Nippon

The Game

Nippon, designed by Paula Soledade and Nuno Bizarro Sentieiro, was released in 2015. Recently I also played another game by them - Madeira - which was a 2013 game. I never followed this designer duo closely, though their names are certainly familiar. Having played two of their games recently, and enjoying them both, I decided to look up what else they had designed. To my surprise Panamax (2014), which I had played before and enjoyed immensely, was also by them. I had forgotten about this. I guess I will be paying more attention to them from now on.

The background story of Nippon is the Meiji Restoration in Japan, which started in 1868. You play the role of industrial conglomerates, developing new industries and producing goods to be supplied to both local markets and overseas markets. This is a point scoring game. There are three stages, and at the end of each there is an area majority scoring depending on how well you have supplied goods to local markets. At game end, you score points based on how well you have developed your industrial empire. Other than these, throughout the game there are also a few other ways you score points.

The main game board featuring a map of Japan.

Let's talk about the core mechanism. On your turn, you have two options - claim a worker, or consolidate. If you claim a worker, you take it from the action table (see above) and place it on your player board. You then perform an action in the column from which you took the worker. Workers come in different colours, and you will want to claim workers in as few colours as possible. Taking workers in many colours costs more money, and money is tight is this game.

These two above are player boards. Along the top are six spaces for you to place workers you've claimed. I (blue) had claimed three workers, two white and one yellow. If you want to claim workers on consecutive turns, you can do it at most 6 times, because you only have 6 spaces. Eventually you'll need to do consolidation. Consolidation is kind of like pay day. You dismiss all the workers from your player board, by paying $3,000 per colour. During consolidation, you also discard any cash and coal on hand, and then you earn cash and coal based on your income level (yellow track) and mining level (black track). You earn income before paying for the workers. That's why fewer colours is important. You want to have as much money left as possible for your next few turns of claiming workers to perform actions.

The tempo of worker-worker-worker-etc-then-consolidate depends a lot on how long your money and coal can last until you need to consolidate again. It also depends somewhat on your appetite for many colours. Sometimes you decide to consolidate earlier because if you take yet another colour, you're going to be too poor the next cycle.

One crucial thing you do during consolidation is claiming a scoring tile to place on your player board. This picture above shows the scoring table at the bottom of your player board. It shows 9 aspects of your industrial empire which will give you points at game end. Scoring tiles you claim and place here determine how much each aspect is worth to you. Tiles once placed are permanent and cannot be changed. Tile values range from x2 to x5 VP, and quantities are limited. The more workers you have when consolidating, the higher valued the scoring tile you get to claim.

In the picture above, at the top left corner, you'll score 3VP per $6,000 leftover. At the bottom right corner, you'll score 5VP per pair of contracts fulfilled.

As the game progresses, players have to plan for and commit to the end game scoring. Watch how your opponents are going to score, so that you know how to hinder them. Watching this also helps you decide where to compete and what to avoid.

Let's look at the action table again. Many actions require money, e.g. improving tech (white track), improving mining level (black track), building factories, building trains, and installing machinery at factories. Most of the actions eventually lead to producing goods, and goods have two end points. They are either supplied to local markets, mainly to get you influence points, or they are sold overseas, fulfilling contracts.

On the main game board the Japanese isles are divided into four regions, and each region is set up with two large squares showing products which are in demand. There are 6 types of products, ranging from low tech to high tech. When you supply goods to a region, you get to place your influence markers (the small squares in player colours - blue, red and yellow). At the end of each of the three stages of the game, you compare influence levels at each region to do scoring. There are some numbers pre-printed on the board. These represent the influence of overseas companies. When doing scoring, overseas companies compete too. When players place influence markers, they may cover the influence values of the overseas companies. Eventually as more and more of these numbers are covered, the influence of overseas companies dwindles.

In this picture above, the table in the upper half shows the victory points that will be scored by the top three companies in a region, for stages 1 to 3. Overseas companies compete as one entity. The table in the lower half shows what influence marker you can place by supplying how many units of which product type to the local market.

The other end use of products is selling them overseas, also known as fulfilling contracts. In the picture above, those eight tiles at the top are the contracts. The top half of a contract specifies how many different product types are required, and how many units of each type. The bottom half specifies the rewards, which can be cash, income level and/or victory points. The income level reward is important, because this gives you more money every time you consolidate.

Those red squares in the second row are influence markers. Quantities in each value are limited, so you need to use them wisely.

