link: Bruno Faidutti - reviewing reviews

This article from Bruna Faidutti really struck a chord with me - Reviews. I too dislike giving games a number rating, and I think the most valuable part of a game review is what the writer thinks of the game - why he likes it or why he doesn't. Who would like the game and why? That's the reason my standard format for blogging about games has a Thoughts section. It is for the convenience of those who wish to literally "jump to conclusions". That's what I like to do.

Food Chain Magnate

Plays: 3Px2.

The Game

You are an aspiring fast food entrepreneur, starting a fast food business with just yourself, one restaurant, and no money. You recruit staff, produce food (and drinks), advertise them, serve customers who visit your restaurant (and restaurants later), and build up your business. You compete with your fellow players to earn the most money when the bank runs out of cash, which is when the game ends.

The first thing you do every round is corporate restructuring. No, that's doesn't exactly sound like fun, but it actually is quite interesting. What it means is you rearrange your corporate structure to determine what actions you can execute that round. You start the game with only one employee - yourself, the CEO. The CEO is always at the top of the organisation chart. You may recruit one new employee every round, and you may supervise three other employees. Supervising means activating an employee. All employees except the CEO need to be activated in order to work. Since the CEO himself can only activate three other employees, to sustain a larger organisation you need middle management, i.e. the managers. They don't do work themselves, but they supervise others. The lowest ranked manager, the management trainee, is only able to supervise two other employees, while the highest ranked manager, the executive vice president, is like Ip Man - he can handle ten. To train up your managers, you need, of course, trainers. That's another type of employee. You have marketers. They advertise your products, or your future products, or even products you don't plan to sell but you want to advertise anyway just to deny your opponents business. You have recruiters to help you recruit more efficiently, so that you don't rely on just the CEO recruiting one new employee per round. You have cooks, who cook burgers and pizza. You have the procurement department, which buys drinks. You have pricing managers, who reduce or increase prices, to compete with other fast food chains and to earn more money respectively. You have branch managers who open new branches. You have business developers who create new homes, and thus new market demand.

The variety in your employees means the variety of actions you can take. You need to manage how you train your employees. Employees in training cannot work for one round. Some employees can no longer do their old work after being trained for a new position. You need to recruit new blood to take up those old positions. You also need to manage costs. You don't need to pay any salary to employees at the entry level, but once an employee is trained, you need to pay him a $5 salary. If you run out of cash and can't pay, you will be forced to fire your people. Sometimes if you don't want to pay an employee, you can fire him just before pay day. It's legal.

This reference chart shows all employees in the game, and also the training paths, or upgrade paths. The management trainee (first box in second row) is most versatile and can be trained to take up many different roles.

This game can take up a lot of space because of the cards. If you want to lay them all out neatly, be prepared to need an extra table. Cards with a white bottom half are employees. Cards with a solid colour are milestones.

This is an org chart. The boss (CEO) is at the top, and you can have up to three layers. If you have managers (black cards) in the second layer, they can supervise other employees in the third layer. The cards at the bottom are the milestones I have claimed.

This was my org chart after my company had grown bigger. I had three managers in the middle layer which allowed me to have a whole bunch of workers working in the third layer. I had quite a few other employees who were not working this round. Three of them were going to be trained by the three trainers who were working.

So how do you make money? Let's start with advertising and generating demand. Your marketers place different forms of ads on the game board to influence the homes. E.g. a burger ad which successfully influences a home will place a burger token on the home, representing that family now craving for a burger. As long as this demand is not satisfied, e.g. no restaurants selling burgers, or they had sold out, the burger token stays on the home. If the ad is still in effect next round, a second burger token will be placed on the home. More tokens will be added as long as the limit is not reached. The limit is 3 tokens for a middle-income household, and 5 tokens for a high-income household. When a family finally visits a restaurant which serves the foods (and drinks) they want, these tokens representing demand are removed. Next round, tokens may be placed anew if there are ads influencing the home.

Ads take effect at the end of a round, while dinner time happens in the middle of a round. That means if you want to advertise a specific food type and sell that food type, you need to do the advertising in the round before you produce the food.

Customers only visit restaurants which fully satisfy their needs. E.g. a family desiring two burgers and a pizza will not visit a restaurant which can serve it only one burger and one pizza. They would rather eat sandwiches at home. Now if two (or more) restaurants can fulfill their demand, they will first consider two factors: driving distance and price. Naturally they prefer nearer restaurants, and lower prices. If two restaurants are still tied after considering these, the next deciding factor is the number of waitresses working that round. If there's still a tie, then it is broken by player turn order. Once a family dines at a restaurant, the tokens at their home representing demand are discarded. The tokens of the restaurant chain representing stock are also discarded, because the food has been consumed. Any leftover food at the end of the round will spoil, and will be discarded.

All food (and drink) types have a base price of $10. Pricing managers can modify this, both upwards and downwards. There's a milestone card which permanently and irrevocably lowers a player's price by $1. Other than the price, there are also bonuses to consider. Some milestones give a $5 bonus to every unit of a specific food type sold. Rich families give a 100% bonus when they dine. So if you have a pricing manager than changes your burger price to $20, and a rich family eats at your burger joint, you are earning $40 per burger instead of $10.

This is what you do in a round. This player aid looks like a restaurant menu, which is nice.

The purple squares are homes, i.e. families, i.e. customers. Homes with gardens (green) attached are rich homes. A game starts with only middle-income households. Once you have a business development manager he can help create new rich homes or upgrade existing homes to rich homes. The food (and drink) tokens on the homes represent what they want to eat, i.e. the effect of ads. The white 2x2 tiles with logos are the restaurants. Location is important, because distance is one of the factors when a customer decides where to dine. The greyish blue tiles are the ads, and the food tokens on them indicate what type of food they are advertising. Those single red, yellow and dark green squares are supply points for drinks. When your buyers go past them they get to collect the corresponding drinks - soda, lemonade or beer.

The numbers on the homes and the ads have meaning. Homes and ads are resolved in ascending order. The effects of a lower numbered ad are determined before that of a higher numbered ad. Low is normally better. An ad that goes first gets to place a token on a house first. If the house reaches its limit for demand tokens, any subsequent ads will have no effect on it. As for the numbering for houses, low is not necessarily better. Lower numbered households go out to eat earlier. If you are in competition with another restaurant chain selling the same food type, and they sell cheap while you go high-end, you would want the middle-income families to have low numbers, but the high-income families to have high numbers. You would be hoping that the cheapskates buy up your competitor's food, leaving the rich families to buy your expensive stuff and pay you a big tip.

