Coup, Kings of Air and Steam, Divinare, New World, Midnight Party, Palastgefluster, Tower of Babel, Quietville, Cite, Sheepland

And another week has past and 1 more week to our next episode! I hope I will be able to start a few feature on our podcast. This week, there aren't any new games (to me) that I would like to specially point out as being excellent and those that are above average are Quietville and Palastgefluster. Lets get on with the reviews! 

COUP

Sigh i never seem to win at this...

Game Session and Thoughts:  Brought this out for a quick 6 player game. Nothing new here to add about the game that you don't already know except we had 3 new players to the group and one of them cannot lie lol. I also have difficulty playing this game because the 2 cards that I have really compels me to use their powers only and nothing else. I wonder if its how I have been playing boardgames (because most games you are only allowed to use what you have and follow the rules) or how I am. So while I am not super psyched and love this game like how some others do, I think I will still be keeping the game and take it out from time to time. Its a nice filler and plays up to 6. Not many games I have can do that nowadays.

KINGS OF AIR AND STEAM

5 player game! Smaller map.

6 player game. All map tiles used!

Game Session and Thoughts: Ah this is a Kickstarter-ed game and after watching the reviews from Joel Eddy, I was eager to grab myself a copy and see how it works with my groups. Gameplay wise its pretty straight forward. Players will have an airship and are flying around to the various factories on the board to pick up goods. Then they fly the airships to their own depots to drop off the goods and subsequently have their goods delivered to respective cities to earn money. After 5 rounds, whoever has the most VPs (in terms of money, built depots, upgraded airship and trains) will win the game. Simple right?
At the start, there will be a market phase where 3 tiles are revealed and the prices of the goods corresponding to the revealed tiles are increased. Next, players simultaneously decide from a deck of movement cards which 4 cards they will perform this round and place these cards faced down in 4 slots. This is very similar to Roborally. Once all players have committed their moves, all players will reveal the first card and depending on the letters on each card, move in alphabetical order. Move cards will usually have the number of spaces your airship can move and you must move all the steps. After you have moved, you can load and unload goods and then you can perform an action. Actions include building a depot, shipping goods (from Depot to City), upgrading your airship, upgrading your train (there's this invisible train that runs from your depots to other depots or cities), getting $3 from the bank or flight adjustment (move your airship 1 space). So play will continue this way until all 4 move+actions are done and then players will need to pay upkeep ($1 for every good in their cargo hold and depot) and then factories will produce (At least 1 per round). That will be the end of the round.
Now if you have seen the pictures, the components look very good. Goods are cubes which are ok, depots are little wooden houses which are also ok and the airships are nice big plastic airships and nicely detailed. The artwork is also very nice and every ship has a unique design and signature. Each player also has a unique character that they can choose from. The board itself when assembled really looked surreal as one player put it. The clouds floating across the cities and our airships flying around the board does make it feel all very thematic. Gameplay wise, its simple as I have already described above and easy to play. Teaching it though there are some bits that will require playing it one round to understand the concepts better. The paper money has a nice design on it though its paper which I did not prefer. So all in all, it played quite ok and is very straight forward. Fly around, pick up goods, drop off goods, deliver them, sell get money and upgrade your airship, trains and build depots. 

Pet Peeves: The airships, while very nice and big, are just too big for the board. Their stands need to share space with the depots and goods on the ground and even worse, another airship if they are both in the same space. Its all very nice to look at and handle and adds a lot thematically but practically its horrible. Its also not easy to locate all the factories when you are repopulating the cubes at the end of a round. Paper money is something that I frown upon but having those small poker chips that I have does make it easier to play and handle. This game also needs a rather large space to play on.

Conclusion: So all in all, this is a pretty ok game. Straight forward pick up and deliver game and I would consider this light-medium weight. Not much interaction between players except for rushing to grab the goods before another player does. Unless another player grabs the nasty character that steals $3 whenever his ship flies through another. Though in my 2nd game, the player playing that character never stole ANY money and she won handily. Problem for me though was there was nothing new to me about this game that grabbed my attention and made me want to hold on to this and play a lot more times. There is certainly replayability with the different characters and the components are attractive and nice and all that but the mechanisms are the same as many other games and thus did not excite me much. Still, its a Try before you buy.

DIVINARE

Awesome deduction game

Game Session and Thoughts: Played with the full 4 this time and it is just as fun. You certainly have to try and keep track of everything so as to force your opponents to have to reposition themselves or suffer the penalties. I realised in this game that with the extra bonuses that you may score if you are in the 2 extremes of each section can sometimes net you more points but those are few and hard to come by. Overall, this game is really dependant on the players and how they play given the cards that they have. Sure the cards you draw can be attributed to randomness but that doesn't stop you from being able to control what you can do as you can chose to give away a lousy hand partially and hope to receive something better. All in all, still a very good game and much liked by everyone so far! 

NEW WORLD A CARCASSONNE GAME

I think we should all stick to base carcassonne

Game Session and Thoughts: One of the last game for that night of gaming, we decided to try something that is easy to pick up and did not take a long time. New Word is essentially built on the Carcassonne engine and with just a few small changes. One, there is a column of land where we all start laying tiles from. Two, there are 2 neutral pawns on the board and whenever someone scores, the pawn furthest to behind or nearest to the starting column will move ahead to the next available tile in the adjacent column. If there are any meeples belonging to any player that are yet to be scored but are found to be "offsides", then that meeple will be returned to the player. In essence the neutral pawns are like referees and players, when placing tiles, have to decide if its worth the risk to place a tile back in zones that have been passed over because they offer lucrative scoring but at the risk of someone else scoring before you can and thus making you waste the previous turn. Third, scoring for farms is dependent on the number of animals that exist in the various land areas that are covered by your farmer meeple. Similar to Carcassonne, the player with the most points at the end of the game will win. While there are a few new features, its nothing earth shattering or ground breaking and it plays pretty much like Carcassonne.

Pet Peeves: Art wise while its abit more realistic as compared to the base game, its a bit hard to see the animals in the forested areas.

