Technically I've been in the business of making and selling games for over three years. That makes me an old hand now, right? Not really. I've only been 'professional' (not just in the sense that this is now my full-time job, but I'm also getting the games manufactured for me, and selling primarily to distributors and shops rather than direct to customers) for eighteen months and I've only had stock for the last thirteen months. I'm still doing a lot of stuff for the first time. And, as with Essen, when I'm doing stuff for the second time it's often under such different circumstances that it's hard to draw any conclusions from the past experience.

The reason I bring this up is that I've started graphing my sales over time, and it's teaching me new stuff all the time. At the beginning I assumed that sales for a new game would peak when it was released and then decline steadily over time. To some degree this statement has been true, but there have been some interesting deviations from what I expected. It's Alive! didn't sell many copies in its first quarter (but it came out in September near the end of the July - September quarter). In its second quarter (the run-up to Christmas) it did exceptionally well, helped by Essen and a few big stocking orders. Carpe Astra did much better than It's Alive! in its first quarter (the run-up to Christmas) and both did well in the first quarter of this year - when I signed the two biggest US distributors. Sumeria got off to a great start (best first quarter sales of any of my games) but then did less well in its second quarter (which for Sumeria corresponded to the Summer: July - September).

If I look at graphs plotting the sales of each game by quarter, with the x-axis corresponding to quarters since release it's hard to draw any conclusions: they are all over the place with dips and peaks that don't correspond at all (note that the last data point in each case is for this quarter which is less than halfway through):

So length of time since release is clearly not the driving factor behind how many games I'll sell in any given quarter. So what is I wonder? People say that the Summer months are often quiet, with the best sales being in the run-up to Christmas. This seems reasonable, so I've drawn the same data on a different x-axis. This time its still in sales per quarter, but the quarters relate to a single instance in time: 1 is last Summer (July - September when It's Alive! was re-released), 2 is last Autumn (October to December, including Essen, the run-up to Christmas and the release of Carpe Astra) and so on. Suddenly things become clearer:

Despite the fact that this quarter (Autumn) is only half done, all three games are showing a clear boost over the preceding Summer months. There's a noticeable decline from Autumn through Winter and Spring into Summer, before a sharp jump into Autumn again. Sumeria, which came out at a fairly quiet time, shows the same pattern, but with higher sales due to the initial stocking orders. I'm expecting a few more re-stocks before Christmas too, so hopefully the climb for this Autumn will become steeper across the board in the next couple of months.

With so little experience to base my decisions on, it's hard to see whether a game is doing well or badly. Are low sales due to the time of release, or something else? As the years go on I'll have more hard data to base my assumptions on, and can make more informed decisions as a result. The important thing is that rather than just waving a finger in the air and using gut feelings I'm collecting the data I've got so I'm more informed for next time.

It's that time again. I've received a submission that I need to get playtested more widely. In particular I want to find playtesters from North America (the best market for this game, I believe).

The game is a fun, silly, card game for 2-6 players than plays in less than 30 minutes. It's very language dependent (hence I'm not looking for European playtesters, I can't see I'll sell many copies there), since it's a fantasy-themed storytelling game.

If you're up for some light-hearted, simple fun, please post a comment explaining why you'd make an awesome playtester for Reiver Games. I'll pick some people (using my arcane selection criteria) and send them a copy of the game.

All I'm asking from you is that you play the game several times, keeping records of game length, scores, number of players, what everyone thought of the game and any ideas you might have for tweaks to the rules or cards.

Thanks!

I've been enjoying the words of wisdom of Brett J. Gilbert recently. One of the things he said recently made me think, and it is the starting point for this blog post. At first I thought it was something he had said in one of his two recent blog posts, but on re-reading them I think it must of come from an email he sent me and a few other UK games designers.

What Brett said was:

... when game players (hopefully) say €œI want to play that game again!€ what they mean is that they want to repeat the *experience* of playing the game, something that is more than simply the sum of the game€™s mechanics.