With 3 players, you only play a 3x4 map. At the top right corner, just off the board, you can see a large rectangular ad. That's an airplane banner ad. The plane flies in a straight line, and every house it flies over will be influenced. There are three pizza tokens on the airplane ad, which means the ad campaign will run for three more rounds.

One of the most important aspects of the game is the milestones. These are strong special abilities which you need to fight for. To claim a milestone card you need to achieve a specific condition, e.g. if you are first to advertise burgers, for the rest of the game every burger you sell gives you a $5 bonus. If two or more players achieve the same condition within the same round, they all get to claim a milestone card. Let's look at another example. If you are first to place an ad, for the rest of the game your ads are permanent, and you never need to pay your marketers. Normally ads last a specific number of rounds, and if you want to place a new ad, you need to assign a marketer to do it. Also, normally you need to pay a $5 salary to marketers except for the entry level marketers. Milestones are good, but sometimes they are a constraint or a hindrance. Using the same example, although perpetual ads save you some effort, it also costs you some effort. Your marketers are forever tied to the same ad campaigns, and you will need to recruit more marketers, and train them, to start any new ad campaign. There's one milestone which saves you up to $15 per round in salaries, however it hinders you from achieving another milestone which requires you to be first to pay $20 in salaries. You need to choose your milestones wisely. Milestones also drive your strategy. If you get the $5 per burger bonus, you will naturally want to sell more burgers.

The game starts with $50 per player in the bank. Before the game starts, every player secretly decides how much more to add to the bank. They get to choose between $100, $200 and $300. This information is not revealed until the money in the bank is exhausted for the first time. Once this happens, the additional amounts are revealed and added to the bank, and the game continues until the bank breaks for the second time. The money pool size has an impact on how you want to play. It affects the length of the game and the tempo of the game.

The Play

I played my first game with Jeff and Vence. All three of us were new to the game and we blundered through the first few rounds, not exactly sure what we should be doing. Both Jeff and I made a mistake with our production cycle, producing food too early when our ads had not yet taken effect. We were unable to sell our food and had to throw it in the bin. However that turned out to be a good thing, because one of the milestones was to be first to waste food. The reward was a fridge - you can keep up to 10 food tokens at the end of every round. I think this milestone is particularly helpful for new players. Once you master the game and the production cycle, this milestone should be less critical.

I went for a McDonald's strategy. I built a huge corporation. I sold cheap burgers. I sold many of them. I think what helped me most was my large company. I recruited aggressively. Being able to have many employees working means being able to do more things in a round. I claimed the $1 discount milestone, which helped me tremendously in competing for customers. I earned less per burger, but I was able to sell many of them. Jeff and Vence did not actively tried to stop me. I had the momentum and eventually won the game. By the time Jeff thought up a plan to slow me down, it was too late, because the bank was almost out of money.

In this first game there were many employees I hadn't tried, so I felt there were many strategies and tactics I hadn't experimented with yet. My second game was against Allen and Han. They were both new to the game. I tried something different this time. I got myself a luxury manager and a business development manager. I wanted to go high-end. That didn't quite work out. Han had gone for a discount strategy, and for a few rounds made a killing, denying both Allen and I many customers. I did manage to bring my master plan to fruition, but only had time to run it for one round before the game ended. Han commanded a big lead and we were nowhere near him when the bank broke for the second time. In hindsight, since I had wanted to try the gourmet burger strategy, I probably should have opted for a longer game and selected the $300 additional bank money card.

Allen struggled a bit with his business, and for some rounds even had to worry about paying wages. All three of us started the game with similar recruitment decisions, but Allen's strategy diverged earlier from Han's and mine.

I think the game will be more interesting with more players. With only three, the competition is not intense enough. Perhaps I should say with only three players, you need to proactively compete and not allow a runaway leader. In both the games I played, we had a runaway leader because the other two players were not aggressive enough in trying to hold him back. With more players, I suspect the players will be forced by the game system to compete. There are only five types of foods and drinks, and the number of milestones also stay the same. The runaway leader problem may be partly because of the shorter game length. We mostly opted for the low or medium amounts to feed to the bank. A shorter game meant less time to catch up. My first game took about 4 hours, and the second game around 3.

This was my second game. I played at Allen's home.

Ethan, Allen and Han. The game board or map area takes up only a little space. It is the card supply, the org charts and the milestones which take up a lot of space.

The Thoughts

I feel that Food Chain Magnate and The Great Zimbabwe are a new generation of games from Splotter. Compared to older titles like Antiquity, Roads and Boats and Indonesia, they are much less fiddly. You have fewer components to manage. The games still have very good strategic depth. I think it's a big achievement that the tediousness can be reduced while maintaining the same strategic depth. The player interaction is high, compared to Roads and Boats and Antiquity which sometimes have low player interaction.

Food Chain Magnate is a very typical Splotter game. It has the unique style which many fans love. The game is unforgiving and unapologetic. You need to know it well to fully appreciate it and to play well. Decisions in the early game are important. If you make a mistake, it can be impossible to catch up. The milestones are very important. You need to go in with a plan. You can't just blunder about and hope something will work out eventually. This is the kind of game that makes you feel alive. You feel that your every decision matters. Every call is life and death.

One possible point of contention is the early game may feel scripted, as in there are only a handful of good opening moves. You can't do a lot in the early game because you have few employees, so the decision tree is small. The crucial decisions are who you employ to get your company going. Then there are the milestones. You know you must compete for them. Of the 17 milestones, some can't be achieved quickly, and among those which can be, some are better than others. So the early game is about going for these better ones. It is no surprise that the early game can feel scripted. At the moment I don't think it's a problem. I think of it as an extended game setup phase, where players jostle to gain different starting strengths. After the opening game, there is still plenty of strategy space to explore and to compete in.