Conclusion: Having the 2 neutral pawns does cause some of us to play it differently from the base game. I found myself trying to score faster so that I can move the pawns and catch the other players' meeples and thus denying them from scoring. But at its core, its still very carcassonne. I never really liked the multitude of carcassonne expansions because they feel very gimmicky to me. Its abit like all those expansions for Dominion. One or two expansions is fine but after 5 or 8, you get the feeling that they are really trying to squeeze as much mileage as they can from the base game and they are already scrapping the barrel. I mean why don't they just let it be and move on to other games. So for me at least, its a MEH and I don't recommend it.

MIDNIGHT PARTY

Run run from the ghooooost! 

Game Session and Thoughts: A light hearted game where players try to move their pieces around a track to enter empty rooms to hide from a ghost that will be roaming along the halls. At the beginning of your turn, you will roll a die and then move any one of your remaining figures that many spaces. If you roll a ghost on the die, then you move the ghost 3 spaces. Players can only move their figures into a room if the ghost is already on the main track so its like a musical chairs kind of mechanism where players are jostling for positions until the ghost appears. Once all figures are either captured by the ghost or in the rooms, then players will determine the score and keep track. After 4 rounds, the player with the least negative points will win the game.

Pet Peeves: The ghost did not look very scary. In fact it looked downright friendly haha. Players who have been kicked out (because the ghost had captured them) will not have anything else to do other than rolling the die and hoping to move the ghost along. All these are just small little issues and because this is largely a family/kid/party game there is no need to be too harsh on it.

Conclusion: We had a lot of fun moving the ghost along, making 'whooo hooo hooo" noises and catching each other's figures. Playing with 5 players we certainly had a lot of figures (each player had 3) and given that the ghost appears on 2 faces of the die, it came out pretty fast and made short work of those near him. I manage to win with only -14 points so that was cool. Take note that this is definitely a kid friendly family game so Try before you buy if you are looking for a family game. Best with kids.

PALASTGEFLUSTER

Its like a predecessor of Citadels and many others...

Game Session and Thoughts:  I have heard of this game from Garrett's game and geekiness and I decided to grab it as a box filler for my latest order online. This game lasts several rounds until 1 player has reached a certain number of points as determined by the number of players. There are 2 decks to this game. One is the main play deck which consists of a bunch of brown cards and all the cards that belongs to the colors of the players in the game. These cards will have one of 6 characters available in the game. The other is a king deck which, when revealed, determines which character card can be played but will not have any special effect (unless its the Jester card which will indicate that the jester card cannot be played). During your turn, you have to play a card from your hand to the area in front of you. If you have to play a card of a character that already exists in your area, you have caused the end of the round and every OTHER player will score a point. Another way the round can end is if you manage to play 6 different characters into your area. Then you will score the point only. All cards are now collected and reshuffled and each player is dealt 6 cards for a new round. Each character has a certain power which can help you or sabotage others. For example, the Wizard allows you to exchange a number of cards from your hand with another player thus you can pass them cards that will cause them to end the round and everyone else to score a point. The unique part of this game is that how the next player is determined, depending on the card that the previous player has played. If the card is a brown card, then the player who has the least number of cards played in front of them will go next. If this is tied, then the active player chooses who to go. If the card is a colored card, then that player with the same color goes next. The active player can play his/her own color to go next but that depends if he/she is lucky enough to have his own colors, can play them or if it is wise to do so. The symbols aren't that easy to understand but the player aid card (which incidentally is used as an arrow to indicate the number of points you have) has all the description for the powers of the various characters. It is easy to teach though probably needs several plays to better appreciate the nature of the game and how it works. It reminds me a lot of Citadels and I believe several card games nowadays that have characters and powers probably owe some homage to this game. Art work is functional though somewhat dated and its a card game that fits nicely into a small box. Good for traveling.

Pet Peeves: Unfortunately, this game can get draggy. For 5 players, we had to reach 4 points and while that may seem easy to do, it did take some time. At the very least you will need 4 rounds to do so. I am also not too sure about blocking the leader and how well that will function because you are given only 6 cards to play around with and depending on the luck of the draw, you may not have the right cards to block the leader.

Conclusion: We did not manage to finish our game as we had new players joining so we stopped or game short of someone actually winning. I do kinda like it right now given what I have seen but will definitely want to try more to see how it actually works and if it can get too lengthy for the weight of the game it is. Deciding what card to keep and play and which player to go next is quite unique and very intriguing for me. So for now it is ok but with the caveat that I will need more plays to have a final decision. Try before you buy.

TOWER OF BABEL

Dated when played today...

Game Session and Thoughts: A rather old game that someone in our group won and so we decided to give it a go and see whats it like. Basically this is a light-medium area control and set collection type of game. Initial setup, there will be discs placed on spots that represent 7 wonders of the world. Players will be provided with a number of cards initially and a Trade card. During each player's turn, they will choose a spot where there's a disc remaining. This is to indicate their interest to complete the requirements of that disc. Each disc will show a particular object and a number, indicating how many of that type of cards is required to be discarded to complete that disc. Now all other players will pull out a number of cards that they want to offer to the active player. When all have chosen, all will reveal the cards selected. The active player can now choose cards from a number of players to assist him on his task. Owners of the cards that were used to contribute to this disc (including active player) will get to place one of their building tokens onto the wonder. If the active player chose a participating player that has a trade card along with his other cards, then active player will pass that disc to that participating player but get to place his building tokens in place of the participating player's tokens.  If a player offered cards but you did not choose that player, then that player will score as many points as cards offered that correspond to the disc's object.

When a wonder has all discs removed, then that wonder is scored. Majority and 2nd runner up will score points and the rest that have contributed will score 3 points. The scoring is incremental which means the next wonder that scores will have more points.
During your turn, you can either choose a disc or pass. If you pass, you will draw a card. At the end of every player's turn, everyone will draw a card. The game ends when all of 1 type of discs has been claimed. Those monuments that were not finished will score a certain number of points and then players reveal the discs they have collected and score points. If you have collected 4 of a kind, then you get to score 30 points which is a lot in the game. The player with the most points will win the game.
Initially we were kinda confused as to why players will bluff  (select cards that do not correspond to the disc's object) and we guessed the only reason was to goad the other players into contributing more. Having the trade card in offering is interesting because if the active player does not have enough, he may need to take the trade card OR forgo his turn just to prevent the disc from falling into the wrong hands. It is also very important not to set someone up to complete the monument and score points. Oh you also get a special card if you triggered the scoring of a monument. Most of the time these special cards will provide you with more cards or even give you some points at the end of the game but its hard to come by and in a game at most there will be 7 such cards given out. Art wise its a pretty ok and components wise its a nice and big board but you could probably remake the game using only cards.

