Power Grid Benelux/Central Europe

Power Grid is one of my favourite games, about running a power company. Players compete to buy power plants, to buy resources (coal, oil, garbage, uranium), to build their power network, and to earn money by supplying power to cities. The base game comes with a two-sided map, one side showing USA and the other showing Germany. I have since bought three expansions to Power Grid, Power Grid Italy/France, Power Grid Benelux/Central Europe and Power Grid Plant Deck 2. The first two are new maps to play on, and the third is a new set of power plants.

I have played the Power Grid base game 15 times, and each of the expansion maps - France, Italy, Belgium/Netherlands/Luxemburg, Central Europe - just once. I don't play enough of this game. I enjoy it a lot and really should play more. I think the reason I don't is I want to play it with 4 players or more. Most of my games were 2 player games against Michelle, which I think is not as good as with more players. I have also played some 3 player games with both Michelle and Han, but one element of tension lacking from a 3 player game is no one will get cut off completely, because eventually a city will allow 3 players to place a house (to indicate connection and supply to this city). So, I have been hoping to play a four player game, for a long time.

Having only played each of the four maps of the expansions only once each, I am not really qualified to do a review fo them. In fact, I am not even sure I remember all the rule changes that come with each map. Each maps comes with some minor rule tweaks, and the maps themselves also offer some variety and some uniqueness. E.g. on the map of France, Paris is made up of 3 cities, and the connection cost between these 3 segments is zero. The Central European map has some restriction about nuclear power. In the Netherlands (and Belgium and Luxemburg), the people are very eco-friendly and if the first power plant in the future market is an eco-friendly, it is available for purchase, in contrary to the standard rules. There is one city in the Central Europe map (Wein?) which allows you to buy garbage (a resource for powering your power plants) cheaper. I find that the expansions add some freshness to the game, although I really have not played the base game enough for it to start getting stale. I don't find the game to be significantly different on the expansion maps. The minor tweaks and different maps make things interesting, and are also thematic, e.g. the abundance of coal on certain maps, but Power Grid is still Power Grid. They don't (at least for me) enhance the game a lot, but they definitely do not make it worse either. It is possible that some game expansions make things worse, even though in the first place the base game must be doing quite well for the publisher to consider printing expansions. Some expansions may make things too complex for some players. Some expansions may change the nature and strategy of the game, and the change may not be welcome by all fans of the original game. For me, I like the Power Grid expansions. I just wish I had more people to play this with.

I have not tried the latest expansion - the new deck of power plant cards. The online retailer left it out by mistake, so they are sending it to me now.

The Benelux map. Luxemburg only has one city.

Close-up of a game in progress on the Benelux map.

Reference card, houses (to denote connection to cities), money (cheap generic poker chips which I bought in Taiwan; the game comes with paper money which I prefer not to use), and my four power plants (usually you are allowed to have three, but for 2-player games you can have four).

One thing that surprised me a little is that Power Grid is the #2 game on BoardGameGeek now. And the thing is, I don't know why I'm surprised. I like the game a lot and should be happy. I don't know why it doesn't have the #2 game aura to me. Maybe I'm unconsciously stereotyping the "Top 3 Games", or "#2 Game". And I know I'm undeniably a boardgame geek now that I'm starting to talk about "#2 game aura".

reading / writing more than playing

I spend more time reading and writing about games than I spend playing games. Is that sad? A little I guess. Sad because I don't get to play games as often as I'd like to. However at least I do enjoy reading and writing about games. Boardgamegeek, Boardgamenews, Fortress Ameritrash, Mikko Saari's Gameblog, ekted's Gamer's Mind, Mike Doyle's Art Play, Tao of Gaming and NYC Gamer are some of the websites I visit regularly. There is always something new to read about. It is almost a daily habit for me to visit boardgame related websites. It's not an addiction (at least I think so). I don't feel uncomfortable not to surf the internet for some time, but if it is convenient, then I'll do it everyday. It's as natural as breathing and eating. At Boardgamegeek I set "Notify me of new content" for some games which I am interested in, so whenever there are new reviews, articles, photos, etc about these games, I get a notification in my Boardgamegeek inbox. So I can rest assured I won't miss news about these games. For things like geeklists and general discussions which are not tied to any specific game, I will miss them if I don't visit Boardgamegeek frequently enough, but it is okay for me. This is an age of information overload, so it would be too tiring to try to keep up-to-date with everything. A hobby is supposed to be fun and not an obligation.

Recently I have been spending much time writing blog entries, because over my recent holidays I have been playing many new games. I started my boardgame blog for the convenience of making updates. It is much easier to use Blogspot than to manually create HTML pages and upload them. I had expected the frequency of my blog posts to be similar to my previous website updates. However the frequency increased, probably encouraged by the convenience, and also I find that I quite enjoy writing.

The first few months of my boardgame blog were mainly about covering different aspects of my boardgame hobby, my history, my preferences, types of games, etc. I also wrote about my boardgaming experiences, my boardgame sessions, and new games that I played. By now, I'm mostly writing about the sessions and the new games, doing mini reviews and sharing my thoughts. It will probably stay so from now on, with some different boardgame related topics occasionally if I can think of something interesting to write. One blog that I admire a lot is NYC Gamer. The posts are not frequent, but the quality is high. Most articles are interesting, deep and thoughtful. I don't think I have that many interesting things to say, but NYC Gamer is a good example to look up to.

My boardgame blog is mainly used as a record of my boardgame hobby. I like posting photos. I enjoy writing for the sake of writing. I think I will enjoy reading my own blog 10 years from now, maybe laughing at myself for doing such a thing as writing a boardgame blog.

So, what about playing games? At any time, if Michelle asks me, "Do you want to play a boardgame?", I will drop everything and play. Forget Boardgamegeek. Forget Blogspot. With two young children, it is not so easy to sit down to play boardgames frequently. When they are awake, they will come and make trouble. When they are asleep, we are sometimes already quite tired. I organise boardgame sessions on Saturdays, about twice a month, depending on Han's work schedule. Unfortunately since coming back to Malaysia in Dec 2004 / Jan 2005, I have not been able to develop a regular gaming group. So, it is still mostly just Han and I. Sometimes Michelle joins us. Sometimes Chee Seng joins us if he is back from Singapore. Sometimes we have other "guests stars", but those are infrequent. Maybe this year. We already have some potential new recruits.

