Dou Di Zhu 斗地主

I recently visited Hong Kong, on a business trip. I extended my stay to meet up with old friends, and we played a lot of games. We played through the night. The last time I stayed up playing games the whole night was in 2003, and it was also in Hong Kong, and it was also with Ah Chung and Ben. That time, the game was The Settlers of Catan, and I hadn't become a boardgame hobbyist yet. It happened soon after that though.

One of the games that I liked the most was, surprisingly, not one that I taught my friends (who are not gamers), but one that Ben taught Ah Chung and I. This is a very popular card game in China, which uses a standard card deck, and is strictly for 3 players. It is called Dou Di Zhu / 斗地主, which means fighting the land lord or land owner. This is probably a phrase or term people use during the cultural revolution, when the communists went against the land owners. The game has a cooperative element, because two players play against one. It is very much a gambling game - it is designed to be very addictive and it really tempts you to raise the stakes. It plays with your greed, your recklessness, or maybe your timidity.

Here's how the game plays. It has some similarity to Big 2 / 锄大D. All cards are dealt out to all 3 players (including the 2 jokers), except for three. The winner of the previous hand has the opportunity to be the landlord. He looks at his cards, and decides whether he wants to be the landlord. If he does, he shows the 3 leftover cards to the other 2 players, and then takes them into his hand. If he doesn't, he passes the 3 leftover cards to the player on his right, who then has the opportunity to become landlord. If no one wants to be landlord, the cards are reshuffled, and for the next hand the stakes are automatically doubled.

Once the landlord is decided, the other 2 players will play against him. Let's say the default stake (注) is $1. In a normal hand, if the landlord wins, he earns $1 each from the other players. If he loses, he pays $1 each to the other players. So, obviously to be landlord means you win big, or lose big.

The basic structure of the game is like Big 2 / 锄大D, i.e. it's a climbing game. The start player plays a card or set of cards, the next player can play a stronger card/set of the same type, or pass, and this repeats until a player plays a card/set that cannot or will not be beaten. The winner of this trick then starts a new trick by playing a card/set. The objective is to get rid of all your cards.

The possible sets in Dou Di Zhu are different from Big 2. Suits have no meaning. 2's are also stronger than Aces, but the two jokers are the strongest, with the coloured joker being stronger than the other. Here are the possible sets:

• Single cards.
• Pairs. You can play multiple pairs as a set, as long as the numbers are in sequence, and you have at least 3 pairs, e.g. 44556677.
• Triplets. You can attach an additional card to a triplet (e.g. KKK4). You can play multiple triplets (e.g. 444555, or 444555666). You can also attach extra cards to these (e.g. 44485553666J).
• Fours. These are bombs (will be explained later). You can attach an extra card to these, but they will then become less effective bombs, and they do not double the stakes.
• Straights. Minimum 5 cards, but they can be as long as you want them to be.
• Double Jokers. I mention this separately from pairs because this is the royal bomb.

No flushes or straight flushes, since suits do not matter. We did not play full houses, but I'm not sure what the formal rules say (if there are any in the first place). Ben says usually full house is not played because it is too easy to make.

Now, bombs. Bombs can be played no matter what type of set is being played in the current trick - pairs, triplets, straights etc. It overrules the type. And very importantly, when a bomb is played, it doubles the stakes. If another bomb is played later in the same hand, the stakes are doubled again, and so on. Bombs are powerful, but you may not always want to play them. If you don't think you are going to win the hand, then it is better not to bomb, because it will only make you lose more. Bombs are not common. Not all games will have bombs, and even for those that do, they may not get used. From the games that we played, we had one game with 4 bombs, but that's extremely rare. It's probably because Chung and I are new. Ben says with veterans at most he has seen 3 bombs.

Dou Di Zhu is very interesting in that it's a 2 vs 1 game. The partnership play is interesting, because you need to guess your partner's intentions, and try to cooperate. Of course, you are not supposed to share information of your cards, or give directions to each other. You should only communicate through card play. You do not need to win yourself. If your partner wins, you win too. Well, there is a little difference. If you win, for the next hand you get first chance to be the landlord. This can be a consideration.

In Dou Di Zhu, the destination is more important that the journey. You win, or you lose. If you lose, it doesn't matter how many cards you have in your hand. You will not be penalised more, or less, depending on the number of unplayed cards. So there is a lot of planning ahead required. You need to plan how to get rid of all your cards. If it looks bleak, then you might as well give up and try to help your partner win (assuming you are not the landlord).