Pet Peeves: Near the middle and the end of the game, most active players will already have all the cards they need and thus not really require any help from the others and it becomes a matter of offering as much cards as we can to score points. In essence, being prevented from helping can actually score you more points than commencing the scoring for a monument. The player order portion on the board confused us because we failed to see the point of it. I mean there is no need to rotate it but the rules mentioned that when a player has taken his turn, place his token at the back of the line and move the others forward. It because a bit pointless. We may have read some rule wrong on this but doesn't seem like it. Other than that, I couldn't really put my finger on it but most of us felt MEH after playing the game though now that I am writing this, I can't remember why. I guess its the way the game is played and the general mode as we are playing that brought our enjoyment factor of the game down a few notches. It could also be that the mechanisms seems dated given the variety of games that we have nowadays and possibly not as engaging as we thought.

Conclusion: So while it doesn't seem as if we enjoyed the game, now that I am reading my own post, it is quite an ok game. The design has not many flaws and mechanisms, while feels dated, are sound. It probably isn't for our group but may require a few more plays to have a more concrete feeling on why it did not work for our group. Try before you buy.

QUIETVILLE

It is very quiet.. even with monsters...

Game Session and Thoughts: A light card game where players are trying to manage the number of buildings in front of them so that they are in the best position to score when any one of the 4 scoring phases card appear in the building deck. There is a set of building cards and disaster cards on the board. During your turn, you can either use 1 money card to purchase a building card, select a disaster cad and apply its effect and obtain a money card or play a Divine Intervention card (if you have any). You can only have a maximum of 2 money cards at 1 time so if you have 2, then you MUST buy a building card or play a Divine Intervention card. Building cards come in 3 colors and a variety of points from 3 to 8. Disaster cards cause you to lose buildings depending on what is indicated on the Disaster card. If you lose 2 buildings, then you will be able to obtain a Divine Intervention card. Otherwise, regardless if you have lost a building or not, you will obtain a money card. Divine intervention cards will usually provide you with special powers like refresh the row of disaster cards etc.
The unique part of the game is when one of 4 scoring cards appear in the building card deck. Whenever a building is taken, that spot is replaced with a new building card. In this way, the scoring cards will appear later on in the game and at the end. Players now choose 1 of 4 scoring types to scoring when a card appear. Players can only choose 1 scoring type per scoring phase for the entire game so players have to plan correctly otherwise they will waste these chances. The 4 types of scoring are: a) score for ALL buildings you currently have, b) score for each of the highest building for each of the colors, c) score for each of the lowest building for each of the colors and d) score all buildings of 1 chosen color. The game ends after the 4th scoring card has been revealed and the player with the most points wins the game.
For this light game, the scoring methods add a surprising depth to it. You have to see if you can hold out and get those buildings that will enable you to perform the scoring that you want. At the same time, you don't want to be caught where you have no choice to purchase but to take a disaster card that will devastate the buildings you already have. Art is quite comic like and nice and everything is clear, easy to teach and easy to play.

Pet Peeves: I think the most irritating thing will have to be the luck of the draw. If you are very unlucky, during your turn you may end up with the worse types of disasters (where you will lose a lot of buildings) or with the low scoring buildings or if you have a divine intervention card that doesn't help you at all. Otherwise, there is very little else that is wrong with the game.

Conclusion: So a light game that is easy to play and surprisingly fun with a bit of strategic planning but more tactical than anything. Whenever we saw a chance to take a disaster card that did not sabotage ourselves too much, we went for it. We did not really focus too much on the Divine Intervention cards as their powers while helpful aren't all that game changing. I did not win though but I still had fun. Try before you buy.

CITE

Game Session and Thoughts: A light-medium, negotiation heavy, tile laying game similar to Princes of Florence. Each player has a set of similar buildings which occupy 1-9 spaces. Your objective is to place/build as many of these buildings as you can within the 7 rounds. The player who has built the most spaces of buildings will win the game. At the start, players are allowed to place up to 7 spaces of buildings. Each player will have a unique resource which only they have (i.e. Yellow has the rock, Red has the cloth) and thus the negotiation is required so that resources from other players can be traded to create secondary elements. The interesting part of the game is how you can build the buildings. The more variety of materials you have, the less of them you need and the more spaces you can build. For example, if you only have 1 type of material, you will need 10 of them to be able to build 1 space. If you have 5 for example, you just need 1 of each to be able to do the same. To be able to create more materials you will need to build your secondary buildings, get the other base material from another player and then be able to build it OR trade another player who has built it. Game play essentially is income (production), negotiation (exchange of goods) and then build. Game ends after 7 rounds or whomever has built all their pieces and the player with the most built squares will win the game. As you can already tell, this game relies a LOT of negotiation although another player managed to build with minimal negotiation and exchange of goods. He also forced his basic material to be rare and hard to come by. In addition, you have to negotiation because of the close proximity of your buildings. Right in the beginning there is a game board where you can place your starting buildings which is the only area where each player's buildings can be adjacent to each other and provide additional benefits to each other. Gameplay can be pretty fast though unless negotiations bog down and cause a stalemate in the game. Components wise are rather good. In fact, they can be considered over produced! The stone are really small stone pebbles and the cloth is nice rich red cloth squares. But they could have done with red cubes and it would have been easier to handle and manage.