I try to play as much as I can, and thankfully I also have Boardgamegeek and other websites, and blogging, to keep me happy and doing something related to boardgames.

Ticket To Ride Switzerland, Carcassonne Abbey and Mayor

I bought many games in December. I bought some at the Fantasy Flight Games (a game publisher) end-of-year sale, and some from Troll & Toad, an online retailer, which also had a special sale in December. I bought seven Blue Moon (a card game) expansions, Ticket To Ride Switzerland (an expansion), Thebes, Carcassonne Abbey and Mayor (another expansion), Power Grid Deck 2 (a small expansion - just a deck of cards), Axis & Allies Guadalcanal and In the Year of the Dragon. Since I was back in Sabah, I asked for the games to be shipped to Han, and on Sat 5 Jan 2008 he brought them to me during our boardgame session.

Ticket To Ride is a game which took me a long time, and many plays, to warm up to, although it is one of Michelle's favourites. I decided to get Ticket To Ride Switzerland because it is designed specifically for 2 or 3 players. (well, I may get it anyway even if I did not have this excuse to use) There are some minor tweaks to the rules of the basic game, e.g. the tunnels (same as Ticket To Ride Europe) where you need to draw 3 random cards from the deck, and if any matches the colour you are playing, you must top up additional cards. You are now allowed to take two face-up jokers (locomotives cards), but jokers can only be used for tunnels. So, it can be very painful to try to collect cards of a specific colour for a long, normal, non-tunnel route. There are some city-to-country and country-to-country tickets. They give you options. If you complete a route to a further country, then you score higher points; closer country, lower points. In case you cannot complete the ticket at all, i.e. unable to connect to any of those countries, you are only penalised the points of the nearest country.

The map of Ticket To Ride Switzerland.

Close-up of the map and the game in play. And the cow.

A country-to-country card which gives you 3 options, and a normal city-to-city card. Deutschland = Germany, Osterreich = Austria, Italia = Italy, France = France. This expansion does not come with train cards, so we use the ones from Ticket To Ride Europe.

I have played this three times with Michelle now. I enjoy the ticket-drawing aspect of it. According to the designer Alan Moon, this expansion was designed so that people can draw many tickets, which is an aspect he likes. Maybe because the map is smaller compared to other versions, you can usually find at least one not-too-difficult-to-complete ticket when you decide to draw tickets (you also draw 3, like in the base game). Many people commented that in this expansion you can get blocked or cut off very easily. Michelle and I didn't find this to be the case. There were some blocking, but they were not too bad. Maybe for two players it is not too bad, and it only gets worse with 3 players. I find that playing Ticket To Ride with the Big Cities variant (which comes with the USA 1910 expansion) has more blocking. In terms of the excitement of getting blocked or cut off, I find that Big Cities is more exciting. Well, maybe we were just lucky in our first 3 games.

Michelle discovered something about the Ticket To Ride series which I have never realised after playing more than 170 games of Ticket To Ride and its various versions. The point value of a ticket is the same as the number of trains of the shortest possible route between the two destinations on that ticket. We checked quite a number of tickets and found that this holds true for all of them. It is quite amazing that we never realised this until now.

I like Ticket To Ride Switzerland. It has its own uniqueness compared to other versions, and I enjoy drawing ticket, and finding I only need to claim just one or two routes to complete the ticket, or sometimes I don't even need to do anything and my existing network already fulfills the ticket. I guess that's a cheapskate mentality where you gain something without putting in any effort. 不劳而获.

Some people complain that now that Days of Wonder (the publisher) is printing games in China, the quality has become much poorer than before. Ticket To Ride Switzerland is one of their first games being printed in China. I can see that the components (the cards and the gameboard, since this expansion only came with these two) are of a different quality compared to previous games. However they are actually still very good. The only thing that is poor is the box insert made of cardboard, but that's a very minor issue for me.

I have not been buying many of the Carcassonne expansions, even though Michelle and I like this game a lot. We just play the base game plus the Inns & Cathedrals expansion. I don't quite fancy the Traders & Builders expansion, having played it a number of times before, so I never bought it. I wasn't interested in the other later expansions like The River, The Count of Carcassonne, Princess & Dragon, Towers of Carcassonne either. I have played other standalone variant versions - Carcassonne The Castle, Carcassonne Hunters and Gatherers (the only one I own), Carcassonne The Discovery, Carcassonne The City, Ark of the Covenant. I guess I can call myself a Carcassonne veteran.

I decided to buy Carcassonne Abbey and Mayor because I read a review commenting that it doesn't change the nature of the game, but rather enhances the existing strategies. One reason I didn't like Traders & Builders so much is the game is starting to get quite "busy" - more and more things to consider, bogging down the game, which I prefer to play briskly.

Carcassonne Abbey and Mayor adds some tiles, and 4 new elements - the abbey, the mayor, the cart, and the barn. The abbey is a tile which everyone starts with in hand, and can only use once in the whole game. It functions as a cloister, but the more important use is to fill "holes", i.e. all four sides enclosed by other tiles. It can help you complete one critical feature, e.g. a large castle, to score big and/or to free up your people who are stuck there because the tile required to complete the feature is rare or does not exist. So, it can be a life saver as well as a game winner.

The mayor is a meeple (which means "my people") with big pants. It can only be placed on castles, and its value is the number of shields in the castle. So it can be very strong in a big castle with many shields, much more so than the fat boy (big meeple) of Inns & Cathedrals. The cart is another meeple, when it completes a feature, it can move to an adjacent incomplete and unoccupied feature. The barn is a super farmer. It can only be placed on a corner of four tiles and that junction must be all grassland. It kicks aways farmers in that farm, allowing them to score as normal (3pt per complete castle). If farmers from other farms are joined to the barn's farm later, those farmers are also kicked away but only scoring 1pt per complete castle. At game end the barn scores 4pt per complete castle. It can be used offensively to kick away your opponents' farmers. It can also be used to benefit yourself. It is the only way farmers can be retrieved, and if you kick away your own farmers, you basically score that farm twice, once for your own farmer and once for the barn.