I like the big sets that you can make in Dou Di Zhu. When you have 8 cards remaining, most people don't expect you to be able to play all in one go. This is possible if you plan well. I like the excitement of the bombs. In fact I got so excited over them that I have been using them a bit too recklessly, hurting instead of benefiting myself and my partner, thus earning screams from Ben.

There is some card counting required if you want to play well. At least you should try to remember the big cards. Ben's guideline is to remember J, Q, K, A, 2, and the Jokers. There is, of course, luck in the game, but there is much strategy and room for innovative play and interaction depending on how your opponent(s) and partner play. So I am happy that Ben taught us this game. Very good for when you have exactly 3 players. Maybe this was why it was invented - Big 2 needs exactly 4 players.

Agricola again

I played Agricola for the first time almost a year ago, at Carcasean back in Sabah. It was Chong Sean's pasted up German version. At the time the English version was not released yet, and Agricola was not yet the top ranked game on www.boardgamegeek.com. I thought it was just OK, or maybe more like undecided what I thought of it. Nothing in particular that I found very outstanding. Later when Imagine Games (Malaysian online boardgame retailer) offered a special pre-order promotion for the English version (and that was still before Agricola hit #1), I hesitated but eventually signed up. Malaysians simply find discounts irresistable. After much waiting (originally scheduled to reach Malaysia in Jul 2008), I finally went to ToyBox to pick up the game on Sat 8 Nov 2008, less than 4 hours after I received the email from Mr Ong of ToyBox telling me that it had arrived.

When Michelle and I started playing it, we couldn't stop playing. We played 4 games on Sunday, 2 on Monday, 1 on Tuesday. That's quite rare, for a game that takes about 1.5 hours in the first few plays, and still 1 hour 15 mins later. (we can probably finish a game within about 1 hour now) Michelle likes the game. I do too, more so than after my first play of it.

This was my first impression of Agricola (with an overview of how it plays).

Having played a few more games, I tried to analyse Agricola. I break it down to three main areas: (a) growing a family and upgrading your home, (b) rearing animals, and (c) growing crop. I think these are the three general directions or focus that you can decide on when you play. Maybe you will try to do all and spend equal effort on each area. Maybe you want to be king of a specific area. Aside from these 3 development directions, there are 2 other important aspects of the game: (d) feeding your family, and (e) tools and unique advantages to help you execute your strategy. Feeding your family is a very important theme. Having enough food is a constant worry, like a tightening feeling in the chest. The game design doesn't let your family die of starvation. If you are short of food you go begging for food. But begging means a very severe victory point penalty. Begging is humiliating. If you're a farmer and cannot even feed your own family, then indeed you are a disgrace. So I find this very fitting for the theme. And the tools / unique advantages are the Major and Minor Improvements (which usually cost you some resource to obtain) and the Occupations (which still cost you an action, and also food if you have more than one Occupation). Some Improvement cards give victory points, but their main purpose (and that of the Occupations too) is to help you in the 3 areas of development above. When I play the game, I look at my Minor Improvement cards and Occupation cards, and decide up front the general direction I want to follow.

Michelle's favourite part of the game is probably the Occupation cards and the Minor Improvement cards. There are so many of them in the game, that we always get different combinations. Since we are still relatively new to the game, we still often get new ones that we haven't seen before. There are just so many cards in the game. Every time we take a look at the 7 Occupation cards and 7 Minor Improvement cards dealt to us at the start of each game, we are like children opening Christmas presents.

Unfortunately, for our first six games since receiving the game, we played a rule regarding the Occupations wrong, very wrong. We played that you can do more than one Occupation card when you choose the Occupation action, and you only pay food if you play more than one Occupation card with one action. The correct rule is you can only play one Occupation when you take the action, and if this is your second time playing an Occupation card, you pay food. In hindsight, this is quite an obvious mistake. The action space on the board does clearly say, "1 Occupation". Needless to say, in our first few games, we always choose the 1 Occupation space early, and we played many Occupation cards, sometimes all 7 of them. This helped us a lot. It was too good to be true, and I had a nagging feeling that something didn't seem right. And indeed it wasn't. Now that we played the rule right, our scores went down to a more sobering 30+, as opposed to 40+, even 50+ in our earlier games. The game feels even tighter and tougher, which it already was. And I like it! Even more difficult and painful decisions to be made.

Our first game after buying Agricola, which, obviously we played wrong (so many occupation cards). I had both the Obelix cards. Agricola has many such inside jokes. Famous people drawn into the cards.