Pet Peeves: Its kinda odd but the playing area will extend beyond the main board. Since you are pretty much given free reign (except that the new building must touch an existing building), you can expand if you want all over your corner of the table. As mentioned above, the materials seems to be over produced. The red player had problem trying to count the number of cloth because, since this was a new set, the clothes were not separated before. Though if they used the cloth same as Marrakech that might have been easier to manage. You need like a bowl or something to keep the amount of material which you may have been able to produced given that the components are not all the same sizes. You may also need to supplement with your own bits as it did not seem to be enough. The game owner used lego bits to supplement what was provided. There is a building that functions like a Bank. You can place up to 3 materials on it and then get some returns. However since the bank building piece is so small, its a bit impractical to place them onto the building. Lastly, the building's functionalities are written on the reverse side of the building but when you build them onto your area, they look better the picture side up so kind of prevents us from referring to their functions once placed on the play area.

Conclusion: I am beginning to shun from pure negotiation games because well, I seem to suck at negotiations :P Some negotiation is fine but if its pure negotiation then I will approach with some apprehension. That being said, there is a lot of chance for "mistakes" in this game because everything is concurrent (the negotiation, exchange of goods and building), people can make mistakes accidentally and kinda takes away from the "pureness" of a win. Not saying that I won of course lol it was all I could do to not be last (Can't remember if I was last ....). So this game is not for me. Might be for you though so verdict is Try before you buy.

SHEEPLAND

Game Session and Thoughts: Avery simple stocks and shares game that is masked with cute sheepples. Yes I said stocks and shares. You have a board with different regions (mountain, plans, swamp, forrest and grassland) and at the start there will be a sheep in every region. Each player starts with a secret land tile randomly assigned at the start of the game. During your turn, you will first roll a die to see where the black sheep may escape to (Black sheep counts as 2 white sheep). Then you can do 3 actions, out of which, 1 of them must be to move your Shepard. If you perform 2 of the same actions, then you have to move the Shepard inbetween those 2 actions (i.e. Action, Move, Action). Actions are moving a sheep (from one region to another through your Shepard), purchasing a land tile (either of the 2 land tiles that are adjacent to your Shepard) or moving your Shepard. That is it. The game ends when a certain number of fences have been placed on the board and everyone plays till the end of that current round. Players then count up the points they have (number of sheeps in that land area multiply with the number of that land's tiles you have) and the winner is the one with the most points. 

So essentially its a stocks and shares game because you are trying to amass a number of tiles (you can see these as shares) while trying to manipulate the sheeps into those land areas (price of shares). It is easy to teach and easy to play however it is quite a light game. Components are rather good looking and of course, the sheepples are very cute. It is interesting to note that most people are focusing a lot on the black sheep as it gets moved around but after a while when the black sheep gets cornered and stuck, then players will start to focusing on other areas. Diversity of the stocks (land tiles) is key here as you don't want to get trapped into only being able to buy those expensive tiles as money is VP at the end of the game and the initial tiles are free or very cheap. 

Pet Peeves: The board had some serious warping issues which is unfortunate. But other than that, there is not much to complain for this rather simple game. 

Conclusion: It is a very light game. That being said, there could be chances for screwage because you can often tell what an opponent is going for and move his sheeps out of the land areas that he wants. However to do that your Shepard has to already be in position or stalking his Shepard very closely. As this is probably a family friendly game, I don't think there's a lot of in built opportunities for screwing around with other players. There are opportunities for interaction but only if the Shepards are close together. So all in all, this is a light game and doesn't provide a lot of depth for me and I was glad to be able to try it but will not be making a purchase. Try before you buy.

Week ending 14th Feb 2013: Geistes Blitz 2.0, CO2, Love Letter, Santa Cruz, Pamplona, Archipelago, Hanabi, Siberia the card game, Homesteaders, Taluva, Coup, Samurai the Card Game, Tzolkin The Mayan Calendar

Happy V-day people! Episode 3 of our podcast will be out this sunday so look out for it! :)
Highlight of this blogpost will be CO2! A lot of controversy with the game so lets get on with this post!


Geistes Blitz 2.0

Seeing that its Chinese New Year and we have cousins over who are still rather new to boardgaming, I brought out this party-agility game for them to try and they love it! There were a lot of cut throatness amongst siblings and relatives which is surprising. i won't go into the game details again but its sometimes surprises me how party games create that amount of fun with a lot of people at the same time. It often reminds me that not everyone derives the same sort of fun from the same activity though I probably won't expand my collection of light filler games unless they also provide some depth as well to me. Still its pretty fun game and if you play the variants (i.e. talk instead of take, talk in different language) that will make it really challenging! As of now, my aunts and grandma are having my copy and I hope they get into playing it often! :D

CO2

Ah, I am still awaiting my copy from local online store but in the meantime I am glad to have a crack at this. Even though our first game we played 1 minor rule wrong and did not rotate the start player, I think we played well and had a good time with the game. So i was raving about it to my friends about the game and to my surprise, 2 of them did not like the game at all. Jon, my podcast cohost wrote about his experiences here and, as expected, gotten quite a few comments and even got the designer's attention as well. Now much of the gripe that Jon mentioned in his post I did not experience. It could be due to the way we played. Right at the start we cleared the cards we have in hand so as to gain the benefits. This dictated how we started the game and it was only after we cleared the cards did we see what the UN objective cards were and we focused on them. That said, when I was playing the game I did keep my secret objective in mind and I think the rest did as well. We did not face the issue where we did not install a project because opponents will build the power plant. For me at least, I saw the benefit outweighed the cons so I went ahead. We did use our scientists strategically as well so it was a small deterrent for others to try to install our plans. We did not feel that the game bogged down and while its true that we had to adjust our plans according to our opponents' decisions, I could still plan strategically what I want. The technology tracks though I felt dictated too much of the game. Its silly if you ignore them as they give you several benefits and trying to chain several advancements together I think is key to playing the technology track. That said, I do wish that its has lesser impact, similar to the Temple track in Tzolkin. For example in Terra Mystica, there is no 1 single aspect of the game that is mandatory for you to win the game. There is supposedly a slight cooperative aspect of the game because we all will lose if the PSI rating is more than 500. But the game isn't so brutal like Archipelago and largely this can be managed by players already building power plants. I did win the game in the end with about 180+ points but the rest weren't that far behind. End game, the CEPs (at $8 a piece) really gave me a huge boost to win the game. So, all in all, I really enjoyed my first game, very astonished by my friends' reactions and would certainly like to try a game with them to see what could have gone wrong or perhaps they are right after all. Jury is still out on this i guess but I am not waiting till then to pimp my copy :P

Love Letter
Alas for such a simple game, my assumption has made an ass out of me. I reailsed I have been playing another rule wrong which is to set aside 1 card before the start of the round. That will make quite a big impact as even if you have the Guard at the end, you cannot for sure, guess your opponent's card. Playing it properly for the first time though still confirm again that I really like this game and even more than Coup. Its a simple game that is played several rounds to determine the winner and can last up to an hour if all players are playing well and guarding each other effectively. i wonder if I am up to the task of using my creative juices to retheming it my way. Lets see.