This expansion was just alright for me. Indeed it didn't change the nature of the game much. The same techniques still apply. There are some additions to make things interesting, but they are not distracting. However, it didn't make me enjoy Carcassonne much more either. I am probably just as happy with the base game plus Inns & Cathedrals. Among these four elements, I rank how much I like them as follows:

1. Barn - Adds a little twist to the end game planning and farmer fighting.
2. Mayor - I am actually neutral on this, i.e. the two below I don't quite like. It seems to be mostly used defensively on your own castle if you see it grow big and it has many shields.
3. Abbey - The game loses some nastiness, because the abbey is there to save you (albeit only once). In one of our games, Michelle built a huge castle, and I played a cathedral into (triple score if castle is completed, zero score otherwise) it. I placed a number of tiles to make it difficult for her to complete that castle. Her abbey tile came to the rescue, scoring her 63pts. Maybe I'm just a sore loser so I blame the abbey for this.
4. Cart - Maybe I don't know how to use it well, but it just feels like another meeple. Often I can't use its ability, or even if I use the ability, it doesn't score me big points. Maybe it should be used in a quantity and not quality approach, i.e. use it to score many times, each time very few points, because every time you use it, you are basically getting a "free" meeple placement.

One thing I find is now we have too many meeples. We already have the fat boy from Inns & Cathedrals, now we get 3 more new meeples. We can use our meeples freely without worrying much about running out. Some tension is lost. I guess we can try to play with fewer meeples.

However one thing I did enjoy from this expansion are the new tiles. Some of them are indeed quite interesting, e.g. the road that branches off at a junction without being broken up. So, in summary, I do not dislike this expansion (unlike some other expansions), but I can probably live without it. Well, now that I have mixed it into my Carcassonne game, I probably will just play with it and not bother taking it out.

Ivanhoe, Conquest of the Fallen Lands, Thebes

Sat 5 Jan 2008 was Han and my first gaming session of 2008. I invited an old friend Alvin, who is new to our kind of modern boardgames. That's a good start to the year. Hopefully we will finally be able to "recruit" more members to our gaming sessions.

Ivanhoe is a quick card game, which Han, Michelle and I played (Alvin was very late). It is a new game to me. It is themed around knights and tournaments, but the theme is pretty thin. The cards are just five different coloured suits with different numbers, some white jokers, and some special action cards. The objective of the game is to be the first to win all five types of tournaments, from melee, swordfighting to morning star, jousting. In other words, to win fights in all five colours. The player who starts a fight decides the type of tournament (i.e. which colour) and plays a card (or more) of that colour. Subsequent players who want to stay in the fight must play cards of the same colour to exceed the previous player's total number. There are jokers, and there are special action cards. The tournament goes on until all but one player is left standing. The winner then claims a coloured coin (the trophy?) to indicate he/she has won this type of tournament.

One interesting thing is the maiden (one of two types of jokers). Maidens have a high value of 6, and help you greatly to win a fight. However, if you play a maiden card (i.e. you become her champion) but lose the fight, you have to surrender one of your previously won trophies (coins). That's the price you pay for disappointing the lady.

My hand of cards in Ivanhoe. There are coloured cards, white cards (jokers) and special action cards. And here I have the Ivanhoe card, which can cancel the effects of any other special action cards.

The draw deck and the discard deck.

This was a high risk fight between Michelle and Han, as both of them have committed a maiden (white 6). The loser in this battle would have to surrender an already won trophy.

This is a very simple and quick card game. I did quite badly from the start, losing some hard fights, and falling behind 4, 4, 1. Since you start the game with one random coin, that means I had zero victories when both Han and Michelle already had three each. However, a surprising thing happened and I bounced back from last place to win the game. I had a lot of weak green cards which I could not use for other coloured fights. Green cards (melee) are always 1, and I had a lot of them. This won me the melee. Then in a few other tournaments, I think Han and Michelle were running out of the appropriate coloured cards, and I won those without having to play many cards. So, I guess one should never give up hope.

Conquest of the Fallen Lands uses hexagonal tiles like Settlers of Catan. The board made up of these tiles represent the land which has been taken by evil forces. The players are the good guys, and compete to conquer these lands back.

You start the game with some money, two servants, and some cards. There are three types of servants - soldiers, mages (wizards) and carpenters. You need them to play your cards. Each servant can only be used once per turn, i.e. if you play a troop card which requires two soldiers and one carpenter, then these three servants will be "used" this turn. Every turn you can pay $5 to recruit a new servant to increase your workforce. They are basically slaves because you don't need to pay them any salary afterwards (or they just like you so much to not mind that).

The cards are mostly troop cards, which have an attack and a support value. You can only play one troop card onto one hex to conquer it. The attack value of that card, plus the support values of other cards (belonging to you) already on the board and next to that hex, must equal or exceed the number of your target hex. There are some support cards, which can only be added to a hex after it has been conquered, and you also can only place one per hex. They work in a similar way as the support value of the troop cards. There are also some magic cards which let you do special things.

Close-up of Conquest of the Fallen Lands. The glass beads indicate ownership. Hexes without cards yet are not yet conquered. You can see how far behind I am (I am green).

Han: "My cards suck big time." (but he still beat me soundly)

My cards - two magic cards and lots of troop cards.

More than half the lands are conquered at this point.

My servants and my money.

Because of how hexes on the board are claimed, and how your troop cards placed on the board are usually needed to support your future conquests, the game is quite spatial. You need to plan where to start your conquest and then use it as a base to expand further. You are not required to conquer only adjacent hexes after you have conquered your first hex, but it does help a lot because of the support value of your cards already on the board. So in this game you need to watch out not to be cut off by your opponents, and you need to plan for your expansion. You can't attack your opponents, because, hey, you are all supposed to be the good guys fighting the evil forces together. But you can attack those hexes which they are planning to attack, stunting their expansion and depriving them of loot. Yes, every time you conquer a hex, you earn money based on the number on the hex. And the richest player at game end (when all hexes are conquered) wins. In the game you can spend money to recruit more servants, so every time you do so you are basically surrendering victory points. So, there is a balancing act in terms of how many servants you recruit (more servants will allow you to make more attacks, build more support buildings, use more magic), and also in terms of when to start saving money. From my first playing, this balancing doesn't seem to be too big a factor. The spatial element was more important. It was a race to be as efficient as possible in conquering the hexes, and in grabbing as many as possible before your oppoent does.

