gaming in photos

12 Dec 2009. Through the Ages. This was a game that Michelle should have won. She has had a very long losing streak in Through the Ages, and yet she still likes to play. We both thought she was finally going to win a game. I was happy for her. Then when the final four events were revealed, the strongest military event played by her gave me 10pts. She had miscalculated and had forgotten to boost up her military. She was the last to take a turn and could have done it. I remember I was only 1 strength ahead of her, and knowing that she could have easily boosted her strength on the last turn of the game, I gave up trying to be the strongest military, even though I had guessed she probably had played that event card. The score was 314 vs 308.

This was my civilisation. As usual, we didn't spend much effort on military. That air force card was only there for scoring for science related wonders / events. In this game I fell behind in science for most of the mid game and struggled quite badly. Notice I have few Age III technology cards.

I did have the Michael combo (Michaelangelo + Hanging Gardens + St Peter's Basilica), which gave me good points in mid game, but towards the end game Michelle caught up easily with her better overall science and infrastructure. I rarely build the Transcontinental Railroad wonder, but now I find it quite useful. It definitely helps a lot when your stone production is not ideal. The 5-strength is significant too, because my games with Michelle are always low military games.

Michelle's civilisation. She likes Aristotle a lot. Look at the many Age III tech cards she had. She had strong science is this game. In the past she often lost out because she didn't build any Age III wonder. She is correcting this now.

The other part of Michelle's civilisation.

12 Dec 2009. Wasabi. I still enjoy this game once in a while, despite the luck. I guess playing it as a 2-player game reduces the luck factor a little. On the following day we went for Japanese food.

Near the end of the game, when the board was about to fill up. I had completed my 5-ingredient recipe, which contained the squid (at the centre of the board). Completing your 5-ingredient recipe is always quite tense. It's tough to do. You need to try to hide your intention, and also hope that your opponents don't accidentally spoil your plan.

12 Dec 2009. Race for the Galaxy (with both expansions). This was Michelle's winning tableau. What a beautifully executed novelty goods (blue) strategy. She had Free Trade Association early, and had planned for this strategy early. Having Improved Logistics (settle twice) and Smuggling World (-1 discount to settle novelty goods worlds) allowed her to settle two such 1-cost worlds in the last round. She really had the stars aligned. She scored 51pts.

13 Dec 2009. Through the Ages again. My civilisation. I happened to have some theatres and libraries, so I took Shakespeare as my leader when he appeared. It wasn't much, just 6pts per turn, but it was worthwhile. Unfortunately, Michelle had planted the Iconoclasm event, and when it came out, Shakespeare had, ahem, an early termination of his employment contract. Using Iconoclasm to kill my leaders is one of the most satisfying things for Michelle. She has been doing it quite frequently. I think this is almost as good as winning the game to her. She gets a big kick out of it.

I had many colonies, because I played the Cartography card early, which gave me a bonus in colonisation. Michelle was unlucky with her card draws. She prefers peaceful games, but she kept drawing aggression and tactics cards, which she seldom uses. I always had just enough to beat her in conquering a new territory. These colonies helped me a lot. I gained so many extra blue and yellow tokens. Yellow tokens were especially useful because they help reduce both pressure for food production and pressure for maintaining happiness.

In this game I was able to build two Age III wonders!

Michelle's civilisation. She had good science from her labs, and when combined with Game Designer, they gave her good culture production. Her food and stone production were better than mine. I struggled with those most of the game, until late in the game. If it weren't for my colonies, I probably would have done much worse.

Michelle had Aristotle again. The Ocean Liner Service is one of her favourite wonders.

Game board at end of game. I managed to make sure I was ahead in all 3 aspects (I was white) - military strength, culture production and science production - so that if related events came up I would do fine. None of the events that eventually came up were related though.

13 Dec 2009. It has been a while since I last played Age of Empires III. I still quite like it, although I think I have never played it with 4 or more, which I think it would be best at. This was a 2-player game, and I still enjoyed it.

My buildings point to a very obvious strategy. From the start I had decided to send as many people as I could to the New World, to gain lots of points from area majority. Three of these four buildings help me towards this goal.

We tended to like to collect trade goods. In this round all spaces were occupied.

Michelle had very many people to place every round - 8 as opposed to the regular 5. In this particular round she had 9 because she had used a worker to obtain an extra merchant the previous round.

My two (green) missionaries pleading to the soldier to be nice. In the end Michelle never started any war.