When The Great Zimbabwe was released, I didn't order a copy. After I played it, I bought a copy. After I bought a copy, I never played it again. When Food Chain Magnate was released, I didn't order a copy. Now that I have played it, I have ordered a copy. I just hope it won't suffer the same fate as The Great Zimbabwe and never get played.

my 2015

In 2015 I had 638 plays of 118 distinct games. There was a big drop in total plays, but it was a distorted number because I played 483 games of Ascension in 2014, while I "only" played a combined total of 380 games of Ascension and Star Realms in 2015. The number of distinct games I played had dropped a little, and that was not distorted by anything I can think of.

I still mostly played at Boardgamecafe.net. Thank you Jeff for steadfastly organising game nights. My old boardgame buddy Allen went on a long hiatus of more than 6 months, so I had been playing fewer games with him in 2015. But he's coming back. And he has a long backlog to work on.

I had hoped to repeat what I did in 2014. In 2014, I put in conscious effort to schedule to play a long game or a rarely played game about once a month. Unfortunately this didn't work out quite so well in 2015. I didn't play The Great Zimbabwe, Clash of Cultures, A Few Acres of Snow and quite a few other games as I had hoped. I was more passive in 2015 than in previous years. I usually just showed up on game night, and played whatever others wanted to play. I thank Ivan for being our main rules reader and game teacher. In 2015 I researched games less. I read fewer rulebooks. I made fewer concise reference sheets. I taught games less. Thankfully I didn't enjoy boardgames less.

I started a new job in August. Work was busy, and I found that I had less time to blog about my hobby. Sometimes my backlog of blog posts got (and still gets) embarrassingly long. My new job was game related, but it was mobile games and not boardgames. That was enough excuse for me to bring some games to the office to teach my colleagues. For research purposes of course. Everyone fell in love with Love Letter.

I acquired significantly fewer games than previous years - only eleven! Ten games purchased and one home-made. That was the lowest record since I started keeping track. This was just continuing the trend from 2014. I actually bought very few games in 2014 too. Many of the new games were gifts from Allen.

In 2015 I started letting go of meticulously recording every game I played. I still recorded every game played, but I started leaving out details like who won and what the scores were. What triggered this was the many games of Ascension and Star Realms I had been playing. I just got sick of keeping screenshots of the final scores to be transferred to a spreadsheet later on. I did still try to remember and record who I played the games with, but if I couldn't recall who won, I didn't mind so much anymore.

Let's talk about the games.

This list is my fives and dimes of 2015:

1. Star Realms (207 plays in 2015) - Played on the smartphone, and mostly against Han. This and Ascension were my fragmented-time games. I took a quick turn whenever I had some spare time to check my phone. It was usually just once or twice a day. A game took around 4 or 5 days to complete.
   
2. Ascension (173) - Played on the smartphone, and mostly against Han. I got tired of it at one point, and stopped completely, but that didn't last long. I returned after about 3 months. Now it's a staple again.
3. Machi Koro (22) - Allen lent me his copy to try out with my children, and they loved it. I liked it a lot too. The children had been denying me a win with the Harbour expansion. They always worked together to stop me from winning, and they were always successful, at least when playing with only this expansion. It was only after we added the Millionaire's Row expansion that I started winning again.
   
4. Samurai Spirit (15) - This cooperative game swept me off my feet when I first played it. I then bought it, and played it solo many times to figure it out. I was very intrigued. Beneath the seemingly simplistic rules, there were quite a few clever nuances.
   
5. Love Letter (14) - A big hit with almost everyone I introduced it to, especially non-gamers.
6. R / BraveRats (12) - A microgame by Seiji Kanai of Love Letter fame. I self-made a Star Wars themed version. It was clever. Not as good as Love Letter, but still not bad.
   
7. Roll for the Galaxy (8) - Because I was a big fan of Race for the Galaxy. It was different yet familiar.
8. Templar Intrigue (8) - A fun social game. I already had a copy, but I self-made another one with an Infernal Affairs theme. It was the the perfect theme for this game.
   
9. Red7 (7) - Clever little game that can be played as a microgame (single round) or as a short game (multiple rounds with scoring).
10. Russian Railroads (6) - My birthday gift. I was curious and a little skeptical at first. It turned out to be a fine game. Not groundbreaking, but well-crafted and offering plenty to explore and experiment.
11. The Message: Emissary Crisis (6) - I have always been a big proponent. I taught my colleagues this game.
12. Ticket To Ride (5) - I probably played this on the iPad. I don't remember taking the game box off the shelf this many times.
13. MR4: Al Capone & The Chicago Underworld (5) - I discovered that the partnership game (4 players) was excellent.
    
14. Ticket To Ride: Switzerland (5) - Probably iPad too.

If we look at time spent playing instead of counts, a slightly different list is produced, favouring long games.

1. Ascension (173 plays, 86.5 hrs)
2. Star Realms (207 plays, 69 hrs)
3. Samurai Spirit (15 plays, 15 hrs)
4. Machi Koro (22 plays, 11 hrs)
5. Russian Railroads (6 plays, 9 hrs)
6. Food Chain Magnate (2 plays, 8 hrs) - The new game from Splotter Spellen. I was very intrigued by their previous game The Great Zimbabwe, and eventually bought a copy, but since then I had never played my own copy, which was a shame. When I heard they were releasing a new game at Essen 2015, I decided let's wait and see. I expected to like it, but I also expected I would not have much chance to play it many times. So I should save the money and not buy it even if I liked it. Then I played it. I liked it. I played it again. I still liked it. I told myself I didn't need to buy it. Then I bought it, at a higher price than if I had just simply decided to buy it during the Essen game fair period. Now I am waiting for it to be shipped to me. And I'm not sure when I will get to play it after I receive it. Why am I doing this to my wallet?
7. Virgin Queen (1 play, 8 hrs) - Sequel to Here I Stand. What a memorable day it was, playing this grand strategy game of European politics, warfare and religious struggles during the Elizabethan era.
   
8. Ticket To Ride (5 plays, 5 hrs)
9. Roll for the Galaxy (8 plays, 4 hrs)
10. Roads & Boats (1 play, 4 hrs) - I'm always happy to be able to find time and determination to do a long game like this. A Splotter game no less!
11. Ticket To Ride: Switzerland (5 plays, 3.75 hrs)
12. Love Letter (14 plays, 3.5 hrs)
13. The Message: Emissary Crisis (6 plays, 3 hrs)
14. Pandemic: The Cure (4 plays, 3 hrs)
15. Ticket To Ride: Europe (3 plays, 3 hrs)
16. Agricola (2 plays, 3 hrs)
17. Legendary Encounters: An Alien Deck Building Game (2 plays, 3 hrs)
18. Antiquity (1 play, 3 hrs) - Hands up if you're a Splotter fan.
19. Mansions of Madness (1 play, 3 hrs)
20. Through the Ages: A New Story of Civilization (1 play, 3 hrs) - I liked the minor tweaks done to this classic. I still haven't decided whether I should buy it. The old version works well enough for me.