This is an interesting game and one I don't mind playing again. Hopefully I can do better next time with the spatial element, on which I did poorly this time.

Thebes is a game about archeology in the early 20th century. Players are archeologists traveling around Europe and the Middle East, studying history, digging up artifacts, putting up exhibitions of these artifacts, and attending conferences; and these four activities basically sum up the ways you score points in this game.

The element in this game which is most talked about is how time and turn order is managed. There is a track around the board showing 52 weeks of a year. Each action you take takes time, e.g. traveling for 2 weeks from London to Rome, and then spending 1 week there gaining 1 special knowledge about Egypt. After taking this action, you move your marker 3 weeks forward, indicating you have spent 3 weeks in total on your turn. The game is played over 2 to 3 years, depending on the number of players. There is no turn order. Whoever is last on the time track is the next player. Sometimes if you do an action that takes a long time, you may need to wait a long time for your turn. Sometimes if you take an action that takes a short time, you can still be last on the time track, and you can take another turn.

This game is beautifully produced, and is fun to play. It is quite immersive, as your little archeologist travel around the map picking up knowledge, excavating artifacts, attending conferences. There is a significant luck element, in the excavations. When you dig, you pull a number of tiles out of a bag. The number of tiles depends on how much knowledge you have on that location (e.g. Crete, Mesopotamia), and how many weeks you are willing to spend digging. At the start of the game, about half the tiles are sand, i.e. you gain no artifact. After any player excavates, he/she keeps the artifacts found, but returns the sand into the bag. So, the later you excavate at a site, the worse your chances become. Sometimes when you have poor luck, you draw no artifacts, or you draw low valued artifacts. So, be prepared for this and don't complain about luck.

Michelle, Alvin and Han studying for their history exam tomorrow. By playing Thebes.

The beautiful map of Thebes. There are always four items available for you to collect (lower right of this picture), and there can be up to three exhibition invitations that you can claim (upper left of this picture).

My specific knowledge (coloured books), general knowledge (open books), congresses attended, assistants recruited. On the right is a cool device used to determine how many chips you draw from the bag when you do an excavation. It depends on how much knowledge you have and how many weeks you are prepared to dig. This is way more cool than a boring table / chart.

I find this game to be quite fun to play, and quite suitable for families. Although not as simple as games like Ticket To Ride, the rules are not difficult, and are very intuitive. I especially enjoy the lucky draw factor of excavating - same reason as why I like Africa. There are meaningful decisions to be made, and planning to be done, and competition in different areas. However, one should take this as a light and fun game and play in a relaxed manner. Don't start complaining about how your planning and perfect moves were ruined by bad luck. Just have a laugh.

This was the only game that Alvin managed to play with us. He only reached my home at about 3:30pm. We had started at 2pm. He enjoyed himself and appeared quite amazed by this new type of boardgames. He said there was a time when he played a lot of Ludo with is wife because they had nothing better to do. Hopefully Alvin will join us again in future and maybe even become a regular or semi-regular player.

new games summary dec 2007, eurogames burnout

I have played many new games during my trip back to my hometown of Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, all of them at Carcasean boardgame cafe, the first of its kind in KK. This is all thanks to Chong Sean, owner of the cafe, who has been very accomodating to bring the games that I requested to try. Most of the games I played are Eurogames, and many are older games which I did not have a chance to try. Some of them I had considered buying. Some I did not plan to buy, but just wanted to try. I played 17 new games.

1. That's Life
2. Elfenland
3. Chinatown
4. O Zoo le Mio
5. Medina
6. Dschunke
7. Show Manager
8. Africa
9. Felix: the cat in the sack (I self-made this)
10. Blokus Trigon
11. Hare & Tortoise
12. Carcassonne The City
13. Thief of Baghdad
14. Palazzo
15. Vinci
16. Carcassonne The Discovery
17. Niagara

Carcassonne The Discovery was an unexpected and pleasant discovery. I'm keen to play again and may even buy it. I like Chinatown too, and will consider buying when it gets reprinted this year. I (and Michelle) like Africa, but unfortunately it is out of print. Felix: the cat in the sack, Niagara, Vinci were disappointing (I wouldn't say bad, but disappointing to me), especially Vinci which I have heard many good things about.

After playing so many new Eurogames within such a short period of time, I can see why some people have Eurogames burnout. I don't have a burnout, at least not yet, but I can see how some people can have this. Eurogames are mostly very streamlined. They have simple rules. Many of them are about collecting victory points. Many of them share similar mechanics. They usually do not have too much luck element, and because of this, they sometimes tend to be rather mathematical, and can be bland at times. The strength of Eurogames is that (usually) strategy matters. However, given that rules are usually quite streamlined and concise, Eurogames sometimes can feel quite similar to one another. I guess playing too many of the same type of games can make one feel burnt out on it. I guess it will be similar for people who play hex and counter wargames, or collectible card games (like Magic The Gathering).

After 17 new games, I still have capacity to learn and play new games now. I think I am enjoying tasting different games, rather than learning a game well and mastering it. Not to say that I don't enjoy that. I have played many games of Lord of the Rings, Power Grid, Mystery Rummy: Jack the Ripper. Sometimes even if I know I probably won't thrilled by a game (e.g. Niagara, Thief of Baghdad, Carcassonne The Discovery), I still want to play it at least once. I'm thankful I did this with Carcassonne The Discovery, as it turned out to be quite interesting. It actually makes me feel happy after I try a game and can tell myself, "I don't need to buy this". I feel like I have spent relatively little money (on a drink at Carcasean), and have saved a lot of money in not buying a game I which would have otherwise had to buy before I could try it.

