Right, I'm clocking off for the holidays now, so thanks to everyone for reading this year and I hope you all have a great Christmas (or other winter holiday) and a fabulous New Year and I'll see you all in 2010.

Happy New Year everyone. I hope you all had a good Christmas (or other appropriate holiday season). I had a proper break for Christmas and New Year - it felt like the first proper break in years, but I'm sure it wasn't.

I read something recently (I think it was on BoardGameGeek but I can't be sure), that said that the vast majority of sales of a game are in the three months after release. I think they even gave a percentage. I can see that for companies with big marketing budgets that would be the case. Before the game is launched lots of money is spent to prime the market to expect and want the game. When the game comes out lots of people will buy the new hot game, but over time there's another new hot game, and then another, so sales tail off. However, I can think of at least two occasions when the front-loaded sales profile is not the case:

The Smash Hit

I've also read that over 15 million copies of The Settlers of Catan have been sold in the 15 years since it was released. Settlers has been a breakout hit, being re-published in tens of languages and becoming a perennial best seller. I can guarantee that most of those 15 million sales weren't in 1995. It's the same for Carcassonne, Magic: The Gathering, Monopoly, Munchkin, Risk, Trivial Pursuit, and any other game that becomes hugely successful. As more people play it, more people buy it and it becomes a juggernaut.

These games sell because people try it, love it, introduce their friends to it, they love it, some of them buy it, they introduce others to it and so on. As time goes on the demand for the game increases - not decreases.

The Sleeper

When the game is unknown and the company is small and has limited marketing budget then it's possible for initial sales to be slow. Distributors and shops don't pick up the game initially, waiting to see if it's got legs before investing in it. Maybe they get demo copies, try it out, like it and get a few copies in. Those copies won't fly off the shelves because no-one's heard of it, but maybe someone takes a chance and tries it out. Things then follow the Smash Hit path but only on a much smaller scale.

Without much of a marketing budget to speak of, I need my games to fall into the Sleeper category. I've not sold the majority of any of my print runs in the first three months. I've sold a decent chunk of my games in their first three months, but not a majority and certainly not 2/3 or 3/4.

How do I intend to do this? Two main strategies. I need to reach new markets where I don't currently have any presence, and improve my market penetration in markets where I do currently have a presence.

For the first point, I'm going to be contacting as many new distributors as I can, focussing on those that have recently expressed an interest in carry my games (particularly those who approached me at Essen) and those in territories where I don't currently have a distributor (notably France and Australia).

For the second part I'm going to continue contacting shops in North America (I'll do Canada once I've finished working through the US States), this seems to be working - several stores are now going to carry my games as a result of me contacting them.

I need sales this year to be at least as good as last year - it's a tall order, but I've got to make it happen. If you've got any ideas on how to boost sales, I'd love to hear them in the comments.

In my last quarterly newsletter I did a special deal for subscribers where they got to buy my games at a discount price. There were a few takers, but not a huge number - there's only four hundred or so people on my newsletter mailing list, and most of them already own one or more of my games.

At the moment I'm running another incentive: free shipping on all my games (but not the Sumeria Expansion) when bought from my website - regardless of where I'm shipping the games.

Incentives like these seem pretty harmless - I get a bit less money than selling at full price, and the customer gets it a bit cheaper than full price plus shipping. However, it's not quite that simple.

I've already agreed to sell my games to a bunch of shops and distributors. Those shops and distributors want to sell my games in their backyard, and due to their nature they will be much better at it than I am: A game shop in Lancaster, PA will have a much better idea of who in Lancaster, PA buys board games than I do, and far more people there will know about the local game store than my website. So I want to keep them as customers, and support them however I can.

The shops and distributors that have bought from me have invested their money in buying my games in the hope that they can sell them on at a profit. If I invite a few select people to get the games cheap from me, that's not really any skin off their back - those people were unlikely to buy from them anyway. In fact, as more people get my games and play them, the awareness of my games increases and it might even lead to more people interested in my games and more sales for my stockists.

If, however, I start undercutting them and making a big splash about it, then it might drive some of their customers who would have bought my games from them to buy them from me instead. That's not playing nice. Instead of supporting them in return for buying my stock, I'm hurting them. In that situation they'd be unlikely to buy more of my stock - leading to fewer sales overall.

There are some places in the world where I've got pretty good distribution: the UK, the US, and a chunk of mainland Europe. Similarly, there are a bunch of places where it's really hard to get hold of my games: Australia, New Zealand, Africa and South America. The free shipping deal was designed to help those hard to reach customers, while having minimum impact on my stockists in the well-supplied regions.

So far, it seems to be working, only one of the orders I've received since starting the deal came from a country where I've got good distribution, the rest came from those hard-to-reach countries - people who probably wouldn't have bought my games otherwise.

So I've sold a few extra games to people who were unlikely to get them otherwise; some people who wanted my games but couldn't afford full price plus shipping got them and the shops that stock them didn't get screwed. All sounds good.

The downside is that I really don't make much money on these copies. For example a sale of Sumeria (plus the expansion) to New Zealand gets me £25. £3.72 of that goes to the tax man as VAT. £1.18 goes to PayPal. £8.81 goes to the Post Office. £0.58 goes to Staples for the packaging. I'm left with £10.71. Still, it's more than I'd get selling to a distributor, and it's money I wouldn't have got without the incentive.

Over the last year or so I've managed to pick up twenty distributors for my games. This is obviously a Good Thing(tm), since I can now get my games in more shops and hence more exposure and hopefully more sales to actual customers.

So far, when I bring out a new game I get initial stocking orders from my distributors, and often a restock of the others. Occasionally I get a restock order for one or more of my games out of the blue.

Over the Christmas and New Year period, with no new games released, I've not had many restock orders - most of my distributors still have stock of my games on hand. In an effort to help them sell their stock and encourage them to re-order, I've been contacting shops in the US introducing myself, my company and my games.

