Ticket to Ride Legacy - The Finale

I started the 12-game Ticket to Ride Legacy campaign in November 2023. When I was about halfway through, I wrote about it. That was up to Game 7, or Year 1865 to 1883 in game terms. Now that I have completed the campaign, I'll make some addendums. Not a lot to add. My impression is generally the same. This is a fun legacy game. The new mechanisms added from Year 1886 to 1898 are interesting. I will mention a little about the post-campaign game. After you are done with the 12-game campaign, you will still have a playable game. There will be no more changes to the game components. Many of the campaign game elements will no longer be in play, but some do remain. Some remain and work slightly differently. Now you play with a map which you have highly customised throughout your campaign. This is effectively having your own personalised Ticket to Ride map with its own history. 

I personally am not too enthusiastic about the post-campaign game. If I were to play a Ticket to Ride game, I'd probably pick another variant. The post-campaign game has a larger map than the original Ticket to Ride. There are more cities and more tickets. You can think of it as an advanced version. It keeps some elements from the legacy campaign which don't exist in the original game. Most of these additional elements are not very interesting to me. So my copy of the game is more a souvenir than a game. I do think the enjoyment I gained throughout the campaign is well worth the price. Ticket to Ride Legacy is now a finalist for the 2024 Spiel des Jahres. It would be great if it eventually wins. It will introduce the legacy game concept to many more people. 

~~~~~

SPOILER ALERT: If you have not played the game and you think you might play it, proceed no further. If you have completed the campaign, or if you are sure you won't be playing, read on. 

We had a big gap between our 7th and 8th game. We went back to my hometown in Sabah for a family holiday. I brought the game so that we could resume our campaign then. We managed to complete the campaign over the holidays. 

The dining table at my parents' home in Kota Kinabalu is a traditional round Chinese table with a Lazy Susan. That doesn't work quite well for playing boardgames. So we used mahjong tables. They are not big enough so we had to use two. 

These are the treasure map cards which help when hunting for treasure. When building routes in the Sierra Madre region, you can choose to buy a map, or attempt to find a treasure. When you use maps to help find treasure, you must use maps with different alphabets. Duplicate maps don't help. 

This is one of the long distance tickets. 

We were halfway through the campaign when I realised we had missed an important rule. Whenever you build a route which connects to a major city, you get to draw a train card from the top of the deck. This is a great rule! And I missed it! This makes connecting to major cities attractive, and thus also competitive. I love that this makes players feel they are getting a good deal. I imagine the reason for this is to speed up the pace. With a bigger map, the game may become draggy. This little bonus helps mitigate this. 

I enjoyed converting towns to my company towns. When doing this, I got to stick my company sticker onto the towns. From then on, anyone who connected to my town had to pay me $1. It wasn't a lot, but it felt good. Claiming towns isn't something you can do any time you want. You only get to do this at certain events or when an employee allows you to. I kept employing the Vice President game after game because he was the one who would let me claim towns. In the campaign every player gets a little sticker sheet with town stickers. I managed to use up all my town stickers just before the campaign ended. That was highly satisfying. 

After the campaign ends, the company towns still remain in play in the post-campaign game. However they now work differently. You don't get to make money from other players. Instead the company towns become third party towns. Anyone who connects to any company town must pay $1 to the bank. I had built many company towns throughout our campaign, which meant in our post-campaign game we would be paying $1 to the bank more often. Michelle and the girls told me I was making life difficult for everyone. Hey you can't fault me like that. How would I know this would happen? If I did, well, I probably would have done it anyway. Because stickering is fun. 

This board section is the Haunted Wastes. It is mountainous, so many routes are tunnel routes. To build tracks here for the first time, all the cards you use must have the pickaxe icon. Not all train cards in the game have the pickaxe. All locomotives (jokers) have the pickaxe. Often when building tunnel routes locomotives will be needed. It is difficult to collect many colour train cards with pickaxes. Tunnels are tough, but you gain a reward the moment you build a tunnel route. How much money you earn is written on the route. This is a one-time bonus. Once you apply your colour stickers over the route, this becomes a normal colour route. You won't need pickaxes for it anymore from the next game onwards. 

