On Sat 19 Sep 2009 I played two quick and funny games with Chong Sean at Carcasean boardgame cafe while waiting for Han to arrive, Kakerlaken-Poker (Cockroach poker?) and Kakerlaken-Suppe (Cockroach soup?). They don't sound exactly appetising, but when you see their colourful and funny artwork, you'll realise they are light-hearted fun.

We played Kakerlaken-Suppe first. This is a reflex game, very ideal as a party game, and probably will be very noisy too. Cards are distributed evenly to all players, and whoever gets rid of his or her cards first wins. On your turn, you take one card from your deck, turn it over and put it at the centre of the table. Then you say the name of the vegetable shown on the card. However, if the previous card(s) showing has the same vegetable, you can't say the name of that vegetable, and must say the name of another one. Also, you can't say the name of the vegetable that the previous player has just said. The previous player may have said a name that didn't match the previous card played (e.g. because it was the same vegetable that his previous player had named). If you are lost for words, or say the wrong thing, you are penalised and must collect all the cards at the centre of the table. Then you start another round.

There's more. There are some soup-tasting cards. When these cards turn up, you say "Slurp!". These cards show one of the four vegetables. Once one of these soup-tasting cards are in play, whenever that vegetable shows up, you must say "Slurp!" instead of the name of the vegetable. Remember the rule that you can't say the same thing as the previous player? If he has said "Slurp!", whether due to the soup-tasting card or a vegeable matching the previously played soup-tasting card, you must say "Mmmm!" (i.e. the cockroach soup tastes so good).

So the whole game is about making sure you say the right thing - pepper, mushroom, leek, carrot, Slurp!, or Mmmm!, while remembering all the rules and exceptions and exceptions to exceptions. Play it very quick, and someone is bound to make a mistake.

This is a party game like Halli Galli, and I think it's a bit tricker, because you have to say something (and make sure you say the right thing) rather than just hitting the bell. This is probably pretty good with children and with new players / casual players.

Kakerlaken-Poker is by the same designer, with similar artwork, but it is quite a different game. And it's nothing like poker, other than that you need to keep a poker face. This game is probably best played with a larger group. Chong Sean and I played a 2P game, which was still alright, but probably not as funny as (and I do mean "as funny as", not "as much fun as") a 4P or more game.

In this game, there is only one loser and the rest are all winners. The moment someone collects 4 pests of the same type, he loses and the game ends (and he does something silly or embarrassing or illegal if your group had agreed on some penalty beforehand). A player starts a round by passing one card to the player on his left, and declares what type of card it is. He can lie if he wants to. The player receiving the card can decide to challenge or to pass on the card. If he decides to challenge, he makes a guess on whether the previous player has lied, and then flips over the card. If he is right, the first player takes the card and puts it in front of himself face-up. If he is wrong, he takes the card himself. If the receiving player decides to pass the card on, he looks at the card before passing it on. He can declare the card to be what the previous player has claimed it is, or declare it to be something else. Then the next receiving player has to decide what to do - to challenge or to pass on the card. This continues until someone issues a challenge resulting in someone taking the card, or until the card reaches the last player. At this time the last player must challenge, since he is not allowed to pass the card back to the start player.

So this game as all about lying and tricking your opponents into taking unwanted pests. When you lie, you want to do it so convincingly that your opponent will believe you. When you tell the truth, you want to do it in such a way that others won't believe you.

In our 2P game, there are some special rules. And of course there is no card passing at all. When I give a card to Chong Sean, he must challenge me immediately, and vice versa. So it all comes down to who is the better liar (or guesser). As I played the game, I found that there is another layer to it, in how to pick a card to play, and what to lie about when you do want to lie. There is also some thought when you challenge a card passed to you. If you already have many toad cards, and the guy giving the card to you says it's a toad, it may be better to say you believe it, because if you don't, and it turns out to be a toad afterall, then you'd have to take it, which is bad for you. You can also observe what pests the other players are afraid of, and pick your cards (and your lies) accordingly. So the game isn't as simple or thoughtless as one may initially be lead to believe. But of course you can play it mindlessly if you want, and this is probably how you should play it when in a party environment. This is a laughter-generating game.

One thing that I really like about both Kakerlaken-Poker and Kakerlaken-Suppe is the artwork. I think it's excellent.

Sat 19 Sep 2009, Carcasean boardgame cafe. I played Cartagena II with Chong Sean and Han. This is very similar to Cartagena, and in fact Chong Sean told me you can play this using the components from Cartagena. There are just some rule twists.

In this game, each player controls a team of pirates, and races to get all his pirates to a pirate town. The race track is made up of 5 modular boards. There are 7 types of icons on the race track, which affects how you move your pirates. You move pirates by playing cards. When you play a card, you move one pirate to the next empty space showing the same icon as the card. Sometimes a pirate can run very very far ahead if many of the icons are covered by other pirates (whether yours or your opponents'). You don't get to draw cards every turn. To draw cards, you must move an opponent's pirate forward (in the original Cartagena you move your own pirate backwards to collect cards). The opponent pirate moves to the next occupied space, and you get to collect up to two cards, depending on how many pirates there are.

So when you move your own pirates forward, you try to get them to move as far as possible. When you have to help your opponents, you try to help them as little as possible, while still trying to get yourself two cards if you can. When moving your pirates, you have to think about whether you are setting up the next player for an even better move. If you have played a map card to move a pirate very far ahead, the next player may also have a map card and may be able to move his pirate even further ahead, because your own pirate has just occupied the next most advanced map space. Another tactical consideration is breaking up your opponents' opportunities for big moves. If you see a whole chain of compass spaces being occupied, you may want to break the chain by moving one of your pirates who happen to be standing on a compass space, so that the next player can't make a big move by playing a compass card.

One twist in the game is the boat. The track is broken down into two sections, with a sea (river? channel?) in between. This forces a break-up of very big moves. There is also a mini area-majority competition on the boat. The player(s) who has the most pirates on the boat can move the boat for free. Else it costs one action. You get three actions on your turn. Also because you have 3 actions, there is some planning that you can do. Sometime you can do powerful combinations of actions, which is amazing considering how simple the game is.

In our game, Chong Sean got off to a good start, since he is more familiar with the game. That turned out to be a bad thing, because it meant Han and I preferred to help each other because we were wary of him. Soon some good card combos put me ahead, and I never looked back.

I just realised that Cartagena II is actually a race game when I started writing this blog entry. Somehow when I played the game it didn't feel that way to me. Maybe it is because it is so much more about card management and planning. It didn't feel like the pirates were running very hard. It felt more like they were magically jumping ahead. This is actually a fairly abstract game. This game reminds me of That's Life, which also has a team of pawns moving along a track. Cartagena II is more about managing your whole team of pirates and how to use your actions effectively. It actually doesn't feel like a race game to me, where speed is most important. There is a lot of player interaction, because all your actions have implications to others.

Date: Sat 19 Sep 2009
Venue: Carcasean boardgame cafe

Chicago Express is a game I have been looking forward to try for some time. In fact I almost wanted to buy before trying. It is called a streamlined version or introductory version to the 18XX games, which are train games with an investment element. You buy shares in railroad companies, you develop the companies, but in the end the most important thing is you are making money out of all this.

We played a 3P game - Han, Chong Sean and I. I have heard some people warn of 4P games, because the players may end up each owning one company, and the game becomes less interesting. I'm not sure whether this is a valid concern though.

In this game, players are investors investing in railroad companies. When you buy a share of a company (which is done by auction), you gain the share and the money is paid to the company. Then the company uses this money to expand. Expansion is an action taken by a player, and that player must be one of the shareholders of the company (but not necessarily the majority shareholder). As a company expands, it increases its earning power, which will affect how much dividend it can pay to its investors the next time dividends are to be paid.