I've managed to build a database (read spreadsheet!) of 611 stores in the US, including their location and contact details. That's great - if I could sell two copies of each game to all those stores I'd have sold a huge percentage of my print runs in one fell swoop. Now obviously, lots of those won't want to carry my games because they're not that heavily into board games and they only want to carry the really big names. However, a few of them would want to carry my games, only they've not heard of them - they've slipped under the radar as they receive a welter of information about hundreds of new games.

I think my email marketing campaign has been remarkably successful. I've got to assume a lot of my emails will end up in a spam filter and in many cases won't even be read. However, of the stores I have contacted before today (the ones I contacted today haven't had much of a chance to respond!), 10% have responded to me via email.

That 10% includes 4% who already stock my games, and another 2.5% who have placed orders with their distributors as a result of my emails. Where I've been copied on the emails to their sales contact at the distributor they have usually picked up two or three copies of each game.

What surprised me the most though was the number of stores with no website (not even a Facebook or MySpace page) and the number who don't provide an email address on their website. I can see why they wouldn't want to expose an email address to the world (I get enough spam on mine), but there are ways around it (online email forms, possibly with captchas, obscured email addresses (e.g. jack (at) reivergames (dot) co (dot) uk). I would have thought as a store you would want to make it as easy as possible for your customers to contact you. In total, I couldn't find an email address or form for 113 of the 611 (that's 18%!).

I think this has been a pretty successful effort, I'm just kicking myself that I didn't do it sooner - especially when I had a new game coming out. I'm going to extend my efforts to Canada and then Europe, and possibly other countries where I already have a distributor.

Self-control when buying games is a recurring theme at my blog. I keep telling myself about this, and despite some successes in curbing my buying habit, I still feel I could have done better. Now that the year end is approaching, I start looking at all the stats about my boardgame hobby that I have been meticulously recording. I had set a loose target of buying no more than 20 games a year. I am at 19 now (not counting 2 self-made games), so I'll meet this target if I can hold off buying any more games until end of this month. I do have some games on my definite-buy list now, e.g. Agricola: Farmers of the Moor, Axis & Allies Pacific 1940, but I can hold off for a while.

Here's a list of things I need to remind myself of. Maybe this will be helpful to you too.

1. You don't need to own every game that you like. If a friend has it, play his/her copy, or borrow it if you really feel like playing the game. I am working on convincing myself I don't need to buy Dungeon Lords ...
2. You don't need to play every good game. So what if you don't have the opportunity to play one particular game that you think you will love? Don't you already have lots of other games that you love that you're not playing much? So...
3. You need to play more of the good games that you own. For me, games like Die Macher, Power Grid.
4. Wait until your interest wanes. Procrastinate. When you hear of a certain new game, you can get very excited about it. Put it on your watchlist. Let it cool for 6 months. If 6 months later you still feel hot for it, then go for it. The wait will also allow you to read more reviews. Early reviews tend to be positive.
5. Don't impulse buy. "Don't marry a person you can live with. Marry a person you can't live without". Something like that.

Here are my 2009 purchases and what I feel about them:

1. Le Havre - (11 plays) I like it a lot, almost as much as Agricola. I wonder why I haven't played this more. Somehow it didn't have an addition period or hot game period like Agricola did. Maybe it's the number of cards in Agricola.
2. Axis & Allies anniversary edition - (2 plays, but both PBEM games and not using my physical copy of the game) I have a soft spot for the Axis & Allies family. That all I need to justify this purchase.
3. Automobile - (8 plays)
4. Civilization - (2 plays before I bought this on eBay, 0 after) Need to find the right group and a right time (i.e. long enough). Kind of like Die Macher. This doesn't work with 2P.
5. Keltis - (20 plays)
6. Wasabi - (17 plays)
7. Space Alert - (3 plays) Need to play more to have a more solid opinion. I can't even beat the Level 2 (of 3) tutorials yet. This one also needs a right group. My wife doesn't like it.
8. Indonesia - (1 play) Want to play more. This probably needs 4 players. And 4 hours.
9. Pandemic: On the Brink - (11 plays) Excellent value for money.
10. Galaxy Trucker Big Expansion - (1 play before I decided to buy it, 2 after I had it) After many games of Galaxy Trucker, this expansion becomes necessary to keep the game challenging and brutal.
11. Race for the Galaxy: Rebel vs Imperium - (18 plays) Buying this is as natural as eating rice (to a Malaysian).

1. Mystery Rummy: Bonnie & Clyde - (21 plays) I didn't realise I have played this many times. Good game and good addition to the Mystery Rummy family. But I don't seem to play it much now. Our default card game is Race for the Galaxy. Used to be Mystery Rummy: Jack the Ripper.
2. Metropolys - (1 play before buying it, 6 plays after) It's quite unique. Haven't played much recently though. Well, at least it passed the 5-plays-in-1st-year-of-purchase mark.
3. Barbarossa - (1 before, 0 after) Bought a used copy. Anticipating playing with my children when they are older.
4. Um Reifenbreite - (1 before, 3 after) Chong Sean gave me an offer I couldn't resist. I think this is the only race game in my collection. I don't fancy race games. One good thing is I have played this (albeit with much simplified rules) with my 4-year-old daughter.
5. Kakerlaken Poker - (1 before, 1 after, and both being 2P games, the "least good" way of playing I think) I intended to buy this piggy-backing on Chong Sean's game order, but afterwards he declined my payment and gave it to me as a gift. This is a game good for bigger groups and for non-gamers. I don't have such occasions often, so this becomes kind of an on-standby game.
6. Rabbit Hunt - (1 before, 2 after) Interesting first game. So-so second game. Need to play more.

1. Monopoly Deal - (4 plays) Impulse buy. I bought it using a gift voucher, which I should have spent on something else. The game is not bad, but nothing really draws me.
2. A Game of Thrones LCG - (4 plays) One I wanted to like, because I love the books. I haven't given up on it yet. I don't think 4 plays is enough to confirm I don't like it.