The third row are the factories. The number in the black cube on the upper right side of a factory specifies how many units of coal are required to activate the factory to produce one batch of goods (default is 1 unit). If you have additional machinery installed, your factory may produce up to 3 units at a time. A factory may store at most 4 units. If the warehouse is full, you can't produce more. Icons at the bottom left indicate the special ability of a factory. These are powerful and you must choose carefully.

On the left you of this picture can see the worker supply area, and along the bottom, the progress track with a white progress marker. Whenever the workers in one of the action table columns are exhausted, you refill by taking a group of workers from the supply area. Whenever the supply area is exhausted, the white progress marker advances one step. There are three marks along the progress track which indicate when a stage ends. The last three spaces of the progress track are yellow instead of green. What this means is the marker advances once per round (i.e. after every player takes a turn), instead of when the worker supply area is exhausted. These will be the last few rounds of the game. You will have only 3 actions left and you had better be prepared for this.

The Play

Allen, Han and I played on BoardGameArena. We played twice. The first time round we made many silly mistakes and did not play very efficiently. The second time round we had a better idea and scored much higher than our first game.

The pace is fast. What you do within a turn is simple. The players' cycles will diverge, and that can create interesting situations. You often need to consider the worker colours you want to take, and also what colours your opponents have taken or will likely take. Sometimes you compete, sometimes you avoid the competition. Often you need to have a rough plan what you are going to do throughout your current workers-then-consolidate cycle. You know how much money and coal you have on hand. They more or less limit how many things you can do.

There is a strong feeling of a development game. You are building your industrial empire bit by bit. You work towards producing goods, and you use them to win victory points.

This is a game in which you are constantly juggling between staying flexible and committing. You want to stay flexible because you want to compete effectively, but the game forces you to make commitments when there is still uncertainty in the future. Which aspects will you focus your scoring on? Are others going to compete aggressively with you in those aspects? You watch your opponents closely. They too need to make such commitments, and adjust their play.

At the bottom right of this picture, Allen's brown and black factories have no special abilities (no icons at the lower left). What's special about these factories is they need less coal to activate compared to their counterparts. That's their special ability.

The two rows at the bottom are factories not yet built. There are many options, and thus many different special abilities to ponder. Normally you'll start with the low tech factories (yellow and white), because you don't have much tech in the early game.

I (blue) had claimed 5 workers, and still remained at 2 colours, red and purple, which was good. In this particular game I aimed to complete as many contracts as possible. I had already completed four at this time (those with green ticks). In my scoring table you can see I had placed a x5 scoring tile for contract completion.

At each of the 4 regions, there are 8 rectangular spaces for trains and ships. Trains give additional influence value, and help players compete. Ships are worth 2VP at each scoring, provided you are most or second most influential.

The white progress marker was on the third space, which means the first stage scoring had just concluded. I (blue) had pressed on to trigger this scoring early, because the situation then was very beneficial to me. In the 2nd and 4th regions only I had influence (other than the overseas companies), so I would score the 2nd place VP with very little effort spent. Allen had many products he could supply to the local market, and I sped up the progress to trigger scoring before he could do so.

This was a typical first stage scoring. Overseas companies were still very strong, coming in first everywhere.

By the third stage scoring, the situation was completely different. The overseas companies were weak now. I did very poorly this time, scoring much less than Allen and Han.

The end game scoring makes up a big part of your final score, so you need to prepare for it well.

Han (red) had claimed 6 workers, so on his next turn he must do consolidation. Having claimed 6 workers means he would be able to claim a x5 scoring tile when he consolidated next turn.

The Thoughts

Nippon requires agility. What leaves the biggest impression on me is how you are constantly torn between needing to commit to how you'll score points at game end, and wanting to stay flexible for as long as possible. It is like running a startup business. You have to confidently commit to your customers that you will deliver the goods, while you frantically juggle all the dirty work to get things done. There is no comfort zone. You are driving at full speed and the path ahead is only partially mapped out. At the same time you have to contend with these monkeys (other players) throwing spanners in the works. All the time you need to watch what your opponents are doing. The area majority scoring means you can't escape competition. You have to fight. This is a game with high player interaction.

You have the feeling of progress and achievement, because a large part of the game is a development game. You build your industrial conglomerate, constructing factories, installing machinery, learning new techs, increasing mining capacity etc. The worker-then-consolidate cycle is an interesting mechanism which creates opportunities for clever tactical play.