Another action that players can take is to develop hexes on the game board. This usually increases the earning power of the railroad companies that have expanded into that particular hex. Sometimes it gives a one-time income to these companies.

There is a long-term goal for the four starting railroad companies - to reach Chicago. This is an important goal, because it gives a big increase in earning power, and railroad companies that reach Chicago will pay a special one-time dividend. So it is in the best interest of the shareholders to have their companies reach Chicago. The first time that one of the four companies reaches Chicago, a special event also takes place - the Wabash Cannonball company is started, a 5th company that the players can invest in, expand and earn money from.

On a player's turn, there are only 3 choices (well, 4 if you count passing) - to put a share up for auction, to expand a company or to develop a hex. It seems very straight-forward, but it actually isn't. Players do not equal companies, so you have think of them separately. When you take an action you have to think about whether you are benefiting another player, and if so by how much. Do you want to win a share in one company so that you can control it and intentionally mess it up? Do you want to put a share up for offer just to dilute the earnings of a company? Do you take an action for the sake of speeding up the game end or triggering the next dividend payout? Do you want to delay them instead? The rules are straight-forward, but the strategies are not so simple. This is quite interesting. Another consideration is each company only has a limited number of shares that it can issue. Once they are all out, the company won't be able to raise more money, and no one else can get an additional share in that company.

Our game started with Han obtaining shares in two companies, and Chong Sean and I one each. From quite early in the game, I had a nagging feeling that I was rather screwed. This was because of share ownership of the companies. I had no majority share in any good company, which meant if I expanded these companies, I'm benefiting either Han or Chong Sean more, or at least equally. I was majority shareholder in one company, but it was the furthest from Chicago, and no one was interested in expanding it due to poor potential.

At game end, indeed I came last. During the game, two companies reached Chicago, Han being the majority shareholder in one, and Chong Sean the other. Han also had some shares in "Chong Sean's" company, and I had some in "Han's". There was a race between these two companies (red and blue) to reach Chicago.

We didn't do a lot of development during our game. The contribution of development to company profits seemed small. We did auction many shares and we did much expansion. The game end condition was triggered by three companies running out of shares. The other possible game end conditions are (a) 3 companies running out of train tokens used for expansion, (b) 3 houses / development markers left, (c) dividend payouts have been made 7 times.

Han won the game with Chong Sean not far behind. I was far behind. In hindsight, I probably should have been more aggressive in buying shares early. Han was cash poor in the early game, but his shares allowed him to earn much money throughout the game. It the early game, when the shares were not very diluted yet, he earned a lot of money from his share holdings.

I tried to manipulate the share holdings, but didn't seem to go anywhere with my attempt. The game developed very quickly, and before I knew it I was already stuck in a rut. I didn't even have time to think about what exactly I did wrong. I think I probably should have bid more aggressively for shares.

Chicago Express is a quick game. It is also a very subtle game. Despite the simple rules, there are many things you need to consider. There is quite a bit of thinking required. I definitely have not fully explored the game yet, and would like to try again, and hopefully do better. We did not do much development during the game. I had been focusing a lot on trying to manipulate share ownership, and I wonder whether that was the right thing to do in the first place. We did not do much about the Wabash Cannonball company, the 5th company that popped up when one of the other four companies reached Chicago. There is probably more thought I need to give to what shares to auction, and how much to bid.

Another thing that just occurred to me is there can also be some diplomacy in the game, e.g. players making unofficial pacts to stop the leader. The rules do not allow players to trade shares among themselves, but there's nothing stopping players from collaborating. Another things to note is this is a completely open information game, so it rewards skillful play. But of course this may also encourage analysis paralysis.

For the moment Chicago Express doesn't yell out to me "Buy me! Buy me!". But it's definitely an interesting puzzle that I'd like to study further.

Date: Sat 19 Sep 2009
Venue: Carcasean boardgame cafe

Fresh Fish is an old (1997) quirky Friedemann Friese game that I have been interested in trying for some time. Friedemann Friese is well known for unusual themes in his games, and I'm usually at least interested to try them out. Not many of his games turn out to be big hits for me though, despite the initial interest. I don't know why.

Fresh Fish is definitely another unusual game. At least I have not seen any other games like this. You reserve plots and construct buildings on a grid. The game board starts with 4 factories. During the course of the game, outlets corresponding to the 4 types of goods produced by the 4 factories will be built. Each player must build one of each type of outlet, and the objective of the game is to make sure your outlets are as close to their respective supplying factories as possible. You also want to make sure you conserve your money, which is used for bidding for outlets when they turn up.

On your turn, you have two options - you can reserve a plot of land, or you can draw a building tile randomly. In the second situation, if you draw a normal building, you must build it on one of your own reserved plots. If you draw an outlet, it is auctioned (blind bidding), and all players who have yet to build that type of outlet can bid for it.

The most important, and unique, and possibly confusing part of the game is expropriation (this is a word I have just learnt, because of this game). This is when all players check the game board, and find that some spaces must be converted to streets due to the expropriation rules. Such streets must be built immediately, even if it means some reserved plots will be used. The player cubes used for reserving these plots are returned to their owners. The expropriation rules state that all factories and outlets must have street access, and all street squares must be connected. This can be difficult to grasp from just reading the rules, but once you see it in action, it's not that difficult to understand.

Han, Chong Sean and I didn't have much idea how to reserve plots and how to bid for outlets, so we just played from our guts and learned along the way. I was most aggressive in bidding for outlets, and got many of my outlets established early. Unfortunately physically near did not necessarily mean short delivery route. One of my outlets was blocked by a building, and had to use a very long, round-about delivery route. That, together with having no money left, gave me a score of 16pts (high is bad) and I came last. Score is total distance of delivery routes minus remaining money. Han played well and was the one who forced the long delivery route on my outlet. Unfortunately he had one distant outlet too because early in the game he drew that outlet, when he didn't have any reserved plot near the corresponding factory. Since he was the active player, and tied auctions go to the active player, both Chong Sean and I bid $0, thus forcing him to take the outlet. Chong Sean also played well, and conserved his money well too. He won the game with 7pts, to Han's 9pts.

I find Fresh Fish quite enjoyable. It isn't as confusing as I had expected, from reading other people's remarks before I played the game. It certainly is quite different. Being different or quirky does not necessary mean a game will be liked, but in this case I like this game. It also plays quite fast, as your actions every turn are simple. Two things discourage me from buying this game. First, it doesn't seem to work well with just 2 players, which is the player number I usually have. Secondly, it's out of print.

Date: Sat 19 Sep 2009
Venue: Carcasean boardgame cafe

Diamonds Club is the kind of game that Ameritrashers (well, at least those who love to hate most Euros, especially more recent Euros) would use as a poster boy of the decline (or lack of progress) of Euro games. The mechanics are abstract, the theme is thin, you collect various things and convert them into other things to score victory points in different ways. There are "multiple paths of victory" (an overused phrase for praising games), there are meaningful decisions to be made, there is not much luck; yet the game does not excite me at all, despite being the #7 game at the prestigious Deutscher Spiele Preis awards. And the DSP caters to hobby gamers as opposed to the family market. The whole time playing the game, it gave me a been-there-done-that feeling.

That's my view. And that's from the perspective of a jaded Eurogamer, which, of course, is not representative of all gamers. Diamonds Club is actually a fine game, if you have not played too many similar games. The game seems to be well balanced (I've only played it once, so I'm just guessing here). There are multiple options and different priorities you need to consider. There are different strategies you can pursue. It is a medium complexity Eurogame which is not difficult to learn. So I'd say it's a fine game, even though I have no urge to play it again.