This is the ghost train. When a game starts, you place it at a specific spot. Whenever anyone builds a white route, roll the ghost die to move the ghost train. If the ghost train stops next to a route you have claimed, you are cursed by it. You draw a curse card and it takes effect indefinitely until you disable it. It even carries over to the next game. Thankfully it is not too difficult to remove the curse. You only need to sacrifice some train cards. The curses are not all severe. Most seem to be inconveniences rather than disasters. 

This particular curse disables your employee. Ungrateful fella...

When the tunnels came into play, I finally understood why there were pickaxe icons on some cards. There are pickaxe icons in the card corners - such a considerate graphic design. If you hold your cards fanned, you can easily see the pickaxe icons. 

My green train pieces are sometimes a little confusing because each train piece looks like two pieces. Each piece is two small carriages linked together. 

I was trying to build a black tunnel, and it was not easy to collect enough black train cards with pickaxes. I had to use locomotives. 

Building tracks here is risky, because you may be visited by the ghost train. That little space next to the track with a bone icon is a parking spot for the ghost train. 

The first time I successfully found lost treasure, I earned $36. Later we found out that the treasure value would keep diminishing. 

This was when the fifth and last treasure was found. 

Advancing to California!

The mechanism introduced in California was the bridges. You earn $2 for building a track with bridges. However this comes with some risk. Earthquakes happen and may damage the bridges. Routes with damaged bridges don't help you complete tickets. In order to repair bridges, you have to keep unused locomotives in hand when the game ends. 

One of the earthquake events

If you build a tunnel route here you will earn $10. 

All five face-up train cards were blue! Younger daughter Chen Rui was the blue player, but at this point she wasn't collecting blue train cards. 

This is how treasure hunting works. To succeed you need to draw 10 cards from the deck without revealing any skulls. Treasure maps help you by cancelling skulls you draw. Each map cancels one skull. Of the 10 cards drawn above, only three have skulls. There are enough treasure maps to cancel these skulls, so the treasure is found! 

Finally we had a complete map. This was at the end of the Game 10. So Game 11 and 12 were played on the complete map. 

When the Cascadia region was revealed (north western region), it triggered a gold rush. In the following game, we were all kept busy bringing people there to look for gold. 

This is a claim card used during the gold rush game. Every player gets one such claim card. A destination is specified, together with five starting cities. Your goal is to connect as many of these starting cities as possible to the destination city. Each time a starting city is connected, you scratch off one of the gold nuggets on the right to claim a reward. 

I played the gold rush successfully and managed to connect all five of the starting cities. During a gold rush, it is not the gold diggers who make money, it is the clever shovel sellers who make money. 

 

In one particular game I earned this much cash. Indecent! This included cash from the gold rush and also from finding lost treasure. I was filthy rich. 

This was a new mechanism introduced in the last two games of the campaign - the train timetable. 

The timetable is a grid showing all the cities on the completed map. This is a bingo game. You have two games to try to cross off as many cities as possible. You cross off a city when you connect to it. For every completed row or column, you earn $10 at the end of the second game. 

I did poorly in this. I didn't make any money from it. Not a single row or column was completed. Elder daughter Shee Yun was most successful in this, making $70. She had completed her tickets early, and had the luxury of taking time to deliberately complete rows and columns. My tickets were challenging and kept me occupied. I only managed to get them completed near game end. 

This particular employee is the psychic. Every turn you may take a look at the top card of the draw deck. This seems powerful, but I'm not sure in practice whether it is as useful as it sounds. I didn't employ her. Chen Rui did, and she did seem to enjoy using the psychic. 

Game 12 was the finale, and the story needed to come to a conclusion. The major thread was Mama O'Connell, notorious gangster. It was time she was hunted down to face the law. In Game 12, after you complete a ticket, you can reveal it to use it to look at clue cards, or to attempt to arrest Mama O'Connell. In our game, only Shee Yun and Michelle made an effort to look for Mama O'Connell. They were able to complete some tickets early. My tickets took a long time to complete, so I could not compete at all in this. Although Shee Yun was first to embark on the hunt, Michelle beat her to locate Mama O'Connell. Every player only has one chance to attempt to locate Mama O'Connell. You have to declare where you think she is. If you are right, you claim a big reward. If you are wrong, others will know which city to rule out, and you are not allowed to make a second attempt. Michelle's attempt was the first one in the whole game, and she got it right. 