14 Dec 2009. This was one very tough game of Pandemic with the Virulent Strain variant from the On the Brink expansion. This was the end of the game when we had managed to cure all 4 diseases. Many cities were on the verge of outbreaks, many would have caused chain reactions. We were also running out of cards (i.e. running out of time).

This was why the game was so tough. The first Epidemic forced us to draw many more infection cards than normal. Every turn that we drew at least one blue infection card, which was the virulent strain in this game, we had to draw an extra infection card. The 3rd Epidemic was bad too. Cleared cities were infected immediately with two cubes instead of one. We had cured the blue disease early, and had intended to eradicate it once and for all. But soon we realised it was going to be hopeless. Thankfully we managed to cure the other 3 diseases in time before time ran out. Making good use of our character powers (Epidemiologist and Troubleshooter) helped a lot.

Race for the Galaxy: Rebel vs Imperium

Race for the Galaxy: Rebel vs Imperium is the second expansion to Race for the Galaxy, my most played game ever. There has never been a doubt that I would buy this expansion, and the next one, Race for the Galaxy: On the Brink, expected early 2010.

Rebel vs Imperium adds new start worlds, new cards, new objective tiles, and takeovers. Takeovers is probably the most interesting new mechanic introduced. It adds some direct aggression to the game. During the Settle phase, if certain conditions are met, you can rob a military world from an opponent's tableau. Only four cards in the whole deck allow takeovers. You need to have played one of them to be able to attack someone else. In addition to that, your target need to have a specific vulnerability that your specific card can attack. E.g. if you have positive military power, you can be targeted. If you have rebel worlds, or you have Imperium cards, you can also be attacked. For a takeover to be successful, the attacker's military power needs to be at least the defender's military power plus the defense value of the military world.

I have played 12 games with Rebel vs Imperium, 8 of which had takeovers turned on (you can opt to play without this). However so far I still have not seen an actual takeover. Maybe it's because all my games have been 2-player games. With fewer players, it is harder for the conditions for takeovers to be met. However, having takeovers turned on did impact our games. We were conscious of it, and it made us think twice before playing Rebel, or Imperium, or military strength cards. However overall the impact of takeovers to the game feels small. I think whenever it does come into play it will become a major factor in deciding that particular game. Just like armies. In peace time you don't feel their impact, but when war breaks out, their strengths decide the fates of nations. I think I will continue to play with takeovers all the time, since with 2-players it is so hard to have an opportunity to see it in action anyway. The rules recommend turning on takeovers for alternative games, but I think that is probably for games with more players.

The additional components for the newly introduced takeover aspect of the game. You use this small board to track your military strength and your vulnerabilities. The pink and purple cubes on the left means you have a Rebel world, and you have an Imperium card respectively. The red cube on the strength track indicates your basic military strength. The pink one indicates your strength specific for attacking Rebel worlds, which may be higher than your basic strength. The square counters are indicators for defense against takeovers. The big round tile is just a reminder for whether takeover is turned on. It is when this side is face-up. Strictly speaking, none of these components are absolutely necessary, but they do make it much easier to see your opponents' strengths and vulnerabilities at a glance. Must easier than checking all the cards and doing the adding every time.

Rebel vs Imperium adds more new cards than Gathering Storm (the 1st expansion). Most of them are interesting. There are quite a few 6-cost developments, which will allow new strategies to be pursued. There is an 8-defense and a 9-defense military world, which are such tempting targets, and yet can be a hindrance if you keep holding the card in your hand and end up never being able to play them. There are quite a few quirky new card powers (e.g. you end the game at 14 instead of 12 cards), and quirky cards (e.g. one of the cards is both an Uplift and an Alien card). I find the new cards very interesting. They make the game richer. I really enjoy exploring the various strategies and various combinations of cards.

A game with the Rebel vs Imperium cards. 2nd row, 3rd card - Mercenary Fleet. It gives +2 strength, and you can discard cards to gain temporary strength. 3rd row, 4th card - Rebel Stronghold. That's a 9-point card, but it's hard to conquer.

Two of the new start worlds were designed to work with the Rebel and the Imperium strategies respectively. Not that they are all that powerful. It's more like you start with the respective vulnerabilities. You start being at risk of getting conquered by the other side. You can have both Rebel and Imperium cards in play. However it will also mean you are vulnerable to more types of attacks.

The new rule that allows you to select one from two start worlds is good. One option will always be a blue (usually peaceful) start world, and the other a red (usually more militaristic) start world. That gives a bit more control. You choose your start world after looking at your initial hand of cards.