Now this is a list of games which entered my collection in 2015.

1. Roll for the Galaxy
2. Samurai Spirit
3. Kobayakawa - A clever microgame which I could easily self-make, but I wanted to buy a copy because I really admired the design. I was surprised how much thinking could go into a game you play despite the very short rules.
   
4. Russian Railroads
5. Pandemic: The Cure
6. R / BraveRats - This was the self-made game. I made it so I could play it.
7. Hanafuda - I bought a 100 yen copy at Daiso when on holiday in Japan. I hadn't known about the existence of this traditional game. I still need to find a rule translation so that I can play.
8. Red7
9. Epic - I rarely participate in Kickstarter projects. I supported this one because of Star Realms and Rob Dougherty. That reminds me. The iPad version of Twilight Struggle which I supported in 2014 still hasn't materialised, despite being a Playdek project. I hope they will eventually get it done, before the end of 2016. It's Playdek dammit!
10. Machi Koro Deluxe - I had played so many games using Allen's copy that it felt wrong not to buy the deluxe version when it became available.
11. Ships - This was my guilty pleasure purchase of Essen 2015. I bought it because it was a Martin Wallace design, and it was part of his transportation series (which started with Automobile, a game I love). Thankfully the game was good.

I did order Food Chain Magnate but it hadn't arrived, so it didn't count towards 2015.

The next list are the New-to-Me games, and when I first played them in 2015.

1. Patchwork (2 Jan) - A pleasant and unusual two-player-only offering from Uwe Rosenberg (Agricola).
2. Arkwright (2 Jan)
3. Samurai Spirit (9 Jan)
4. Pandemic: The Cure (9 Jan)
5. Dead of Winter (9 Jan) - This was a big hit in 2014, and it was not bad indeed. I would enjoy playing this again.
6. R (13 Jan)
7. Guillotine (18 Jan)
8. Zhanguo (30 Jan)
9. Virgin Queen (1 Feb)
10. Machi Koro (2 Feb)
11. Lost Legacy: The Starship (6 Feb) - These two are sibling games to Love Letter, but somehow not as much fun.
12. Lost Legacy: Flying Garden (6 Feb)
13. Hyperborea (6 Feb)
14. Star Realms (10 Feb)
15. Roll for the Galaxy (15 Feb)
16. Pick-a-Pig (8 Mar)
17. BANG! (8 Mar) - I'm not 100% sure about this. I might have played this many years ago, before I started keeping records.
18. Thunder Alley (20 Mar)
19. New Amsterdam (27 Mar)
20. Kingsport Festival (27 Mar) - updated Kingsburg.
21. Hansa Teutonica: Brittania (17 Apr) - This gave me an urge to collect every Hansa Teutonica expansion, but then I don't even play the base game much now. So after a while, I forgot about it.
    
22. Alchemists (30 Apr) - A non Vlaada Chvatil game that feels a lot like his work. It's from the same publisher, so the style being similar is not surprising. It's innovative and quirky. It's built on an interesting premise. It's a refreshing experience. I'm still unsure about the game balance, and I'll need more plays to understand it better.
    
23. Madame Ching (22 May)
24. Targi (28 May)
25. Morels (28 May) - I liked this one. A good spouse game.
26. Toc Toc Woodman (9 Jun)
27. Ice Cream Combo (9 Jun)
28. Sheriff of Nottingham (19 Jun) - An updated version of that smuggling-goods-and-bribing-the-customs-officer game. It was very interactive. It was more about gaming the players than gaming the system.
29. Kobayakawa (19 Jun)
30. Lords of Scotland (3 Jul) - A card game based on numbers and colours, but it offers a rich experience due to the very strong powers of each colour.
31. Timbuktu (10 Jul)
32. Abluxxen (17 Jul) - An innovative card game which I don't know how to categorise, which is a good thing.
33. La Granja (17 Jul)
34. Pictomania (31 Jul) - An enjoyable real-time party game.
35. Viticulture (31 Jul) - Decent.
36. The Princes of Machu Picchu (7 Aug) - Mac Gerdts designs are good but somehow most don't really grab me. This one does.
37. Cubist (21 Aug)
38. 1812: The Invasion of Canada (22 Aug) - Simple and minimalistic mechanisms, yet it provides very good immersion.
39. Infiltration (4 Sep)
40. Mottainai (4 Sep) - A refined and streamlined Glory to Rome.
41. Abyss (11 Sep)
42. Imperial (18 Sep) - Mac Gerdts' magnus opus. It reminds me that I suck at stock-holding games.
43. Legendary Encounters: An Alien Deck Building Game (23 Sep)
44. Russian Railroads (24 Sep)
45. Red7 (26 Sep)
46. Mansions of Madness (30 Oct)
47. Epic (1 Nov) - Crazy card powers vs crazy card powers.
48. Through the Ages: A New Story of Civilization (10 Nov)
49. Food Chain Magnate (10 Nov) - Classic Splotter. It's unforgiving. Bad moves will kill you. You need to know what you're doing in order to stay in contention. This is not a game where everything you do will help you progress somewhat, and winning is a matter of being more efficient than others. In Food Chain Magnate you live and die by devising a strategy and executing it well. You really feel alive because you know your decisions matter a lot. They can make or break your game. If you feel lost, you are dead.
    
50. Ships (13 Nov) - You take small steps. You see cycles come and go. Ultimately it is the end game you need to prepare for. Everything you do is positioning yourself for the final showdown. Will you be ready? Are you timing your tempo right?
51. Codenames (13 Nov) - Now I understand why this was such a hit. It plays on the different personal backgrounds, past experiences, knowledge, perceptions and biases of players on the same team. It is the epic failures that makes this game funny, much more so than how cleverly crafted clues can be satisfying. This game forces you to be creative.
52. Celestia (20 Nov) - An updated Cloud 9, but I prefer the original because I'm stubborn that's why and get off my lawn!
53. Qwinto (20 Nov) - A thinky filler is an oxymoron, but this is indeed a thinky filler.
54. Broom Service (20 Nov) - An updated and built up Witch's Brew.
55. Roll Through the Ages: The Iron Age (27 Nov) - A variant which may tend to run a little long.