After the campaign ended, the story cards directed us to look under the box insert. This was where we found more components, including the rulebook for the post-campaign game. This rulebook lists the components to be retained for the post-campaign game, and those to be retired permanently. 

These grey route stickers were provided for us to stick on track beds which were still unclaimed by the end of the campaign. These tracks would become normal generic grey routes. You can use any colour on them. 

The post-campaign game is called Ticket To Ride 1901. These are the game mechanisms which remain:  

• Shares: It works in the same way as the campaign game. If the route you claim is in the colour of one of the face-up shares, you claim that share. When the game ends, you compare share ownership to see how much extra money (i.e. points) you earn. 
• Employees: During game setup, players each claim an employee in reverse player order. Some employees used during the campaign game are retired. 
• Events: Similarly, some are retired. 
• All tickets: During the campaign, tickets which were fully punched were retired. Now all tickets come back into play. The 1901 game has a very thick tickets deck. During game setup, you draw 5 tickets instead of 4, and you must keep at least 3. 
• Piggyback: This mechanism stays. You have one emergency parachute in case you get completely blocked off. 
• California bridges and earthquakes: They are still there, but I don't find them particularly interesting. 
• The big cities: Whenever you connect to a big city, you draw one train card from the deck. I like this one. 

These game mechanisms no longer exist in 1901: 

• Circus: The stickers have all been used, so naturally this doesn't come back. 
• Tunnels: Unclaimed tunnels have been converted to normal grey routes by now. 
• Ghost train and curses: The unhappy ghost has found peace now. 
• Robber: Not that he was caught. He got tired of people stealing his stash so he decided to retire. 
• Train schedule: This was done only across two specific campaign games. 
• Gold rush: This was done only in one specific campaign game. 
• Lost treasures: We've found them all. 
• Hole puncher: This was my favourite thing. In the post-campaign game, components no longer change, so of course we are not going to punch any more holes. 

I have not actually played the 1901 game, so maybe I should not already decide I'm not going to enjoy it as much as other Ticket to Ride variants. The reason I think I won't like is as much is I don't find those mechanism which are retained very interesting - the bridges, earthquakes and shares. I have not yet tried how the game feels with all those tickets though. 

This was the scoring process at the end of the campaign game. We scored our share holding first (left). Then we added all the other elements. The biggest component of the final campaign scores was still our game end scores of those 12 campaign games. 

The final game looked pretty epic.

These eight employees were retired at the end of the campaign. I am going to miss the Vice President the most. He was the one who helped me add so many company town stickers to the board. The gambler was an interesting employee. During game setup, you place one of your tickets under her. This ticket scores double at game end. That's a great deal. There is some risk though. If you fail to complete that ticket, the penalty is doubled too. 

At the start of the campaign, these two pages in the campaign game rulebook were 90% blank. As we played through the campaign, we kept adding stickers. These two pages are all about what you need to do when you build tracks. This looks intimidating, but it isn't really that complicated. The various sections are related to different mechanisms introduced during the game, and not all are in play at all times. Mechanisms come and go during the campaign. 

This particular story card is read when the famous robber retires. When our campaign game ended, the story deck was used up, leaving an empty space. We decided to put this particular card here, with the legendary bandit riding off into the sunset. This was apt. A fitting ending to a fun journey. 

boardgaming in photos: more Exit games

Around the end of last year I bought four different games in the Exit series at one go. I'm not actually a super big fan of the series, or of puzzle games in general. However my family enjoys games in the series. When my wife Michelle suggested that we get some to play as a family, of course I agreed enthusiastically. I have played quite a few Exit games before. I didn't buy every single game, but I consider myself a veteran. However it had been a while, so I decided to get one easier game among the four to ease us back into playing. Thus this one The Enchanted Forest. Difficulty level is 2 of 5. This one is interesting because it uses many fairy tale elements. 

A typical Exit game is essentially a series of 10 riddles. Many are quite creative. You play in a cooperative manner trying to solve all the riddles in as short a time as possible. In case you get stuck, you can read hints provided. If you still can't solve the riddle, you can look at the solution so that you can move on to the next riddle. This is really a puzzle and not a game. I guess it depends on what you define as a game. 