I feel a bit better after writing this down. It seems I didn't do too bad in 2009. Hopefully in 2010 I have more in the Happy list and less in the Unsure and Unhappy lists.

My current watchlist. Not the full list, just the higher ranked ones. Darn... that's already 17 out of 20 slots for 2010. Trim trim trim.

1. Agricola: Farmers of the Moor (buy)
2. Axis & Allies Pacific: 1940 edition (buy)
3. Axis & Allies Europe: 1940 edition (not out yet) (buy)
4. Race for the Galaxy: Brink of War (not out yet) (buy)
5. Power Grid - Factory Manager
6. At the Gates of Loyang
7. Campaign Manager 2008 (not out yet, I think)
8. Dominion: Seaside (I don't have Dominion: Intrigue though)
9. Times Square
10. Greed, Incorporated
11. Hansa Teutonica
12. Twilight Struggle
13. Homesteaders
14. Dungeon Lords
15. Warriors of God
16. Carson City
17. Power Struggle / Machtspiele

Already ordered. Oops... I'm actually already over 20.

1. Funny Friends
2. Planet Steam
3. Keltis - Die Erweiterung
4. Tales of the Arabian Nights

I guess I'm not repentant about posting too many photos of Through the Ages...

I did a my 2008 post one year ago, and it was interesting to go back to read that (at least for me). In 2008, three games more-or-less established themselves as the default go-to game when my wife Michelle and I had some time to play. Through the Ages for long games, Agricola for medium-length games, and Race for the Galaxy for short games. In 2009, no new game displaced these three. Pandemic did become a staple, for gameplay length between Agricola and Race for the Galaxy. That said, there were some new-to-me games in 2009 that I quite like.

Let's start with the fancy stats and diagrams.

Other miscellaneous thoughts:

Favourites - None in particular among new-to-me games played in 2009. Le Havre and Automobile come close. I enjoy the long-term planning in Le Havre, I like how it is more open to different strategies, and I like how it tells the story of a developing port city. Automobile is tight and tense. Very limited actions, and you need to plan carefully. Competition is fierce. The game is almost all open information, making it a little prone to analysis paralysis, but the only hidden bit (market demand) gives a lot of (good) anxiety and can cause lots of cheers and/or groans.

Likes - I like Indonesia, even though I have only played it once, and it was a 2-player game, probably the worst way to play. It's a long and complex economic game. Dungeon Lords has been great in my first 2 plays. I definitely want to play more. It's such a nail-biter. Struggle of Empires was published (and bought) in 2004. It is a good area majority game with lots of options. The dice add some randomness, but there are many things that you can (or at least you feel you can) do to mitigate luck. And wars are expensive. Euro-war-game.

Rare and good - Games that I didn't or won't get to play often, but are very enjoyable when I do play. I actually played Space Hulk (1st edition) 3 times in 2009. That's more than many other games. I don't own the game, but now that Han (whose copy it is) is back in town, we plan to play all 6 scenarios that come with the game. Axis & Allies Anniversary edition is long and good. Not that much longer than A&A Revised (2004), and has many improvements over it. Warriors of God is also quite long - nice sweep-of-history game. But it should move faster now that I've played it. I think the most important aspects of Civilization are the trading and the technological advancement. Negotiation and diplomacy are important. Watching disasters shake the world up is fun. Just try not to get too attached to your people. Fortress America was great Ameritrashy fun. I think I should try to arrange a game of Samurai Swords.

Medium likes - I am a little surprised with my number of plays of Keltis and Wasabi. Both are enjoyable although not anything earth shattering or deeply immersive. Just light and good fun. I'm going to get the Keltis expansion.

Surprises - Container seemed so dry from reading the rules. When I played it (a 5P game - I think the ideal number), I realised the rules are just the framework which allows the player interaction to come through. An economic game which is all about the group mentality and how the group creates and runs the in-game economy. This, my friends, (pregnant pause) is player interaction. Formula D is probably the only race game that I truly like. I generally dislike race games. I enjoyed making race car sounds when I played. And this was at a public venue (Carcasean boardgame cafe). There is a lot of excitement in the risk taking (which gear to use) and in the die-rolling. The World Cup Game is simple, quick and flavourful. Good for non-gamer football (soccer) fans. Before playing Airships I had expected yet-another-similar-dice-game, where you roll dice and try to do something useful with them, and often you can reroll / freeze some dice. But in Airships the decision making is before you roll the dice. There is some medium to longer term planning you need to do.

Disappointments - None in particular. Not that I didn't dislike any new-to-me games, just that for such games I didn't have high expectations in the first place.

Classics revisited - It's always good to revisit older good games. Many hobby gamers are guilty of buying too many games and only playing each game a few times. Often game depths are not sufficiently explored - opportunities wasted. I played Traumfabrik again and enjoyed it a lot. Thinking about it made me decide not to buy the recently published Basket Boss. They are quite different, but somehow they give me a similar feeling (admittedly that's from only reading the rules of the latter). I played Hammer of the Scots again, and thinking about that made me decide not to buy Richard III. I think owning the former is sufficient. I should spend my self-imposed game-buying quota on something more different. Puerto Rico, still enjoyable, despite being the 2P variant. I played more games of Lord of the Rings in 2009 than in 2008. Most are with the Battlefields expansion. It is tough.

I didn't play this?!! - Power Grid. I thought I was a big fan. I own so many expansions too. I've stopped buying expansions until I can play the existing expansions more. I love Princes of Florence too, but sadly 0 plays in 2009. I like Die Macher a lot, but this is a long one.

Surprised that I played this many - I knew I had played many games of Through the Ages, but I didn't realise this many. 2nd most played game of the year! I was a little surprised with the number of plays of Keltis and Wasabi too. They passed the 5-plays-in-first-year-of-purchase test with flying colours.