The new objectives (objectives are introduced only in Gathering Storm) are nothing spectacular, but they do add some variety. I find that by now the objectives that came with Gathering Storm are starting to feel a bit repetitive. So I welcome some variety.

For those who like Race for the Galaxy, getting Rebel vs Imperium is a no-brainer. The only issue I have with the game is - damn, there are a lot of cards to shuffle.

gaming (and space-trucking) in photos

29 Nov 2009. Through the Ages. I have not played this for a while, and still enjoy it a lot. This is yet another 2P game with Michelle. This seems to be the only way we play now. In this game, the Internet wonder gave me 36 points! 6 points for each of my labs and libraries, which were all Age III buildings.

29 Nov 2009. Galaxy Trucker with Big Expansion. We played with the new tiles (including the blue aliens) and with the Rough Roads expansion. In this particular game we had Defective Connectors (one of the Rough Roads cards), which meant connecting the components became much trickier. As much as possible we had to connect simple connectors to simple connectors, doubles to doubles and universals to universals. Normally you can connect universals no either singles or doubles. You are only restricted to not connect singles with doubles. With this card, every mismatching connection slows down the spaceship by one. Our game went very slow because of this.

Notice I only had 3 mismatching connections on the leftmost two columns of my spaceship. So my total speed is only 2, instead of 5. I was desperate enough to use the blue alien life support component (lower left side) as a connector. I had no cabin for the alien.

Michelle had 5 mismatching connections, which means her speed is only 1 - 4 from engines, 2 from the brown alien, and minus 5 for mismatching connections.

Michelle had one extra shield component (lower left corner) which she had "reserved" earlier but was unable to build into her spaceship. That's a $1 penalty. Also notice how many cabins (with 2 astronauts and the brown alien) that she had compared to mine. In this game there were very few cabins and we had to race to find them. With the Big Expansion, due to the additional tiles added into the component mix, you remove 25 tiles for every player less than 5. Only two of us played, so we had to remove 75 tiles.

There was a saboteur on board my ship, and it so happened he sabotaged this particular engine tile (see lower centre part). That's very very bad, because...

... it meant this whole chunk on the left side of my spaceship fell off. I have noone to blame except myself, for poor construction. There is worse news. The other Rough Roads card we had in play was the one where any components falling off from spaceships flying in front of you become large meteors flying towards you. I was in front, which meant...

... there were 10 big meteors speeding towards Michelle's spaceship. They eventually destroyed two thirds of her spaceship. It was all my fault...

Later on, on another adventure card, she was hit by another meteor or cannon fire (I don't remember which), and lost another big chunk of her spaceship. Hmm... now that I look at this photo, I wonder why she didn't choose to lose the smaller broken off part. Probably she made a mistake.

This was what remained of her spaceship.

And yet she (red) reached the destination first, scoring more money ($12) for first arrival. She also scored the $6 bonus for "most beautiful ship", because she had the least exposed connectors. She didn't have many components left to give her many exposed connectors. And what's even more amazing is, she won this game by $2!!! Where's the justice??! Maybe I deserved to lose because it was my fault for causing her so much damage. Karma. It's karma... 报应...

5 Dec 2009. Ticket to Ride: Switzerland. Michelle and I still occasionally bring out one of the Ticket to Ride games to play. Since we usually play 2-player games, our favourite ways to play are Ticket to Ride: Switzerland and original Ticket to Ride with the Big Cities variant that comes with the 1910 expansion. In Ticket to Ride: Switzerland, the Zurich area is almost always congested.

5 Dec 2009. Keltis. The board is randomly set up every time. This particular setup is rather unusual, because the tiles on the yellow track are all wishing stones. Unfortunately I did not have many yellow cards that game. Too bad.

6 Dec 2009. Through the Ages. Another game played with Michelle on a Sunday morning. We are usually quite peaceful and do not spend much effort on military. We rarely play Aggression or War cards. Our military are mostly for surviving events and grabbing colonies. So we usually can do better in infrastructure - science, stone production, food production, culture production etc.

I had 5 colonies in this game, and I had James Cook, which gives 2 culture per colony every turn. Unfortunately he died rather young (I think just 2 turns). He came up as the very last card in Age II, and the Iconoclasm event seeded by Michelle came up soon after he became my leader. Sigh. The Colossus is upside down because we had the Ravages of Time event, which "expires" one Age A wonder. It loses its effect and produces 2 culture per turn instead. My First Space Flight wonder is placed sideways because I failed to complete it. I miscalculated and was one turn short from completing it. My stone production wasn't very strong in Age III.