This is something I've considered in the past when discussing Battlestar Galactica: The Board Game. BSG:TBG is a fairly simple game when you get down to the mechanisms involved, but the experience (when played with the right group of people) is much better than the sum of the mechanics. It's a game of paranoia, suspicion and table talk. Everyone is trying to uncover the hidden traitor, except the hidden traitor who is trying to frame someone else without being too obvious. It's a game where a lot of the fun comes from accusing everyone around you of being a "frakking toaster" (the TV show's TV-friendly swear word, and epithet for the TV show's robotic bad guys who are all chromed up - like a toaster). It's a huge amount of fun.

Why bring this up now? I've been sent a submission fairly recently that's tickled my fancy. In the two months since I received it I've played it with a bunch of people, who have all been entertained by it. Those of you who stalk me on the internet will probably know I've been enquiring about artists for it, and looking for North American playtesters for it.

It's different from the other games I've done. It's a pure card game (no components other than cards) and it's a very simple game, strategically very simple. But the experience makes it something more than the mechanisms would have you believe. It's a story-telling game, driven by your handful of cards. There's no deep, overarching strategy: you play the cards you've got. What makes it so entertaining is the cards themselves. Some of them are sensible, some of them are funny by themselves, but when you combine them in one of the 260,000 possible combinations even the straight ones often end up in hilarious stories.

Is this game going to wow fans of deep strategic eurogames? Probably not. But I think it might sell very well, especially in America (where most of my business is), if I can just get the marketing right. It's a silly, funny game, that could potentially appeal to the legions of Munchkin fans in addition to anyone else with a sense of humour.

It's still early days - I've been constructing playtesting copies to send to my playtesters. I need more feedback. Is it really funny? Could it be funnier? Is it too simple? Too complex? More information will help inform my publishing decision. But at the moment I think I'm onto a winner...

A big thank you to everyone who volunteered to help me test the storytelling card game. In addition to those of my current playtesters who have expressed an interest, I would like to send copies to:

• Skiznills
• FatherPhoenix
• jafrank

Please could you guys email me with your street addresses so I can get copies in the post to you.

I get lots of emails from people who are interested in publishing a game of their own design. Some want to start small, like I did with Border Reivers and the limited edition of It's Alive!, others want to jump in at the deep end and get their games manufactured professionally and try to sell to shops.

To do the latter you've got to be prepared to risk a large chunk of money and hence the possibility of failure and the loss of that large chunk (or a proportion of it). I thought I'd give an example here with some numbers, so you can see what I mean. These aren't accurate figures from one of my games, but they are indicative, so not miles out either.

Let's say you're a small publisher (like the now legendary Reiver Games), who want to aim at the smaller, lighter, cheaper end of the market. You've designed a game, and you think it's a winner. You think it would sell well at around £20-25. So the first thing to do is to price up getting it made. The more copies you make the cheaper it will be per copy, but the bigger the risk involved as you will have to invest more money, and sell more copies to break even/make a profit.

To sell to shops and distributors you need to be able to make a profit when selling the games at 40% of retail: i.e. £8- £10. Out of this you need to be able to pay your overheads, wages and marketing, so you really need to be getting the games make for around 20% of retail: £4-5.

You approach a manufacturer and get some manufacturing quotes. Your quotes come back as: £9,000 for 1,000 copies ( £9 per copy), £12,000 for 2,000 copies ( £6 per copy) or £15,000 for 3,000 copies ( £5 per copy).

If you want to only make 1,000 copies you need to either sell it at £45, sell it at £25 with almost no margin, or do something in between. Remember to make a profit you need to sell at least the break even number (if you are selling at £10 to distributors and they cost you £9, you won't break even until you've sold 90%, i.e. 900 copies, and even if you achieve a sell out, you'll only make £1,000 profit, which is probably not enough to cover your overheads, wages and marketing budget). If the market for your game at £25 is only 900 people will buy it then you will at least cover the cost of manufacturing, but you will lose money on overheads, etc.