And now the long list of all games played in 2009. New-to-me games in 2009 have an asterisk.

Dimes
1. Race for the Galaxy - 115
2. Through the Ages - 31
3. Pandemic - 28
4. Agricola - 22
5. Dominion - 22
6. Bonnie and Clyde* - 21
7. Keltis* - 20
8. Blue Moon - 19
9. Wasabi* - 17
10. Le Havre* - 12
11. Secret Mission* - 10

Fives
12. Twister - 9
13. Ra: the dice game* - 8
14. Loopin' Louie - 8
15. Automobile* - 8
16. Lord of the Rings - 8
17. LOTR Confrontation - 7
18. Roll Through The Ages* - 7
19. Galaxy Trucker - 7
20. Gulo Gulo - 7
21. TTR Switzerland - 7
22. Metropolys - 6

Others
23. Blokus 3D - 4
24. Carcassonne - 4
25. Monopoly Deal* - 4
26. TTR Nordic Countries - 4
27. Blokus Duo - 4
28. Um Reifenbreite* - 4
29. A Game of Thrones LCG* - 4
30. Space Hulk* - 3
31. Rabbit Hunt* - 3
32. Lightning: Midway - 3
33. Space Alert* - 3
34. Villa Paletti - 3
35. 10 days in Asia - 3
36. Elasund - 3
37. Attika - 2
38. Brass - 2
39. Thebes - 2
40. Hive - 2
41. Dawn Under - 2
42. Axis & Allies Revised - 2
43. Risk: Star Wars Original Trilogy Edition* - 2
44. Magic the Gathering - 2
45. Civilization* - 2
46. Scotland Yard* - 2
47. Waterloo* - 2
48. Kakerlaken-Poker* - 2
49. Dungeon Lords* - 2
50. Axis & Allies Anniversary Edition* - 2
51. 7 Ages* - 2
52. Louis XIV - 1
53. Age of Steam - 1
54. Tikal - 1
55. Downfall of Pompeii* - 1
56. Witch's Brew* - 1
57. Titan* - 1
58. Puerto Rico - 1
59. Risk: Lord of the Rings Trilogy Edition* - 1
60. Caylus - 1
61. TTR Card Game - 1
62. Mag Blast - 1
63. Fortress America* - 1
64. Indonesia* - 1
65. New York Chase* - 1
66. Arkadia* - 1
67. Container* - 1
68. Fuzzy Tiger* - 1
69. That's Life - 1
70. Minion Hunter* - 1
71. China - 1
72. Ticket to Ride - 1
73. Modern Art - 1
74. Cartagena II* - 1
75. Red November* - 1
76. Castellers* - 1
77. Age of Empires III - 1
78. Mamma Mia - 1
79. Taj Mahal - 1
80. Perikles* - 1
81. Tempus* - 1
82. Colosseum* - 1
83. Battlestar Galactica* - 1
84. Minnie's Garden Game* - 1
85. In the Year of the Dragon - 1
86. Monopoly Express - 1
87. Amun-Re - 1
88. MR1: Jack the Ripper - 1
89. Tribune - 1
90. Manoeuvre* - 1
91. Notre Dame - 1
92. Chateau Roquefort* - 1
93. Formula D* - 1
94. Big Kini* - 1
95. Chaos Isle: Zombie Deck* - 1
96. The World Cup Game* - 1
97. Cosmic Encounter* - 1
98. Traumfabrik - 1
99. Warriors of God* - 1
100. TTR Europe - 1
101. For Sale - 1
102. Yspahan - 1
103. Wyatt Earp - 1
104. Hammer of the Scots - 1
105. Snow Tails* - 1
106. Byzantium - 1
107. Kakerlaken-Suppe* - 1
108. Chicago Express* - 1
109. Fresh Fish* - 1
110. Diamonds Club* - 1
111. Struggle of Empires* - 1
112. Airships* - 1
113. 2 de Mayo* - 1
114. Dou4Di4Zhu3 - 1
115. Middle-Earth Quest* - 1
116. Hacienda - 1
117. Risk Express - 1

Warning: Geeky post coming. Read on at own risk.

I have played more than 380 games of Race for the Galaxy now, this being my most played game ever. My second and third most played games are Mystery Rummy: Jack the Ripper and Carcassonne, both at 200+ plays. I wrote about how I log my plays of Race for the Galaxy some time ago. See the second half this blog post. Now my logging method has evolved further.

FYV[4] cards 19 (13), special 10 (1 - new galactic order), chips 2 = 31 (mostly military)
HCS[1] cards 23 (11), special 5 (1 - galactic federation), chips 1 = 29 (military)

This above was the notation that I used in June 2008. It started with the player initials (FYV), then start world in square brackets (4), then points from cards (19) and number of cards (13), then points from special 6-cost development cards (10), number of such cards (1), name of the cards (New Galactic Order), points from victory point chips (2), total points (31), comment on strategy used (mostly strategy).

Soon afterwards, it changed to this:

HCS[3] cards 27 (12), special 20 (gal imp 11, seti 9), chips 0 = 47 (military)
FYV[0] cards 11 (12), special 21 (new eco 9, min lea 6, mer gui 6), chips 30 = 62 (rare element consume)

I dropped the count for 6-cost development cards, since I was going to list down the names anyway. I didn't use the full names anymore. "gal imp" instead of "Galactic Imperium". "seti" instead of "Galactic Survey: SETI". "seti" was the only 6-cost development card that I abbreviated in a different way from all others.

HCS[1] cards 8 (9), special 9 (gf5, fta4), chips 19 = 36 (consume)
FYV[3] cards 18 (12), special 11 (seti), chips 5 = 34 (military)

Later on, I abbreviated the 6-cost developments names further. I only used the initials. "gf" = "Galactic Federation". Good thing that none of them had the same initials. Only "seti" remained as "seti". Not "gss". And if a player only has one 6-cost development, I don't list the individual points for the card, since it will be the same as the total points. E.g. seti above.