One thing that I have learnt from my recent playing binge: You don't need to play / own every game. There are so many games out there, you'd be making life difficult for yourself if you try to play and/or own all of them. Playing is probably not too bad. It doesn't cost too much to play a game, if you have a boardgame cafe like Carcasean to visit. Other forms of entertainment, like karaoke, movies, probably cost more. Owning too many games is expensive. Not economical. I have about 130 games now, and to be honest with myself, this number really is more than I need. There are games (although not many) which I have bought and have never played. There are quite a few which I have played only a few times, and after that have not played for a long time, e.g. Java, Axis & Allies Europe, Axis & Allies Pacific, Mexica, Goa, Taj Mahal, Princes of Florence (and yet I love this game!). These are the ones which, if I were very rational and very strict, I probably would not keep in my collection (maybe except Taj Mahal and Princes of Florence). However I cannot bring myself to part with them, because I'd tell myself: "This is a good game", or "I will play it again one day", or both. The only game that ever left my collection was Domaine, which I didn't like much, and traded it for Hoity Toity at a local boardgame event. I almost traded away Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation - Deluxe edition, because I like the base game which I already own, but don't like the variant game that is included in the deluxe edition. I also don't like the bigger and clumsier pieces and the graphics of the deluxe edition. Manila is also one of the less loved games in my collection. Sid Meier's Civilisation too, but my sister lugged that all the way back from Melbourne for me, so it's worth keeping just to remember her kindness.

So, I need to tell myself this more: You don't need to play / own every game. It's OK to miss some good games, even excellent games. You already have enough good and excellent games to play, and you are not playing them enough. And perhaps I'll just wait for an opportunity to play those games at a boardgame cafe. I am thinking of Notre Dame, Pillars of the Earth (Han is planning to trade for this, so I may get to try this soon), Race for the Galaxy, Agricola, Airships (Giganten der Lufte), King of Siam. Let's see which of these I eventually cannot resist and decide to buy... hey wait, I wasn't supposed to say that.

Carcassonne The Discovery, Niagara, Thurn and Taxis

I paid my 7th visit to Carcasean, on 1 Jan 2008, the last day of my holiday, and I was going to fly back to Kuala Lumpur on that day too. Michelle went with me. This time we played Carcassonne The Discovery, Niagara and Thurn and Taxis. Chong Sean joined us for the latter two.

Carcassonne The Discovery is one of the many variations of Carcassonne. This is designed by Leo Colovini, a designer, like Michael Schact, who is well known for clean and simple rules. This is the second variation which is not designed by the original designer of Carcassonne, Klaus-Jürgen Wrede. The first one was Carcassonne The Castle by Reiner Knizia. After seeing it on the shelf on previous visits, I decided to give it a try, since Michelle and I are such big fans of Carcassonne.

After reading the rules, I found the game to be simpler than the original. There are three types of terrain but no roads. There are only 3 things your people can do (to score), i.e. you place them on one of these three types of terrain. There is no competition for majority on a feature. Everyone can score. So you don't get into those painful battles for super farms or gigantic castles in Carcassonne. But you can use the same tricks like linking your small feature to a larger feature of an opponent, placing tiles to make it difficult for your opponent to complete a feature, etc.

When I played the game, I was surprised that it wasn't as simple as I thought. We played much slower than we expected. I had thought we would play very quickly, because we are Carcassonne veterans. In fact, we played even more slowly than when we played Carcassonne The City. One difficulty we had was there are three types of terrain we need to match, as opposed to 2 types (castle or grassland) plus road. I guess we are very used to the terrain of the original Carcassonne, and we need to unlearn the old and learn the new. The game turned out to be more tricky than I had though from reading the rules. In addition to the challenge in matching tiles, there are a few other interesting dilemmas. Firstly, you only have 4 people to play with. You need to use them efficiently. If a figure placed on the table does not look like it will score much, you might as well retrieve it and use it for something else. This is one big difference compared to the original (and all other versions of) Carcassonne. You can decide to retrieve your people even though the feature it is standing on is not yet complete. In fact, it doesn't get automatically returned to me when the feature completes. You need to use an action to retrieve it. On your turn, you place a tile, and then you can choose to either place a figure or retrieve a figure (of course you can do neither if you choose to). So, your figure will never get "stuck" on the table. But now you have an interesting dilemma of when to retrieve your figure. Do you wait for the feature to complete so that you can score more? It may not get completed. For the case of mountains, even if it is completed, the score may increase further when plains adjacent to it expand further. So a completed mountain does not necessary mean you can't score even more later. Sometimes you also have a dilemma about whether to place a figure or to retrieve a figure. You can only choose one on your turn.

I quite enjoyed Carcassonne The Discovery. It was more challenging than I had expected. It surprised me. It is one of the few games that I have played at Carcasean which have tempted me to buy, the others being Chinatown and Africa. I like it more than Carcassonne The City. I would say both are significantly different from the original game, despite the same basic concepts.

In fact, I enjoyed this game so much that I forgot to take a picture.

Niagara is the Spiel des Jahres award winner for 2005. The one thing that everyone will remember about it is the waterfall mechanism. Every turn the river flows and there may be some boats that will fall off the edge of the board. Oh what fun!

This is a game where you race to collect gems. You either try to get four of the same type, or one each of the five types, or any seven gems. Every round players secretly and simultaneously select a movement tile to play. After that they take turns to move their boats. They can pick up, drop off, and even steal gems from other players. Once every player has taken a turn, it's the river's turn to move. The river "moves" by the smallest number played by the players plus the weather condition (i.e. heavy rain means quicker flow). So, if everyone has played a big number, then the river will flow very quickly and someone may die (or go for a good swim).

The first thing I learned (from Chong Sean, who has played this game before) is: don't spend so much effort rowing downstream. Let the river take you. You need your energy to row back upstream to bring the gems back. Also you need to watch out for people stealing your gems, especially when you are upstream compared to others.

Niagara, just before the two boats toppled over the waterfall.

I found the game to be just so-so. The idea is interesting, but for a game supposedly quite simple and supposedly suitable for families, there are actually quite a number of exceptions and special cases, like when you lose your boat. It can also be quite tricky to plan your moves and to take into account how the river will move. It can be rather taxing to the brain. To me the effort required is more than the fun extracted. We did have two boats falling off the waterfall. Yay!

Thurn and Taxis is the 2006 Spiel des Jahres winner. It is designed by Andreas Seyfarth, designer of Puerto Rico, #1 game at Boardgamegeek. However Thurn and Taxis is a middle weight game, quite different from Puerto Rico. It is more similar to Ticket To Ride, and as Chong Sean commented, also similar in feel to Show Manager.