In the game, you collect gems, then used them to buy things to decorate your estate. Different things score in different ways. There are also some special awards for being first to achieve certain goals, e.g. first to build three rose gardens, or first to build all four types of decorations. The game ends after one player has filled up 14 spaces of his estate.

Every round you start with a certain amount of money, and you place your coins on a grid to collect items (permits, ships, mines), to improve a technology track, to compete for initiative, etc. Each space on the grid can be used only once, and if you want to use a space which is adjacent to other spaces that have already been used, you have to pay extra. After spending money, you (usually) collect gems. You then use these gems to buy various items to decorate your estate, e.g. fountains, forests, palm trees. If the game has not yet ended, you start a new round, with a different random grid layout.

The grid forces some player interaction, because you need to watch what your opponents want, and try to block them or make them pay more money for what they want to get. When buying decorations for your estate, there is also some player interaction because players who are 2nd, 3rd or last to buy a decoration type have to pay more gems.

There is a small technology track on your personal board. One track allows you to score more points per forest. One allows you to gain extra gems for each gem shipment. The 3rd one allows you to start with more cash at the start of every round (cash is not brought forward to the next round).

In our 3P game, Chong Sean focused on getting many gems and buying many decorations, Han tried to go for a forest strategy (planting forests while increasing their value), and I went for a zoo strategy (collecting sets of bird park, deer pen and fish pond). Chong Sean also went for the special awards (all are related to decorations), winning many of them. Chong Sean eventually won the game, but all our scores were close.

One thing that I wonder is how flexible your strategy really is. Chong Sean commented that since I went for the zoo strategy, I should have tried to push the game towards an earlier end. Indeed zoos are cheaper to build, but score less than decorations. So I probably should have tried to fill up my estate quicker, perhaps by planting some forests too, which is also cheaper than the standard decorations. Han pursued the forest strategy. He did have many forests, but in the last round of the game there weren't many spaces on the grid that allowed him to increase his forest value. So he probably needed to have been focusing on doing this throughout the previous 3 rounds (I think we played 4 rounds). This made me think whether you can't quite switch strategy once you've committed to one. Or maybe the normal decorations should always be your main focus, and zoos and forests just supplementary parts.

Well, I may never find out, because there are too many other games I'd like to try at Carcasean and I doubt I'll come back to Diamonds Club.

Date: Mon 21 Sep 2009
Venue: Carcasean boardgame cafe

I asked Chong Sean to teach me Red November, since he has played it before. Red November is one of the many cooperative games that were released around last year. In this game, players are Russian gnomes stuck in a submarine, the Red November, where things keep going wrong one after another. The gnomes try to survive for one hour, waiting for rescue. You win together if some of you survive, with the submarine not completely destroyed, after one hour.

The game uses a Thebes-like mechanic for tracking time. When the gnomes take actions, every action costs time, and your use a white marker to temporarily mark how much time you've used on your turn. After your turn is done, you need to check how many red stars you have passed on the time track. For each star, you draw a disaster card. Usually bad things will happen. There are some spaces which award you tools, but there are less of these than the disaster spaces. Many types of bad things can happen. Fires start, fires spread, rooms flood, doors become stuck, the oxygen level drops, the heat level rises, the pressure increases, the missiles malfunction and threaten to explode, and worst of all, a giant kraken approach and eye the submarine hungrily. When you take a turn, you basically move about the submarine and attempt to fix a problem, e.g. unlocking a door, pumping out water, reducing the heat level to the next stable state, etc. You can also go to the equipment room to collect tools, or go to the captain's room to collect grog (vodka?), which is considered a type of tool. Grog allows you to fix problems quicker, and if a room is on fire and you don't have a fire extinguisher, drinking grog is the only way to give yourself enough courage to enter the burning room. But then, drinking means getting drunk, and you may pass out because of your exertion. If the room where you lie unconscious is on fire or is flooded, you die.

The submarine can get destroyed in a number of ways. There are three tracks on the board showing heat level, pressure level and oxygen level. If the marker on any of these tracks reach the last spot, the submarine is destroyed. There are also four major disasters, which, if not prevented in time, will destroy the submarine. E.g. missile malfunction, kraken attack.

Chong Sean and I played a 2-player game, controlling 2 gnomes each. I am pleased that the game has two green gnomes, a dark and a light one. So I could still stick to playing with green. We were quite conservative when trying to fix problems. In this game, every problem takes at most 10 minutes to fix. You can try to spend less time to fix a problem, but risk wasting your time because you may fail to fix it. E.g. if you decide to spend only 5 minutes, you roll a 10-sided die to see whether you manage to fix the problem. Roll and 6 or more, and you fail. Chong Sean is quite conservative and usually prefers to spend about 8 minutes on a problem. Spending more time means a higher likelihood of fixing a problem, but also less time to work on other problems.

We were relatively lucky and didn't fail many times when fixing problems. There was one turn on which I had a gut feel that I would roll a 10, so I decided to spend 10 minutes on the problem. If you spend 10 minutes, you are guaranteed to fix the problem and do not need to roll the die, but I rolled the die anyway, and it was a 10! My completely baseless prediction turned out to be true! Every time that we chose to spend 10 minutes on a task, we rolled the die anyway, just so that we could feel good if we rolled a high number.

We didn't play the traitor variant, where a gnome may abandon his comrades and win the game by himself, if the submarine is destroyed. So when we drew "hatch stuck" cards, we assigned the "stuck" tokens to the outer hatches, or to rooms which lead to the outer hatches. When you draw a "hatch stuck" event card, you roll the die to determine which room will have one of its hatches locked, but once the room is determined, you can choose which hatch to be the one to get locked. Maybe a little unthematic, but I think if otherwise the game becomes too difficult or too luck-dependent.

More and more rooms were flooded, or were on fire, or were locked up, as we retreated and decided not to spend more effort to save those rooms. As we approached the arrival time of our rescuers, we depleted the disaster deck, and now the kraken card gets shuffled in as we reshuffled the whole deck. Chong Sean said he had never seen the kraken card drawn before. The kraken is hard to defeat, because (a) you need to be able to gain access to one of the three external hatches in order to leave the submarine, and (b) you need the aqualung to be able to go outside. Guess what... we drew the kraken card soon after we started using the reshuffled disaster deck. The kraken timed event was to happen in 15 minutes. We checked the time track, and to our relief, that would be exactly at the 0 mark. The rules say the event will only happen if we pass that event marker, so we were safe. Phew...

Later on we drew yet another timed event card which we wouldn't have been able to prevent, but the event time was yet again on exactly 0 minute mark. We were very unlucky to have drawn these major disasters so soon after the deck reshuffle, but we were also very lucky that neither would occur. Eventually we won the game, with none of the three tracks nearing the last space.

Red November is quite thematic, I would say. Many things that you can or cannot do, or what can and cannot happen in the game, are logical. There are quite many types of tools available in the game, so in the beginning you'll need to spend some time looking up what they do. However there are icons to help you remember. The rules are not complex.

Han has played this before and didn't quite like it. Maybe his comments made me set my expectations lower, so I found the game to be alright. Not a game that I plan to buy, but I wouldn't mind playing again. That said, although there isn't anything in particular that I dislike, there isn't anything in particular that draws me either. Bruno Faidutti is a popular designer, but somehow I find that I don't have any particular liking in any of his games. My favourites are probably Incan Gold / Diamant and Castle. I don't quite like Citadels, maybe because I was scarred by the very slow 6/7-player games that I have played. I like Red November more than Citadels, but probably slightly less than Incan Gold.

