Week gaming ending 13 Oct

Lets go lets go lets go!

DOS RIOS

Often the 2 rivers combine...

Dos Rios is a worker placement game where during your turn you are trying to place your people at the best places to capitalize on the upcoming harvest which may activate all tiles that are irrigated by the river or certain tiles only. Whenever harvest is activated and your people are on that particular tile(tiles), you will get $100. The objective of the game is to be the first to build all 5 buildings (you will need $3000) or 4 buildings that are all irrigated (including a Hacienda) which you will need $2500. This is a game where there is a LOT of pushing, shoving, positioning and sabotaging the other players. A game of high interaction and careful planning. The game is rather simple to teach and play, but can be highly tactical and surprisingly deep. Not bad.

QUEBEC

So many colors!

I manage to bring out Quebec again. This game is very fun for me as there are so many avenues to win and you need to attract the other players to contribute to your building thus allowing for interaction during the game. I still have yet to grasp the scoring fully as I lost horribly in the game to the rest who are new players. This game could use good player aids though for players to refer as there are a lot of symbols and interesting concepts in the game. A good medium weight game that I recommend.

ELEMINIS

So I discard your poop, i mean earth..

I have heard of this game but never thought it will fit my group. A colleague of mine placed and order and we brought it out for 8 players during an office lunch session. Its a very light game where you just react to the card that you draw during your turn. Objective is to get 5 different types of elements in front of you (stars count as wild) and you win the game. There is a lot of screwage and its pretty hard to win unless people do not notice you or you happen to pick up the right card during your turn to win. This portion reminds me of Evil Baby Orphanage or Munchkin where there are a lot of things that others can do to stop you from winning but you just need 1 lucky draw/move to win. Party game and not really for me nor my usual groups.

AGRICOLA:ALL CREATURES BIG AND SMALL

Very low scoring game. I won with 11 points.

Brought out this game again and this time around, it was a pretty low scoring game. I am not sure is it because we were guarding each other very effectively or we both had the same mindset but I won by 4 points only. This game is surprisingly hard to find in Singapore at affordable prices. If you have read my previous post, you will notice that at Essen, they will be releasing an expansion for this with new special buildings and other stuff. I will be looking forward to that as this is a good game with nice bits. Now if they gave a few more of those (4) cardboard tokens then we won't have a leaning tower of Sheepples.

ANDROID: NETRUNNER

See my super protected remote server? Did not work :(

I was the corporation this time and I must say I have more fun playing the runner. This game requires a very good shuffle of the cards because if you don't happen to draw Ice during your first few rounds you are pretty much screwed as the runners can get their way with your servers. I do wish there was a rules translation to modern terms to allow for better understanding of the rules (i.e. Firewall instead of Ice, Hacking instead of Running) but after a few plays you get the hang of it and its smooth sailing. I was hoping that my very protected remote server can serve as my agenda scoring machine but I neglected my R&D which gave the Runner the final 2 points to win the game. This game lasted longer than usual due to the runner not having many icebreakers and me not having a lot of credits to do much. Still a very good game for me and I do look forward to the expansions that FFG has already announced.

SEASONS

Did not seem as fun anymore! Noooooo

Seasons! My copy is still with my wife in NYC and I managed to get a play with a friend's copy. As mentioned on several other places, the components are really nice. Dice are large and chunky and the art work is really astounding and Hi-resolution. Only complaints are the score board could have been larger and the player card could have been larger as well. This is because to keep track of your score and summoning limit, you use the standard cubes which are a little too big for the numbers they are covering. You also need a surprisingly large amount of space to play due to the number of cards you can summon. In the early stage of the game I was leading as I was getting 3 points at the end of every round for having at least 4 energy and it seemed like a difficult case for my opponent to beat me. Halfway through and near the end, he managed to score 20+ points due to the cards which counts the number of magic items that you have in play. At the end, we had thought we were at a tie until i realised every card in your hand deducts 5 points. So through this, I won by 5 points. Its not a bad game but sometime during the game I found the game has lost its luster and glamour for me. I was really looking forward to my copying reaching here and playing it with my wife but now it seems to have reached a new MEH level. What has happened? I am not too sure..... :(

1955: THE WAR OF ESPIONAGE

Its a simpler reimagining of Twilight Struggle

Last game of the night I brought out 1955. This game reminded my opponent a lot about Twilight Struggle in terms of the push and pull mechanism of the game. We were pretty tired at this point so did not really think a lot and put up a lot of struggle. I manage to win by getting my opponent's home country into my area. I do like the game (now that I know the correct rules) and I hope to get more plays in before I decide if it stays or if it goes.

ESSEN

Yay! Its coming its coming and I cannot wait to look at the online shop to see what goodies i can grab. Though it will take a slow boat to reach me (as in real ship-shipping), its still way cheaper than paying for the air freight from usa to Singapore. Its surprisingly that most online shops in USA do not offer ship-shipping. I bet they will make a lot of money if they do as most people outside of USA can order more freely without the expensive air freight prices!

SECRET SANTA

Yay the BGG's secret santa sign up is now on! I had a lot of fun last year and I will definitely be joining this year again :) I wonder if the podcasters have their own secret santa where they give each other gifts. Hmm.. interesting food for thought.