Close-up of the Obelix cards.

My little no-space-wasted farm, with a nice big stone house, thanks to Obelix.

Michelle's farm in that first game.

Minor Improvement card on the upper left, Major Improvement cards on the lower left, and the rest are Occupation cards.

More cards...

There are 4 central boards. The leftmost one is for always-available actions. The middle one partly for always-available actions and partly for more-available-every-round actions. The upper right board is only for more-available-every-round actions. The lower right board is for the 10 Major Improvements which are available every game.

Close-up of some of the central boards. We place our farmers onto the actions that we choose.

Cards...

Another no-space-wasted farm. This time Michelle's.

My big family. 5 is the max.

I had all Occupation cards in play, which, I thought was a bit too easy, and later found out that we had played incorrectly.

Michelle played a Minor Improvement on the first round, which gave her 2 food from the next round onwards until the end of the game.

This is the card. Of course, we still played the Occupation rule wrong at the time. It should be impossible to play this card in round 1, because you can only do 1 Occupation at a time.

Agricola is an exercise in frustration. And I mean this in a positive way. You feel so strongly that there is so much you want to do, but you can only do so little, more so than many other games which also give this feeling. Tough choices, painful compromises, opportunities abandoned. You always feel that you are doing very badly, but sometimes when you add up the score at the end, it actually isn't that bad, or sometimes it turns out to be much better than expected. The game makes you feel so inadequate. Probably not very suitable for people with low self-esteem. But in the end, when you look at your well developed farm (assuming you played a well-enough game), maybe with some minor flaws, you feel a sense of pride, a sense of achievement.

Agricola is also a game if planning. I tend to plan ahead what I want to do, and I plot the road map to get myself there, which resources to collect, or which Occupations to play first, etc. I plan to maximise efficiency, minimise waste. Maybe it's because I have been playing mostly 2-player games. There is less competition for actions to choose from, so it is easier to plan. Agricola is a game of chicken (though technically there is no chicken in the game, just sheep, boars and cattle). When the resources accumulate on the board, you are tempted to take them, but maybe you hope noone will take them this round, so that even more will be added next round, and you can take them then, and have the exact amount that you intend to use. But sometimes you opponent may take them just before you, and all that waiting will have been for naught. It'll take a few more turns for the resources to accumulate. So, to take them now or to gamble that they'll still be there for you later. Agricola is a game of prioritising. Too many things that you want to do. You need to decide between what to do now and what to do later. Often you need to decide what to give up and not do at all.

Agricola is a game of taking what your opponent most desperately needs. Oh yes, it can be evil. Sometimes you do this just to spite your opponent. Agricola is a game of conservation. You need to save your actions. You need to make every action count. You need to try to do more with less. Some actions allow you to do two things, and you should try to do both, rather than selecting the action twice to do one thing earlier and another thing later. So there is some coordination and planning you need to do to be able to pull this off. Agricola is a game of synergy. It is usually a good idea to pick Occupations and Improvements that have synergy. This allows you to do more with less.

Comparing Agricola to other games, I actually find some similarity with Race for the Galaxy (maybe I've just been playing too much of Race for the Galaxy, and am just seeing what I want to see). You look at your initial cards, and you usually decide on a strategy based on what what you see, before even the first turn. But of course in Race for the Galaxy, you keep drawing cards, and may decide to switch strategy depending on what cards you get later. In Agricola you don't get new cards. Agricola was inspired by Caylus. I find it more thematic than Caylus. I always felt that Caylus is collecting cubes, converting cubes, and using up cubes to gain victory points. In Agricola the cubes feel more like sheep / boars / cattle, because they can breed. That's my logic. There are aspects of Agricola which do not jive with real life, but generally it feels more thematic. One thing I like about Agricola is you need not worry about the order of activation of the buildings like in Caylus. In Agricola the moment you choose an action, you execute it, unlike in Caylus, where building effects are resolved in a strict order after everyone has placed all workers. Not everyone will agree with me. Some may like the additional challenge. I can live without it, and be challenged by other aspects of the game, and there is no shortage of that.

So, in summary, I like Agricola very much.

gaming in photos - Race for the Galaxy

This was a game played on 2 Nov 2008. This was Michelle's tableau. And this was at the end of the game. 6 cards at the end of the game is rather few. Also this tableau doesn't seem to have much of a coherent strategy. This seems to be rather poor play, since Michelle has played Race for the Galaxy almost 200 times.