Date: Wed 23 Sep 2009
Venue: Carcasean boardgame cafe

I bought Struggle of Empires in 2004, in Taiwan. This was my first time playing it (almost 5 years), and it was not even my copy. But I'm happy that I finally got to try it. This is a multiplayer conflict game, so it needs more players to be good. And it needs players who don't mind some conflict. I seldom have this combination, thus why the game has been unplayed for so long.

We played a 4-player game - Han, Shankaran, Chong Sean and I. I'd like to play it with 5 or more (the game supports 3 to 7 players), but it turns out that 4P is quite fun too. The backdrop of Struggle of Empires is the age of colonialism. Players are European countries competing to exert influence on other minor European powers or on distant colonies. The game is very much an area majority game. Each of the 11 regions where you can exert influence awards points to the countries having the most influence in the region. There are many ways to exert influence, population migration and shipping slaves, but most of the time, you need to fight - either the local powers, or other foreign powers. So, you build troops (navies, armies or forts), you move troops, and you fight.

So far, it still sounds a little bland. Where a lot of flavour comes in is the tiles. The game comes with a LOT of tiles, which provide special abilities. Some have one-time effects, some have ongoing effects. Some have very quirky effects. They add a lot of character to the game. What kind of country do you want to run? Which tiles would benefit you the most? There is a random set-up at the start of every game, which makes things variable. Each country will have some influence already established in some regions. At the start of each of the three wars that make up the game, there will be 10 tokens placed randomly. These are opportunities for the players to exert influence on the regions. So there is quite some variability in the game.

How scoring is done is a little unusual compared to other area majority games. Each region has 2 or 3 numbers, e.g. Central Europe is 6/4/2. The players with the most influence all get 6pts. The players with the next most influence all get 4pts. In the case of ties, everyone gets awarded the same higher score. So you just want to be one of the players with the most influence. There is less incentive to reduce the influence of other players. Gaining more points for yourself seems to be a more efficient use of your actions than trying to make others earn less points. This scoring system also seems to encourage players to have some influence in many regions, rather than having heavy influence in a few regions.

Combat resolution reminds me a little of Perikles. There is a navy support phase followed by the main combat. It is quite straight-forward. It uses dice, so there is some luck. Not as much as Risk, but still you need to be prepared for some bad luck to strike. Your basic strength come from your units and the effect of your tiles. Then you add the result of rolling two dice and taking the difference (i.e. die roll result ranges from 0 to 5).

Money is tight. It is mainly used for fighting battles ($2 each). War is expensive. There is a concept of unrest. Every time you are short of money you can take $2 from the bank at the cost of 1 unrest point. Every time a unit dies you take 1 unrest point. At game end, you lost immediately if you have too much unrest. You also lost points for having the most or second most unrest. So you need to be careful about unrest.

One interesting part of the game is the alliance system. For each of the 3 wars that make up the game, you go through an auction process to set up two alliances. Players in the same alliances are not allowed to fight each other. So if you want to attack a person, you need to make sure he's in the enemy alliance. If you want to prevent another player from attacking you, try to force him into the same alliance as you.

In our game, as expected, most of us started off attacking the neutral tokens, before attacking one another. We also tried to grab as many useful tiles as possible early in the game, so that we could benefit more from them. Chong Sean took a Euro-efficiency-peaceful approach, exerting influence as widely as possible at the most lucrative areas, while minimising conflict. Han took a more aggressive approach. Shankaran and I were probably somewhere in between, but maybe tending more towards the war-mongering side. Most of our fighting took place in Europe, some in North and Central America. Other colonies were quite peaceful. The Ottoman Empire was pretty much left alone throughout the game. No one wanted to fight the locals (i.e. the square tokens) who were strong, and they also cost you an unrest point.

By the end of the 2nd war, Chong Sean was the clear leader, followed by Han. So during the alliance phase of the 3rd and last war, we (i.e. the rest of the losers) conspired to place Chong Sean in a difference alliance from Han (2nd place) and I (3rd place), so that both of us could attack him. We did so mercilessly, even though Chong Sean has been a nice guy. He lost much influence in the 3rd war. At the start of the 3rd war, Shankaran and I started taking Reform tiles to help us get rid of unrest points. These are the only way to get rid of unrest. Chong Sean and Han didn't do this as much, and by game end they had the most and 2nd most unrest, costing them 7pts and 4pts respectively. However this penalty didn't cause any change in position. Chong Sean won the game, albeit with a smaller margin. Our scores were close.

Struggle of Empires feels more like a wargame to me than an area majority game, because there is a lot of fighting you need to do. Mechanic-wise it probably should be considered an area majority game, since most of the scoring revolves around establishing influence in the 11 regions. Maybe the theme left more of an impression on me than the mechanics, which I think is a good thing.

I was pleasantly surprised that the game plays quite well even with only 4 players. I was initially worried there may not be enough competition.

The number of tiles, and their special abilities are quite daunting. You have much freedom to shape your strategy. But this is definitely not a game for casual players. I think I probably spent as much time trying to explain the tiles as explaining the rest of the rules. I imagine this would be a turn-off for non-gamers. Also this is not a game for those who don't like conflict in their games. In Struggle of Empires, you will fight.

I enjoyed the game, and I'm keen to find out how it plays with the full complement of 7 players. Ooh... that's going to be brutal.

7 Ages is a civilisation game. It tells the story of the history of mankind, starting from the earliest ancient civilisations, to modern day nations. The game is played on a world map. Each player controls a number of empires, settling new lands, conquering enemies' territories, building cities, constructing monuments, trading with other empires. You also get to play events, develop technologies, adopt religions, gain great leaders, build armies, fight battles, suffer disasters and so on. The scope of the game is truly epic. And it takes a bloody long time to play!

Han, Chong Sean and I first played a learning game on 17 Sep 2009, playing about 1.5 ages in 2 hours. Then we scheduled another day to attempt to play a full, 7 ages, game, on 25 Sep 2009, this time with an additional player, Choo. To my surprise, we didn't even manage to play half a game. We only managed to play 3 ages in 7 hours. This may be partly because we didn't push our empires to progress as quickly as they could have done so.

How does the game work? The two main things to talk about are the cards, and the action selection. The game comes with a big deck of cards, which serve multiple purposes. Each card shows an empire, which you can start as your own. The card tells you where this empire starts, how much money you get to buy your starting units, whether you have a capital, whether you get leaders, in which ages you can start the empire, etc. Each card also has a number ranging from 0 to 7, which is used for combat resolution, trading, some event resolution, and even in determining player order at the start of the game. Each card also has a technology, or religion, or artefact, or government, which one of your empires can develop / adopt / build. Each card also has an event that you can play on your own empire or someone else's. Some are good, some are bad. There are many ways to use a card, but you can only pick one. The cards in the game provide the bulk of the flavour.

The structure of the game revolves around the action tokens. At the start of every round, every player secretly selects a number of action tokens. Then as each phase of a round is executed, players who have chosen the action token corresponding to that phase participates (in a way, this is like Race for the Galaxy). You can start a new empire, end an existing empire, discard/draw cards, move & fight, earn money & build units. You can trade cards and hopefully by "winning" (i.e. giving a better card to your trade partner) your empire gains some extra progress steps. You can choose an action called Civilise, which allow you to do many things - build cities, gain leaders, modernise your army, play event cards, found or adopt a religion, develop a technology, build a monument, etc. The tricky part of these actions is there is only one chip of each type of action. When you have multiple empires, they won't be able to do the same thing, since you can only assign one action chip to one empire. So you need to plan and coordinate. There is one Wild Card action chip that allow you to do one repeated action, but it costs one victory point, which is a big deal in this game.