Now for my family. My wife Michelle had 78 plays of 39 distinct games in 2015. That was a big increase compared to 2014, and this surprised me. I hadn't realised she had been playing more. Her most played games were Roll for the Galaxy, Russian Railroads and Mystery Rummy 4: Al Capone and the Chicago Underworld. My elder daughter Shee Yun (10) had 98 plays of 41 distinct games. That was slightly less than the year before. Her most played games were Machi Koro, R (BraveRats) and Red7. Younger daughter Chen Rui (9) had 94 plays of 38 distinct games, which was slightly less than the year before too. Most played games were Machi Koro, Love Letter, R and Mystery Rummy 4: Al Capone and the Chicago Underworld.

The first thing I need to do in 2016? I need to catch up with the backlog at my blog!

Happy New Year and Happy Gaming!

Mansions of Madness

Plays: 5Px1.

The Game

Mansions of Madness is a Cthulhu mythology game. It is scenario-based, and the scenarios are one-overlord-vs-multiple-investigators affairs. Every scenario is a mystery, with the overlord setting up the solution and knowing how the scenario works, while at the start of the game the investigators don't even know what they need to do to win. The investigators need to look for clues to piece together the winning condition, and they need to achieve the winning condition before time runs out.

The scenario I played was from the Call of the Wild expansion. I have not played scenarios from the base game so I can't make comparisons. I just know the scenarios in the base game happen indoors, while in Call of the Wild the scenarios are outdoors.

Most players play investigators, and there are many characters to pick from. As an investigator you explore the map to search for clues, you encounter events and resolve them, you try to work out the objective of the scenario so that you can work towards victory. The overlord player is the dungeon master. He can summon monsters to attack the players. He gets to play bad events on the investigators. He manages the scenario, and he tries his best to prevent the players from winning.

The card at the top left is a character card with the basic information and stats. The two cards at the bottom are configurable traits of the character. You have options and you can select a specific combination that you like, or that you think will be most suitable for the scenario you're about to play. The card on the top right is an equipment card.

Those tiles at the top left are a minigame. When you encounter certain events, the overlord will set up such minigames for you to solve before you can proceed further. In this particular minigame you need to connect the start and end tiles, and you only have a limited number of moves per turn to turn the tiles or to swap their positions.

Our particular scenario started with the four map tiles in the lower left forming the initial play area. The two additional tiles in the upper right were added as we explored the edges of the map. Edges with cards mean you can explore and thus extend the map.

That one on the left is one of the monsters. The one on the right is one of the investigators. The investigator is in a shed now, and when she exits she will run into the monster.

This is an event card. It says you need to solve a puzzle (i.e. a minigame) before you can enter the location you are trying to access.

As the investigators explore more, the map area grows.

That disc is a non-player character (NPC) in our particular scenario. He is a source of clues.

The Play

Spoiler Alert: I will talk a little about the scenario I played. No specifics and no answers, but if you want to play this scenario completely fresh, you may want to skip this section and go straight to the next section - The Thoughts.

Ivan taught the game and played the overlord. Jeff, Sinbad, Kareem and I were the investigators. At the start of the scenario, we the investigators regained consciousness at a camp surrounded by a mysterious mist. We couldn't remember what happened or how we got there. We just had a nagging feeling that there was something important we needed to do. But what? There was a dodgy-looking stranger at our camp urging us to move. We had to keep questioning him for clues. He obviously knew something we needed to know. We kept him close as we explored the area, trying to figure out what it was we were supposed to do here. Our scenario had a countdown mechanism, so we knew time was not on our side. There was an urgency to quickly find out our mission.

The monsters summoned by Ivan in the early game were more annoyances than threats. We could kill them if we wanted to, but they were just distractions Ivan threw at us. Killing monsters was not how to win. We needed to focus on learning the winning condition, and then achieving it.

The clues we picked up were mostly mumbo jumbo. We could not make much of them. It took a while to collect enough mumbo jumbo for them to start making sense. And they still didn't make a lot of sense. We were mostly Eurogamers, so we applied more of our Eurogamer instincts than our Ameritrasher skills. We worked out that to win the game, we needed to bring one artifact off the map in one specific direction before the countdown ended. If we picked the wrong artifact or wrong direction, we would lose instantly. It was not just about beating the clock. We started the game with four artifacts. Now one of the them was consumable, i.e. if we used its power, it would be discarded from the game. Obviously that could not have been the key artifact. If it were, the investigators could have used it up before they realised that it was the key to winning. There was no way a scenario could be designed with such a flaw. It turned out that we were right (of course!). This was doing deduction based on our experience as gamers and the logic in game design. It was not based on being immersed in the story of the scenario. For the rest of the mystery, we had to rely on the written passages in the clue cards, i.e. the mumbo jumbo. We probably took them too much at face value, e.g. we just considered whether the clues were hinting at a particular artifact (or direction), but we didn't think deeply enough about whether the clues meant to tell us to pick that artifact or not to pick that artifact. At least in my case, that was the Eurogame mindset working. I hadn't immersed myself in the narration enough. At one point we, the investigators, made a wrong conclusion about the direction we should exit in, and Ivan reminded us to think deeper about the clues we had on hand. It was then we realised that a particular clue which we had thought meant to tell us to go in a particular direction actually meant to tell us not to go in that direction. Ooops! Communication breakdown!

Eventually we agreed on what the clues were trying to tell us. What remained was to get the job done before time ran out. At that point the board was infested with monsters. The big monsters were out too. We knew we had no time to fight them. We needed to run for it. I was a little thankful that we had "wasted" some effort in killing the little monsters in the early game. Otherwise there would have been even more of them around to drag us down at this crucial moment. I'm still not exactly sure how to balance between killing monsters to prevent a build-up, and ignoring them to focus on getting the scenario objective completed ASAP.