One common element in Exit games is that round device at the bottom right. Every game has something like this. It is not a riddle. It is a mechanism to help you check whether your answers for the riddles are correct. The solution to every riddle is a three digit number. Every riddle has a shape associated with it. For example, if you want to check whether the answer for the triangle riddle is 375, you need to line up the triangle, 3, 7 and 5 on the round device, then check the number visible through the little window. This sounds a little complicated, but once you play with it, you'll quickly grasp how it works. Anyway, it's not a riddle in itself. It's just a mechanism to facilitate playing the game. 

The other components in the photo are all unique to this particular Exit game. Every Exit game has quite a few unique components needed for its riddles. 

The Enchanted Forest is indeed rather easy. It is too easy for my tastes. Some riddles felt more like following a procedure to calculate the answer. They were clear as daylight. There was nothing to be puzzled about. Thankfully there were some harder riddles. Eventually we had to use some clues too. If you are an experienced Exit player, I'd suggest you skip this one. If you are new, this is a good one to start with. 

It was easy, but we didn't score the full 10 stars. We used the free mobile app for timekeeping, score calculation and background sound effects. 

The Deserted Lighthouse is a little different from other Exit games I have played. It contains jigsaw puzzles. Yeah, there are puzzles in this puzzle. The box is larger. Difficulty level is 4 of 5, so this is a bit more challenging. 

These are the game components. One difference compared to other Exit games is it doesn't come with a deck of cards. Normally the cards are used for checking answers and for reading hints. In The Deserted Lighthouse these aspects are done in a different way. You still have the round device. When you use that to check your answer, you will get a sequence of shapes. If you can find that sequence on one of the booklets, it means your answer is correct. Else, you go back to the drawing board. As for the hints, they are written at the back of the rulebook. You can look them up there if you need help. The slight disadvantage is you need to resist the temptation to read other hints on the same page. Not a big issue though. 

The Deserted Lighthouse is quite tough. It really tests your problem solving ability and creativity. Unfortunately for me, it was also tough in the sense that I didn't fully enjoy the experience. We played in the evening, and as the game went on, we felt tired. When we encountered some of the more difficult riddles, we gave up easily because we didn't have patience to think harder or longer. We went for the hints, and sometimes the answers. Had we played during daytime, it might have been more enjoyable. Another problem I had was related to the colours and the text. I found some colours on the drawings hard to tell apart, and some writing hard to read. Better lighting or playing at daytime might have been better. 

It took us two and a half hours. No wonder we felt drained. I must say the riddles here are creative and interesting. If you like a challenge, this will satisfy that need. Just be prepared if you have poor eyesight, the game will be hard in an additional way. Have your reading glasses ready. Maybe even a magnifying glass. 

Asian Board Games Festival Penang 2024

 

I will be showcasing my games in Penang at the Asian Board Games Festival 20 - 21 July 2024. Who's in town? Come visit me and I'll teach you how to play in person! My booth will be on the Ground Floor.

Easy Breezy Travel Agency

The Game

Easy Breezy Travel Agency is a quick card game for 2 to 4 players. You are travel agents, and you collect travelers to form trip groups. Whoever makes the most money from organising trips wins. 

The game is set up like this. The 4x4 grid is a ticket price chart. The four columns represent price, from $1 to $4. The four rows represent four destinations - Miami, Chicago, New York and New Orleans. The cards within the grid are drawn from the four small stacks on the left. These are the transportation cards. They can be buses, trains or planes. Different modes of transportation carry different numbers of passengers. The positions of the transportation cards indicate the ticket prices. Prices always start at $1, but they can go up to $4. 

The four face-up cards on the right are the passengers. Some passengers want to go to a specific city. Some (I think of them as cheapskate backpackers) are happy to get a free ride anywhere. In this game you collect passengers, and when you get enough to fill the bus / train / plane, you claim the transportation card and make money (score points). How much you make depends on the number of paying passengers and the ticket price at the time. Backpackers help you fill seats if you struggle to get enough passengers. Just remember they don't pay. 

A turn is very simple. The available actions are straight-forward. What you will do most frequently is to take a card from those four face-up on the table. Each time you take a card and refill the pool, the new card from the deck may specify a price increase for one of the four destination cities. When this happens, you update the grid at the centre of the table, advancing the relevant transportation card. 