The scoring in the game is done every round. Every empire has a few ways to score, e.g. controlling the most land in Asia, retaining control of its home province, being the biggest Christian empire, having the largest navy, having the most colonies outside of Europe compared to other European empires. Sometimes you must be the top player to earn points. Sometimes you earn points for being in 2nd or 3rd place. Each empire has a few ways of earning points, but we found that typically you earn about 4 points for an empire for one round, and that's an empire that's doing well. Some empires earn only 1 or 2 points, and some may even cost you points! The way empires earn points is quite thematic and also interesting, and creates much variety. When you manage multiple empires, you should try to avoid conflicting interests among your own empires. You also need to watch your opponents' empires and try to prevent them from scoring, even if it means you need to do something that does not gain you points.

There is a lot more to the game, and you'll really need to experience it to appreciate how rich the game is. Here are how our two games went.

In our learning game, we did not plan to start in Age 1. The game allows players to start in any age, but somehow we started in Age 1 anyway. I forgot who started the first empire. The first empire started determines the start age of the game. I don't remember much about our learning game, but one thing that was very funny (probably except to Han, who was the victim in that event) was how his Tamil empire was started and then immediately wiped out in the same round by a volcano eruption event played by Chong Sean. There is only one such event card in the whole deck, and Han happened to start an empire on the same round that Chong Sean had chosen to do a Civilise action (part of which allowed playing events). That was painful.

We played and learned along the way, looking up the reference sheets and rulebook and player guide. There were quite many elements which I simply ignored and did not try to utilise, because there were simply too many things to think about and to read up. Even after having played 2 games, there are still many aspects of the game that I'm not familiar with yet. I just read and learn along the way, and if I find something (some leadership power, or some government, or religion, or artefact etc) useful, I try to incorporate it into one of my empires. 7 Ages is not a game you should try to know inside out before you start playing.

For our second game, we made arrangements to meet up at 8am to start playing on a Friday. Some of us took leave from work to play. 8am is even earlier than a work day! We agreed to start in Age 1, so that we could experience the full scope of the game. The start of the game was quirky. Neither Han nor Chong Sean had any Age 1 empires in their starting hands. They were late by 2 to 3 rounds to start even their first empire, because they had to spend actions refreshing their hands trying to get Age 1 empires. Han was the last to start any empire, which was a big handicap.

Choo, who played for the first time, had a very good start and played quite well. Drawing the Romans certainly didn't hurt, and he chose the intimidating black counters for the Romans. The quantity and quality of the units of the 15 colours in the game are not the same, and the black set is the strongest (but I think they are less in numbers). Competition in Europe and Asia (in this game, Asia is Middle East to Siberia, excluding China, India, and North East Asia) was fierce. Europe was very crowded. Asia had two aggressive empires - Chong Sean's Huns, which were mobile (normally empires are not allowed to vacate an occupied territory, thus reducing mobility and ability to attack others), and later Han's Mongols. Asia was not a safe place. The Middle East part of Asia was busy too. Choo had the Arabs and founded Islam there. There were a few North African empires.

China saw a number of dynasties fighting one another. None of the dynasties were very lasting. The first two (I can't remember exactly - Shang and Xia maybe) fought bitterly. Later I started Tang, but it was quickly crippled when the Mongols appeared. I hurriedly ended the Tang empire. The glorious (in real life) Tang Dynasty only lasted as long as an ice-cream on a hot summer day. Later on Han started the Ming Dynasty, which did much better, and even started conquering Indian territory.

The Tamil empire was the only one ever started in India. Coincidentally, exactly like in our previous learning game, Chong Sean had the volcano event and could have wiped out the Tamils just as they came out. What luck?! (Maybe I should say in the deep Darth Vader voice, "It is your DES-tiny") And I was the one who traded that card to him earlier. But he decided to be merciful and kept the card for another use. Surprisingly noone bothered the Tamils, and they spent quite some time expanding (even to South East Asia) and earning points for me.

There was little activity in the Americas. I was the only one to have started an empire there, I think the Aztecs (or Incas?) in South America. They didn't have much victory point earning potential, and just gave me 2 points every round. Not much, but at least reliable. I barely developed this empire, so they continued to live in trees for a long time.

Towards the end of Age 3, we started to see some colonisation-type empires. Chong Sean was first to have a European empire with a goal (and fulfilling it) of having the most non-European territories. We never progressed past Age 3. The concept of progress in 7 Ages has some similarity to Civilization. At the end of every round, every empire progresses one step for free, unless it is on a dark age space, or it has used the Wild Card action. If an empire is on a dark age space on the progress chart, it can only progress through trade, i.e. it must choose the Trade & Progress action and "win" the trade. By choosing Trade & Progress, an empire may progress up to 3 steps - one for "winning" the trade, one more if you are less advanced than your trade partner, and one for being the one to initiate the trade. The last space of Age 3 on the progress chart is a dark age space, and for the last few rounds of our game, the two empires stuck on that space kept being stuck and did not manage to progress to Age 4 through trade. So we blamed Han and Choo for keeping everyone in the Dark Ages. They were the ones with empires on the brink of progressing to the next age.

We agreed to play till 4:30pm, so we stopped then. Chong Sean had overtaken Choo and was the leading player by a comfortable margin. Chong Sean had earned some good points from artefacts and leader abilities. I was second place, with Choo close behind. Han was still in last place, despite having played aggressively and played well, due to his unlucky start and early game.

So we've played less than half a game. And we've spent 7 hours, excluding lunch break. We gradually saw some changes in the nature of the empires. I expect the gameplay would gradually change as new empires came into play, and new units, new technologies, government forms, religions too. We had started seeing some improved horsed units, infantry and ships rendering the oldest units less effective. The later empires would also score higher per round. There was still so much more to experience and to explore. If I get a chance to play 7 Ages again I would grab it, and I wouldn't hesitate to try to complete a full game.

7 Ages is enjoyable. It is also very long. Being long is not bad in itself, but I do find it a little tedious. I wonder whether there is some way to simplify or streamline it. Maybe simplying the combat system or the units themselves. The game covers very many aspects of civilisation building, but it seems that a lot of the emphasis is in fighting, which is a shame. I'm not sure whether this is because of the way we played. Other groups may have different experiences. Many of the scoring conditions are related to controlling territories, so it seems you can't really run away from fighting over territory.

This is definitely a daunting game. I joked with Han that it's reference sheets have more pages than many Eurogame rules. Han printed out a player guide / player aid prepared by a fan of the game, it was practically a thick book! So this is definitely a gamer's game. In a way, this is also an experience game. Sometimes you really can be screwed by bad luck. Sometimes you get hit by bad events. You watch your empires rise and fall. But I would say you still make many decisions and take an active role in steering your empires. There is an element of diplomacy in the game. If there is an obvious runaway leader, other players can and should cooperate to keep him in check. In this way, some luck is balanced out.

One last point about 7 Ages - come to think of it, this is actually a very educational game! Well, maybe except the part that Jesus Christ is one of the leaders you can choose to lead your Roman empire.

Date: Fri 25 Sep 2009
Venue: Carcasean boardgame cafe

Airships is a dice game by Andreas Seyfarth, designer of Puerto Rico and Thurn & Taxis, both award winning games. In the past few years there seems to have been a burst of dice games being published. In many of them, you can roll dice multiple times, and each time you freeze a certain number of dice. This seems to be the most common mechanism for dice games. Airships is different - your only roll your dice once. The game moves faster and there is less waiting time between players.

The game is about collecting tools to eventually help you build airships. You score most of your points by building airships. Some tools also give points if you manage to acquire them. At the start of the game, you can roll two white dice on your turn. On the game board there are various tools (cards) available to be acquired. Each card tells you the requirements to acquire it, and the benefit it gives. Requirements are stated in the form of using a specific number of dice in a specific colour (or some specific combination of colours), and a target number. E.g. two white dice and one red die, to achieve 10. So if you want to target that tool, you must have the ability to roll at least two white dice and one red die. It would be better if you have the ability to roll more, because then after you roll the dice, you can pick the ones with higher numbers. The dice in the three different colours, white, red and black, have different number distributions.