In this game players compete to establish post offices in various cities in different regions in Germany. To establish post offices, you need to set up a routes, and to set up a route, you collect city cards. There are six city cards displayed on the board. Every turn, you (usually) pick one to start a new route or extend your existing route. When extending your route, you must extend at both ends and must not branch out from the middle. When you are happy with your route, you can declare it complete, and then place your post offices in some or all of the cities covered by your route. You can choose to place an office in one city in each region your route passes through, or you can place offices in all cities of one region that your route passes through.

There are a few different ways to score points in this game, e.g. for the length of your completed routes, for putting offices in all cities of a region or a pair of regions, for putting at least one office in all regions, etc. There is a race element to this, e.g. the first player to complete a length 6 route gets a higher score than the second player to do so. You cannot block your opponents like in Ticket To Ride, because there is no limit to the number of offices that can be placed in a city. However, you can watch how their routes are developing and take the card that they need. It is more subtle.

Michelle and Chong Sean playing Thurn and Taxis.

Close-up of the post offices.

My current route, and my carriage level. You start with a level carriage, and must upgrade step by step, to level 7. You can upgrade when you complete a route longer or equal to the next level. Carriage level gives points too.

The square tiles are the points for having presence in all cities for a region (the grey one) or a pair of regions (orange and red).

I have played this once before on BSW, against Han. However neither of us were very sure what we were doing and we just half-fumbled through the game, and I lost. So, this is my second time playing it. I made an expensive mistake. I had to abandon one of my routes because on that turn I could not get a card that could extend it legally. I forgot that every turn you must extend your route if you have one existing, or start a new one. I should have declared the route complete at the end of my previous turn. I wasted four turns because of this. I came last. Chong Sean, a veteran Thurn and Taxis player, representative of the Chinatown community on BSW, won decisively. He comforted me that at least I didn't end up with negative points, which he said wasn't uncommon when he played with new players. Talk about merciless.

I still found Thurn and Taxis to be just so-so. I like Ticket To Ride better. Both are relatively simple, although Ticket To Ride is simpler. There is some route planning, and you need to watch your opponents if you want to play well. Of course, if you are lazy you can just focus on your own cards and your own plan. This applies to both games, and I guess that's why they are suitable as family games. You can play in a relaxed way and do not need to be too competitive.

Thief of Baghdad, Palazzo, Vinci

On 31 Dec 2007, Michelle and I visited Carcasean (again!). This time we played Thief of Baghdad, Palazzo, and Vinci. Chong Sean joined us for Palazzo and Vinci.

Thief of Baghdad was one of the finalists for the Spiel des Jahres this year, although it didn't win. There are six palaces, each with four treasure chests. There are guards protecting the palaces, some of which are yours, some are your opponents', and some are neutral guards. And then you have some thieves to help you steal the treasure chests. To steal a treasure chest, you need to get enough of your thieves into the palace. The first treasure chest in a palace requires four thieves, followed by 5, 6 and 7 thieves.

You play cards to place thieves, to move thieves (accompanied by your guards) or to move your guards or neutral guards. To place a thief into a palace requires at least one of your guards at that palace and at least one more guard not belonging to you. I think of this as you need your guard to bribe the other guard, and a guard not belonging to you needs to be present so that the sultan will not know it was your guard who let the thief in. I don't think this is in the rules, but explaining it this way probably helps in understanding and remembering the rule.

The beautiful board of Thief of Baghdad.

The tall guys are the guards (black ones are the neutral guards), the short guy is the thief. There is a stack of treasure chests in the inner section of the palace. Each treasure chest requires a number of thieves to steal it. This particular one at the top of the stack needs four.

This copy of the game came with a wrong figure. That one of the left is a Carcasonne meeple.

Very nice cards, especially the joker - a beautiful dancer.

So, basically you play cards, and you draw cards, and you race to steal a number of treasure chests, depending on the number of players. The game is quite simple. There is, of course, luck in terms of what cards you get, but the game also allows for clever usage of the cards you get, which I think is the best part of the game. You try to be as efficient as you can and as quick as you can to steal the treasure chests. The rules are very clean and simple, so this is an easy game to teach. This is an OK game. I don't need to own it, but I don't mind playing occasionally.

Palazzo is sometimes called an improved version of Alhambra (Spiel des Jahres winner in 2003), because they share some similarities in how money is handled. But I find that is the only similarity. The game is otherwise quite different. I like Palazzo more, despite it not being an SdJ winner.

In this game, players compete in building palaces (palazzo = palaces). You buy single floor tiles either directly or through auctions, and you use these floor tiles to construct your palaces. Each floor tile has a number, and you must build in ascending order, without repeating any number. Each floor tile is made from one of three types of materials, and making palaces of a single material earns you bonuses. The floor tiles also have different numbers of doors and windows, which also give you points. You need to build tall palaces to score more points. In fact, a single floor palace will give you negative points.

To buy palace floors, there are two ways. If you choose to buy palace floors on your turn, you reveal two floors, place the first in the centre warehouse, and the second in one of the four quarries surrounding the warehouse depending on the number of windows of that floor. Then you choose whether to buy from the warehouse, or to start an auction for the next group of floors in the quarries. Buying directly from the warehouse is "safe", as in noone else can stop you, but you can buy at most two floors, and you must be able to afford the price. Starting an auction means other players may compete with you. However, you have a slight advantage of $3. As the player who triggers the auction, you are automatically considered having started the bidding at $3, i.e. if you win, you effectively have a $3 discount. Of course the most important factor when deciding whether to buy direct or to start an auction is whether the floors available at the warehouse or at the next quarry are useful to you.

Palazzo. Warehouse in the centre, and four quarries surrounding it. The brown figure is the architect, and whenever an auction occurs, he moves to the next non-empty quarry, and the floors at that quarry will be auctioned.

My four palaces in the middle of the game.

During the game, you can also take money and do renovation. Money is, of course, needed for the purchasing and the auctions. Renovation is important to improve your palaces. You can insert a single floor tile into a palace, or pull out a single floor tile from a palace, or completely discard a single floor palace. Doing a renovation costs you one turn, but sometimes it is very worthwhile.

I enjoyed Palazzo. I like building things and matching colours. It's like playing with Lego, my favourite toy in my childhood.

Vinci is an out of print game ranked highly at BoardGameGeek. It is one of the games people call a "Civilisation Lite". There is some similarity to History of the World, which I own, but it is much shorter, and there is no dice.