Ticket To Ride: London

The Game

I'm a minor collector of the Ticket To Ride series. My wife Michelle likes the series. I don't own all the expansions, but I have more than enough to occupy us. Currently there are two short versions, Ticket To Ride: New York and Ticket To Ride: London. They have smaller maps, fewer trains, and they take a shorter time to play. They work well for newbies. The full Ticket To Ride game is already a newbie-friendly game. These shorter versions work just as well, within a shorter time.

Box cover on the left, rulebook on the right. The rulebook is designed to look like a travel brochure, which is nice.

The box insert is well designed. The player colours are red, blue, white and purple. Red, blue and white are colours of the UK flag.

Instead of trains, you get London double decker buses. Each player gets only 17 buses, compared to 45 trains in the original game. That's less than half!

The full map. The score track along the edges is made of bus tickets.

The two columns on the left are the train cards (called transportation cards in this version). The joker is the iconic double decker. My favourite is the yellow submarine. The traditional black cab is a nice touch too.

The rightmost column is the ticket cards. The basic gameplay is similar to standard Ticket To Ride. However at the start of the game, you draw two instead of three tickets, and you must keep at least one. During play, if you decide to draw tickets, you also draw two, and you must also keep at least one.

I like the decorations on the board, like this Sherlock Hotel room key near the Baker Street station.

The longest route on the map is 4-trains (to be precise, 4-buses). The route point values are the same as standard Ticket To Ride.

The main reason I bought Ticket To Ride: London is Michelle used to study and live in London, near Elephant & Castle.

The stations on the London map are numbered. This is related to a new mechanism. If you connect all stations of the same number, you get to score bonus points of that value. There are three blue stations on the board with the number 3. If I connect Waterloo to Globe Theatre, and also Globe Theatre to Elephant & Castle, at game end I will score 3VP. There is no longer any 10VP bonus for the player with the longest route. This is one difference from the standard game.

The Play

The 2-player game is a little loose and easy. Less chances of getting into each other's way. Workable, but I think the game is better with more than two.

You only have 17 buses, and that is an important consideration. At the start of the game when you draw those two tickets, you may find it impossible to fulfil both of them, because you'd need more than 17 buses. There is a feeling of danger in London because of this. During play, if you draw tickets and find yourself unable to fulfil either one, you are royally screwed. If you are low on buses, you really must think twice before drawing tickets.

I (white) had completed one long ticket. I didn't have many buses left, and decided to use them to connect those #2 and #3 stations for the station bonuses.

Coincidentally every time Michelle played, she (red) connected to the Elephant & Castle station.

There are only two #1 stations on the board, and they are only one bus apart, thus easy to connect. Still, 1VP is VP.

Shee Yun and Chen Rui played with us. We did a full 4-player game. The 4-player game was more exciting because we easily got into one another's way.

If you are forced to reroute on the London map, you are in big trouble. Sometimes it's a death sentence, because you may not have enough buses left. In this game, elder daughter Shee Yun intentionally blocked Michelle. Michelle was only one 1-bus route away from getting to where she wanted to go, and Shee Yun placed a bus to block her. As a result Michelle had to reroute, needing to spend 5 buses instead. 5 buses out of a total of 17 is a big deal.

In this photo you can see a 1-bus route with two possible connections, pink and black. It's between a green 2 and a black 1 station. That was one route I needed for completing one of my tickets. I collected a black train card so that I could claim that route. Before I did so, Chen Rui announced that she would be claiming that route. She was going to use a joker for it, and she asked whether anyone at the table needed specifically the pink part or the black part of the route, because if anyone needed one of them, she was willing to take the other one so as not to block him/her. That was mighty considerate of her. I didn't want to say anything. I didn't want to take advantage of that. I let her randomly decide. Unfortunately for me, she picked black, which was what I needed. I didn't manage to get a pink card in time before the game ended. I couldn't complete my ticket and was penalised.

From this you can see the difference in behaviour of the children. Shee Yun is more competitive, while Chen Rui is more laid back.

With 4 players, the board gets crowded. Michelle needed to go from Waterloo to Big Ben, and because Shee Yun blocked her, she had to take a detour via Elephant & Castle.