When you win a card, it gives a certain benefit, e.g. allowing you to roll an additional red die starting from your next turn, or allowing you to add 1 to a black die, or allowing you to roll two red dice in lieu of three white dice. There are 6 types of tools, and your player board can only accommodate one of each type, which means if you get a tool of a type which you already have, you must discard the old one. This makes things interesting. I found that I could never really build a perfect engine. There just aren't enough slots (or enough time) to build myself some invincible combination that allows me to roll 3 white, 3 red and 3 black dice. You are forced to make tough choices and to choose a path. Do you go for more red dice and fewer black ones? Do you go for a smaller number of each type of dice?

Building an airship works the same way as acquiring a tool. The requirements are laid out in the same format. The reward is victory points, instead of new abilities. There are two ways that the game can end - either all four stacks of normal airships are depleted down to one card or less, or the all four stages of the Hindenburg, the largest of all airships, are built. This creates a twist in the end game, as different players may have different interests in how they want the game to end. The victory points for building stages of the Hindenburg vary depending on whether the Hindenburg is completed, so if you have spent effort on the Hindenburg, you'd want to make sure it gets completed.

One thing that makes Airships quite different from many other dice games is you make the decision before you roll your dice. You don't roll, and then see what you get, and then decide how to use them or which ones to freeze or which ones to reroll. The key decision is which tool (or airship) to target for when your turn comes. You evaluate the risks and rewards before you roll your dice. There is also a long term strategy element in the game. You need to think of how far you want to improve your engine (dice rolling ability) before you start targeting the airships. You need to think of how to customise your engine. The game moves quickly and you don't have much time to fiddle around trying to fine-tune your engine. It's a race!

Our 4-player game played quite quickly. Some four players who had just played 7 Ages for 7 hours, so Airships was a light closer for the day. Chong Sean was rather unlucky, and actually ended the game with 0pts! In Cantonese:

This is a topic I have been wanting to write about for quite some time, but never quite got around to it, because it's a heavy topic that makes me think a lot. I'd have to really sit down to think about it from various angles, and to organise my thoughts, before posting this blog post. Of course, the main reason I want to write about it is because I do this - I self make games which are designed by other people (here's a link to when I last wrote about this), and I play these self-made copies. Is this right or wrong?

First, there are different ways to define what's right and what's wrong. Legally right and morally right are different. The latter will probably have different interpretations, depending on your background, your culture, your world view. Let's start from the legal viewpoint. If I'm making a copy to play with my own friends, and not making a business profit out of it, I think this is not against any law. If I don't freely (as in "without care", not "free of charge") share the tools, equipment and techniques that I use for making a home-made game, I think I'm not breaking any law. Based on my limited understanding, the line is crossed only if you are making a profit out of it.

I have read on BoardGameGeek a discussion about a version of Bang released commercially in China. The Chinese version has a Romance of the Three Kingdoms theme, and is much richer than the original Bang, with more characters, more powers, weapons, etc. However, from reading the description (I have not played either game), it seems very obvious to me the Chinese version (I forget the name) is obviously based on Bang. And the designer of Bang was never credited, and never received any royalty or fee. To me, this is wrong. But there are some who think differently. I have read that only game rules and artwork are copyrighted, as written / drawn. If you use the same game concepts, or use rewritten rules, it's not illegal, as long as you don't copy the text straight and don't re-use artwork. If so, I guess this Chinese version is not illegal, but I'd say it's wrong, from a moral perspective.

Well, this is one extreme - plagiarism (in my opinion). And it's for commercial use.

How about if it is only for personal use? It can be argued that if you self-make a game, then you are depriving the game designer and the publisher of one sale. If you support the designer / publisher, and think their work should be rewarded, you should buy their game. Why self-make a game and not support the designer / publisher? There can be many reasons:

1. Try-before-buy: You are not sure whether you'll like the game. You don't have easy access to try it, e.g. a friend's copy, or a shop's demo copy. So you make your own copy and see whether you like the game. For me, I find that more often than not I don't end up buying a copy of the real game. Usually that's because I found that I didn't like the game as much as I had thought I would (e.g. Medici & Strozzi, Felix: the cat in the sack). Or I just don't play the game a lot (e.g. Incan Gold, R-Eco). There are some exceptions, e.g. I eventually got Ra (a gift), Modern Art. Should I feel obliged to buy a real copy of the game if I like it? Or if I like it enough to play it more than X number of times? Even when the home-made copy works just fine?
2. Cost: In Malaysia, the cost to buy a game (well, at least the type of game that boardgame hobbyists buy) is not cheap to an average Malaysian. If I were an American or European making a living in US Dollars or in Euro, games would be much cheaper. Also I usually buy from overseas, because not all the games that I want to buy are available at local shops or local online shops. So shipping cost is a factor.
3. Speed: Sometimes I just can't wait. E.g. Ra: the dice game. I can't wait for the next overseas bulk order that I make (usually only 2 or 3 times in a year). I can't wait for the local shop / online retailer to stock the game.
4. Availability: Sometimes the local retailers do not stock the games I'm interested in. Sometimes I make games because they are out of print, e.g. when I made Ra in 2004, or Traumfabrik / Hollywood Blockbuster.
5. Retheme: I self-made Traumfabrik using files downloaded from BoardGameGeek which use more modern-day (~1990's) movies and actors / actresses. I quite like that, and I have no interest in getting the Uberplay-published Hollywood Blockbuster which uses cartoonised / humourously tweaked movie, actor and actress names. I am also not interested in the original Traumfabrik with movies from around the 1930's, because I don't know the movies and celebrities from that era.

Would a game designer to happy or upset to find that someone had self-made his game? Will he be happy or proud that a person has gone to such lengths to home-make his game? Or will he be unhappy that he is denied his reward in the form of another copy of his game sold?

I will continue to self-make games. I realise that I'm doing this less and less though, probably because there aren't many games that are easy to self-make that I am interested in. There's no way I'm going to home-make a game like Race for the Galaxy with so many different cards. My tolerance for time spent on self-making a game is also less now. I can't imagine myself spending the kind of time and effort on self-making Ra (200+ tiles) and Traumfabrik now.

Do you think self-making a game is right? Or when is it right and when is it wrong, if such a distinction can be made?

Castellers was one of the games that Chong Sean ordered, when he, Han and I pooled together to order a batch of games from Canada. Since he is in KK, the earliest that he will be able to get his hands on his game is next month, when Han has a business trip to KL, and can bring it to KK for him. I put all his and Han's games in one corner, waiting for Han to pick them up next month. I was surprised (pleasantly) when Chong Sean asked me to open up his games and play them and share with him some photos. To gamers (or maybe it's just me), opening another gamer's game is worse than sacrilege. Opening a new game is a sacred ritual - ripping off the plastic wrap, listening to the first box fart (if any), punching out the cardboard components, bagging them and so on. Only with Chong Sean's blessing, I went ahead to open up Castellers and gave it a go.

The theme of Castellers is a traditional sport in Spain, where teams compete to build the tallest human tower. The current world record is 10 levels high, which is quite amazing. In the game, you build these human towers using nice big wooden blocks. Everyone starts with a hand-size of two blocks. On your turn you have two actions which you can use freely. The three possible actions are: (a) drawing a block from the bag, (b) adding a block to a tower, including building a new tower, and (c) swapping your block(s) with an opponent's single block and immediately adding that single block to your tower. When building a tower, there are only a few rules you need to remember: (a) blocks must be of the some colour, (b) you must complete one level before you start the next - your tower can be of any width, but once you start building on the 2nd level, you have committed to the width for that tower (i.e. the width of Level 1), and (c) a block above another must have a larger number - numbers range from 1 to 7.