Then later she showed me her hand of cards. This was a dream-come-true hand of cards for an alien strategy. Unfortunately it turned out to be a nightmare for her, because all the cards were too expensive. She stalled and stalled, hoping to get enough cards to start executing the alien strategy, but by the time she was ready to start, it was too late. In the Race for the Galaxy base game, an alien strategy is quite hard to pull off, so we do enjoy trying it when the opportunity arises.

My tableau. I had reasonably good card draws, and in this game I could play very speedily, especially considering the 3 small windfall worlds. This spelt doom for Michelle's alien strategy.

new kaki

"kaki" is equivalent to companion / regular opponent / fellow addict.

Sui Jye and Jing Yi came to play on 26 Oct 2008, their 3rd visit. I think they have potential to be regulars. Sui Jye has starting frequenting www.boardgamegeek.com. They have visited Toybox and bought Carcassonne: Discovery and The Settlers of Catan. Hopefully this will be a start to a regular gaming group. Good thing that they live quite nearby.

Carcassonne on 26 Oct 2008. Sui Jye and Jing Yi seemed to like this better that Carcassonne: Discovery which they had bought (because Carcassonne was out-of-stock). That big castle was a memorable moment. This was a 4-player game - Sui Jye, Jing Yi, Michelle and I. All four had people in the castle, but as it developed, Sui Jye and I were the only ones who would be able to score because we had the most people. Unfortunately Michelle had added the cathedral tile, i.e. if the castle was not completed by game end, it would score nothing. But if completed, it would score not double but triple. Sui Jye and I were desperate to close it. There were still two tiles needed, and they were not easy to find, requiring 3 sides to match (the lower left corner of the castle and that tile at the top with a green farmer). We were the last two players to place tiles, and to our surprise the last two tiles of the game were exactly what we needed to complete this castle. I shouted with joy! A 72pts castle!

Sui Jye and Jing Yi pondering over Age of Steam. Sui Jye likes trains and pirates. Too bad I don't have any pirate game.

Still early in the game. Jing Yi (yellow) on the west, Sui Jye (blue) in the centre, and me (green) on the east.

Near game end. Sui Jye and I competed a bit, fighting over goods to deliver. Jing Yi had less competition, and also had a lot of space to build long tracks. She won the game decisively. I could see it coming but couldn't stop it. Too late.

Through the Ages continue to be good value for money. Michelle commented that this is her favourite long game. When I thought about it a bit more, actually she doesn't play any other long games. She wouldn't touch any of the Axis & Allies games. So I guess I can only say this is a long game that she actually enjoys playing.

Through the Ages on 27 Oct 2008. This was near game end. I was white, Michelle red. My military strength was zero, because I sacrificed all my men to win one colony. Thankfully I only did so near game end, and Michelle didn't play any nasty war card on me. With a 14 strength difference, a war would have been devastating. My culture rate was the strongest that I have ever achieved (later on the very last turn it went up to 26). Michelle's culture rate was actually not that bad. I think she had some leader that gave culture, who was now dead, and her culture rate dropped back to 4. In this game Michelle initially led in culture points. I took the lead later, but was never very far ahead, until the last two turns.

My civilisation. I had Game Designer as my leader. This was the 2nd time I had him, and I find him fantastic! Also now I realise that labs, libraries and theatres are very good for generating culture. Many Age II and Age III leaders give culture based on these buildings. So it's a good idea to build them, and then grab a leader who works well with them.

My military never progressed beyond Warriors. I had a lot of good wonders though.

Michelle's civilisation. She likes Einstein. This was not her first time using Einstein as her leader. Her military technology never progressed beyond Warriors either, but she had other ways of increasing her strength.

Michelle tends to like gaining more actions. She had 9 civil actions and 7 military actions!

I was very constrained in actions in the early game. Michelle took both Pyramids and the blue technology giving +1 civil action. She likes getting more actions. With few actions, little food and little stone in the early game, I decided to focus on wonders, because they need not be manned. Many culture-generating wonders were built. Michelle was militarily stronger throughout the game. The gap was not big for most of the game, until near the end of Age III, when I sacrificed all soldiers to win a colony. No aggressions or wars were played at all. This has been the norm since we started playing without the Non Aggression variant. I guess we both prefer to be peaceful.

