow) each have two, but my most senior official is #3, while his is #4. That means I have more influence and will be in contention (being in the top two), while he will not be in contention. He must lend his support to either Han or me. He has no gift obligation to either of us, so he can freely choose who to support. Whoever he supports will become minister (7pts), and the other will be secretary (6pts).

However, before ministry resolution is done, exam resolution must be completed. Allen and I are competing. Han (green) has a gift obligation to Allen (purple) and must support his student. It is likely Allen will win the exam, and if he wants to earn points at the Ministry of Public resolution, he must place his winning student there and displace either Han's or my unsecured official.

By this time, many gifts have been removed from the game, either by being replaced with a higher valued gift, or by transferring officials.

In a desperate move to secure the minister post at the Ministry of the Army (left), I have controlled five officials. It may look like overkill, but if I don't secure the fifth official, my fourth official can easily be replaced by the winning student (either Han's or Allen's), and being left with three officials means I may end up only winning the secretary post.

The Ministry of Public has been resolved, so all officials are marked as secured (tiny "S").

Currently Allen (purple) has a gift obligation to Han (green). Both Allen and I (yellow) are holding gifts that we have bought and have not used.

Game end.

The Thoughts

When I first read the rules, Confucius felt rather convoluted. There are quite many small details covering each aspect of the game. However, upon playing, things clicked together much better. The different aspects of the game are interwoven well. At first I was wary whether the designer was trying to cram everything important about early Ming Dynasty, the gift mechanism and Chinese bureaucracy into the game. I wondered whether the various pieces would feel forcefully glued together. It turned out that they meshed together better than I expected. One thing that really ties them up well is the challenging cash flow mechanism. You need to constantly manage your income to ensure your flexibility, and you need money and licenses for most actions.

In broad strokes, you are competing in just three aspects - military conquests, exploration voyages, and influencing ministry officials. There are various actions you need to take and steps you need to plan for to achieve your goals. You need to set your priorities and plan carefully so as not to waste your actions and resources. Gifts come into play as an important tool to hinder your opponents in exams and in influencing officials. If not given to an opponent, they can be used for their one-time special abilities (in the advanced game).

Scoring is low granularity - there are only a handful of victory point tiles to be fought over, so each need to be fought over fiercely. Every tile is a big deal. Even a 4pt tile is a major swing (in our 3-player game, scores ranged from 21 to 31pts). This low granularity makes things quite exciting, since much effort is invested in each fight, making winning sweet and losing agonising.

During our game, Han suspected that the game would probably work better with more players, and I tend to agree. With more players, the gift obligation relationships and ministry bribery competition will be more interesting. The military conquest aspect should also be more interesting. With three players, the combined resources seem insufficient to make competition (and cooperation) interesting enough in the military and exploration aspects.

Overall Confucius was a pleasant surprise.

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Noble Knight Games - Buy, sell and Trade! New and Out-of-Print RPG's, Board Games, Miniatures, Dungeons & Dragons