Not all towers score points for you. For a tower to be "active", it needs at least two complete levels and at least 4 blocks, e.g. a 2-width 2-height tower, or a 1-width 4-height tower. Towers score according to the number of blocks in them, and some blocks give 2pts instead of 1. There are bonuses for widest tower and tallest tower. For each tower that you build, you deduct 1pt. This discourages you from building many useless towers.

I have only played one learning game with Michelle. We were both quite conservative about starting towers, and spent many turns drawing blocks and hoping to get good hands before we started building. The game was very quick. I started building earlier, and ended the game before Michelle could do more building. She underestimated how quickly the game could end, and this costed her the game.

Castellers is a simple and quick game. It is meant for 2-4 players, but I'm not sure how well it works with two. I have a feeling it's not tense enough, because probably both players will try to build in all four, or at least three, of the colours. I think with more players things will be more exciting, because you'll have to watch out for more opponents force-swapping your blocks. There will probably be more tension in choosing the colours to build in too. This is my gut feel.

One thing that I didn't like is the production. I think this is clearly a case of physical attractiveness over practicality. The blocks only have stickers on one side, so you need to place your towers at an add angle so that both you and your opponents can easily (read "with bearable trouble") see them. The publisher probably could have provided double the sticker sheets, but peeling and pasting the stickers to the blocks would be double the work. The round bases that come with the game seem unnecessary to me. Also they are not wide enough if I want to build a tower of width 4. I would have preferred the game to be implemented as a card game. But of course it wouldn't look as impressive.

A passerby may think this is a Jenga-like game, where the towers are eventually supposed to collapse. They're not. Please don't cheer if you see another group playing this and a tower collapses.

2 de Mayo means 2nd of May. The game refers to events that took place on 2 May 1808 in French-occupied Spanish capital Madrid, when local citizens revolted against the French army, the strongest army in Europe at the time. This is a very asymmetric game. It is a short game with simple rules, but it also has a lot of theme. It feels very different playing the two sides of the conflict.

The French are much greater in numbers in this game. To win, they need to kill off all Spanish units, and secure all 4 entry points to the city, by the end of Round 10. The Spanish win if they can prevent this. They can also score an instant win if they kill 4 French units.

At the start of a round, players each draw an event card from their respective decks. These cards can be played any time. You just follow instructions on them. Most are useful to you, but some are a hindrance, or benefit your opponent. There are 11 cards per side, and 10 rounds in a game, which means only 1 card will not be drawn. So knowing the cards well will help you. E.g. there are a pair of Spanish cards which allow a Spanish instant win by killing only 3 French units. Also there is one French card which cancels one Spanish move order in Round 10.

After drawing cards, players secretly write down their move orders for the round. The two side have different rules when moving. The French can only make two orders, except for groups starting in 3 specific areas (main streets of Madrid). Also French units cannot leave an area where fighting is taking place. However, the French can split their groups when moving, unlike the Spanish, whose units must move together once they have met up. The Spanish units can break away from fights though, but they must leave behind half the units to continue the fight (well, I guess more often than not to die holding off the French so that the rest can escape). The Spanish does not have limitations on how many orders they can issue.

Move orders are revealed simultaneously. Then the Spanish move, before the French do. Once movement is done, fighting (where units from both sides coexist in the same area) is resolved. The side with more units kill one unit of the losing side. If you outnumber your opponent by twice the number of units, you kill 2 enemy units. If your numbers are triple that of your opponents, you kill 3, and so on. If both sides are equally matched, noone gets killed.

So the game is very straight-forward: draw card, write and reveal orders, move, fight.

What amazes me is how flavourful the game feels. Michelle (as the French) and I (as the Spanish) played the game without reading any of the cards beforehand (intentionally). The cards add a lot of flavour to the game because they introduce exceptions to the game, making the two sides very different. The movement rules themselves already make the two sides quite different. The game reminds me a little of Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation, because of how asymmetric the two sides are. But of course the gameplay is completely different.

In our game, I started off trying to kill the lone French unit in area 10. The game starts with one French unit in area 10 already engaged in fighting, which means it can't leave, and is a sitting duck because it is surrounded. Unfortunately Michelle played an event card that prevented any French in area 10 from getting killed. What luck. I tried to score an instant win by killing off four French units. At the start of the game most of the French units were outside the city, and those inside were quite scattered. So if I wanted to do this I'd have to do it quickly. Michelle played another event card that effectively sealed off the southern part of the city from me (because she controlled areas 15 and 16 - one of the main streets). Her reinforcements marched into the city slowly but steadily.

I was getting my hand full of useless cards. Holding useless cards is worse than not having cards, because if you hold 3 cards (or more) more than your opponent, your opponent can stop you from drawing cards. There were a few rounds that I couldn't draw cards. I tried to mass my units to fight some of the smaller French groups. I was only able to kill two units before my group was surrounded. It was a lost cause, so my next option was to try to survive until Round 10. I played one event card that allowed my remaining two units to skip one fighting round (i.e. no casualty for that group for that round only). The group was already engaged in fighting. I still held one card that allowed me to add +1 strength. I only had one more round to go. I had planned to move one of my two units out of the fight, to a neighbouring area with two French units. Normally that single unit would have been killed, but with the +1 strength card, I would match the French strength, and would not be eliminated. Unfortunately for me, Michelle had two (!) cards that could cancel my move order. So my plan didn't work out. The last two rebel units were defeated by the French army.

2 de Mayo is quite an interesting and fun game, despite seemingly so simple. After one game, I'm not so sure yet whether the best strategy for the Spanish is to go for the 4-kill instant win, or to try to last until Round 10; to disperse its forces to try to avoid getting caught, or to group together to fight. The game is mostly open information, the only randomness being introduced by the cards. Since 10 out of 11 cards will come into play in every game, the difference from game to game will mostly be in the order the players get the cards. This can affect the players' strategy a lot though. Another factor of unpredictability is, of course, how your opponent makes his move orders. There is some bluffing and double-guessing in this aspect of the game.

Replayability may be a concern, since the main difference from game to game is just the order of the cards appearing. But this may not be a game that you want to play over and over all the time. You probably want to play this 5 - 10 times when you first buy it, and after that only pull it out once in a while.

I'd like to talk about computer versions of boardgames which have AI's or computer opponents that you can play against. I'm not talking about computer interfaces for human vs human play, be it real-time or play-by-e-mail. I am of the opinion that these computer versions will generally spoil the game for you. In the past I have not really thought much about this, but now I'd like to look into why these computer versions spoil the original boardgames, at least for me.

The first time I noticed this happening was with St Petersburg. It was quite popular when it came out, and I think it even won the DSP award, probably the most prestigious gamer's game award. Then there was a computer version released. I played against the computer AI's a few times, not really a lot, and soon the game lost its shine. It became very mechanical to play.

Something similar happened to Yspahan, which I also own the physical boardgame of.

I learned to play Kingsburg solely from the computer version. I think I only played one game, and I was turned off by the experience. I had no urge to try again, or to try a physical copy.

Here are the reasons that I can think of that computer versions can spoil a game:

1. Overdose - If you play too many times within a short period of time, you'll just tire of the game very quickly. Does this mean that if you only play the physical copy, you'll also tire of it after the same number of plays? E.g. by the 10th play of a game, you'd feel that you've explored all the strategies there are to the game. If so then it may be a problem of the game. But I think having too many plays within a short time can make you sick of a game. Overdose.