The Thoughts

Before playing the game, I expected it to be super simple and nothing serious. Now that I have played it, I found it to be different from what I expected. Yes, it is shorter, but there are still strategic considerations. I find it somewhat more exciting than Ticket To Ride. You only have 17 buses. It is as if you are playing the crucial and climactic final quarter of a tight Ticket To Ride game. Any mistake can cost you the game. Ticket To Ride: London has a sense of urgency which makes regular Ticket To Ride feel leisurely in comparison. I had expected Ticket To Ride: London to be inferior (sorry), but that's not the case at all. It's not a dumbed down, simpler version. It's a condensed and tighter version.

more plays of Exit: The Game

By now I have played 9 games in the Exit: The Game series. I like them well enough, but I'm not a particularly big fan (I know, after 9 games, that doesn't sound convincing). Exit is a good family activity. I played all nine with my wife and children. These three - The Mysterious Museum, The Sinister Mansion and Dead Man on the Orient Express - were bought in Sep 2019. They were unplayed for a rather long time. I only played them in May 2020, all three of them. The COVID-19 Movement Control Order in Malaysia started mid March. I had plenty of opportunities since then to play the games, since everybody was stuck home almost all the time. Maybe the games were out of sight and thus out of mind, so it was only in May that we brought them out to play.

The Mysterious Museum is of difficulty level 2 (of 5). The difficulty levels of the three games in this batch are 2, 3 and 4, so naturally I started with 2 and progressed from there. I wanted to build up to a climax. Level 2 was indeed easy, especially since we had played 6 other Exit games before. We already had a grasp of the styles of the puzzles and the typical tricks. We managed to complete The Mysterious Mansion within 1 hour without much difficulty.

The background stories in the Exit series are somewhat linked. They are written in such a way that they assume you have played previous games in the series (which is true for me). So you have experienced many dangerous situations from which you needed to escape. You keep getting yourself into such situations. The story writer pokes fun at that - why do you keep getting yourself into trouble? For people who have indeed played previous games, the references to those previous games are relatable and humourous. For people playing a game in the series for the first time, no harm done.

When I play I prefer to use the timer in the official app, because of the background sound effects. It's quite atmospheric. Younger daughter Chen Rui finds the background sound effects scary and asks me to lower the volume.

The Sinister Mansion (Level 3) took us more than an hour. I had thought with our experience we would complete it within an hours, since Level 3 is medium difficulty.

Dead Man on the Orient Express (Level 4) was of course inspired by Agatha Christie's detective novel Murder on the Orient Express. This Exit game has something a little different from others in the series. There really is a crime you have to solve based on clues you collect throughout the game, e.g. accounts given by the suspects, objects you collect, details you observe. In usual Exit games you are basically solving ten puzzles. There are logic puzzles, word puzzles, puzzles based on patterns and shapes, and mathematical puzzles. In Dead Man on the Orient Express, you get these puzzles too, but they all build up to an overarching crime you need to solve. When you solve certain puzzles, you gain access to the cabins of specific passengers, in which you will find more clues to help you solve the crime. This is a nice thematic touch.

If you have read the original story, don't fret. It wouldn't spoil this game for you. You get a very similar setting, but the story and the details are different.

If you are a casual Exit games player and do not intend to play every single one, then I recommend this, because it's something a little different, and it's challenging enough. I think as a general rule, if you have played games in the series and already have some familiarity, don't go for games at Level 1 or 2. They would be too easy for experienced players.

Dead Man on the Orient Express despite being a Level 4 game did not feel as hard as I expected. It was about the same difficulty as The Sinister Mansion (Level 3). It still took us about an hour and a half to complete, and we did need to use hints.

Daughters Shee Yun and Chen Rui now play the Exit games with Michelle and I as equals. It is no longer two adults leading two children. In fact sometimes they take the lead, and we are happy to let them do so. Often they are the ones who come up with the solutions.

Madeira

The Game

The Madeira island group is Portugal's earliest colony during the Age of Exploration. It was a launch pad for Portugese colonisation, the first stop for many expeditions.  The game Madeira is based on this period in history and the role played by this island group. You develop the islands, and use their resources to help Portugal expand its colonial empire. This is a heavy Eurogame. You win by scoring the most points.

This is a complex game, and it's challenging to summarise what it's like. When I first looked at the board and the interface of this computer implementation, I found it overwhelming. I will just touch on a few things that left the biggest impression on me.

There are only two islands on the board, one of which is divided into northern and southern halves. So there are a total of three regions. The regions produce wood, wheat, sugar and wine. Many plantations are initially forests. Only when the trees are felled do they transform into plantations. To harvest resources, you need to place workers onto the forests or plantations, and you need to perform the harvest action. At the end of Round 2, some wheat fields transform to become sugar plantations. In Round 4, some sugar plantations become wine plantations. This is historical flavour integrated into gameplay.