Weekend Gaming: 13 May 2012

I am kinda abstaining from too much boardgaming until the end of June because I am preparing for an exam. So I am scheduling at most 1 weekend session for boardgaming. Been waiting for today and here are the games we played:

Martian Dice
We started off with this while waiting for the others to arrive. Its a simple, push your luck dice game and we will be introducing this in an upcoming Singles event at the library so I needed to learn how to play so as to facilitate on that day. During the game you roll specially made dice with Chicken, Human, Cow, Tank and Space ship faces on them. During each roll, you can choose 1 type of dice to keep. Tanks are automatically kept after each roll. At the end when you have no more dice to roll OR you cannot roll anymore, you check to see if you have more tanks than space ships. If you do, then you lose that round and the next player continues. Otherwise you score points. The first to reach 25 points wins the game. It is definitely a filler/warm up type of game. Lets see how this plays during that night.

Quebec

Very fun game. I have been praising this game every time I played it and this time manage to bring it out again. We generally agreed that this is a very fun game with a lot of mechanics. The designers though try to tie down a theme with it and even added historical fluff to the manual and game components. But the theme is quite loose in the game. Nevertheless, the mechanisms and the colorful presentation makes this a very fun game and not dull or too abstracted for us to enjoy it. I heartily encourage you to give this a go if you have not tried it!

Railways of the World (Eastern US map)

Our epic game of the night. 5 of us took about 4 hours to play. That is because we played quite strategically and there were a lot of upgrading of the cities done. In addition, we were all very engrossed in building tracks to try to score the major lines and did not always transport a lot of goods. If you notice in the map, Red was trying to connect from New York to Kansas City and 3 of us were trying our best to block. We manage to delay him for about 3 turns but in the end he manage to get the jump on us. This blocking action manage to give the Yellow play an advantage as you can see and he got up to the Level 8 locomotive and was able to score a couple of 8 point deliveries. That and coupled with the Railroad baron card he had, Yellow won the game easily. Epic game and very fun. Cannot wait to try the Mexico map next!

Weekend Boardgaming: 21st April 2012

so I organised a boardgaming session for my friends on saturday. With this group, I had played Quebec previously but had made 1 important error (you can contribute to your own building but cannot activate the power) and I eagerly wanted to try again. Here's what we played:

Pergamon

We were waiting for 1 more to arrive so the 4 of us started off with a light game. I chose Pergamon as it has very nice components and is light and fast enough and provides a good warm up for the longer games later in the day. In Pergamon, we are archaeologists trying to secure research funds to dig up artifacts and then decide when is the best time to display them in the museum. The components are of good cardboard stock and easy to handle and hold. Gameplay wise, its fast, easy to teach and learn. It is definitely a light game and the randomness of which artifact tiles will appear at each turn lends a lot to the replay ability. However if you want to  "break" the game, you can memorize the research funds cards and the artifact tiles and from there win the game (i.e. card counting). Still, it is definitely a light game. I am not sure if I will keep it around though since while its light, it is not that fun for me.

Initial Impression: Average

Quebec again!

When our 5th player arrived, we started Quebec again. Explaining Quebec is not easy as there are many things to take note of and the way to score points can be quickly covered up by the different things that you can do during your turn and what they all mean. Still as the game went on, the players manage to get what is happening and the game really shined for me. This is a med-heavy game as it requires a lot of thinking and strategic planning. If you prefer tactical decisions only, then Quebec will be a challenge for you. I especially enjoyed how you are trying to choose buildings which will entice all the other players to help you by contributing to it but at the same time, by doing so, you are also helping them. Thus you are trying to find a way to make you benefit more than the benefits you are handing out to the other players. A very fine game I feel. The components are very colorful, bright and of good quality as well. All in all, a very good buy I feel. I cannot wait to try this with my other gaming groups!

Initial Impression: Good !!!

Before dinner, we played a game of Vineta. Now I cannot remember what made me decide to buy this game but I am so glad I did. I have already done a review of this game so I will not go into this but it is a fun little game with a lot of backstabbing and sabotaging. I realize I do enjoy cut throat games but at the same time I can play and will enjoy pure economical games as well. Just I prefer the banter and conversations that will arise from all the backstabbing, intrigue and sabotage. One strategy I tried was at the beginning when placing the houses, I decided to target just 1 color. This serves to trick others into thinking that I am of that color and also confuse the player with that character. Alas the color I chose did not belong to anyone. Another player decided to make half of his play random so as to confuse the rest of us (which he did!). So for a small game like this, it provides quite a punch in terms of fun!

Final Impression: Good

Olympos

After an awesome dinner, we had 1 final game of Olympos before we called it a night. it is a great little game with an interesting "time spent will determine your turn order" mechanism which is similar to that found in Red November. This time I decided to go all warfare and started acquiring the Discovery tiles with swords. The rest of the players quickly understood the traveling Discovery tile (only 1 time is spent when moving across land) and were spreading all across the map. But because I had more swords (and thus only 1 time is spent when i conquer an opponent), I can take my time and conquer their starting settlements while they spread all across the map. I did not manage to get my wonder in time though as it was snatched out from my hands but I did get the achievement which gave me 2 points per Sword I had as well as an extra 1 point for each settlement of mine on the board. At the very end, I also purchased the Discovery tile that gave me 3 victory points and won the game. Not sure if I'll get the expansion though but if this sees more play I probably will!

Initial Impression: Good

All in all, an awesome weekend of boardgaming. I just wished my packages that are suppose to be here are actually here then I will have new goodies to share with everyone. As of now, I think on monday I will have majority of it but the package that I have been anticipating has mysteriously been shipped to PARAGUAY! Of all places...... *shake head*....

SIGH