After the expansion Gathering Storm came out, I needed to record points from objectives too.

FYV[1] cards 19 (13), special 7 (ngo), chips 3, objectives 11 = 40 (mostly military)
HCS[0] cards 12 (9), special 0, chips 12, objectives 8 = 32 (settle, some consume)

I used this notation above for quite some time. I recorded a summary of the game score (e.g. "fyv40, hcs32") in one cell in Microsoft Excel, and then I inserted the breakdown as a cell comment. Recently I made one dramatic switch. I had one burst of many plays of Race for the Galaxy with Michelle, and I suddenly felt I needed to simply this notation further. I don't bother with inserting as comment anymore now. I just squeeze everything into the cell. This is now my latest notation:

fyv45, hcs 28; fyv10-14(14) is10 seti9 6 6, hcs2-16(12) gf6 1 5

fyv54, hcs23; fyv11-41(15) 0 0 13, hcs2-9(6) gf10 ngo4 0 0

It starts with winner initials (fyv) and score (45), then other players and scores (hcs28). After that the breakdown: player initials (fyv), start world (10), points from cards (14), number of cards including 6-cost development cards (14), initials and scores of 6-cost developments (is10 seti9), points from VP chips (6) and points from objectives (6). I have dropped the total points for 6-cost developments (even if there are more than one played). If there is no 6-cost development, I just put a 0. See second example above. Also I don't bother to repeat the total score in the breakdown anymore.

Hmm... I just realised that the last two examples that I had randomly picked showed Michelle completely slaughtering me.

On 3 Jan 2010 I brought out Space Alert again, this time to play with Han, who had not tried it before. In my previous plays I had never reached the real missions, but this time I did. We started with tutorial Level 1 (of 3 levels), which we managed to win, and then moved on to Level 2 (which I had not won before). We managed to beat Level 2 too. Then we decided to be a bit more ambitious - we jumped straight to a full mission, skipping over tutorial Level 3. The Level 3 tutorials add internal threats, battlebots and interceptors. The real missions add heroic actions and visual comfirmation on top of these. Heroic actions are quite simple, and we didn't bother with the visual confirmation aspect of the game, so I thought we might as well go for it. Visual confirmation is a way to earn points. There is a scoring system in the game, but I don't bother with it, because I'm happy to just survive and win. Winning by how much is not important. I do the same with Lord of the Rings.

The real mission was tough. We had 4 external and 1 internal threats. There were only two of us playing, so we had to manage two androids in addition to our own characters. The good thing with 2 players is there is less coordination required. The bad thing is each of us need to manage more things, and this being a real-time game makes it quite tense. As more and more threats started to appear, we split up. I managed one android and the two of us (android and I) handled two threats at the centre and red side of the spaceship, in addition to the android being put in charge of the mouse-wiggling to keep the spaceship computer screensaver off (which would otherwise delay everyone's actions). Han managed the other android, and the two of them went to the blue side of the ship to manage the 1 internal threat and 2 external threats over there. It was quite frantic. We did all we could within the 10 minutes of the soundtrack. We finished placing all our actions with about half a minute to spare. We knew we couldn't do much else with that little time remaining. To try to change anything by then would be too late. So we stopped the soundtrack and proceeded to the execution stage.

It was a good idea to have a dedicated person (well, android) minding the mouse. One less thing to worry about. The android could also shoot the main cannon when we needed it to. There was a cheat-like thing that we did, which I don't think is illegal or against the spirit of the game. Up front we assigned the android to wiggle the mouse in the 1st, 4th and 8th turns. You are supposed to plan actions for turns 1 to 3, 4 to 7 and 8 to 12 in three different stages. The rules explicitly forbid changing your planned actions of a previous stage, but they do not explicitly forbid planning for an upcoming stage. And I do not pick up the cards for that upcoming stage yet. Anyway, if this is disallowed, I would still set aside the Button C cards, to be played in the 2nd and 3rd stages. It's just easier to place them early and not worry about them anymore.

The external threats appeared one after another. We managed to defeat the first few without issue. Then suddenly I realised I had misremembered how the internal threat worked. We had the one where the missiles malfunctioned and would explode if not fixed in time. I had thought that as long as we made sure we fired all the missiles before they exploded, we would be fine. I suddenly realised that when they malfunctioned, we should not have been able to fire them in the first place. Oops. Surprisingly, my mistake in teaching the game probably saved us. I not only misremembered how malfunctions worked, I also forgot to tell Han that every button can only be pressed once per turn. He had himself and his sidekick android press the missile C button at the some time, thinking that they could fire two missiles at the same time. It doesn't work that way. Only one missile can be fired in one turn. However, if there is a malfunction, more than one person can work on fixing it at the some time. If more people work on it at the same time, you can fix the malfunction quicker. So the two C actions that Han had played were not wasted afterall. The missile malfunction was fixed in time. But of course no missiles were fired to target the external enemies.

Our spaceship took some damage. It was then that I realised that taking damage is a major source of uncertainty. No matter how well you have planned, if you take damage, you won't know beforehand what will be spoilt. Your weapons may become less effective, your energy stores too, and your lift may go out of order. You can't plan ahead for these, and these can cost you the game. So, in Space Alert, you really must try to avoid damage as much as possible, to minimise uncertainty.

One threat after another were defeated. We were still alive. It was down to the last one. It was approaching too fast. We couldn't destroy it before it reached the Z point. But! Thank goodness the damage it dealt was not enough to kill our spaceship. We survived! We won our first full mission of Space Alert! We were lucky for sure (the two mistakes ended up helping us), but I think we played pretty well too. I didn't go back to see whether we would have lost if we had played with the wrong rules. We might have survived anyway.

I am pretty happy with this session. Now I can confirm I do like Space Alert. One thing that definitely helped a lot was moving the pieces around when we did the planning. I didn't do this in my previous games. Doing this helped us visualise the situation on board the spaceship. It is especially important for making sure you have managed your energy cubes well. It can also help avoid two people trying to squeeze into the 1-person lift at the same time.