Santa Cruz

Essentially, this is a light euro style game with a worker placement mechanism. The interesting parts of this game are the 2 phases and the set of cards you choose which will determine how you can move around the map during your turn. During the 1st phase, tiles are placed facedown on the map and each player will get to play a card from the set he has chosen to place one of 3 types of buildings on the board. The sets come in unique combinations for example one may have more "road" cards while another has more "river" cards. Road cards allow you to place your building into a spot 1 road away from your existing building. River cards allow you to place your building into a spot on the same river as that which you have a building on. Amongst the card you play will also be objective cards which will score for all players. When all cards have been placed, then all players take back all their buildings, return their cards (except the objective cards), receive a new objective cards and choose a set of route cards to begin phase 2. The twist will be that all tiles that were exposed in Phase 1 will remain as it is thus players begin phase 2 with new knowledge of both the tiles and possible objectives that maybe played. Th game ends when all players have played their cards in the 2nd phase and the winner is the one with the most points. So when I played this, the initial rush seems to be to complete your objectives first before others so that only you get to score and they don't. At the same time you also want to see what others are doing so you can tap in on their objectives as well. Once the objectives are scored, then its all about finishing up by trying to claim those that give the most points. There are also bird tiles which you can obtain that give you 1-3 points at the end of the game. Not bad and cleanly designed but I don't think I will give it another play.

Pamplona

Run! The Bulls are coming! Based on the annual festival where cows and bulls will run against humans this game attempts to capture the feeling with a twist. You control BOTH a runner and 1 cow and 1 bull. Over 4 race maps, you will attempt to enable your runner to cross the finish line and use your cow and bull to gore/trample on your opponents' runners. The runner will always only move up to 2 spaces whereas the bull and cow have their own set of cards which are distributed to the players at the beginning of a race. Then at the beginning of each race, players will start by placing their cows and then bulls (playing cards to do so ). Finally players will place their runners and depending on where they are they will score bonus points (for being daring). Race will start and the runner/cow/bull that is furthest in front will go first. If your cow runs over another runner, they are trampled and you score 1 point. If your bull runs over another runner, they are gored and you score 2 points and the runner will not finish the race. There are also special cards which you can play that lends certain powers for example you can trip another runner that is adjacent to you. The odd thing about this game is that you can control your own bull/cow to protect your runner. That is quite a big disconnect from the theme of the game. There is quite a fair bit of blocking required from other players else a player can take advantage and win the races. After some of the cows overtake the runners or nearing the finishing line, it becomes pointless to continue as the bulls and cows often will no longer be able to prevent the runners from completing the race. At the end of 4 races, player with the most points will win the game. It is a light game and lots of laughs as we attempt to manuver our pet cow/bull to block others and we relish the opportunity to trample/gore our opponents' runners into the ground. There isn't much to strategy and its a tactical game. Components are rather good with nice thick boards and cards and nice art. The disconnect of your pet cow/bull puts me off a little.

Archipelago Solo play

Previously I had mentioned my experiences with Achipelago and how it all fell to pieces and I have never yet managed to play a single game properly. So i was eager to try out the solo game and see if its a keeper with it. The main differences are that you choose a character from the solo set which will dictate the starting setup, end game condition and points scoring conditions. In addition, during the card purchasing phase, you will need to purchase 1 card and then rotate 2. If at any time you cannot purchase you will lose. If there is a rebellion the game will also win as per the base game. First solo game i failed and lost when the game won. Second solo i got 3rd place. It seems incredibly difficult (as also mentioned in BGG) to score a gold medal for a short game. It seems that medium or longer games will play better. It becomes how well you can play the game to meet the different objectives and since the solo cards are quite different, there will be a lot of replayability. Still however its hard to prepare for the random events that may occur and thus fight against the game winning. Especially in a solo game where you are dependant on luck of draw for the cards which you can purchase and the tiles you explore. If you are unlucky, you may end up wasting several turns exploring but not being able to place the tiles or have cards which do not help you to quell rebellion. The fact that the events are also random unless you prepare at least 1 cube of each type in the domestic market and harvest a lot of discovery tokens makes this game a bit too random for my taste. At least in CO2 you know HOW to prevent the game from winning and you can work towards that. In Archipelago you can't tell and worse there are so many possible varieties that it seems way too difficult. So unfortunately, I would have loved to like this game, I don't think it has made the cut even with the solo expansion. Pity.

Hanabi

Co-op game! OMG why am i playing a co-op game? because the first time i played this, we had a lot of fun. Probably its because we were all quite tired and it was very late into the night when we played this. Mostly because we groaned at bad tips being given and laughed when we started forgetting previous tips or pointless tips being provided. It was quite fun then and I was fortunate enough to PnP the design that friend had done. I brought it out for my cousins to play and surprise surprise the first things that they said was "its a coop ? but i don't want to play coop!" LOL. Think it runs in the families. Anyway they tried but we did not have the same level of fun as we did previously. I have also tried it in office and the effect is same. Muted and not the same as before. Maybe i need to add liquor with this game hahahaha. In anycase, I love the rethemed game and the art is gorgeous. It will remain my unique copy :)

Siberia the card game
Following up on the base game which had some hype but seems to have died down, the card game version, plays 2-4, draws from the same artwork and the same mechanism of playing 2 of the same tokens (in this case cards) to activate the particular item. In the card game, there is a row of resources (some covered initially) that you can have access to. There are also character cards (workers, sales men etc) that you can purchase as well which give you certain benefits. Then there are action cards which you draw at least one per turn and play to obtain resources OR characters. To play the cards, you need to play 2 cards with the same symbol as the item you want to obtain or 1 card + 2 other cards of any symbol. If its resources you are attempting to obtain, how many workers you have will determine how many resource cards you can pick up. So the characters will give you certain benefits. Salesmen will increase the prices of each of the resource cards you have at the end of the game. Game ends when all resource cards have been revealed and players tally up the $ value on each of their cards (including character cards) and whoever has the most $ will win the game. Its a light set collection type of game that is quick and easy to play. Not terribly exciting I feel yet and the characters are certainly very powerful. I will need to play this with my more competitive friends and see how it goes.