When you have enough passengers, you will be able to perform the second type of action, which is to claim a transportation card. You discard the passengers and you score points. You keep the transportation card for game end bonus scoring. A new transportation card for that destination will be drawn. It is priced at $1. The game end scoring is based on whether you have collected many transportation cards of the same city or mode of transportation. You will score more points if you collect many cards of the same city or mode of transportation. 

You may have at most four cards in hand. If you have more than that, any surplus is placed before you on the table. The cards are still yours, just that they are vulnerable to attack. Now the third thing you can do on your turn is to reorganise. As part of this action, you may place cards from your hand onto the table, you may force opponents to swap cards with you twice, and then you may take cards back into your hand. This is where the "attacking" happens, and where the concept of unprotected cards comes into play. Anything you have on the table in front of you are at risk. 

Each city card stack in the game has only three cards, of the three modes of transportation. So there are only 12 city cards in the game. The game ends when one city card stack runs out. This is something the players can manipulate. 

The Play

This is a light and quick game. Most of the time you are collecting passengers. You need to accumulate enough to claim the transportation cards. It is a race, and at the same time you hope to time the claiming of the transportation cards when the ticket price is the highest. There is a little brinkmanship here. Buses take two passengers (no more, no less), trains three, planes four. You can see what passengers your opponents have collected, so you know who are competing with you. Whether to use free riders is not always an easy decision. If you are desperate to grab the transportation card, you may have to resort to using them. Even when you will be missing out on points. Some points is better than having an opponent take the card before you can, or the game ending before you manage to take it. Yet, maybe if you wait for just a little longer you can get the right paying passenger, and that will give you a bigger profit. 

Whenever anyone takes a transportation card for a city, the next card to come into play always starts at $1. So if you miss cashing in at a higher ticket price, your passengers will suddenly devalue. 

The game end situation can be exciting. When you have enough passengers to claim the last transportation card of a city, do you do it immediately? If you are obviously leading then it's a no brainer. But if you are not exactly sure, it's not so simple. Do you let the game go on a little bit more so that you can score more points? But will that also allow your opponents to score even more? 

 

I have an ideal situation here. I have four paying passengers who want to go to Miami (yellow). The plane tickets to Miami are at $4 now, the highest rate. I will be able to score $16 at one go. However in case someone else claims the last Chicago (red) transportation card, the game would end before I can score my $16. 

The Thoughts

This is a light and breezy card game, just like the game title suggests. The rules are simple, but they create some interesting situations and decision angst. I find it an enjoyable filler. 

Pie Factory

 

The Game

Pie Factory is a light card game about making pies. The cards in the game are ingredients. There are three types of ingredients - crusts, fillings and toppings. Pies can be just the crust (probably not very interesting), or crust plus filling, or crust, filling and topping. You score points by completing pies and selling them. The game ends after you go through the deck twice. 

This is a 2-player game in progress. The two cards on the right determine player order. Player order is checked and can change every round. On the left there is an assembly line of cards. You can take cards from this assembly line. 

You only perform one action on your turn. You can play a card from your hand, play a card from the assembly line, draw a card from the deck to your hand, or box pies. Playing a card means adding it to a pie or starting a new pie. You can work on at most three pies at the same time. If you already have three, you will need to box them in order to be able to work on a new one. To start a pie you will always need a crust. Fillings can be put on crusts. Toppings cannot be simply added to any filling. The toppings only go well with specific fillings. 

The text and icon at the bottom of the card indicate what ingredient it is. The icon at the top right corner indicates what it can be placed on. In the photo above, the card on the left is a crust, so there is no icon along the top. This means you can play the crust directly onto the table as a new pie. The card in the middle is a topping. Along the top right corner you can see that the meringue topping only goes well with lemon, lime or chocolate fillings. The card on the right is a filling. So in the top right corner you see that it must go on top of a crust. 

The point value of a pie (when you box it) is the dollar value of its topmost card. When you box a pie, you score it, putting the top card in your score pile. The other cards go to the common discard pile. 