6 Dec 2009. Galaxy Trucker with Big Expansion. This was ship class IA. It can be oriented in any direction you like. It's a bad-luck ship. Look at the numbers surrounding it. In this game if you are shot at or a meteor flies towards you, you roll two dice to determine where you get hit. These numbers around the ship means no matter what number you roll, your ship will get hit. Those 4 astronauts lying down are frozen in a hibernation unit. You can wake them up if you lose some astronauts during the flight.

Michelle's class IA ship, with a different and more conventional orientation.

My class IIA ship. I employed a blue (cyan?) alien this time. The blue aliens all have different special abilities. This particular one that I recruited helped me sell red and yellow cubes at higher prices.

My class III ship.

Michelle's class III ship.

... which crashed and burned. Well that wasn't too bad. She still had half a ship left. Crashing and burning in Galaxy Trucker can be very brutal, because you can enter a downward spiral. Get hit once, and as you lose some components, your engine strength, or crew size, or firepower reduces, which makes you even more vulnerable in the next encounter.

This was the first time we played with the Evil Machinations expansion. Each player draws 4 Evil Machinations cards at the start of the game. These are special events. Before the building stage of each of the 3 flights, every player secretly selects one Evil Machinations card to play for that flight. These cards are shuffled into the adventure cards deck before the flight phase. I find that the effects of these Evil Machinations cards are not too bad. The Rough Roads expansion is tougher. But the Evil Machination cards can be sneaky, because for each of them only one player knows what to expect. So when you play with this, you probably want to watch how your opponents build their ships, to try to guess what they're up to.

6 Dec 2009. Carcassonne, with Inns & Cathedrals and Abbey and Mayor and some other small expansions. I played a lot of Carcassonne in my early days in the boardgaming hobby. Quite a number of friends whom I introduced it to bought it too. I still enjoy playing it once in a while.

Red fat boy (a.k.a. big meeple) threatening to take over a to-be-merged castle from the green mayor (I call it baggy pants). It was tough to find a tile that fitted in this, so eventually Michelle gave up and put down her abbey tile. Her fat boy was stuck here for quite some time. She probably should have freed her fat boy earlier.

Dungeon Lords

Dungeon Lords is one of the hot new games from the recent Essen game fair in October, designed by Vlaada Chvatil (designer of Through the Ages, Space Alert, Galaxy Trucker). Han asked a friend to bring this back from Essen (name withheld to protect said friend from accusations of "why didn't you offer to bring me some games?"), and when Han was in town on 30 Nov 2009, we gave it a go, as a 2-player game.

In Dungeon Lords, you are evil apprentice dungeon masters constructing a dungeon, and recruiting monsters and setting up traps, to protect your dungeon from those pesky holier-than-thou adventurers. The rulebook is full of humour, just like Galaxy Trucker and Space Alert. Similar to Galaxy Trucker, there is one phase of building your dungeon, followed by one phase of subjecting your dungeon to attacks by a band of heroes. The meat of the game is in the dungeon construction. By the time the combat part comes around, there are some but not many decisions to be made. You just try to make use of whatever you have in your dungeon to try to defeat the adventurers. There is a puzzle-solving element to it, and also some randomness in the combat cards. I'll come to that later.

The dungeon construction part of the game has been compared to Hoity Toity / Adel Verpflichtet, which I find to be very apt. In each of the four construction rounds (4 seasons in a year), there are 8 types of actions available, e.g. gaining food, digging tunnels, mining gold, recruiting imps, improving your reputation, recruiting monsters. Every player has 8 cards representing these 8 possible actions. However each round there will be 2 that you cannot choose (and this is public information), and from the remaining 6, you secretly and simultaneously choose 3 to execute. For each type of action, at most 3 players can execute it. The costs and rewards differ for each player who has chosen the same type, depending on which spot on the game board you manage to place your minion (which in turn depends on turn order, and the order you place your 3 actions). E.g. among the 3 possible tunnel digging actions, one allows a player to assign up to two imps to dig 2 tunnels, one allows 3, and one allows 4, but you need to assign a "fore-imp" in addition.