Making 2,000 copies you need to either sell it at £30, sell it at £25 with a 66% margin, or do something in between. Now the break even number at £25 RRP is a smaller percentage of the print run (60%), but with the bigger print run this means more copies (1,200). If you manage to sell 1,200 you've covered the cost of manufacturing, but not your overheads. If you sell out, you've made £8,000 (minus overheads, wages and marketing budget), but can you sell 2,000 copies? It doesn't sound that many when you consider there are 300 million people in the US and more in Europe, but with your marketing budget what proportion of those people will hear about your games? And what proportion of those who hear about them will be interested? If the market is 900 people you will lose £7,500.

If you go for 3,000 copies then selling at £25 RRP (i.e. £10 to distributors) then you will break even at 1,500 and if you sell out you will make £15,000! Of course, that means selling even more copies. If the market for you game is only 900, then you will lose £10,500.

The million dollar question is how many copies of a game can you sell? It depends on a lot of factors. The quality of the game. The effectiveness of your marketing. The price point you've pitched at (you'll sell more games at £5 than at £50 all other things being equal). When you start out in this business you don't really know what you can achieve, that information comes from experience. If you've never made a game in your life you've no idea how many copies you can sell. If you've sold 20 games, with sales of between 1,200 and 12,000 copies you've got a much better idea of how many copies you can sell of a given game at a given price.

A further spanner in the works comes from the time to sell out. Say you make 2,000 copies and you will sell them all. Great. That's £8,000 in the bank. Minus overheads. Let's say your overheads are £1,500 a month (which includes a modest wage, warehousing and a few other things). If you sell out in a month you've made £20,000, minus the manufacturing cost: £12,000 and one month's overheads: £1,500. So £6,500 of profit. Nice work. But one month seems a little unlikely. Let's say it takes you six months to sell out. Now the overheads are £9,000 and you've lost £1,000. If it takes two years, then you'll lose £28,000!

How on earth can I still be in business I hear you ask? My overheads are extremely low (I'm still not taking a salary), and having multiple games means I've spread the risk. Also the overheads only apply once. My overheads are the same whether I have one game or several, so getting income from multiple games all offset the overheads.

For the record, It's Alive! has been out nearly 15 months and I'm still a good distance away from selling out of it.

In my last post I showed you just how scary the figures could be for trying to make games for a living. They weren't actual figures for one of my games, but they were indicative. In the comments Daniel asked what about hobby publishing - how does that compare (I paraphrase!). So here's the answer.

Just over three years ago I decided to make and sell some copies of Border Reivers, a board game I had designed over the preceding five years. With little money to throw at the effort and little faith in my ability to sell a lot of copies I chose to go down the hobby publishing route: I would make a small number of copies, largely by hand to keep costs down.

I worked out that I could make 100 copies for £1,255 plus £376 on overheads (I wasn't paying warehousing costs, or myself any salary, but there were a bunch of tools I needed to make the games. To keep costs down I ordered the wooden and plastic pieces all at once (the more you get the cheaper they are), and did the same with the printing. I got a digital printer to do all the printing for me, just onto SRA3 sheets of paper and thin card. I got them to laminate it all to to make it more durable, but I was going to do all the assembly myself. The total price was £1,631 or £16.31 per copy. To cover my costs (plus the cost of attending various conventions and setting up a website I chose to price the game at £30, less than twice the manufacturing cost. I doubted very much whether anyone would pay more than that for it, especially as the cost of shipping would be on top of that. Obviously I couldn't afford to sell to distributors or shops, so I had to hope that I could win enough people over at conventions and via the internet to cover my costs.

With no fixed overheads (no warehousing, no salary) the time it took me to sell the copies didn't really matter - it just came down to whether or not I could. I needed to sell 55 copies to break even, which considering I had no market presence and no reputation seemed like a lot. If I did sell all 100 copies I would stand to make £3,000, or a £1,369 profit.

In the end I damaged some pieces so I only ended up making 96 out of the 100, and some of those I gave away (or kept), I made £2,600, so just under £1,000 profit. Since all those sales were within the first year I gained 60% on top of my original investment, a far better rate of interest than any other savings investment would have offered!