When you take a card from the assembly line, you must immediately play it. If there is no valid play, you can't take the card. Only some of the leftmost cards in the line are free. To claim the rightmost card, you must discard two cards from your hand. For the middle cards, you need to discard one. During a game round, if a player takes a card from the assembly line, the assembly line is not immediately refilled. This is only done at the end of the round. So player order is important. The early bird can get the free cards and also have more options. 

When refilling the assembly line, the cards are first shifted left to fill any gaps. Cards are then drawn from the deck to fill the rightmost spaces. So newer cards will be more expensive. 

The player order of the next round is determined by cards played in the current round. There is a preparation time at the top left corner of the cards. Whoever has the shortest preparation time gets to go first next round. If you do not play a card, i.e. you draw from the deck, or you box pies, you automatically go last next round. 

Some cards have an icon at the bottom left. This is the area majority aspect of the game. There are three main icon types - presidents, foremen and secretaries. At game end, you compare who has collected the most in each category. This gives bonus points. The icon in the photo above is not the secretaries. It is the grandma. This is a special card. If you have the grandma, during the president reckoning, you may convert one of your presidents to a foreman or secretary. 

The Play

The game is generally simple. The art is lovely. I found the change in player order every round tedious. The game procedure feels unnatural and unwieldy to me. When you play a card, you can't directly put it on your pie. You have to set it aside first, because after everyone has played, you need to compare prep time to determine the new turn order. I played many rounds and couldn't get used to the round procedure. It felt convoluted to me. When you pick a card from the assembly line, it must go directly into play, but when you draw a card from the draw deck, it goes into your hand. This may be a small difference, but I got confused and it made the game feel non-intuitive to me. 

You want to make pies of high values, and that means you want to make pies with crust, filling and topping. This seems to depend a lot on the luck of the draw. If a topping appears but you don't have the right filling, you are out of luck. You can't take the card into your hand, since anything you take from the assembly line must go into play in the current round. 

I can appreciate the importance of player order. You get more options, and you are more likely able to get a free card. In our game, we often had few or no cards in hand. That limited our options. First we couldn't take those cards from the assembly line which required discarding cards. That means we could either draw from the deck, or take the free card. The free card was not always playable, which meant we couldn't take it. Then we were left with just the blind draw. Maybe I just played poorly and I shouldn't have allowed myself to get into a situation with no cards in hand. 

Taking a card from the assembly line allows you to put a card into play with just one action, compared to drawing from the deck to your hand and then playing it from your hand, which is two actions. Instinctively, taking a card from the assembly line is the better option. It has double the efficiency. However when you have no hand cards, you can only take the free card, which severely limits your choices. Spending two actions allow you to do some planning and saving up of good cards. The cards go through your hand and you can do your strategising. However the cards are blind draws. Then you are dependent on luck. That doesn't seem fun. 

During play, you have to keep in mind the area majority competition - collecting cards with customer icons. The points from these are significant enough that you can't ignore them. 

My score pile at the end of a 2-player game.

The Thoughts

Unfortunately this is a game I doubt I will play again. The art is nice. It's a generally simple game. However I find the gameplay unintuitive and tedious for the amount of fun I get out of it. It also felt restrictive and it didn't allow me to plan or strategise much. 

Furmation of Rome

The Game

Furmation of Rome is a light card game for 2 to 4 players. Rome is being established, and you are one of the leaders building the city state. As you build the nation, you are also competing to be the most influential. Whoever can obtain the support of the most citizen classes will become the first emperor of Rome. 

There are six citizen classes - consul, clergy, legionary, philosopher, farmer and brigand. Each has a different token. 

Depending on the number of players, you will remove certain cards. For example monuments are used for 3 players or more. Brigands are used only for 4 players. The number of cards in each citizen class is important information, and you can look up those number on these reference cards. 

Citizens in the 6 classes

A player turn is simple - you play a card and you take a card. When playing a card, you can use it in one of two ways. You either place it before you to make it your supporter, or you discard it to use the power written on it. Players compare the number of supporters they have in all classes, and the token always goes to whoever has the most supporters (cards) in the specific citizen class. Using the power of a card means not being able to keep the card as your supporter, but sometimes the powers are very helpful and can turn the tide. 