Homesteaders

I used to own a copy of this but sold it away to another couple who really loved it. I missed the awesome bits that came with the game so recently I bought another copy. Boy was it fun sorting the cool apple-eeples, cow-eeples, copper-eeples and steel-eeples as well as punching out all the thick thick cardboard pieces. For a game of this size and price, it sure comes with a lot of high quality bits! In the game we are all trying to build up a town and earn points and by the end of 10 rounds, whoever has the most points will win the game. At the start of each round, there will be a sort of worker placement and then income (in terms of money or goods) phase. After that, players will need to pay $1 for each worker they have. Next comes the auction phase where players will bid on up to 3 rights which will dictate what players can buy/build during that round. Finally, players will, in a certain order, purchase/build available buildings in the market to add to their town. The round will end and a new round will begin. halfway through the game, settlement buildings will be removed and new town buildings will be added to the market. last 2 rounds, only city buildings will be available in the market. There are also loans which you can take and only need to pay back at the end else they will deduct points from your score. An interesting bit about this game is the availability of a market with which you can buy/sell resources freely except every buy or sell action requires a trade chit which usually comes as a resource from a number of buildings. I don't know why but i suck at auction games. i usually don't do very well and end up over paying or losing out on it. I also am bad at managing my finances lol. Still i do enjoy the game but probably not as much as my other friends who were playing with me. I am also particularly tickled by the presence of a DUDE ranch which give points depending on how many cowboys or farm hands you have at the end of the game. Dude ranch.... I can imagine them going "Yo DuDeeeeeeee....... Wasssup.......?" lol. Try it!

Taluva

An medium abstract game that has seen a recent reprint. I have heard its a pretty good game and decided to take a chance on it. Its an abstract game where you are placing tiles each turn and then placing one of 3 buildings (with certain restrictions). The game will end when a player has placed all of 2 types of buildings or when all tiles have been played. A player can be kicked out early in the game too if he cannot place any of his buildings due to the restrictions. A player can also win early if he has managed to place all 3 temples on the map. There are some restrictions as to how you place the map and how you place buildings so when you take a tile, you need to plan ahead and decide what you can do with the tile. This can lead to analysis paralysis as you are working out all the different things you can do. There can be a lot of screwage in the game because you can place tiles to block others or cover someone else's buildings so this is a highly interactive game. I had a lot of fun as its not just a pure abstract (no theme and bland) but has just that enough theme to make it a good game for me. Definitely needs more plays to have a better sense but for now is a try it for me!

Coup
Played Coup with 4 players and somehow its still not grabbing me as how Love letter has. Another player in my group as well also preferred Love Letter to Coup. Not sure if its the bluffing aspect that is throwing us off but then again I love Kakerlakenpoker which has bluffing as its main game mechanism. Maybe I need to play it with the right group to fully appreciate the game.

Samurai the Card Game

i have seen the base game being played and the plastic pieces in that game are way cooler than the ones in the card game. Also the card game requiries a lot of space to play whereas the base game limits you to a preset board. Still this abstract game is a fun one but it requires players to be aware of possible setups and try to prevent those from happening. If all players are doing their part then it should allow for an intense close game. Very fun for me.

Tzolkin The Mayan Calendar

Recently I wrote in to the publisher about my damaged board and to my pleasent surprise I have received new pieces for the entire board (instead of just that 1 piece)! Now to figure out how to take out my painted wheels to attach to the new board. I tried to see if ignoring the temple will net me the victory. I must say that while you don't need to make it the main focus, you cannot ignore it. I went on the tech track and played pretty well in my opinion. Near the end though after having accomplished it, I turned to the temple tracks to try to grab some final points to give me the victory. One of the players had his timing all wrong though so had to waste a few turns here and there just taking up his action pawns which is unfortunate. I am beginning to appreciate the "move the wheel twice" feature which is a very good screw your opponents move when timed just nice. As our spaces on the board are planned to the assumption that the wheel will only move once, you now have to pay attention to the corn on the wheel and when someone may want to take the first player and ultimately, if that person will also want to move the wheel twice. Because moving the wheel twice will screw up a lot of well layed plans and assumptions. people may now have to pay up to 3 corns to perform activities which they had planned previously and that can be a lot. The intial drafting of your starting resources is also very important as a first mistake can set you back a lot and make it costly to catch up. In this game I managed the corn i required pretty well and it was my best game so far as everything was working out for me and I was left pretty much by myself. So after more plays, I am beginning to better appreciate the game and enjoy it. Still highly recommended in my opinion!

Happy Chinese New Year! And i played: Phantom, Maya, Le Havre The Inland Port, Among The Stars, Riff Raff, Coup, Hanabi, Kemet, Copycat, city of horror, robinson crusoe, legendary

Hey Everyone, HAPPY Lunar New Year!
Its the year of the Snake and I hope everyone has a pleasant and wonderful year! I am hoping for great things to come, improving and increasing listenership for the podcast and readership for the blog and so far its been quite a good start for me :)

I did some reshuffling and here is my boardgame collection (minus all the items which I am putting up for an auction coming next sunday (if you are interested and in Singapore, please take a look here http://www.meetup.com/Boardgames-Singapore/messages/boards/thread/31278782).