As I've mentioned before, there are basically four links in the retail chain: manufacturer (that's me!), distributor, shop and customer. Ideally what you want is to get your product to the customer as quickly as possible.

It's possible to skip steps, either by selling directly to the customer (via your website or at a convention for example), or directly to shops, but you'll never hit the big time doing that unless you have an extremely popular website.

What you want to do is get your game carried by most shops. Most shops won't want to order enough copies of a game to make it worth your while selling to them directly, in addition, they want the convenience of dealing with a single supplier (or two) for all the products they carry, rather than dealing with hundreds of manufacturers. So you want distributors to carry your products.

Distributors will either pay you when you invoice them for an order or when they sell to a shop (if the games are 'on consignment'). If they pay on invoicing, they won't place another order until they've sold the first order to shops, so you want shops to carry your products.

Similarly, shops will only re-order your games if customers buy them, so you need to get customers to want your games.

You will get a little help from one link to the next (distributors will tell the shops that they are carrying your products, shop staff will tell customers that your games are available), but you really need to get your marketing to work on each link in the chain.

I've got a pretty good network of distributors, some of which I've contacted myself, some of which have contacted me and some of which have been asked by their customers (the shops) to carry my games. I've spent some money on online advertising and I occasionally make a fuss on BoardGameGeek to contact customers. In addition, I attend Essen, several UK conventions and I'm currently doing a tour of UK game shops to promote my games to customers.

So the missing link is clearly the shops. I've been thinking for a while about how I can best contact the US shops (there's at least 2,500 of them!), while spending the least amount of money. I've considered paying my distributors to advertise my products to their customers; getting volunteers to demo games in their local stores and now I'm trying something new: email.

Email has the advantage of being free, and simple to do. The downside is that any email I send is going to be to a public email address from a webpage which is likely to be heavily spammed, so my emails might not get through, and if they do they might themselves be considered spam.

I'm currently sending a brief email to every shop I can find out about, introducing myself, my company and my products and asking the shop to consider stocking them. I ask them to let me know if they will start stocking them (or do already), and give them an incentive to reply by offering to list them on my website as a stockist.

In addition to sending the emails, I'm building up a spreadsheet of all the shops I find out about, including their contact details (phone number if I can't find an email address) and whether or not they've replied and are a stockist. I'm using the FLGS of the USA meta-thread on BGG as a starting point to try to find out about the shops.

So how's it going? I've had nine replies so far from about 100 emails. Most of them already carry at least one of my games, two are going to carry them from now on. That seems a pretty good response rate for an email marketing campaign. I'm going to keep it up for a few weeks, and see if it leads to any re-stock orders from my US distributors.

Sometimes you have a great plan, and things outside your control throw everything into disarray.

For the last couple of weeks I've been spending a decent chunk of my time email shops in the US, trying to get them to stock my games. It's been pretty successful, so I am keen to continue. This week, I was going to be playtesting on Monday and I had a hospital appointment Tuesday morning, but other than that I planned to spend 3.5 days on the email campaign.

Monday I went playtesting, then to my German lesson on Monday night. Tuesday morning I nipped over to the hospital as planned. So far so good. I got back to my computer on Tuesday afternoon and experienced yet more internet problems, which had been a continuing problem over the last couple of weeks. Webpages were timing out when I tried to view them, emails were repeatedly timing out when I tried to send them. Everything was a bit flaky. I'd checked with my ISP and they weren't reporting any problems, so perhaps it was a local problem. I pinged Google. Very slow with up to 75% packet loss. Not good. I pinged my wireless router. Very slow with up to 75% packet loss. WHAT? This is not a good sign. I rebooted my computer in Windows (it's a dual boot machine) and got the same result, so it's either a problem with my computer or the router. Then I set up The Wife's computer in my office and her computer was fine, 0% packet loss to the router and 2ms response time. So it was my computer, and since I was getting the same problem in Windows and Ubuntu it was a hardware problem.