We played a 3 player game, but we only played up to 100 victory points, instead of the standard 150VP meant for 3 players. We just wanted to give it a try to get a feel. I wonder whether playing a shorter version distorted how good the game is. I found the game to be a little flat.

Each player starts the game with one civilisation. Each civilisation has two special abilities (e.g. being harder to defeat, or scoring additional victory points for certain types of terrain occupied). Each turn, you try to expand your empire, and at the end of the turn, you score points based on the provinces you control. Conquest is deterministic. You just count a few factors to determine the number of people you need for conquering a province, e.g. terrain type, number of defenders, any civilisation special abilities. As your empire start to run out of steam, you can spend one turn to bring it into decline, and then choose a new civilisation to play starting the next turn. Your "old" civilisation will continue to give you victory points, even though you can't use it anymore, as long as they are not yet completely destroyed by your opponents.

"That stack is too tall!". Vinci in play. This is a stylised European map.

Different colours / patterns mean different terrains. The coloured discs are players' people. The non coloured wooden disc is a local tribe.

Ireland and United Kingdom.

The broken pillar indicates an empire in decline. Declining empires are passive and are just waiting to be conquered by others, but they still score points for the owning player until they are completely wiped out.

Near the end of the game. Notice how different the distribution of the player colours are compared to the early game.

In our (short) game, Michelle had 3 civilisations and both Chong Sean and I had 2. Each turn we try to maximise our score by conquering as many provinces as we could, and sometimes when certain terrain give bonus, or are easier to conquer, we go for those. I had high hopes for Vinci, since it is quite highly regarded. However after our game, it seemed a little boring. It is indeed short, and simple, and it does simulate the rise and fall of civilisations. The design is clean, even though there are many different special abilities. You don't need to remember all. There is a handy reference card. Maybe playing a shorter game made it not as good as a full game.

Blokus Trigon, Hare & Tortoise, Carcassonne Hunters & Gatherers, Carcassonne The City

On 30 Dec 2007 I played Blokus Trigon, Hare & Tortoise, Carcassonne Hunters & Gatherers, and Carcassonne The City at Carcasean. All were new to me, except for Carcassonne Hunters & Gatherers which I own. This session was a session with new players - Jannie, Ah Sheng, June.

Simon, Ah Sheng and I arrived earliest, so we played a quick game of Blokus Trigon. I have played Blokus a lot, but not Blokus Trigon. They are similar, but the latter uses shapes made up of triangles instead of squares, and a corner can touch an edge, unlike in Blokus where only corner can touch corner. In this game, all three of us managed to achieve perfect scores of 20, i.e. all pieces placed onto the board, and the last piece placed is the single triangle placed. I guess having only 3 players is too easy (the game comes with 4 colours) because there is more space to play. Only later I realised that when playing a 3 player game the rows next to the edge of the board should not be used, making the playable space smaller. Oops.

Simon and Ah Sheng playing Blokus Trigon.

That's me holding up the (green, of course) fox piece.

We played this very very wrong. With 3 players, you are not supposed to use the outer most row at each edge. No wonder all of us scored perfect scores.

I like Blokus. It is a simple and quick game. It can be played with lots of serious thinking and planning, but it can also be played in a light-hearted way, the way I prefer to play it. Blokus Trigon feels similar, except the shapes are different, and takes a bit of time to get used to. I don't think I need to own it. To me Blokus is sufficient, although I enjoyed Blokus Trigon.

Hare & Tortoise was the winner of the 1979 Spiel des Jahres award (Game of the Year, in Germany), the first time this prestigious award was given. It is a race game, and carrots are your fuel. You start with some carrots, and 3 lettuces. During the race, you try to collect more carrots using the different types of spaces with different types of special powers, and you must eat all 3 of your lettuces. There is some luck element (on the rabbit spaces where you need to throw a die), but it is not big, and you can choose not to stop at any rabbit space anyway. When you are ready to cross the finish line, you need to make sure you don't have too many carrots remaining, which is not allowed. So, collecting and using just the right number of carrots is important and is an interesting balancing act.

This game is interesting because you can never be too sure who is in the lead. The positions for the first three quarters of the game can be quite misleading. The players in front may be short of carrots and may not be able to run fast. The players behind may have accumulated lots of carrots and may be ready to sprint towards the finish line. This was the case in our 6 player game (6 players is supposedly the ideal number of players). I was in the lead for most of the game, and focused on eating my lettuces. Some players hung back to collect lots of carrots. Some had lots of difficulties getting to those lettuce spaces to get their lettuces eaten. In the end, the first and second placed players were the newbies - Jannie and June. I came a disgraceful third, being the most experienced boardgame player. Ah Sheng, also a newbie came fourth. Michelle, also very experienced, came fifth, because she had lots of difficulties with the lettuce spaces, and wasted much time collecting carrots inefficiently. Simon, who has been playing many boardgames with me during my holiday back in KK, came in last. He was very unlucky, because very often when he planned to go to a space, someone else will land there before he could do it, ruining his plans, and other times he ran out of carrots.

June, Simon, Ah Sheng, Jannie, Michelle, playing Hare & Tortoise.

The board of Hare & Tortoise. One funny about teaching this game to new players (to the hobby) is that they naturally assume you need to roll the dice to move your piece.

Michelle and I.

Ah Sheng and Jannie enjoying their first visit to Carcasean.

Close-up of the board.

Overall I found the game to be so-so. It is probably because we were playing with new players (new to boardgames in general, not just this particular game), so the game progressed quite slowly. And with a 6 player game, down time is of course worse. Also, there is a lot of counting we need to do - referring to the card showing how many carrots are needed to move how many spaces, and then counting whether we have enough carrots. With experience, the counting should reduce greatly, and the game should be much faster. Although my first play was rather so-so, I am still interested to play this again, to try to do better by learning from my mistakes. I definitely have room for improvement.

I taught Ah Sheng and Jannie Carcassonne Hunters & Gatherers, because I think it is simpler for new players than basic Carcassonne, because of the farmer rule. Michelle also played, so we had a four player game. They picked up the game OK, but I'm not sure how much they liked it. I myself prefer the basic plus the Inns & Cathedrals expansion over this version.