I will need to find a place to secure them when my brother and family comes over! :)
Over the last 2 weeks or so I played quite a number of games including most of the new games that I have bought from Boardgameshop.eu. Speaking of which, I must praise the shop for having an updated collection (mostly Euro games since, well they are a shop in Europe) and quite affordable shipping rates which makes the games more economical to obtain.
Now lets get on with the games I have played:

Phantom

I bought this game having only read the reviews on BGG (and there wasn't must information on it yet) as also a filler for my packaged delivery to bring down postage costs. I was eager to give it a try and was I surprised at the fun I had with this little game. Phantom is a 2 player game where players are trying to scare this group of people in a haunted mansion. First player to reach 11 points wins the game. There are 4 locations in the mansion and during your turn you must activate each of them in the order that you choose. When you activate a location, you may pass or play a card. There are 2 types of cards in our hands, Ghost cards which belong to 1 of 4 types and have 1 of 6 characteristics; Place cards which may provide "scare points" as well as increase the number of ghosts that location may hold. If after you activate a location and your "scare points" meet or exceed the scare limits of a single character in that location, you would have successfully scared that person and win points based on that person's character. It is a straight forward set collecting light-medium weight game where you must decide how to position your Floor and Ghost cards in order to be able to scare and score points. There is also much player interaction in the game as there are Ghost cards which will allow you to steal an opponent's ghosts or even Floor cards. For our very first game, we came in surprisingly tight and it was down to the last character in the game to determine the winner. Both of us agree that this is a good game and would like to play it again. The card quality is matt and quite thick but that also means you should sleeve it to allow for ease of shuffling. Artwork is also not too bad. I would recommend you to try before you buy.

Maya

We played a 2 player game of Maya which have additional items like the ladders and the priest. Rules are still the same except that if you manage to combine 2 pieces of the same colours together in the same pyramid you get to place a step/ladders at the bottom of that pyramid. At the end of the game you will score 1 point if you have majority of ladders/steps in that pyramid. In addition, if you manage to complete a pyramid (all pieces are the same color), you will be able to place a priest on the top of the temple which will also give you 1 point. Its not a bad game but there are some quirks I think. For example, you may end up doing only 1 possible move during your turn but these instances probably occur nearer to the end of the game where its very hard to be able to find something to move. Fun game and a must try!

Le Havre: The Inland Port

Played another game and it still holds a lot of appeal to me. The way you need to keep looking at your opponents's board and try to predict what he is trying to do and timing your moves just right is a very fun mechanism for me. This feels quite different from a 2 player game of the base game and plays quite fast. I guess the lack of needing to feed makes this version not as stressful as the base game. I predict there will be new buildings in a future expansion (similar to Agricola All Creatures Big and Small) and I will look forward to getting it. Only problem is for people who have never played Le Havre the base game, they will find it hard to visualize why the mechanics (while streamlined from the base game) function in this manner that seems a little bit counter intuitive. For new players, be patient with it and after a few plays I am pretty sure you will be able to enjoy it like I did.

Among The Stars

I have heard of this game but wasn't too interested in it. The game is very similar to Suburbia but with a space theme and drafting mechanism. You will be drafting a card each turn and then building the card you drafted into your space station. You could also discard it to get money or to build a power reactor. Then depending on the card you played, you may score instant points and move up on the score track. Pass the remaining cards in your hand to your neighbour and then rinse and repeat till all cards have been used up and that is the end of a year. The game lasts for 4 years and then players count up their secret objectives + race (each player has a unique race with special traits/objectives) and whoever has the most points wins the game. Unlike suburbia this has more player interaction as you can perform actions to steal money etc from your neighbour. Artwork wise its pretty nice as it has very obvious colours to easily tell what each building provides and its an ok game. I did not do too well with my first game though so that was a bummer. The game also requires a lot of space because of the way people can grow their space station in all different directions so having a big table is a must to play this game. All in all, I would say this is a try before you buy.

Riff Raff

We ended the night with an agility game with awesome wooden bits and a very unique component - a loopsided ball bearing. Each player will choose a card from identical decks and then simultaneously reveal the card. The player who played the highest number will go first. Each player during their turn will take an item from an identical set and place it on the space corresponding to the number he/she played. If you tip the boat (its balanced quite precariously) then you can attempt to catch the falling pieces and place them onto the board. If you fail then your turn is over and you keep all pieces that have fallen. This continues until the cards have all been played or when a player has all his/her pieces on the boat. With the introduction of cards, it does add a slight tactical decision making to the game. You want to be the next to place items when the ship has just been cleared or has very few items. If you  play a card that requires you to play after someone has just put in the same space, then its very likely you will fail and have more pieces to keep. I sucked at agility games and this was no exception. Components wise this game has top notch components. So if you are into party/agility games or a light game with friends (especially when drunk), then I will recommend you to try this game out before you buy.

Coup

Finally managed to get myself a copy of this game that has been generating a lot of hype in 2012. I have played this about 6 times so far and I am beginning to warm up to the idea and concepts on how to play the game. Basically you have 2 cards face down (You can see them of course) in front of you which will represent your lives in the game. During your turn you can play an action. Whenever someone plays an action, anyone else can counter (by declaring that you do not believe the player) and if they are successful, the action is blocked. If at anytime, anyone is not successful when countering an action because they were caught bluffing, then they will lose a life by flipping over the card. If you have to reveal both cards, that means you are out of the game. The last player standing wins the game. Not a bad game but I need to get used to all the bluffing and challenging actions or basically, knowing how to read a person. Now I can see that this game is only vaguely resembling Love Letter and is a whole different animal. In Love Letter you are not bluffing so there isn't a need to think further and thus caters for the simple game that it is. In Coup there is a need to bluff and try to get away with things. This is quite dependant on the group then as if they are role playing along or cajoling others, then the game will be quite fun for everyone. So Love Letter I feel is more accessible and easier to play and Coup is quite dependant on the group of players. Both will still be in my collection and I would heartily recommend anyone to give both Love Letter and Coup a try!

Hanabi

My friend managed to retheme the game of Hanabi into a Christmas theme and I was eager to bring it out for my colleagues to play this co-op game. Now if you know me, I don't really like co-op games because I feel a need to compete but I had quite a lot of fun with my regular group and the original game of hanabi that I wanted to see if I can recreate the same fun and laughter we had with my other groups. What surprised me right at the start was how my colleagues all mentioned they don't want to coop! They wanted to compete! Hahahaah.... that was music to my ears :P We still manage to give it a go though and I think I manage to recreate some of the fun and face palm moments. I love how my friend manage to capture the spirit of Christmas with fantastic and creative art and I am glad to have this copy.