Michelle had Homer in Age I which allowed two Warriors to generate culture. I was behind in culture initially, but later managed to catch up and overtake her. Our culture points were close for most of the game, despite my higher culture. Probably because of events, especially those rewarding the stronger and/or punishing the weaker. Only on the last 2 turns my culture points jumped significantly ahead. I not only had Game Designer to give me 9pts per turn, I also had two movie theatres to give me 8pts per turn. I won quite decisively on the last two turns. I was also lucky enough with the Age III events. I managed to draw the ones that would have benefited Michelle more, so of course I discarded them. The four events at game end probably gave me more points than Michelle.

rules blunders

Maybe I should even call these royal blunders. Not that they are so severe that they make the game unplayable or make the gameplay experience very bad. Royal because I have played the games very many times (more than 150 games of Race for the Galaxy, and more than 200 games of Mystery Rummy: Jack the Ripper), and only now I realise my errors.

In the advanced 2-player game of Race for the Galaxy, if my opponent chooses 2 develop action, and I choose 1 or none, I still can do development twice, just that if I have chosen 1 develop action, then I only get the discount for the first development, and if I have chosen none, then I don't get any discount for either development. In the past I have always thought I was only allowed to do one development. Oops. The same principle applies to the settle action, which I have played wrong for more than 150 games. Now that I realise this, the game is even faster! If one player chooses 2 develop and the other chooses 2 settle, then there can be 4 cards added to one's tableau in one round.

Even when playing with this rule mistake, Race for the Galaxy already often feels quick, and indeed a race. Now it will be even quicker. Not that I mind. Indeed sometimes when your early card draws are bad, or you make the wrong call, deciding to pursue one strategy but keep getting cards that are not useful after you have made that decision, any effort will seem rather futile because there is nothing you can do to stop your opponent who has raced ahead. However, I find that Race for the Galaxy has many interesting decisions, and it's all about how to make the best out of what cards you draw. There are many options for you. So I don't mind being occasionally screwed by bad luck.

Now that Michelle and I have discovered this rule error, we find it has added some additional excitement to our games. Now we have to be even more careful of speed play, and we are watchful for opportunities for speed play ourselves. Interesting!

The other royal blunder, for Mystery Rummy: Jack the Ripper, is for a rarer situation, but I think it can mean the difference between victory and defeat. When you use a Scene card (a gavel card) to get a card from the discard pile, if that card you pick is a gavel card too, you can play it immediately. This is an exception from the rule of one gavel card per player turn. I have not played Mystery Rummy: Jack the Ripper after discovering this blunder. I wonder how big a difference this will make to our game.

I hope I didn't miss any rules for the other games which I have played more than 100 times - Carcassonne and Ticket To Ride.

gaming in photos

A game of Princes of Florence played on 11 Oct 2008, against Michelle, using the 2-player variant. I like how my little city is so neat and compact. Very little unusable space - only that bottom right corner.

Michelle's city is even more compact than mine! No unusable space at all. Of course having the second builder helps a lot. The second builder allows buildings to touch. Michelle decided to buy a lot of builders. There is a builder strategy discussed at Boardgamegeek, which is supposedly not easy to execute. I have not learnt this strategy, but I don't think what Michelle did was it. She just wanted to get buildings for free, because her cards required many different buildings.

My strategy when playing Princes of Florence is rather one-dimensional. I just try to make as many works as possible. Usually I try to complete 6 works. I have done 7 works just once I think. So, this is very much a quantity over quality strategy. So I like the jesters, which improve all my works. I rarely buy bonus cards because I need to save my actions for completing works and buying profession cards. Anyway my focus is on quantity and not on boosting the quality of a single work. I usually don't bid for prestige cards, unless there is nothing else I need.

I think my strategy is pretty narrow because I usually play the 2-player variant. Princes of Florence is a game best played with 5 players. So having only Michelle as my opponent probably distorted my game play. I am quite sure there are other strategies to explore. Also with more players there will be much more competition, and your plans can easily be foiled by others. So with more players the planning will be much more trickier, and you'll have to adjust your plans on the fly if things don't go the way you hope. There may be much more of a survival feel.

A game of Carcassonne on 11 Oct 2008. Now my Carcassonne set contains 3 expansions (Inns & Cathedrals, Abbey & Mayor, and a Knucklebones magazine mini expansion), and I play it this way with Michelle. In this photo Michelle (red) was trying to complete a big, complex castle, and I (green) tried to get inside the castle and win it over from her. She managed to stop me.

Now Michelle had successfully completed the castle. 14 x 3 = 42pts! My green merchant (notice the baggy pants) was starting to feel like a fool.