This could have been a real disaster, but since The Wife has less need of her computer now, she'd already offered to swap with me. She's also got a work laptop she brings home too. I'd started to install stuff on her machine in Windows (Vista :( ) a few weeks ago, but it hadn't been a priority. Now it was. Wednesday I spent all day trying to get Ubuntu onto her machine. She had a single large partition on her hard drive, so I needed to re-size that to make room for a ext4 linux partition. Fortunately, Vista comes with partitioning tools. Unfortunately, there are some problems. You can't shrink a partition if there are files at the end of it. You need to move the files first. Which you can do with a defragment and optimise. But not if the files are immovable. So I needed to reduce the number of immovable files. This was well into Yak-shaving territory by now. I turned off hibernation, deleted the hibernation file, turned off paging and deleted the page file, I turned off system restoration, and deleted most of the restore points. Finally I was able to run defrag and optimise (two hours), shrink the partition, turn everything back on and install Ubuntu. I finished at 11pm on Wednesday.

Thursday morning was spent setting up Ubuntu how I wanted and re-installing my data. The Wife had booked Friday as holiday, but decided to take Thursday afternoon and Friday morning off instead, so I took those off with her.

So I've got a working computer again, and I got my playtesting done, but not a lot else this week. It's frustrating when unexpected circumstances take control, but every now and again it can't be helped :(.

On Fri 11 Sep 2009, I finally joined the Old Town Kopitiam Cheras (OTK Cheras) gamers to play for the first time. I have been talking about joining them to play since slightly more than a year ago, when my regular kaki (gaming buddy) Han was being transferred to another city because of work. By now Han is expecting to return to KL soon. The OTK players are regulars, so the cafe reserves two rectangular tables with sofas for them every Friday.

I was one of the earlier arrivals, so I played Wyatt Earp with Jeff and Wai Yan as a starter. I have played this 5 years ago but have forgotten most of the rules. It's by the same designer (Mike Fitzgerald) of the Mystery Rummy series, so there are many similarities. However my impression of it hasn't changed since the last time I played. I didn't enjoy it as much as the other Mystery Rummy games. What was funny in our game was how I kept getting Hideout cards, and I kept playing them on Jeff and Wai Yan's melds to deny them points. Still, it didn't help to prevent me from coming in last. Serves me right for being nasty.

After Wyatt Earp, I played a 5P game of Automobile, this being the first time I played with 5P, the supposedly ideal number of players. I played with Jeff, David, Afif and Reza, who all played this game for the first time.

5P Automobile can be quite brutal. Competition is more fierce, because the number of slots for distributors is the same as when playing with fewer players, and the demand for luxury cars is the same too. The game becomes quite tight. There were a few times when some distributors had to be fired because there weren't enough slots, or when the players controlling them didn't have the right car type that they could sell. It suddenly dawned on me this advantage of producing all 3 types of cars - it can help your distributors keep their jobs. You have more flexibility when fighting the distributor war.

I made a very stupid mistake in the first round. Well, maybe I should say I made two very stupid mistakes. I console myself by telling myself that I made stupid mistakes because I had been a good teacher and had been paying more attention to teaching than to playing. First mistake was placing three distributors, when I was 4th (or 5th?) in turn order. That's bad, because in Round 1, there are very few slots for distributors, and when you are far behind in turn order, it's risky to place so many distributors. Although distributors are good, and it's always good to place some earlier, I probably shouldn't have placed 3 (the max allowed per action). In Round 1, I was the only person to build a factory for cheap cars, anticipating the later growing demand for such cars, and trying to avoid competition in mid range cars. Second mistake - I should not have built 2 factories. That would force me to produce at least 5 cars every time I produce. In Round 1, there is no general demand for cheap cars, and there are only 3 distributor slots for them. I didn't control the Howard character, so I couldn't sell 2 cars using him. So I could sell at most 3 cheap cars, even if no one competed with me. Why the heck did I build 2 factories? Third mistake - I realise I actually made three, not two - I decided not to produce cars in Round 1. I decided to build two more factories instead (a 3rd car factory on the cheap car spot, and a parts factory), to lay foundations for the future, and to avoid the losses and the loss cubes penalty for failing to sell cars. After I did that, I suddenly realised that I had basically just hired and fired 3 distributors in the same Round. The three jokers didn't have cars to sell. Bye-bye. Hello three loss cubes (which is even more than if I had just produced five cheap cars and failed to sell two of them).