You have workers and you have ships in your personal supply. You deploy them onto different parts the board to do various things, e.g. gaining resources, making money, scoring points, obtaining privileges. There is a cost in deploying workers and ships. Every round you must feed them. Workers eat bread. Ships consume wood - you need to maintain them. If you fail to pay such maintenance fees for workers or ships, you will take penalty in the form of pirate points. At game end, players lose victory points based on their rankings in pirate points. This intricate balance between deploying your pieces and making sure you can afford to do so reminds me of Antiquity and Agricola. You are playing the game on a slippery slope and you need to be careful to stay afloat. The pressure is on right from the start.

The game is played over 5 rounds. At the start of the game and the start of every round, you will pick a scoring tile. Each scoring tile lets you score victory points based on a specific criteria. At the end of the first round you already need to pick one of the two scoring tiles you have at that point to score. Once scored, the tile is discarded. At the end of the third round, you score two of your tiles on hand. At game end, you score all three on hand. These scoring tiles will account for most of your victory points in the game. Your strategy revolves around them. Fighting for player order is important because it determines who gets to pick a scoring tile first. You must watch your opponents' scoring tiles so that you know how to hinder them. Sometimes you want to force your opponents to take scoring tiles which are bad for them. The scoring criteria include spending money for points, merchant ships scoring points, colony ships scoring points, and unused privileges scoring points.

The two sections at the lower right are the colony section and the market section. You get to deploy ships here. To deploy a colony ship you must pay wine (purple). You'll receive some benefit immediately. To deploy a merchant ship, you pay wheat, sugar or wine, and the reward is cold hard cash. During the scoring phase, if you have the right scoring tiles, your ships will score points.

The three rows at the lower left are three cities. When you deploy workers here, you gain bread, money or wood. The more workers you have here, the more resources you will collect. If you have the right scoring tile, presence at cities will score points.

In this screenshot above, those square tiles in the second rows under each player name are the privilege tiles. They have a variety of powers, and they are single-use. Some actions in the game let you reset these tiles, thus allowing you to use them again.

In addition to colony ships, you may deploy workers to the colony section on the right side of the board. These workers become colonists, and they produce resources for you every round. Just don't forget you'll need bread to feed them every round too.

The Play

The grand strategy in Madeira is centred around the six scoring tiles you will claim and score at different times in the game. You must manipulate this and adjust your play to match the scoring tiles you end up with. There are many tactical considerations in the game. Many of the actions in the game are linked with others, and thus have far-reaching implications. This is not an easy game to digest.

Dice are used to create some randomness and conflicting needs. They affect the costs of some actions and the risks of taking pirate points. There is a worker placement element. The number of times a particular action can be taken in a round is limited. If it is important to you, you'd better do it sooner rather than later, especially if you need to do it more than once. There is much decision angst, because there are often a few things you want to do, and you know when you choose one over another, you may not get to do that other one later on. The game has meaningful and difficult decisions, not those superficial ones where you can easily tell which the best option is.

The Thoughts

I wasn't optimistic when I started learning and playing the game. It looked like a mess to me - over convoluted. I was wary whether this was going to be yet another highly complex game jam-packed with mechanisms and rules but no soul. As I played, I gradually discovered the story and the character in the design. I like the sense of urgency and desperation in trying to feed your workers and maintain your ships. It is an intricate balance trying to deploy as many workers and ships as you can, but not too many that it causes more harm than it helps. You have to either afford the maintenance cost, or afford to take the pirate points penalty for not paying the maintenance cost. I also like how wood gets depleted, and how wheat fields turn to sugar plantations and sugar plantations to wine plantations. There is a feeling of living through history and watching an age progress.

The game has high player interaction. Many aspects of the game are tightly integrated, and this creates competition. It is hard to avoid competing. Madeira is for the heavy Eurogamer.

Keyflower

I played Keyflower for the first time during the COVID-19 Movement Control Order period in Malaysia. It is not a new game. It's just that I never found a time to try it out. Since we couldn't go out to meet people for boardgame sessions, Allen, Han and I arranged to play online using BoardGameArena.

The Game

A big part of the game is the bidding mechanism. The game is played over 4 rounds, and the first half of a round is bidding for (mostly) tiles. Your currency is workers, and they come in four different colours. Red, yellow and blue are regular workers. Green is rare workers which you can only get under special circumstances.