Another thing that I find to be important is you need to specialise. Just like the android being assigned to wiggle the mouse, someone needs to be in charge of remembering to manage the energy transfers, of specific threats, etc. It would be convenient that each character stays in one room, or only moves between two rooms, doing whatever shooting or energy replenishment or sheild charging as required. However the internal threats force you to move. When a character picks up the battlebots, the battlebots stick to him/her, and cannot be reassigned. So that character will have to move about to fight intruders, or to fly the interceptors. Quite tricky, and I like it.

Now I need to think of how to convince my wife to try this again...

On 8 Jan 2010 I joined the Old Town Kopitiam Cheras gamers again, to play Greed, Incorporated. We had 5 players, the full complement, and it was the first game for all of us.

Greed is a game about businessmen building up companies, then wrecking them in order to gain personal profit in the form of big severance packages, and ultimately using this personal wealth gained to buy status symbols, like art collections and private jets. Everyone starts the game with no personal wealth, but each player is the CEO of a new company with $100 million cash. To make money, the companies can gradually acquire up to four assets. Some assets produce goods, which can be sold for profit, and some assets convert goods to other types of goods, which can usually be sold for even more profit. Companies can trade goods with one another. Every year (round), if any company does not earn more money than the previous year, there will be a blame game, and the CEO, CFO and COO will each pick a person to blame. Anyone blamed will be fired, and will get a severance package, and this is how the players gain personal wealth. Every round there are two status symbols that are available to be purchased, via open auction. The players bid for these using their personal money.

You can also start up new companies using your personal wealth. A player may control (i.e. be CEO of) any number of companies. A player can also be CFO, COO or board member for any number of companies. So trying to get yourself into positions of power and into profitable companies is important.

The rules are a little complex and there are many steps in every round. This reminds me of Die Macher. You really need a reference sheet for this. We all started the game without much clue. Henry was the first to have a decent company, producing valuable assets and making good profit. I think Jeff was the first to gain control of two companies. He started a lot of creative (i.e. dubious) business deals between his two companies. Later on Allen controlled 3 companies! There were even more creative business deals among those companies, e.g. goods being sold at dirt cheap prices. Heng was one of the earlier ones to be controlling no company (after getting himself fired, i.e. cashing out). Henry and I also at some point had no companies. Baaad idea. We watched in despair as Jeff and Allen's companies prospered and made profits that were unimaginable based on the kind of profits that we had seen in the first few rounds of the game.

Jeff was the first among us to discover the trick of populating the board with your own family members. It's a fantastic way of milking the company dry. Every year that the company is doing poorer, just point fingers at your CEO son, sack him by giving him 40% of the company's cash, then have your CFO son take over as CEO. The next year, just employ your next son (or son-in-law or daughter-in-law or nephew or neice etc) to the CFO position, ready to pull the same trick. There is a rule that penalises this, but the penalty (at least in our game) was small.

Towards the end game, no one could beat Allen's riches. He kept winning the gold status symbols, and Jeff kept getting the silver status symbols. Henry, Heng and I had no chance by that stage. I think we didn't even have enough cash for the starting bids. At game end, Jeff won the game with 29pts, from 4 status symbols won. He had started gaining status symbols earlier than Allen, who had 27pts from 3 status symbols. Henry scored in the teens, with 2 status symbols. Heng and I both had 9pts, he had one status symbol and I had two, but I think I had less cash, which meant I was dead last.

Greed, Incorporated is quite a tricky game. You really need to think ahead, analysing the types of assets available, the needs and products and situations of all the companies, who's who on the company boards, etc. Trying to manipulate your company to intentionally do poorer so that you can get yourself fired can be tricky. Each company has three buckets of money - (1) Free Cash is what the company can spend; (2) This Year's Income is whatever the company has earned this year, and money in this bucket cannot be spent; (3) Last Year's Income is money earned in the previous round, which the company also cannot spend. So cash flow can be quite tight because a lot of money can be tied up in this pipeline. Only once a round the money in the buckets are shifted forwards towards the Free Cash bucket.

The game is quite complex. I'd say more so that Indonesia (another complex economic game by the same publisher), and about the same as Die Macher. One thing that makes it feel more complex to me is the two layers in the game - the companies and the players. You need to switch between mindsets. While you are playing the role of company CEO's, you have to remember that making the companies profitable is only the means to an end - your own personal wealth and earning status symbols. You are playing two very different roles at the same time. I have a feeling I won't do very well in 18XX train games, because they too have two layers, the players owning shares in railroad companies, and the companies themselves. I struggle with managing these two layers. Chicago Express has these two layers, but then it's a very streamlined design so I can still cope.

Timing of when to cash out and when to bid for the status symbols is important. This depends a lot on how the group plays. You really need to watch your opponents and guess their intentions. There is pressure to cash in early and gain some cheap status symbols before others can afford them. However cashing in too early may leave yourself vulnerable, being unable to build up your earning power for later rounds. You may become uncompetitive in the later game, when the status symbols are worth more points.

How to wreck a company before you get yourself fired is a skill. You don't want your successor to milk more out of the cash cow. When you have an opportunity to take over another company, e.g. the company did poorly and your superiors are bailing out, do you want to take over as CEO, hoping you can turn the company around and eventually in the long term make more money for yourself, or should you just take a cut now and abandon ship?

The game is quite brutal. It seems to be very hard to recover if you've made some bad decisions in the early game. I felt that from mid-game onwards I was already doomed. Well, this was my first game afterall, so maybe if I play again I won't repeat such fatal mistakes.

There is opportunity for negotiation and trading in the game. I think this is meant to play an important role. In our particular game this didn't play a big part though, at least not for me. I did strike some deals, e.g. selling a good for less than what it was worth, because I wanted to find an excuse to fire myself. However for most of the game I was floundering, and the trades I did didn't help me much.