After that Michelle and I played a 2 player game of Carcassonne The City. We are both veteran Carcassonne players, and we enjoy 2 player games of it. Carcassonne The City is a more complex variation of Carcassonne. Some of the changes include only roads need to match up and markets and residential areas do not need to (similar to Carcassonne The Castle), and the walls and towers enclosing the city. You can use towers to score a stretch of wall, and you can place guards on the walls, who score at game end depending on how many public or historical buildings are in their row.

Close-up of Carcassonne The City. This is a 2 player game between Michelle (red always) and I (green always).

Michelle contemplating her next move.

The rules are moderately different, although sharing a basic structure. They are also slightly more complex, but, to me, not by too much. Overall, I found the game to be just so-so. I wonder whether it is because I didn't like the graphics, and the fact that the features do not need to match, making the city ugly. Carcassonne The Castle isn't ugly because its tiles have just squares and rectangles. Carcassonne The City has semicircles, curves, sharp edges, triangles, concave lenses (like basic Carcassonne), so when the features do not match up, they look rather unharmonious (to me). Gameplay is moderately different, so the game doesn't feel too similar to the basic Carcassonne, and is worth buying if you like the gameplay. For me it was just OK. So I can save some money. Not that I had intended to buy it. I just wanted to try it. So I'm happy now.

Michelle won the game. I joked that it was because she tricked me. When we were about to end the game (because the walls would be less than 5 spaces apart by the end of that turn), she pointed out to me a tile where I could place a wall and a guard to earn some cheap points. I did that. After that, she realised that she could put her wall right next to the one I had just place, and score big points by placing her own guard. So I joked with her that she had been planning to trick me all along.

Africa, Felix: The Cat in the Sack

Yet another visit to Carcasean, this time two new games.

On 28 Dec 2007 I played Africa (2 player game against Michelle), and Felix: The Cat in the Sack (5 player game, using my home-made version).

Africa is not a highly ranked game at Boardgamegeek. When I told Chong Sean (owner of Carcasean) I was interested to try it, he seemed to be amazed that I was interested even to try it. He asked me, "After reading the rules, do you expect it will be fun?". After we played the game, and Michelle told him it was fun, he was surprised.

Africa is about exploring Africa (of course). There are face-down chips placed all over a map of Africa, and you explore. You discover natural resources (gold and diamonds), you collect trade goods, you find animals and try to herd them together, you find nomads and try to relocate them to places with more space, you find monuments, you set up camps to extract natural resources or to study the animals / people / monuments. Throughout the game, you move your explorer, you turn over tiles, and do various actions, and earn victory points along the way. You do this until the 11th monument is discovered. Then the game ends. At game end, there is also some scoring for the gold, diamonds and trade goods.

The exploration of Africa is well underway.

Michelle liked Africa, which totally upset Chong Sean. :-D Hey, I just realised she was wearing a T-shirt from Africa - from Egypt!

The white Indiana Jones and the brown Indiana Jones fighting over a tent.

These camps were set up to study the animals, nomads and monuments. 1VP for each adjacent.

Africa was a pleasant surprise for me. It is quite a light game. There is a lot of luck. Yet somehow I do enjoy it. I don't know whether it's something I'd enjoy after playing for the tenth time, but my first play was definitely enjoyable. Michelle liked it too. I think one thing that makes the game fun is the "lucky draw" factor. In this game, every time you turn over a tile is a lucky draw. Also, every turn you try to maximise your score. You try to make clever moves like setting up camp, or moving already revealed animals or nomads. There is some, but not a lot of, player interaction. You can compete in gold / diamonds / trade goods. You can compete for good spots to set up camp. You can also try to block your opponents' explorers using your own explorer.

I like Africa. I think it's fun. This is a game that should be played in a relaxed way.

Felix: The Cat in the Sack, is a recently released game. The designer, Friedemann Friese, is well known for unique and strange themes for this game (and also for many F's in his games' names, and green colour in his games, and his green hair). The theme in this game is not too weird, but it certainly has an interesting twist in its auction mechanism.

I home-made this game after reading the rules. It's cheaper, and I don't need to wait for the English release. This is my first time making a colour-printed game, because I used my father's printer. I don't have a printer at home, and the laser printers at the office are black & white. I enjoy home-making games, searching the internet for pictures, creating the components on Powerpoint. I can even choose to change the theme of the game.

I played Felix: The Cat in the Sack twice with 5 players - Michelle, Chong Sean, and two other customers (I think). This is an auction game, and what is unique about it is you usually do not know for sure the value of the sack which you are bidding for. As people drop off from the auction, information about the sack is gradually revealed. However, often you won't know what that last card is, even if you are one of the last two players competing for that sack.

Chong Sean and two other players joined us to play a 5-player game of Felix: The Cat in the Sack. We used Chong Sean's high quality poker chips.

My home-made version. Printed in colour this time.

Every player starts the game with 9 cards. There are cat cards with positive and negative values, dog cards which may chase away cats, and even a rabbit card with value 0. In every round, each player places a card into the sack in the middle of the table. This is the sack which everyone will bid for. One card is revealed before the auction starts. Each time a player drops off from the auction, one more can is revealed. By the time there are 2 players remaining, there will still be one card unrevealed. Only when the sack is won, the last card will be revealed. So, usually no one will know for sure what the total value of the sack until that moment. The only exception is when you are the one who played that last card.

When you pass, you earn some money. The later you pass, the more you earn. So, it is probably possible to win the game without winning any auctions. At game end, you add up your money and the value of your cards to determine your final score.

There is some psychology in the game. By watching how other players bid or concede, you can try to guess what kind of card they have played into the sack. The game is also about risk management - should you press on with the bidding, or drop off and gain money immediately. Sometimes you actually earn more money by dropping off than winning the sack, e.g. when the value of the sack is low, or when the amount bid is high. It is even possible to lose money when you win an auction, when the amount bid is higher than the value of the sack. Sometimes the value of the sack can even be negative!

Although there are some clever twists in the game, I found it to be quite random. There seems to be many ways to guess the value of the sack, and it seems you should have quite a bit of control. However, I find that I often ended up having to make wild guesses. There seems to be quite a bit of luck in the game to me. So, overall it was just an OK game for me. Maybe having 5 players make things more random and chaotic than I like. Perhaps I should try with fewer players.