Kareem had a Spider-tingling feeling that our conclusion might be wrong. In Star Wars-speak that's "I have a bad feeling about this". There was another artifact which we had considered being possibly the artifact. Kareem hadn't completely dismissed it. However it was in a house far away from where we were, and that house was now a party house for monsters. Even if we could get to it and avoid getting eaten by the monsters, we likely wouldn't have time to bring it off the map. So we stuck to the plan. Well, mostly. Jeff, Sinbad and I ran in one direction with our prized artifact. Kareem went on a side quest. He ran towards the second artifact. A bold move, but eventually it just got him killed. Jeff, Sinbad and I managed to force our way through the tangle of monsters, and we succeeded in getting our artifact off the map. It was then time for the final reckoning. We got the direction right, but unfortunately Kareem's hunch turned out to be right. We had the wrong artifact all along. The real one was the one he died trying to extract.

Running with the wrong artifact, we got lost in the mist, and ended up back at camp, and we collapsed into unconsciousness. We came to only to find that we had forgotten why we were here, and what we were trying to do. We just had a nagging feeling that we had something important to do, and we had to do it quickly. Then a suspicious stranger walked up to us and said, "Hurry up!".

More and more monsters were popping up and we were starting to get overwhelmed.

The big ones were here now. These were a major pain. We didn't have to fight them, but even if we tried to leave their presence, we might still get injured because monsters get a free attack whenever you try to run away from them.

This was the climax. We were ready to exit the map with the artifact which we decided was the right one. It was the moment of truth. And.... truth hurts.

Game end. Kareem died a horrible death, torn to pieces by three monsters.

The Thoughts

The most important part of Mansions of Madness is the stories and the narration. To fully enjoy the game, you need to immerse yourself in the narration, and not play it as a mechanism-first game. You need to be imaginative. The system is much more than a mathematical problem. The flavour text is not just flavour text. It is part of the core of the game.

The solution to a scenario is variable. It is determined by the overlord when he sets up the game. The clue cards being used will differ depending on the solution the overlord decides upon. The map grows in different ways depending on how the exploration cards are distributed. So a scenario will rarely play the same the next time round. However if you have played a scenario, you will know much about it such that the second play will have fewer surprises. You will already have a rough idea what clues to watch out for and you may already be able to devise a general strategy. In fact if you see the same clue cards coming out again, you will know that the solution will be exactly the same as before. Thus, I would argue that a scenario is technically replayable, but in practice your subsequent plays will be less interesting. This may not be a problem. My copy of Tragedy Looper comes with 10 scenarios, and I haven't even done half of them.

Merry Christmas

... and have a great 2016 ahead!

Epic

Plays: 2Px2.

The Game

I supported Epic on Kickstarter because of Rob Dougherty. He was on the Ascension design team, and he designed Star Realms too. Both are games I enjoy. Epic is not a deck-building game, but you can customise your deck like other Collectible Card Games (CCG's). It doesn't have the booster pack business model like popular CCG's, e.g. Magic: The Gathering. That was one of the reasons I did not hesitate to support it. I wouldn't feel compelled to continue investing in the game system. I didn't have specific expectations. If it turned out to be something as good as Star Realms, i.e. a brisk card game with interesting card combos and decent strategy, I would be happy enough.

Epic feels like Magic: The Gathering, but that's based on my very limited understanding of Magic. The basic game is two players going head-to-head trying to defeat each other by reducing the opponent's health to zero. You deploy champions in front of you, and these champions can be used to attack your opponent or to protect you from attacks. One aspect is much simplified compared to Magic and even Hearthstone - the resource system. There is only one resource type - money. At the start of every player's turn, your money is reset to $1. That means on your turn you have $1 to spend, and on your opponent's turn you also have $1 to spend. If you spend it, good. If you don't, you've wasted it, because it won't accumulate. Next turn, you start with $1 again. Cards in the game either cost $1 to play, or they cost nothing. Very simple, but some players may feel something is lost due to this simplification. I think it's a good idea.

I made my own box, using an unused box I found at home. I wrapped the four sides with present paper, and then printed the cover of the original game box to be stuck on three of the sides. The original box can fit the 128 cards of the base game and the rulebook. However once I sleeved the cards, it was no longer possible to fit everything, not even close. Moreover I received many promos and mini expansions that were part of the successful crowdfunding effort.

There isn't a lot of extra space is this self-made box after I put everything in.

The original box is on the left.

Cards come in four colours (see icon at top left): yellow is good, red is evil, blue is science / tech, and green is nature. Cards of the same colour often boost the powers of one another, so if you play with a pre-built deck, you will want to focus on just a few colours and make good use of card combos. A legal deck has 30 cards. You are allowed to have up to 3 copies of the same card. So you can have only 10 different cards in your deck, three copies each. However to do this you need three copies of the game, because each game contains only one copy of every card.

There is an alternative win condition. If you exhaust your deck and need to draw, you win immediately. Normally you only draw one card at the start of your turn, but some cards let you draw more cards. Some card powers make you return cards to the bottom of your deck though. This extends the lifetime of your deck.

The combat mechanism is simple and similar to Magic. The active player gets to decide whether to attack, how many times to attack (as long as he has enough champions to do so) and how many champions to be involved in each attack. Each champion can only participate in one attack every turn, because after an attack they are either killed or exhausted. Upon being attacked, the passive player can decide whether to send champions to defend, and how many to send. As long as at least one defender engages the attacker or attackers, the player being attacked does not get injured. Any casualty will be between the attacking and defending champions. A champion dies if the damage it takes within the same turn reaches its health value. Else it fully heals at the start of the next turn.

The Play

I asked Shee Yun (10) to play with me. She has played Hearthstone and Star Realms before, so I said to her it's about the same. She handily defeated me in our first game.

We played twice, using the very basic rules. We randomly drew cards for our decks, since we didn't know the cards well anyway and didn't have any idea how to build a deck properly. My first impression of the game is: the cards are all very strong! Most of the time when I read a card, I start imagining the various terrific ways I can use it and many wonderful ways I can combine it with other cards. However, no matter how strong some cards may appear, it seems they will have their match. Also, no matter how powerful an opponent's attacking champion is, as long as you are willing to sacrifice a lowly defender every time it attacks, that champion can't hurt you at all. A high attack strength isn't everything.