This is the player board. You have a 4x5 grid to build your dungeon, and you start with 3 tunnels in the centre column (I had dug two more tunnels and build one room by this point). On the top left there are 4 rectangular slots for the adventurers who will come to "kick your sand castle". One of the slots is bigger and is for the Paladin, if you are evil enough to attract him. The icons at the top centre are a reminder for the combat sequence. The cave on the right is where your monsters (and ghosts) rest and prepare to fight. I have employed a vampire. The bottom right section is where you place your orders. The two on top are inaccessible orders for the current round. They will become available in the next round. The bottom three (face-down) are what I have chosen secretly.

The main board, and the progress board on top. The progress board gives you step-by-step instructions on what you should do. Very useful and practical. The main board shows the 8 types of action available to you. At most 3 players can choose the same action, and within each type, the individual actions vary slightly. In our 2-player game, there are 2 non-player entities, blue and red, and at the start of every round, they already randomly occupy some spots. The Evilometer is on the right side of the main board.

Details of the progress board. I like the artwork a lot. All the icons on the progress track mean something and they remind you what you need to do at each step.

In our first game, this action selection was a little daunting, and it took us a while to think through it and to choose the actions. Also since it was a 2-player game, we had to handle choosing actions for the non-player characters. This may sound a bit tedious and clunky, but I think it works well, and it also gives some additional control.

Managing your food stock and your finances (gold) is tough. Some actions require one or the other or both. Some monsters ask for food when you recruit them. Every year there is one pay day, and you need to pay this food cost again. The Ministry of Dungeons taxes you for dungeon construction. If you can't pay up, there is a heavy victory point penalty. Sometimes you also need gold to lure adventurers to walk into your trap.

There's an Evilometer in the game. Some actions worsen your reputation (e.g. you go to the village to rob food). Recruiting some monsters (e.g. vampires) worsen your reputation. Some actions and events can improve your reputation. Your standing on this Evilometer determines which adventurer you attract. The more evil you are, the stronger the adventurer you attract. If you have been really really naughty, you will attract the Paladin, a very powerful character who will likely cause much damage to your dungeon, but will also earn you many points if you manage to capture him.

There are four types of adventurers. Warriors walk in front and tend to be able to take much damage. Wizards cast spells, which can sometimes be devastating. Thieves reduce damage caused by traps. Priests heal the adventuring party. You need to try to cater your dungeon to the adventurers that you will get. Well, actually, I think more often you need to try to manipulate your Evilometer standing so that you will get the "right" adventurer that your dungeon can defeat more easily.

So there is a lot to think about when you construct your dungeon. The core of the game is in the action selection. You need to see your opponents' dungeons, assess what they need, and guess their intentions. You need to be careful not to get shut out of an action. You get at most 12 actions in a year, so it is painful to waste even one action.

After one year of dungeon construction, the adventuring party is fully assembled at your doorstep, and it barges in. There will be 4 rounds of combat. For each round that you do not completely defeat the party, it conquers one of your tunnels or rooms. After the 4th round, if there are adventurers remaining, they get bored and leave. I find that at this stage of the game, the players actually try to help each other defeat their respective invading gangs. It's like helping one another solve their different puzzles.

There are two years in the game, and after two years of building and fighting, you score. You score for many things - the number of rooms, the number of monsters, the number of captured adventurers. You are penalised for conquered tunnels and rooms. There are also a bunch of titles awarded, e.g. for being most evil, for having the most tunnels, for having the most imps.

This was the party that attacked me in Year 2 of our first game. I almost peed in my pants.

This was my dungeon in Year 2 before the adventurers started wreaking havoc. I did have two vampires, which were good because they were multi-use monsters. They were "expensive" to recruit and maintain, because they cause you to shoot up the Evilometer. I was already too evil anyway and didn't mind recruiting a second vampire. I had three rooms (the square ones). The one on the top left increases goblin and troll strength by one. The one on the top right neutralises magic. The one deeper down is the, ahem, imp breeding room. Put two imps there, add one food (romantic dinner), and magic! You get an extra imp. To the right of my group of orange imps you can see two adventurers that I had captured in Year 1.

After the fighting. I was actually a little surprised I managed to "off" the Paladin and the warrior, the first two in the party. The adventurers had conquered 2 rooms and 1 tunnel. They didn't conquer one more only because I had the slime monster which slowed them down in one of the combat rounds.

Three imps in the imp room. Imps are hard workers who dig tunnels for you, dig gold for you, and also do all sorts manufacturing for you if you have the appropriate production rooms.