Overall I didn't like Greed, Incorporated as much as I expected. I'm probably a little biased because I did really poorly in the game. For me the sarcasm and humour from reading the rules didn't turn out to be so funny in an actual game. I guess I didn't really enjoy being evil CEO. Another recent Essen release that has caught my attention is Power Struggle, which also pokes fun at the business world, specifically the politics within a company, bribery, corruption etc. Now I have second thoughts about trying it out.

...

Oh who am I kidding, if I get a chance to play it I'd jump in without hesitation.

I first played Twilight Struggle in 2006. Played 1.5 games, but after that never came back to try it again. The recently released deluxe edition (4th printing, which means this game is selling well) triggered my interest to try it again. I am looking for another 2-player-playable longish game that can be my wife and my go-to game, in addition to Through the Ages. So I borrowed Han's copy of Twilight Struggle to try it out with Michelle, to see whether she likes it, before deciding whether to buy the deluxe edition. Actually, I'm not even sure whether I liked it when I played it four years ago.

Twilight Struggle is about the Cold War, 1945 - 1989, from the end of World War II to the fall of USSR. It is a 2-player-only game, where the players play USSR and USA, the two superpowers during the Cold War, competing to spread their influence around the world. This is a card driven game. Players take turns playing cards and either use the operation points on the cards to spread their influence, or use the events on the cards. Most of the flavour of the game comes from these real historical events. This is a very educational game, summarising the geopolicital tensions and international incidents throughout the Cold War. In most cases the outcomes of these events are related to how influence is changed on the world map, or how victory points are scored.

There are various ways to spread your influence. You can add your influence through proper means. I imagine providing aid to countries, or signing international treaties, etc. You can make some risky political realignments to reduce your opponent's influence. I imagine these to be things like spy missions, which can backfire and cause you to lose influence instead. You can even set up a military coup to try to reduce your opponent's influence and even to increase your own influence.

When you play a card, if it has an event associated to your superpower, you can choose to use the operation points number of the card, or have that event occur. Sometimes this can be a tough decision. The even more tricky thing is if you play a card with your opponent's event, you can only choose to use the op points, and your opponent's event occurs (usually bad for you). That means you will be in trouble if you draw many cards associated with your opponent's superpower.

There are ways around this. Normally you will play cards from your hand until you have only one card left. So if you have many of you opponent's events, at least you can reserve the worst one to be the last card held in your hand. But you can't discard it. You'll still continue hold it when you replenish your hand for the next Turn, but hopefully later on the effect of the card wouldn't hurt you as much. The other way around this is the Space Race. This is a simple and abstract mechanism meant to represent the prestige project of the two superpowers. Any card spent on the Space Race will not have its event occur. Advancing your country in the Space Race gives some benefits, but as soon as your opponent catches up, you lose that advantage.

Another interesting aspect of the game is the DEFCON track, representing how close the world is to nuclear war. Military coups, and some other events can cause the world stability to worsen. Whoever causes the situation to get out of control will end the world by nuclear annihilation. Everyone loses, and that player loses more for being the culprit. Military coups are sometimes a convenient way to fight for influence, but the DEFCON level will restrict the use of coups in different regions, and you can't start a coup if it the world is on the brink of nuclear armageddon (unless you want to concede the game).

The Military Ops track is another interesting concept. Both superpowers want to flex their military muscles around the world, by sponsoring or triggering wars, and staging coups. You can lose face and get penalised if you don't show off your strength enough.

Most of the scoring in the game centres around the scoring cards. Every region on the board has a scoring card, and when such a card is played, players score depending on how well they have established control in that region. If you have a scoring card in your hand, you can plan ahead and try to make sure you are better positioned than your opponent to benefit from it. Sometimes when you see your opponent suddenly sucking up to African warlords, you'll wonder whether she'll be playing the African scoring card soon. But then, she may also be bluffing just to distract you.

The game is a little complex. Definitely at the level of the complex Eurogames, but compared to wargames this is probably relatively simple.

Michelle player USSR, supposedly the easier superpower to play, and I played USA. In the early game USSR was always ahead in score. I was pretty much just doing damage control. USSR had strong influence in Europe, even controlling France. I barely held on to West Germany. Even in Asia it managed to control South Korea and Taiwan, traditionally USA allies. During the mid game, the advantage gradually shifted to the USA. I slowly managed to dominate Asia, the Middle-East and Central America. Michelle controlled many countries in Africa. We were more or less equally matched in South America. Eventually USA won in Turn 9 (out of 10 Turns in the game), by reaching 20 victory points. The last 4pts were gained by successfully advancing on one of the steps on the Space Race.

Unfortunately, my victory was marred. There were some USA event cards that I forgot to discard. Some events should have been discarded from the game when they occurred, but were not. That definitely impacted the game. One thing that I made use of a lot was the coups, which I think helped me a lot. Michelle didn't use those much. She was still grappling with the rules. And I think throughout the game neither of us tried realignment rolls. It had never even occurred to me. It probably would have been very useful in some situations. So actually I was grappling with the rules too, just maybe slightly less than Michelle.

I quite enjoyed the game. I enjoyed watching history unfold. I think in any game a majority of the cards will come out sooner or later, just that not all will be played as events. This means that the cards very much define the game. All the flavour, the pacing, and the many unique quirks come from the cards. The game is very much about damage control, and managing the timing of the scoring cards and the rise and fall of your influence. You need to prioritise where you want to exert influence. Sometimes you need to bluff. In a way it feels like Race for the Galaxy - how do you make the most out of your hand of cards. If they are good, how should you squeeze the most out of them? If they are bad, how do you minimise damage?

Playing the game for the first time can be challenging, because there is a lot of text on the cards. But the overall structure of the game is not complex. It's just playing cards and doing one of four possible actions - add influence, realignment, coup or Space Race.