I forgot some of the barn rules. The correct rules are: (a) If a barn is placed on a farm which has farmers, the farmers score 3pt per castle and are then removed. (b) If a farm with a barn is connected to a farm with farmers, those farmers score 1pt per castle and are then removed. When we were playing this game, I mis-remembered the rule and thought that in case (b) the farmer scores 3pt too. So Michelle and I had a tough fight over farm mergers. Michelle first tried to get a farmer in to the central farm (which already had my barn) from the lower left. I stopped her advance by placing tile A. Since her plan was foiled, she decided to play her abbey (tile B) to pick up some points. She also tried to get a farmer in from the upper right. She almost succeeded too. Thankfully I could put my abbey (tile C) to cut her off. Later we found out that the fight was over much fewer points than we had thought.

Another game. This was early in the game and we already had 5 rugby ball castles. Naturally, we started eyeing this lucrative farm from very early on too.

At the end of the game, the central farm had 13 castles, i.e. 52pts with a barn. Thankfully I managed to get my barn into this farm too, thus neutralising Michelle's barn which was placed there earlier than mine.

money is but dirt in Tribune

I continue to enjoy playing Tribune, despite most of my games being just 2 player games against Michelle. One tendency that we see in our games is we treat money as dirt. As the Chinese saying goes, 视钱财如粪土, literally translated as "considering money as wealth to be excrement and mud". Among the various victory conditions, we tend to leave money to be the last condition to fulfill. Getting the Tribune tile and getting the Favour of the Gods tile are usually the highest priority, because these are often the most difficult to achieve. Money always ends up to be the means to an end, to be used for acquiring cards to achieve the other victory conditions. However in fact money should be one of the victory conditions to be kept in mind.

Possibly one way to improve our game is to manage money better, to try not to spend too much, and to plan ahead better to fulfill this victory condition. There were a few times when I had fulfilled all other victory conditions, and then in order to amass enough money to fulfill the last victory condition, I had to spend one more round to place almost all my pawns on the coin bowl. That felt rather silly, and seems to me a reflection of poor planning. I wonder whether this is normal.

In this game I managed to get 4 leaders (the cards with value 0) and used them to win over their factions. Needless to say, I won this game comfortably.

Perhaps the money victory condition only becomes more important (or unavoidable) in 2-player games. When playing with more players, the number of victory conditions that you need to fulfill in order to win the game decreases. So you can completely ignore money if you choose to do so. In games with more players, money becomes an option for players who are not successful in competing in other types of victory conditions. An alternate path to victory. And that's a good thing.

But I guess since I tend to play 2-player games, I will need to remind myself: "Show me the money!!"

improving in Through the Ages

I have now played 14 games of Through the Ages, and am still loving it. There are many shorter games in my collection that I have not played more than 10 times, or even 5 times. Michelle is a tough opponent to beat. Based on play records, we are quite evenly matched. Recently she had a 304VP game, which was the highest I have ever seen in the games I have played. Although we don't play the No-Aggression variant anymore, we tend to be rather peaceful. We do build up our military, but mainly just for gaining an edge when events are resolved or when colonies are up for grabs, and not for aggressions or wars. We still have not played a single war card, ever. Yay. Peace.

Since I only play games within a small circle of friends, I don't really get a lot of exposure to different tactics and strategies. I tend not to read strategy articles on Boardgamegeek, because I prefer to explore them myself. I sometimes read them, after I have done some exploring myself, when I am interested to see how others play. So my new relevations on Through the Ages are probably just basic strategy for other better players.

(1) I only recently realised that I should make use of my knowledge of the card deck to plan ahead. I actually have been doing this to an extent, but have not thought of applying this to the whole game. James Cook is the first example of how Michelle and I have been planning ahead. Cook, if you have him as a leader, gives 2 culture points per turn per colony. He can be a big culture boost. If we colonise a lot in Age I and Age II, we start to anticipate him appearing, either to claim him to help ourselves, or to deny each other. We even start to hope to draw the Iconoclasm event card (which retires - let's not use the word "kills" - leaders not of the current age, i.e. it can force Cook into early retirement once Age III is here). We have been doing this for quite a few games, and I did not realise that this same principle can be applied to many other situations.

In our latest game, I had 3 Level II labs. When Sid Meier (oops... I mean Game Designer) appeared, I took him as my Age III leader, and he gave me 6 culture points per turn! (at the expense of 3 science points per turn, which I could afford) I didn't plan for this beforehand. I was just trying to be clever (by having a lot of science points) (heh heh... bad joke...). When I realised how great Sid was, the light bulb lit up. I could have planned for this. This applies to all the other leaders too, and wonders, and to some extent special technologies and governments too. All the while I have been playing a rather reactive game, just browsing the card row for what looks nice to have, instead of actively planning ahead for what will come up. So, hopefully learning to do planning will help me to improve my game.