When you take a card, you choose from three face-up cards at the centre of the table. It is not a blind draw from the deck. You get to choose. However your opponents can see what you have picked. 

The game ends after the deck runs out and all cards at the centre have been taken. You play all your hand cards as supporters, and then do scoring. Every token you have is 1 point. The player with the most points wins. 

With three or four players, the monuments come into play. If you have the monument and also fulfil the requirement of having three specific citizens, it scores 1 point for you. 

Brigands are used only when you have four players. These "supporters" are not played into your own supporters area. Instead they are "gifted" to an opponent. At game end, the player holding the brigand token loses 1 point. There is aggression in this game. Trailing players can gang up on the apparent leader by using brigands. 

This is a two-player game setup. There are three face-up cards at the centre of the table. You always pick a card here when you refill your hand. Your starting hand is three cards. There is a mistake here. With two players, brigands are not in play, so there should not be any brigand token. 

The Play

Gameplay is simple and smooth. On your turn, you are just playing a card and picking a card. Which classes to compete in somewhat depends on your initial draw of cards. How well you can compete depends on what cards become available at what time. You must also consider who else is competing with you. This is an area majority game. That means you can't fight everywhere. You have to pick your battles. If you try to be everywhere, you will lose everywhere and end up with nothing. You would be spreading your resources too thin. Whether to make a card your supporter or to use its power can be tricky. A supporter seems to be more permanent and reliable. Yet sometimes the powers can be highly impactful. Some of the powers are offensive in nature, so there is a take-that element. There will be some politicking among the players. Being able to play the look-weak game can be an advantage. 

How many citizens there are in every class is open information. The whole deck will be used, so you can count cards. If you want to secure a class, you have to control more than half of the citizens of that class. This seems pretty absolute. However, some powers will throw your calculation and planning off. 

The Thoughts

Furmation of Rome is the first published game from Malaysian game designer Poon Jon. I got to know Jon through TTGDMY (Tabletop Game Designers of Malaysia) and we have been playtesting each other's games for some time. I've always felt he is a designer with good design sense. He is sharp. I admire his work and always look forward to try something from him.

I have played Furmation of Rome when it was still in development. Now that it has made its way all through to production, I am pretty excited to hold it in my hands. This is a well crafted and well thought out game, not just a random take-that game. The game is simple enough that casual players will be able to handle it and have fun with it. For seasoned gamers, they will be able to appreciate the intricacies and the thought that has gone into the design. It is still a light game, but it's nevertheless a strategy game with meaningful player interaction. 

I've got my copy. Have you got yours? 

BOXCON 2024 KLIA2

22 - 23 Jun 2024 was the 2024 BOXCON. This time it was done at a smaller scale, and it was done at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport Terminal 2. It was the airport management which reached out to the boardgame circle to invite us to have an event. They contacted Gray of Kaki Tabletop. I've never been an exhibitor at an airport, so I was keen to try it out. 

I brought two mobile phone stands to display my games. My box sizes were just nice for these stands. That highlighted box of Dancing Queen was just below a spotlight. Perfect! 

The other game I brought was Snow White and the Eleven Dwarfs. This event did not target gamers, so I did not bring games to be playtested. The audience was travelers, and we expected they would not have a lot of time or interest to sit down to play. I only brought published games that I could sell. No prototypes. However I did have a setup to allow visitors to try the games, if they had time. 

This was the first time I used the counter display unit of Snow White. I asked elder daughter Shee Yun to help me assemble these. Later after she assembles more I will pass them to the distributor to be distributed to the retail stores. The CDU is meant for retail stores. Snow White has a small box so it is not very visible. The CDU hopefully will make it more visible, and hopefully that leads to more sales. 

I managed to teach Dancing Queen to new players quite many times at this event, and that was satisfying. It feels great to see people appreciate the game and the nuances. This couple came all the way from KL to visit the exhibition. They were not travelers who happened to stop by. Thank you for supporting Dancing Queen!

Tim (right) was there too. 

Most exhibitors were local game designers. We also had some game retailers. 

Gray is the main guy behind the event. He had just recently done another game expo at Great Eastern Mall.

Group photo before we packed up at the end of Day 2. 

It was a smaller event this time, but I enjoyed catching up and exchanging ideas with fellow game designers and enthusiasts.