In one particular game when things were starting to look bleak for me, I drew one card which would let me deal some damage to every champion, both Shee Yun's and mine. It was the perfect card for my situation, because she had many champions, but they all had low health values. My card would kill them all, while one of my high-health champions would live. I waited for the perfect time to play this card, and then suddenly she played one champion which could not be killed on her turn. I was stunned. I was on the verge of losing my last few health points, and my event card would have turned the tables. It was Shee Yun's turn, and I could not do anything to stop her recently deployed champion. It promptly destroyed me.

Epic is a game with dramatic twists of fate. Here's another story from our games. I had a very strong champion which had an extremely high health value of 30. I drew it early and was very pleased that I would have this champion fighting for me for a long time. It wouldn't be easy for Shee Yun to deploy enough champions to deal a total of 30 damage within one turn. Then to my utter shock she played an event card which not only killed my sturdy champion but also added its health value to her health total. She went from 30 health points to 60 health points. The champion which I thought was a godsend turned out to be a horrible curse.

That yellow coin doesn't come with the game. It's from a set of plastic poker chips I bought in Taiwan. The yellow coin is the $1. I use coins of other colours to denote the players' health points. Those two identical cards at the bottom are not regular cards. They are token cards, used to represent minor champions summoned by the players. The token cards form a separate pool which is shared by both players.

The cards played at an angle are newly deployed champions. They can't attack yet, and they can't use their special abilities yet. They can only block the opponent's attackers. They will be updated to normal status at the start of my next turn.

The Thoughts

Epic is a fast-paced player-vs-player head-to-head-fighting card game. The game system is fairly straight-forward. The cards are powerful and offer many opportunities for combos and clever play. There is still a lot more I need to explore and learn. For now I will say the first impression is positive, and early plays are promising. I think this game is very good value for money.

Red7

Plays: 2Px4, 3Px2, 4Px1.

The Game

I'm pretty sure Red7 is the result of Carl Chudyk seeing the recent trend of microgames and deciding he wanted in too, and what a pleasant surprise that result is. Red7 has 49 cards, numbered 1 to 7. There are seven cards for each number, and they come in seven different colours - the colours of the rainbow. When comparing two cards, naturally the higher numbered card wins. When the numbers are the same, you compare colour, and the colour closer to the red end of the spectrum wins. So Red 7 is the strongest card, followed by Orange 7, Yellow 7 and so on. The weakest card is Purple 1.

I am very pleased with the component design. The cardboard insert fits one deck of cards nicely, but once you sleeve the cards, they won't fit anymore (this photo). However if you remove the cardboard insert, everything fits perfectly! See the next photo.

Perfect!

In the basic game, the objective is to be the last man standing. Everyone starts with seven cards, and a random card in the play area in front of him. The player with the strongest card in his play area is the current strongest player. On your turn, you execute one action, and you must end your turn with yourself being the strongest. Else you are not allowed to take your action at all and you lose immediately. You have three options on your turn. (1) Play a card into your play area. (2) Play a card onto the discard pile. This may change the domination rule, i.e. the rule which determines who is strongest. The domination rule changes depending on the colour you play. E.g. orange means whoever has the most cards of the same number is strongest. Blue means whoever has the most cards of different colours is strongest. (3) Do both - play a card into your play area, then play a card onto the discard pile. Naturally choosing the third option means you are using two cards, which is costly. Players take turns taking actions. Eventually one by one they will be eliminated because they are unable to modify the game situation to make themselves strongest. The last remaining player wins. In case you use up all your cards, the next time your turn comes again, you automatically lose.

This reference card lists the seven colours and their corresponding domination rule.

I have just described the basic rules. It takes about 5 minutes to play a game using the basic rules. In the full game, two aspects are added, and the game is longer. The first aspect added is scoring. You play a number of hands, as opposed to just one hand. The winner of a hand scores points, and the game only ends when one player reaches a target score. When a hand ends, the winner scores the cards in his play area which meet the current domination criteria. E.g. if the domination rule is most even numbered cards, then the winner picks up all the even numbered cards from his play area and puts them in his score pile. This means some cards are removed from the game, which will affect the subsequent hands. Due to this scoring rule, it is now a valid strategy to concede during a hand. Sometimes even though you are able to play cards to make yourself strongest and thus stay in the game, you may want to concede instead and let your opponent win with a low score. You can avoid the risk of losing anyway later and allowing your opponent to score big. This is damage control.

The second aspect added is drawing cards. In the basic game you never draw cards. In the full game, whenever you play a card to the discard pile, you may draw a card. If the number you play is higher than the number of cards in your play area, you draw a card from the draw deck. This means it is easier to draw cards in the early game. It gets harder as the game progresses because you will have more and more cards in your play area. This card drawing aspect creates another layer of strategy.

In addition to the basic rules and the full rules, there is also a variant rule, where some cards have special abilities. I have not tried that yet so I can't comment.

The Play

The rules are simple. The number of actions you actually get to do is very low - at most seven in the basic game. However this little filler can be quite thinky. The moment you see your hand of cards, you need to analyse it and strategise how to play the current hand. What kind of tableau should you build? Which cards will you use for building up your play area, and which will you play to the discard pile to modify the domination rule? Once the hand gets going, you need to consider how others are building their play areas, and you need to adjust your strategy accordingly. There are seven different domination rules, so even if you can't beat the others in some of them, hopefully you can find others which can help you survive. There is some luck. If you get a good hand, winning can be very easy. However it is when your get a lousy or mediocre hand that things become interesting, because that's where the challenge lies. That's when you really need to think hard and try your best to "make lemonade".

The rules are simple enough to play with children. There is some strategic depth, so younger children may not grasp all of it, even if they can follow the rules. They just may not do as well as the adults.

I have three cards in my play area. If the domination rule is highest card, I will be dominant because of my Red 7. If the domination rule is having the most of one number, I will be in a good position too because of my two 7's.

Shee Yun (10) likes the game and we have played the full game a few times. She understands the strategies and jas beaten me a few times.

She plays a yellow card to the discard pile to change the domination rule.

The cards tucked under the reference card are scored cards, i.e. they are now out of circulation.