(2) Your game needs to be balanced, but not too diversified. I can only think of calling this "efficient diversity". One of my early impressions of the game is you need to be diversified. You cannot ignore any specific aspect of your civilisation. You can't ignore food production, because otherwise you won't have enough population to do all things you want to do. Ignore stone (resource) production and you can't afford to build anything. Ignore government form and you won't get enough actions. Ignore science and you'll stay a caveman. Ignore culture and you lose (culture = victory points). And so on. Now I find that you not only have to diversify (now I'm not even sure this is the best word), you must do it as efficiently as possible. You need to do less to achieve the same. If you need more science, get some labs, OR get some libraries, but don't try to do both. I wouldn't make this a hard-and-fast rule. I'm just using this as an example to illustrate. Another example is the blue special technologies. These technologies, e.g. the warfare / military strategy ones, have different versions for the different ages. The version for a later age is costs more science but is also more expensive, and if you have an old version when you obtain the new version, you must discard the old one, i.e. the effects are not accumulative, you are just enhancing the effects. As a general rule, I'd say once you have obtained one technology in the family, don't bother to upgrade it. The cost to do so may not be worth the additional gain. You might as well go for another technology from a different family. For cards with an upgrade path, like the urban buildings and special technologies, and to an extent government forms, you should try to do more with less. I think it's better to have fewer types of urban buildings, so that you can focus on upgrading them to be more efficient. I think it's better not to change governments too many times, because these are expensive.

(3) Don't depend on your crutches. This is something I should have learned from the Civilisation PC game. Wonders in the PC game are, well, wonderful. And they are fun to build. When you beat all other civilisations in building a wonder, you feel great. You have a big sense of achievement. The benefits of the wonders are usually significant. However one pitfall of wonders, especially when you are progressing to a harder difficulty level, is that you become dependent on them. At higher difficulty levels when you are unable to build as many wonders and you tend to like to do at easier levels, you may suffer because at the easier levels the wonders have spoilt you. You are not playing efficiently. The same applies to Through the Ages, and I only realise it now.

When I had Moses as my leader at the start of the game, I tend to ignore improving my farms, because with Moses I needed less food to increase my population. The moment that I reached the saturation point (no surplus food), or when Moses "retired", I suddenly found myself struggling with food production. So in my latest game, when I had Moses, I consciously told myself not to ignore my farms, and throughout the game I didn't have any problem with that aspect of my civilisation.

My most recent game played on 5 Oct 2008. I had four colonies. Unfortunately I don't think I had Cook as my leader (who would have given me 8 culture points per turn). But I do remember I made use of Columbus to get a "free" colony. I unconsciously applied the "plan ahead" technique. I got Columbus in my hand, didn't play it until I had a decent colony card in my hand, and soon after making use of his power, I "fired" him and took on a new leader. I'm not a very compassionate boss.

We still play with our own house rule on the Fast Food Chains. Score for military unit OR urban building, and score for farms OR mines. But now I'm starting to see why this card may not be so overpowered afterall. Competent players probably won't have so many workers out because they don't need to. Their buildings / farms / mines would probably be quite efficient, thus needing fewer workers.

Another new thing that I learned recently is that I don't like Hammurabi very much after all. He used to be my favourite Age A leader, giving an extra civil action at the cost of one military action less. In the early game, one civil action is a big deal. Now I think it is better to gain the extra civil actions by other means. The penalty of one military action less is big. Not just because it makes raising troops slower, but also I think more importantly you get to draw only one military card per turn (assuming you didn't use the military action). That limits your choices a lot. You have much less influence on the event deck. You have less chance of drawing suitable tactic cards. Also Age A leaders don't last very long. When you suddenly find yourself back to 4 civil actions at the end of Age I, that's bad. When Age II come around, you need more civil actions. I guess the lesson of not depending on your crutches applies here too.

I wonder what's the next thing I'll learn in Through the Ages. Although this is one of the more expensive games, I am happy to have bought it. I have enjoyed it a lot and continue to do so.