I don't know whether Michelle will play this with me again. I'm kind of in denial and don't want to ask her yet, waiting for when she is in a charitable mood. The mistake I made upset her a little. But I think at least she now has a pretty good grasp of how the game works. She is always resistant to learning new games, but once she gets over the initial learning curve, she can start liking the game, if it is a game that she is able to like. For some games she flatly tells me it's no fun (

Tales of the Arabian Nights is an old game republished last year. It was the game that I had mistakenly thought Once Upon A Time was when I bought the latter. Arabian Nights is the more famous game. In some ways, these two games are actually quite similar. Both are story-telling games. The biggest difference is in Once Upon A Time you are (mostly) active and in Arabian Nights you are (mostly) passive.

The Game

Think boardgame version of choose-your-own-adventure books. That's more or less the gist. Players are characters in the world of the Arabian Nights. They start the game in Baghdad, with three basic skills and a quest to fulfill. They adventure around the board encountering various people and events. They may learn new skills, acquire treasures, get cursed, become an outlaw etc. Throughout these adventures, they gaining Story Points and Destiny Points, which are needed to win the game.

A very thick Book of Tales comes with the game. When a player encounters an event (which usually happens every turn), you look up a list to determine what (or who) you encounter. Then there's a list of possible reactions you can choose from (look up another list). After choosing your reaction, your fellow player reads out your story for you, from the Book of Tales, after looking up the right paragraph based on your choice of reaction. There is some die rolling that mixes things up a bit, and sometimes some of your skills can make a difference in the outcome too.

That's basically how the game works. Pretty simple. And there's a lot of looking up to do. There are some other rules, but the game is not complex.

The Play

I played a 2-player game with Han. He suggested we use a goal of 15pts instead of 20, to make things go quicker. Also we each had 1 master skill and 2 normal skills, as opposed to 3 normal skills. I wanted to play green, as usual, but green is a woman in this game. Han played Sindad, who is blue in the game. My starting quest was to be a have a great story. Every time I scored 2 Story Points within the same turn, I'd earn 1 of 3 quest markers, and when I earned all 3 markers, I'd complete the quest. Han's starting quest was to travel to three distant cities (determined by me), so he had some destinations to aim for. I wandered around until I drew some city cards, which were like mini quests - go to the specified city to gain some benefit.

Things didn't quite work out for me. On my first turn I ran into some corrupt official who tried to frame me for a crime I didn't commit. Since I was good with weapons, I tried to attack him, but that didn't work out. I was defeated, humiliated and injured. I escaped and wasted one turn to recover, but now I was an outlaw and could never go back to that city because the people there knew my face. I tried to be a studious person. When I met a wise sage I tried to speak with him and learn from him, but the arrogant old fart got offended and told me off. I was never able to earn 2 Story Points in a turn, while Han managed to visit one quest city after another. He used a pretty crazy approach when choosing reactions, taking mostly aggressive or unusual actions. It turned out quite well for him though. He gained Destiny and Story Points steadily while I floundered, and he eventually won the game. He did have one tragic love story to tell though - he got married in a city where widows and widowers were expected to get themselves killed too if their spouses died, and his wife died a few days after their marriage (and I bet she had no life insurance). He managed to run away and returned to Baghdad.

The Thoughts

All those reviews for Arabian Nights are right - if you want to enjoy it you need to play with the right mindset. You don't get much control about whether good or bad things happen to you. You need to just relax and enjoy the bizarre story (bizarre is good). Not that you should not be trying to win. That is still important because it gives you a sense of purpose (just like the quests and city cards do). Just be prepared that the winner is probably going to be determined by luck rather than skill. In Han's words - "a game only good for families and non-gamers". I think we played a bit hurriedly with those modifications used to shorten the game, because we were worried it might drag. It turned out, at least to me, that the game felt short.

There are many many paragraphs in the Book of Tales. However in our game I think we've encountered Strange Customs three times. Maybe it is because I tended to visit cities. It can be no fun if you start encountering the same things. I pity the game designer / developers. For every little bit that they wanted to reduce the chances of a player encountering the same thing, they had to put in a lot of effort in writing many more paragraphs. A lot of hard work had gone into this game. And still, we could encounter the same thing even in our first game, and this was a 2-player game. Maybe we were just super unlucky. Of course one way to change what you will experience is to intentionally choose some other reaction to the same encounter. But that feels a bit forced. You would be making a random choice for the sake of variety, rather than getting into character and making the choice that feels right. This can be applied to locations that you choose to have an encounter too. You can intentionally choose to have encounters at different types of locations - cities, forests, deserts, sea etc. However that feels forced. It detracts from the feeling of immersing yourself in a magical story.

We encountered a whirlpool on land. I've read that quirky things like this can happen. I don't mind it too much. I can make excuses like I happened to be crossing a lake.

Your story will be quite disjointed. It is more or less random which paragraph you get every turn. There are things that try to tie things together and give a sense of continuity - your skills, your treasures, your statuses and your quests. They do help, and in my opinion to a good extent, especially the quests. Skills are sometimes helpful and do affect the outcome of encounters, but not really all that often. E.g. my skills with weapons didn't help me when I decided to fight the evil vizier.

I have already ordered a copy of Arabian Nights, even before I played it. It is something very different from any other game I have played, and I think it will be a good game to play with my children when they are older. I can enjoy the game, but it's definitely not something that I'd play heavily. And indeed it is a good game to play with non-gamers. You can just spend 3 minutes describing the basics, skipping the rest of the rules, and start a game. You only need to teach them how to do the look-ups, Destiny and Story Points, and movement, to get a game started. All the rest can be taught during the game.

The game is probably best with 3 or 4 players. With 2, the non-active player has too much look-up work to do. With more than 4, there is probably going to be too much downtime. There is little player interaction anyway, and I don't think that's an important part of the game in the first place.

Arabian Nights is not not a game. It's just that your choices may not have much relevance to winning. Accept that, immerse yourself in the story, and you'll enjoy it.