The Thoughts

Red7 is a compact, unique game. Short, yet a little thinky. I prefer the full game, which requires playing a few hands. It is no longer a microgame when played in this format, but it has a bit more strategic depth this way. If you want to play it as a filler, go for the basic game. It still gives you some challenge and something to chew on. The game is most satisfying when you get to the point where you are able to analyse and plan upon looking at the hand you are dealt. That is the point where you appreciate the quirks of the game. There is some luck, but I don't mind it in such a short game. In fact I think being too lucky is no fun. It is when your cards are mediocre that you feel challenged and you need to work hard to do well.

miscellaneous: Love Letter, Ascension, Essen, New Through the Ages

I started a new job a few months ago, and work has been busy. My blogging has been impacted. My backlog is growing. There are often many photos queuing up to be included in my blog posts. I try to maintain some regularity, but I don't force myself to write. Blogging is something I want to enjoy doing. It should not become a chore. My new work takes much energy. It is engaging and it is satisfying. However I tell myself I mustn't allow myself to put too much time and energy into my work to the detriment of other aspects of my life - my family, my friends, and of course boardgames. Sometimes on weekday nights or on weekends I am tempted to turn on my laptop and continue to work on a piece of work I have been halfway through at the office. I need to remind myself there are other things I should allocate time for.

My new work is related to games, so I have a valid reason (*cough* perfect excuse *cough*) to bring boardgames to the office to play with my colleagues. The biggest hit so far is Love Letter. My homemade copy has an Adventure Time theme. Now my colleagues intend to make one with a Chibi Maruko-chan theme. It will be interesting to see how it turns out.

There was one particularly memorable game when Teck Seng played a 3 on Ruby, i.e. they were to compare cards and whoever lost would be out of the round. They both looked quite confident, but the moment they saw each other's cards, they started laughing. The loser had to reveal the losing card. Ruby flipped her card over, and it was a 7! That meant Teck Seng's card was an 8! They probably both thought they would win, because they had high cards. Who would have expected that this fight would end up getting them both eliminated. Since Teck Seng's identity was leaked, he was soon targeted and forced out of the round. Everyone who plays Love Letter falls in love with it!

I have now played more than 1000 games of Ascension, all on iOS. I have never played the physical copy. Ascension was my train game. I could play it very casually, usually when on the train to or from work. Now that I need to drive to work, I still manage to play a few turns everyday when I have short breaks. Despite the many plays, I don't feel like an expert. I have never had any epiphany worth sharing.

Star Realms was my other train game, and is still my current casual phone game. It is designed by Rob Dougherty, one of the designers of Ascension. I've hit 200 plays now, and similar to Ascension, I don't feel I play it well enough to be able to discuss strategy in depth. I supported the Kickstarter campaign of the recent game from Rob Dougherty - Epic. I have now received the game and so far have played it twice. Now it's in my to-blog-list queue.

What are your top to-watch games from the 2015 Essen batch? I have two this year, Food Chain Magnate from Splotter, and Ships by Martin Wallace. I am happy to have played both. I have bought a copy of Ships. I'm still thinking about Food Chain Magnate. I like it. It's a good game. But I worry it may end up being like The Great Zimbabwe - not getting played much. The game is not cheap too, considering the Malaysian currency exchange rate and the shipping cost. Looking back at the 2014 Essen batch, two games that stood out for me were Panamax and Tragedy Looper. I had played the former once, and the latter twice, and before I could play them again, Essen 2015 had come and gone. There are just too many good games!

A new improved version of Through the Ages was release this Essen. I am still thinking whether I should get it. It is 95% the same. There are very few rule changes. Some cards are rebalanced. It's very easy to pick up if you already know the previous version. Physical component design and artwork are improved. The whole thing is prettier. On Deepavali Day, Jeff organised a full-day gaming session at Boardgamecafe.net. I hadn't done any long gaming session for quite a while, so I grabbed the opportunity. It felt good spending 9 hours boardgaming. We did Through the Ages and then Food Chain Magnate.

Through the Ages. Some cards which did not have drawings in the earlier version now have drawings. They look much better.

Printing the starting cards directly on the player board is an excellent idea. This has been implemented before in previous editions of the game, but my copy is a very old edition and still uses individual cards.

I usually play Through the Ages with my wife, and we play a no-aggression variant. Because of this my game is distorted. This time, playing with Jeff, Ainul and Dith, was very different. The normal game, i.e. needing to worry more about military, was something I needed to adapt to. The higher player count was also new to me. In two ages, we exhausted the military deck and had to reshuffle the discard pile to form a new draw deck. This also meant every event had been drawn by at least one player, just that we didn't know for sure who, and we had to guess whether a particular event card had been seeded into the event deck, or was being held in hand, or had been discarded and might get drawn again. Knowledge of events became even more important.

I played rather poorly. I was a despot until about mid game, so my government was rather inefficient. Dith went culture-heavy right from the start, and had a huge lead over the rest of us. Jeff did better than Ainul and I in catching up, and eventually overtook Dith to win the game. Ainul and I never quite managed to catch up to the two of them.

One of the changes in this edition is the game board being broken up into five smaller boards. You can arrange these boards whichever way suits you best.

There are stickers for the player markers. They look good.

If you look at the yellow culture board (i.e. victory point board) you can see that Dith (red) is far ahead of us. Jeff is blue and is a distant second place. Ainul (yellow) and I (green) are close, and we take up the rear.

In this version I finally see Sid Meier's name and picture. In my version he is just Game Designer and a silhouette. Maybe the publisher explicitly asked for his permission to use his name and face.

This is the military board. One of the rules changes is related to the tactics cards. In previous versions, a tactics card is played in front of you and stays there until you play a new tactics card. Now a tactics cards you play only stays exclusively yours for one round. After that you still enjoy the benefit, but the card is moved to this military board, and other players can spend military actions to adopt the same tactic as you. This is very thematic.

One reason why Through the Ages works well as a spouse game for me is that military is still very relevant even if I don't play aggressions or wars. It is still important because of events and because you need military for colonisation. The game isn't thrown completely off balance when I take out aggressions and wars. In this recent game I played, I had much more pressure to maintain a strong military because otherwise I could be targeted by three other opponents.

The four-player game was slow. Normally before my turn came I had already decided how to spend most of my actions. I arranged my cards and civil action tokens this way to remind myself what I had planned to do. Then I could play quickly when my turn came.

I emphasised science in this game. You can see the leaders Newton and Einstein in this photo. In the ancient age I had Aristotle as my leader.

This was my civilisation at game-end. I only had two wonders of the world (purple cards) - the hanging gardens and the first space flight.

The final scores: Jeff 246, Dith 242, me 222, Ainul 203. Since the scores are in the 200's, this is not really a big gap.