The first person who bids on an item decides which colour will be used. Subsequent bidders trying to outbid him must use workers of the same colour. This makes green workers very powerful and valuable. When you use green, others may not have enough green workers to outbid you, or may not think it worthwhile.

Tiles that you win through the bidding are added to your village, which starts with one village centre tile. You also bid for player order. At the top left you can see three ships with workers and tools. These are resources which will enter the game next round. Based on player order, you will pick which set of resources to claim next round.

At the bottom are our villages. We had just started growing them. The tiles have various powers, e.g. producing resources, converting resources. To use the power of a tile, you just need to place a worker (or more) on it. You may already start using the power of a tile that is still in the common pool and not yet claimed by anyone. You may also use a tile already in another player's village, just that the worker you place there will become his next round.

The tiles are double-sided. You may upgrade them to the more powerful side by spending resources. Also you gain victory points when upgrading a tile to the other side. To do this upgrade, you need to not only have the necessary resources, you also need to deliver them to that tile. Some tiles generate resources. Sometimes you gain resources at your village centre. You need to perform deliveries to transport resources to the desired destinations. Deliveries are simply one type of tile power. The village centre has such a power, but it is not strong. You usually need more tiles with delivery powers if you want to be competitive.

Some tiles are for end-game scoring. Everyone gets three such scoring tiles at the start of the game, and they are kept secret from other players. You get to plan ahead based on these tiles. In the screenshot above, this scoring tile gives me 10pts for every set of three different tools. At the start of Round 4, everyone must pick at least one scoring tile from his hand to be added to the bidding pool. You have had time to plan to fulfill the scoring criteria, so usually you will be aiming for those tiles you add to the pool. However it is not guaranteed that you will get these tiles. You still need to win them through the bidding process. Usually you'll try to release tiles which are helpful to you but not to your opponents. This way they are less motivated to fight you for these tiles. However if some tiles are too good for you, your opponents may be forced to compete just to deny you, even if the tiles don't help them much.

After winning some tiles, your next problem will be where to place them. This stage of a round is a little like Carcassonne. The sides of the tiles must match up. Road with road, river with river, field with field. You want your village to be compact to minimise delivery distances. You want to be efficient. Sometimes tile placement affects scoring. Ideally even when bidding you should already plan where you'll be placing the tiles you will potentially win.

The village in the centre is Allen's. At one point he messed up his planning, and his village expanded in an unwieldy fashion.

This particular scoring tile gives you 12pts straight, without needing to fulfill any criteria.

I had added to the pool one scoring tile which was particularly important to me - the tile which would give me 10pts per set of 3 different tools. I had been saving up my tools for it. Unfortunately Allen competed for it and won it. That tile would probably have given me 30pts, and that would be about half my total score. When I bid for the tile, I was stingy and tried to win it with a low bid. Allen knew it was important to me, and he outbid me. I did not have enough workers to continue the fight. I lost the forest because I went cheap on one tree. Aarrgghh! Priorities!!

The Play

The bidding aspect in Keyflower reminds me of trick-taking games. Once anyone starts bidding for an item, the colour (or suit) for that item is locked. You may not have many workers in every colour, but if you are quick, you can protect your bid for a particular item by using your strongest suit or others' weakest suits. Managing your currency (workers) is an important tactical element.

From the beginning of the game you already have 3 scoring criteria in hand, and you can prepare to fulfill them as much as possible throughout the game. This is the long-term strategy aspect of the game. You do long-term planning. You develop your village based on some general goals. It is satisfying to grow and improve your settlement. There is a fair bit of optimisation. Min-maxing. You want to plan carefully and play efficiently, minimising delivery distances, fully utilising the delivery action, producing just enough resources for what you need.

There is also a worker placement aspect to the game, though not a "hard" one. During the bidding stage of a round, you can already decide to place workers to use tile powers. Being first to use a tile does not prevent others from using it. You just make it more expensive. Being first to bid for a tile does not prevent others from outbidding you, just that if you do your first bid well, you can make it expensive and undesirable for others to outbid you. The decision between bidding for a tile and using a tile is often a difficult one to make. There are many things you want to do, but you can only pick one on your turn. You watch your opponents and try to guess what they will likely go for.

The Thoughts

Player interaction is high. Complexity is medium to high. This is quite an involved strategy game that will give you a good mental exercise.