2. "Solvable" - Now I don't mean solvable as in there is a sure-fire way to win a game given a certain start condition. I mean "solvable" as in at any point in a game, based on the information that you know, there is always one ideal move you should make. It may or may not be obvious, but of course if it is obvious, then the situation is even worse. If an AI can be programmed to play a game competently, then maybe there isn't really a lot of depth to the game. If it only take some calculations and some card-counting to write a competent AI, then it may mean the game can be easily analysed for ideal moves given any game situation. It may mean that there aren't really any meaningful choices to make. There is always a best move, even if sometimes it takes some time to work it out. That's no fun.

   There are good AI's for Chess. I don't think Chess is a game without depth. But I think some AI's written for some modern Eurogames are not as complex as Chess AI's.

   I have not looked at the program codes for the AI's, so I'm just making unfounded claims here. My gut feel is that generally the existance of a competent AI for a game (often Euro games) means that the game is actually not very deep. The shallowness of the game is exposed. I'm sorry to say this about Euro games, as I'm actually mainly a Euro game fan.

3. Too fast - I'm not sure how to explain this. This may not make much sense. I think you will enjoy playing a game with 3 other human players for 1 hour, more than playing a game with 3 AI players for 15 minutes, even if every single move in these two games are exactly the same. Same setup, same results. This sounds absurd. You waste 45 minutes and you like that more?! Maybe it's the human touch, the human interaction. Maybe you feel you are playing against smart opponents and not dumb programs. You think about what your opponents are thinking, and not how the programs are written. Your human opponents can be more unpredictable. You spend more time, but you are enjoying the time exploring the possibilities in the game, not hurriedly trying to solve a math problem. Playing against AI's feels so mechanical.

Surprisingly, I could actually go back to playing the boardgame versions of St Petersburg and Yspahan and still enjoy myself. That was some time after my last vs-AI games, so I have pretty much forgotten most of the tactics and the bitter taste. I needed a little effort to remember the strategies and to rediscover the games, and I enjoyed these. The strategies came back easily, and I was soon playing quickly. And yet I still enjoyed the games. I wonder whether I am simply prejudiced against AI's.

There are counter examples. I have played Blue Moon against AI's, and it didn't sour the game for me at all. The AI is pretty good. I don't know how the programmer did it. I am quite impressed. Yet the AI's tactics didn't feel formulaic. Admittedly sometimes it makes strange moves or bad moves. At least them seemed so to me. But overall playing against the Blue Moon AI was challenging and enjoyable.

There is now an AI for Race for the Galaxy too. I have not tried it yet, and am hesitant, because Race for the Galaxy is one of my favourite games, and I don't want the AI experience to spoil it for me. I may never get around to trying this AI. Anyway, this is one game that my wife is usually willing to play.

Although I think computer versions of games (those with AI's) spoil the games for me, I think computer versions which just provide an interface for human vs human play are very handy. The Ticket to Ride implementation is done very well. It does all the tiresome train-placing, card-holding, card-shuffling, map-checking for you. You can play a game in less than a quarter of the time when playing a physical copy. Dominion is another good example. The computer takes care of all the card shuffling for you, which is a lot of effort saved.

So, computer good. AI bad. Not because they are incompetent (like many PC games AI's are), but because they expose how shallow some of our hobby games actually are, or because sometimes humans are just so hard to please.

Space Alert is one very unusual game. It is cooperative and real-time. It is by Vlaada Chvatil from the Czech Republic, who designed Through the Ages and Galaxy Trucker (both of which I like a lot), and often has very innovative and interesting ideas for games. In Space Alert, you and your teammates need to defend your spaceship for 10 minutes. If you survive, you win. The "real" part of the game is played in real-time. You listen to a sound track (there are many to choose from to provide some variety) which tells you about enemy attacks, ship malfunctions, communications downtimes, etc. During these 10 minutes, you plan your actions using your hand of cards. It sounds simple - you are just putting cards down onto 12 spaces, but it is actually quite tricky, requiring good coordination among the teammates in real-time. It's very chaotic! Once the soundtrack is over, you do an evaluation round, basically reenacting everything that had happened step by step, to see whether you survived.

I have played six games of this, and I have not even played a real mission yet! I am still playing the tutorials, and still failing them! There are three levels of tutorials - Test Runs, Simulations and Advanced Simulations. They introduce the game to you bit by bit, with new elements and new challenges being added at each new level. For now I have only reached Simulations. And I am not even beating the game yet! In fact, even for my very first Test Run, I (well, we) lost the game. I had thought the Test Run was designed to be impossible to lose.

So what do you do during a game? To summarise, you move and you press buttons. As simple as that. There are 6 rooms on the spaceship, each having 3 buttons performing different functions. The A buttons are for shooting. Each room has a different cannon, with different fire-powers, ranges and power sources, and also pointing in different directions. You often need to coordinate with your teammates to shoot at an approaching enemy at the same time, because it is much more effective in damaging your enemy. B buttons are all related to managing energy - for charging up defensive shields, moving energy cubes to where they are needed, and charging up your energy core. This is a very important aspect, which we learnt the hard way. There was one game when we (Afif, Sui Jye, Jing Yi and I) planned a very well coordinated shooting, only to find that our cannons had run out of energy cubes. Click! Click! We failed to destroy the approaching enemy, and lost the game miserably.

Then there are the C buttons, which do different things. Some allow you to control combat robots, which are needed to fight enemies which are on board. One allows you to fire homing missiles. One simply allows you to score additional victory points, but I think in this game that's the last thing I'm going to care about. I need to learn to survive first. There's even one C button that is for making sure that the computer screensaver doesn't come up to interrupt your actions. Apparently the operating system of the spaceship computer was sponsored, and thus has a screensaver with advertising content.

There are many different types of enemies in the game, which approach at different speeds, attack at different strengths, and have different shield strengths. There are also internal threats - sometimes enemies that board your spaceship, sometimes systems malfunctions. In each mission, these are randomly drawn, and you only see a few of them. This gives the game some replayability. There are some time tracks that vary how quickly enemies approach and how often and how soon they attack. Four time tracks are drawn randomly to be placed at different parts of the ship. This too increases variety.

Space Alert is a game that needs a dedicated group of players. It is actually not easy to beat, and requires good cooperation among the players. You need players who are interested enough to play it multiple times and work through the tutorials to get to the real missions. If you only play with casual players, you may never reach the real missions. I wonder whether the game will lose its appeal after you win a few real missions, the way some PC or console adventure games lose their appeal after you beat them. But even if this happens, I think I would have gained a lot of value from the game. I suspect the game will continue to be interesting even after I learn to beat the normal missions, like how Galaxy Trucker (also by Vlaada Chvatil) and Pandemic are.

Space Alert is probably a game that needs 4 or 5 players. With less than four, you need to introduce android characters, which are ordered around by the other human players. This is not very ideal when you are still trying to learn the game. There are enough for you to worry about without androids. You probably want to play with less than four after you are familiar with the game. But I think the game is meant for 4 or 5, because the fun is in overcoming the chaos of many players trying to coordinate their actions to save the spaceship.

There is one thing which I wonder whether I have been doing right. When I play the game, I don't try to move the pieces on the board much. I only sometimes move my character, to remind myself where I am. I don't remove energy cubes spent, I don't move enemy markers, I don't mark the damage done to my spaceship or to the enemies. I think I probably should do that, because that would help a lot in visualising what's happening. That would take some effort from everyone, because you need to synchronise the changes made to the board with your teammates. Else it may cause even more confusion, or worse, cause wrong planning. I should do this next time I play, and let's see whether I will fare better.

So this is just an initial impression of Space Alert. Hopefully the next time I write about this game I will have beaten some normal missions.