Kemet

One of the new releases from Essen, Kemet is touted as Cyclades successor and from the same publisher as well. I had Cyclades previously and did have fun with the game so I was eager to give this a go and see just how it plays. Kemet surprised me with what it is and how different it is from Cyclades. In Kemet you are trying to be the first to score 8 points (shorter game) or 11 points (longer game) which will trigger the game end and the player with the most points wins the game. To achieve this, during your turn, you will place 1 of your action discs onto your player board to trigger an action. Things that you can do include recruiting soldiers, move your troop, earn prayer points (currency), increase your pyramid level and purchase power tiles. This actually a Euro war game with an Egyptian theme and a worker placement mechanism. The game actively encourages you to wage wars and engage in battles with your opponents as this is 1 way to gain permanent points in the game. On the board, there also 5 temple areas where you can control to gain temporary points but these areas are easily wrestled away as you can pay 2 prayer points (which is the currency of the game) to teleport to obelisks on the map and there is one located at every temple. My initial thoughts were that this is an ameri-trash game because it has nice components and even nicely washed figures which are usually staples of an ameritrash game. So I am very surprised when I realised after playing that this is a euro game that requires players to interact with each other to win the game. Art is pretty good and the components are excellent. Figures of the scorpion, snake etc (these are the "heroes" or special units of the game) are also very nicely washed and even stamped at the bottom of their bases. I am also surprised that none of the units had warped blades as they are quite small and looked fragile. The other big component are the pyramids that look like 4 sided dice. The pyramids and the levels they are at will allow you to purchase power tiles depending on the levels. They look so cool and most players will start throwing them once it is out of the box. But alas they are just used as place holders. My first game took way longer than it was supposed to be because I did not realise we all started with 10 troops thus allowing us to wage wars right from the get go. My 2nd game was way better and it was really close with all 5 of us nearing the 8 point mark and we had 1 epic final round to determine the winner.

Copycat

Finally manage to play Copycat another Essen 2012 release. This is a euro game which borrows other games mechanisms and to weld them quite smartly into a single game. Because this is a euro game, theme wise it suffers for me. Artwork also seems a little kiddish and thus I did not appreciate it as much as others. Gameplay wise, I can see how the various game mechanisms are nicely woven together to create an intriguing game but I only got this like halfway through the game though. First thing you do is draw 5 cards from your deck. Then choose one of the cards to bid for position. That card you used is discarded. Once player order is determined, in player order, players will then place their workers on the various available cards on the board which will allow them to activate an action. Once all workers are on the map, in turn order again, players will activate these workers and perform their actions accordingly (i.e. shred card, gain money, gain VP, buy a card). Rinse and repeat till one of 2 end game conditions are triggered. While I can appreciate how these different mechanisms work together, the theme falls woefully sort for me. I think this is the case where I am quite put off by the bland art. I wouldn't mind playing it again but I am definitely passing on getting a copy for myself.

City of Horror

From all the Euro games we went into an ameritrash game and boy was it trash lol. Its primarily a negotiation game where in you are also trying to strategically move your people around the board so that you are always in a majority and thus can vote someone else's character to be eaten by the zombies. At this point our group was pretty tired and we were learning this as a new game which is not a good combination to have. During your turn, you choose a location card and then every player simultaneously reveals the card. In turn order, players must move one of their characters (each players start off with 3 in a 5 player game) to that new location. Then each location is resolved. If there are enough zombies to meet that location's requirements, then players in that room will need to vote to feed someone to the zombies (Urk!). The game ends after 5 rounds and players' characters must have the antidote for them to survive the airlift and score points. Incredibly there were only 2 players left with characters at the end and I lost by only 1 or 2 points. I think our regular group has moved on to euro games nowadays and perhaps that is why most of us weren't enjoying the game. This game is a super MEH for me!

Robinson Crusoe: Adventure on the Cursed Island

This is another co op game which I purchased to play solo. I have read that it is a very fun thematic game therefore I pulled the trigger and wanted to see for myself. In a turn, the phases are as follows: first you draw an event card and resolve the event. If it bumps another event out (there can only be at most 2 event cards that are revealed) then you will have to perform a threat action as depicted by the event card that has been bumped out. Next you get resources depending on which tile you have set up camp on. Next phase you decide where you want to place your pawns on the various available action spaces. After that is done, you will execute the actions by visiting each action space in sequential order and using the pawns After all actions are done, if required, roll the weather dice to determine how much suffering you are subjected to. Finally, check if you are sleeping out in the open and feed yourself. A turn is done and the game repeats and will end depending on the scenario that you have chosen. So far I am having fun playing this game solo even though I have not won the scenario yet. One problem I have with the game is the way the rulebook is written as it is not very intuitive and may be unclear at times. Luckily a FAQ has been provided and this should prove helpful when I next play. I have heard that in real coop mode, the game is also as tough if not even more. I will continue to play it as a solo game and will recommend this game.


Legendary: A Marvel Deck Building game

Played another solo game of Legendary. I am intrigued with the different villans and super heroes so wanted to try a different combination. This time Magneto was threatening earth again by converting everyone into a Killbot! Rogue, Storm and Emma Frost, the 3 ladies of XMEN are tasked with stopping Magneto and to contain the killbots within the city. If 5 killbots escape, they will be able to propagate across the globe and Earth would be lost! The initial part of the game was trying my best to ensure none escape and I was defeating enemies left and right. However somewhere into 30 minutes of the game, I realise I should just focus on defeating Magento. As I have been storing up my attack power with a lot of cards, I was able to defeat Magento in 2 consecutive turns. I ended the game with 28 points. Legendary reminds me of Thunderstone but much improved. You cannot just keep building up until you are ready to face the Mastermind. Instead its a constant management of villans running amok in the city areas as well as keeping your hand lean and trim to be able to defeat the mastermind eventually. There will be expansion for this game sometime near GENCON 2013 and they will be adding 17 super heroes! SEVENTEEN! I wonder if this game though will survive in my collection till then ;p Stay tuned true believers!

So that's a wrap, a lot of typing and a lot of cool games played!