Han and I played two games back-to-back. And Dungeon Lords is not a short game. Our first game took 2 hours, the second one took about 1.5. I was really evil in the first game, and attracted the Paladin twice. I had tried to improve my reputation, but the gap with Han and the non-player entity was so big I gave up. I attracted the Paladin in both years. In the second year, he was attracted even before the year started, because I was already evil enough. Later on, we found that we missed one rule - whenever one of your tunnels or rooms get conquered, your evilness drops. I had 4 tunnels conquered in Year 1, and should have had my evilness reduced by four. I probably wouldn't have attracted the Paladin if we played right. The good news is I did managed to defeat both Paladins, which gave me a lot of points.

In our second game Han and I reversed roles. I was Mr. Nice Guy, and he the evil overlord. He attracted the Paladins in both years too. It wasn't intentional in the second year, and that was a painful fight he had to go through. There was a magic spell cast by the party which really screwed up his defense too. He had committed some tough monsters to defeat the Paladin quickly, but then the wizard cast a spell to summon a weak phantom adventurer at the head of the party. So the monsters killed off that phantom adventurer instead of the Paladin. Monsters are one-use-per-year, which means Han had wasted some of his best monsters on that phantom adventurer. He did eventually beat the Paladin, but in that 2nd year the adventurers conquered 5 of his tunnels / rooms (there was another magic spell that allowed the adventurers to conquer an additional one).

In the 2nd year of the 2nd game, I made one major mistake that completely destroyed my game. I was out of food and out of gold, a situation which I probably should not have allowed myself to get into in the first place. Then in that particular round, I got shut out from one action (tunnel digging), which had a cascading effect, causing my other two actions to be abandoned as well. I couldn't dig any new tunnel, and I didn't have any unconquered tunnel, so I couldn't dig for gold. And without any unconquered tunnel, I couldn't do the convert-tunnel-to-room action. So I had one round of completely wasted actions. This had further rippling effects. I couldn't pay my dungeon tax which was due that round, and received two nasty letters from the Ministry of Dungeons (-3 points each, ouch...). It also caused some more wasted actions in subsequent rounds. I had a pretty empty dungeon. And I ended the game with -7 points. Oww....

The Evilometer. This was the 2nd game we played, and I decided to play Mr. Nice Guy this time (see green cube). That step on the Evilometer with the weapons is the threshold at which you would attract the Paladin.

Having my minions (wooden figures) placed on the order cards meant I was unable to or decided not to execute that order, which is baaaad.

The adventurers who attacked my dungeon in Year 2 of Game 2. the first two were wizards. The gem icons represent their magic power. For each of the four combat rounds, there is one combat card assigned randomly and secretly. The combat card contains a magic spell. In the first round of combat, if there is at least one wizard in your party with at least one gem icon, the wizard will cast this spell. In the second round, 2 gem icons are required, and so on. Some of these spells can be very devastating. During the dungeon building, some actions allow you to peek at them, so that you can be better prepared.

The heart icons on priest means he will heal two points of injury after any fight. Sometimes when you have many priests, it may be better to not fight, because the amount of damage you deal may be less that the damage the priests can heal, which means they will end up healing damage done in previous rounds of combat. You'd end up worse than before.

My rather humble dungeon awaiting its fate.

After the fighting, I had defeated the two wizards (who were now in my prison), but could not defeat the priest.

The games were very tense! There never seemed to be enough actions for me to do all I wanted, to build up and protect my dungeon. And my heart just sank whenever the marauding adventurers approached my dungeon, especially when there was a Paladin leading the party. This is such a cruel, cruel game. I felt like I was fighting the adventurers more than I was competing with Han. Maybe that was because I was still new to the game. I needed to learn to survive before I could learn to be competitive.

I enjoyed Dungeon Lords very much. But I think we did rather poorly in building our dungeons. They kept getting conquered. I wonder how other people fare, and what's the norm after you become familiar with the game. In our first game we tied at 15pts. Having positive points meant we both passed the dungeon lords exam and earned our dungeon building licenses. In the second game Han scored 15pts too, but I failed my exam miserably.

I'm a bit torn about Dungeon Lords - whether I should buy it. Han already has a copy, and there are many other new games that I'm interested to try. But I really like it a lot. I shall procrastinate. I find that if I put off buying games for a while, when I later revisit my wishlist, I will have lost interest in some of the games, and it will become easier to trim down the buylist. In the mean time I expect I will bug Han to bring Dungeon Lords quite often.