Ra discovery

My copy of Ra was the original German version published by Alea. It was a surprise gift from my Taiwanese friends. They had bought it from the German eBay, back in 2004, when it was an out-of-print game. Recently my elder daughter Shee Yun (3.5 years old) has been requesting to play with it. I have some player aids / mats where you can place your tiles. She likes matching the tiles to the pictures on the player aids. One night she whispered secretively in my ear, "Waaa" (哗), and I wondered what made her say "Wow". Only when she pointed outside (my boardgame shelf is just outside my bedroom) I realised she was actually saying "Raaa" in a "My Presscioussss" way.

And while playing the tile matching game with her using Ra, I realised something for the first time after having owned this game for 4 years. I actually have a lot of extra tiles in the box! It had never occurred to me to count the tiles. So I have played quite a number of games of Ra where the tile draws have been skewed by the incorrect mix of tiles. So now I have an excuse for losing so frequently.

The game did come with many tiles that were not printed correctly. The position of the picture is off, the worst case being the picture for the next tile being visible too at the edge. However the game is still playable with these misprints, because you can still tell what tile it is. I suspect the original owner had requested for replacement tiles from the publisher, and when he/she sold the game on eBay, he/she had put all tiles into the box.

These are all extra tiles

Babel and Goa

On Sun 21 Sep 2008, I was finally able to convince Michelle to try Babel, a nasty little 2-player card game about building temples and destroying your opponent's temples. I have played this before, and have always been keen to introduce it to Michelle, because this type of short games is something we can play often (like Race for the Galaxy, Mystery Rummy series). They are quick and not too taxing for the brain, yet provide enough interesting challenge, and being short means we can bring them out any time without needing to set aside some time beforehand (like Through the Ages).

I reminded myself not to be too nasty to her in her first games, lest it leaves a bitter taste for her. Thankfully I didn't get much chance to play nastily anyway, so I didn't have to play "artificially" for the sake of not being too nasty. In fact, she was the one to pull a nasty move on me. It was my oversight for not seeing it coming. On my turn I reached 15pts, while she was on 12pts. If I had reached 15pts when she had less than 10pts, then it would be an instant win for me. Else, the game would enter the game end phase, i.e. whoever reaches 20pts first wins, or whoever drops below 10pts first loses. On Michelle's turn she made a combination of moves which completely destroyed one of my Level 6 temples, bringing me down to 9pts. Game over.

After the game she told me this game is too nasty - "很毒". Although she won both of the games we played, I wonder whether I will be able to convince her to play again. Maybe, like Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation, the tension and nastiness is too much for her. She likes the LOTR movies and you can't blame her for not liking to see the fellowship die out one by one. Only Boromir was supposed to die.

Having played Babel again, I feel impressed by the possible combinations of clever moves with just 5 types of cards in the game. The game seems so minimalistic, and yet there can be so much variation and so many opportunities for clever play.

We also played Goa, which we have not played for a long time. This copy of the game was a gift from Yoyo, the German guy who runs the boardgame cafe Witch House in Taipei. It is a German version, so I had to download and print some English reference sheets. I remember Goa used to be called the new Princes of Florence, because of its structure of auctions then actions every round. But I find them very different. I like Princes of Florence better, but Goa is not bad too.

Goa, Round 6 (of 8). I use the yellow tokens on the left to mark the number of actions that have been taken for a round.

One aspect that I think Michelle and I did badly on is the auctions. Every round you can select what tile you want to auction. If someone else buys a tile that you selected, he/she pays you (and the money "stays in the game"). If you buy the tile that you yourself selected, you pay to the bank (i.e. money "goes out of the game"). Usually it's bad to buy your own thing, because you get much poorer than your opponents. When money becomes scarce, shortage of money is painful. Both Michelle and I tended to select tiles that we want for ourselves, and thus we kept buying our own stuff. Maybe the end effect was not too bad, since we both played like that. I imagine if we had played with stronger players we would have been in deep trouble.

Money in this game is on cards. There are $1, $2, $5 and $10 cards. The value is only on one side of the cards, so you keep your money secret. At one point I discovered that Michelle's hand was full of $1 cards. She had been changing her money into $1 notes so that she appeared rich with more cards in her hand. It did work. I had thought she had a lot of money and bid too high on some of the tiles.

I was quite lucky with the expedition cards (obtained from reaching level 4 and 5 of some of the development tracks first, and from the auctions), and had two which allowed me to upgrade with ships only (i.e. without spices). This allowed me to do two level 4 to level 5 upgrades without spices. Saving 8 spices probably translates to 4 actions. I won the game narrowly at 50 to 47. I had an expedition card that allowed me to sell my spices for $3 a piece, which made me the richest and that gave me 3pts and the win.