The game was very enjoyable, despite my silly mistakes. 5P Automobile is tough and challenging. Surprisingly, there were still times when we underestimated the demand for cars, and thus produced less than we should have. I think somehow we tend to focus on the market demand, which is only one of three ways of selling cars. There are other avenues - the Howard character, and the distributors. We had incidents of players discounting cars out of fear of failing to sell, but it turned out that the market demand was high enough for all cars to be sold. The car buyers must be laughing... But we did have incidents of having too many cars too, and players taking loss cubes as a result.

One trick that we learned was to build one advanced factory late in the game, and then closing it. Closing a factory costs you $100, but it also allows you to get rid of half your loss cubes. In Round 4, each loss cube will cost you $40. So if you have lots of loss cubes, you can consider this. The other possible advantage of building that single factory is to allow you to have cars in all three classes. I did this, the single factory being a mid range car factory. I only produced very few mid range cars, but the flexibility that it gave me helped me a lot in the distributor wars. Also since I wasn't producing many cars anyway, I didn't have to worry too much about being unable to sell all of them. And of course, some profit from these sales wouldn't hurt.

I have played Automobile 7 times now, and I think indeed the game is best with 5. 4 is quite good too, but I think 3 would be less interesting. With 5, you get pain - the good type of pain.

I am back in KK (Kota Kinabalu, Sabah) again, and as usual, am visiting Carcasean boardgame cafe frequently again to play games. I am looking forward to playing many new games, and to writing about them too.

The first new game this time is Snow Tails, a game about dog sled racing. You have a sled pulled by two dogs. You "drive" your sled by playing cards. Every player has his own deck of canine cards, with numbers 1 to 5. On your turn, you must play 1 to 3 cards (if playing more than one, they must be of the same number). They can be applied to left dog, right dog or brake. The number of spaces your sled moves is left dog number + right dog number - brake number. If your two dogs are not pulling at the some strength, your sled will drift to the left or right, depending on which dog is pulling harder. That's how you turn.

Then there are damages. You have a hand of 5 cards. If you slide past a corner too fast, or bang into a tree, or bang against the wall, you get dent cards. Dent cards basically occupy hand space, so you will have less flexibility when managing your cards. If you get 5 dent cards, your sled falls apart and you lose immediately.

I played this with Han and Chong Sean, and we played one of the intermediate difficulty tracks, since we are veteran gamers, ahem. We had trees (technically they are called saplings), and we had one section where the track narrowed dangerously. We had one hairpin turn too. We were quite conservative in taking dents. Throughout the game Han and Chong Sean only had one dent each. I was the only one with 2 dents, and I regretted very much for allowing the second one to happen. The cost in flexibility was much more than I had expected. Chong Sean cruised to a comfortable win. I was slightly behind Han, and we both crossed the finish line on the same round. However, I was lucky to draw a 5 card, and although in real time I crossed the line after him, because I passed the line further than he did, I was considered to have beaten him by a hair. That was an unexpected twist, as I had been doing quite poorly for the last stretch of the race, due to my 2 dents.

Snow Tails is simple and interesting. There is actualy some thought that you need to put into how you play your cards. There is also some forward planning you need to do - what card to play on your next turn, how to maneuver your sled to avoid trees, to turn corners, to not overspeed when entering corners. I was slightly surprised by the game. There is more thought to it than I had expected. I had thought it would be simpler and more tactical.

With three players, we did have some player interaction, e.g. trying to get into each other's way, trying to block another player's path, but it wasn't really a lot. I think the game will be more interesting with more players. It supports up to 5.

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.