Weekend Boardgaming: 17 June 2012

A bit late to post on this I do apologise (blame my studying, Diablo 3 and the latest craze, Pocket Planes!) so here we go with the games we played last sunday!

Pyramid
I saw this game being played by my Friday group previously and I have been itching to find a copy to see how it will work in office. In my latest german shipment, I finally manage to snag a copy. I have played it in office before and I decided to use it as a warm up game.

The game is a very light game and its unique selling point is the magnetic board and pieces. 1 player will be the mummy, trying to move around the board to catch the other players who are trying to loot treasures from the pyramid. The other players will be on the other side of the board trying to move around the mummy and each other and grab their 5 pieces of treasure from the maze. Movement is determined by dice rolling and treasure hunters can reroll as many times as they want before choosing 1 die. However beware! If you roll the mummy, then that die is locked and cannot be rolled. Sooner or later, the dice that have been locked will have to be released which will give the mummy player a free move, depending on the number of dice that have been unlocked. The mummy player also gets a turn to move after all the players have moved once. Its pretty fun and unique and a good light game. However so far in all my plays it seems that the mummy always wins. In 2 games, 1 player had only 2 pieces left to find but if the other players are not skillful enough, the mummy will win in more often than not. Its hard to get in Singapore but if you chance upon it, do pick it up!

In the office

Steel Driver

Another purchase from my german lot was Steel Driver. The gameplay reminds me very much of Imperial and even a lighter version of the many train games like 18xx and the like. During the game, each company will be auctioned off. After the auction, players who have managed to win the bids will control that company and make a move for that company by lying tracks and connecting between stations. After all companies have passed, then the controlling player during that turn will obtain profits based on the tracks that were laid during his/her turn. So this game is where you try to diversify and invest in companies that holds the most promise. At the end of the game, cubes will be placed at each station and the majority shareholder of each company will take turns "delivering" goods over their own tracks. Collecting sets of different cubes will mark the final profit value of the company and each share holder will receive payout. The player with the most money at the end of the game wins. I found myself without a company to perform the cube delivery at the end game but however since I manage to invest in 2 companies which had the most profit at the end, I won the game. The players found the board rather dry to look at and not particularly entertaining. The gameplay itself was pretty ok but the board could have been more exciting to look at. All in all, it is a light game that will make a great introduction to heavier train games.

Glen More

Before dinner, we played a game of Glen More for 5. This is a light to medium game where each of us is trying to grow our village as efficient as we can. During each player's turn, you will move your piece onto a tile that you want, place the tile into your village, activate that tile and all 8 tiles that are surrounding the tile you just placed. All the time you have to be mindful of the scoring elements of each of the 3 scoring rounds because players score based on the difference (between how many pieces they have compared to the player with the least amount of that piece) so that you do not accidentally provide other players with big scoring opportunities. The turn is based on which player's meeple is the furthest behind so its not a clockwise kind of player turn. Finally, you have to be as efficient as you can so that you will not be penalised as each village tile above the size of the smallest village will subtract 3 points from your total. The player with the most points will win the game. I find it hard to feel out which player is winning during the game but otherwise this is a good game. The players all felt it was very fun so recommended from me.

Twilight Struggle
After dinner we had a game of Twilight Struggle (after 3 of the players left) and this was my 3rd play and my opponents first. We played till about Turn 6 before we felt it was rather late and we had better call it a night. Very good game and epic but I found that if there is no scoring card that is coming out (we only had 2 scoring rounds), then the game play is all about positioning in preparation of the scoring card. Throughout the game I was in the lead with points but I could not captialise on it enough to win the game. My opponent also had quite bad dice rolls thus her coups and realignment rolls were not very effective. That being said, she felt that it was a very epic game and will look forward to playing it again. So yay!

Computer games
So a big part of my time is also taken up by computer games and I decided to talk about them a little given how there have been much fun to be had!

Diablo 3
The biggest thing to hit us the last few weeks. Very soon quite a few of my colleagues including my lunch group were playing. There were certainly a lot of fun AND funny moments as one of my lunch group had never played any major games in his life (his last major game was Warcraft the RTS game on PC). Still I have not reached 60 yet and the latest patch really put a bummer on things I feel. All the gold I spend leveling up my artisans felt very wasted as they are way way way cheaper now. Still its the group that makes the game fun I feel and I will look forward to questing at 60 together :)

Le Harve
I have really taken a liking to this game and when the iOS version came out, I immediately jumped on it. So far I have played a 2 player game online with a random person (he/she beat me) and played a solo game.

I was pretty lucky and manage to score 218 in my solo game. Very nice game and good implementation in the iOS. Some wishlist items will be clearer graphics (making use of the retina display on the new iPad) and maybe some enhancements since well this is a computer version of the boardgame. Still a very good purchase and a must have for any Le Harve player! Comment here if you want a match! :D

Pocket Planes

The latest craze to be released from the makers of Tiny Towers. Now I did not play a lot of Tiny Towers because I found it a tad silly trying to shuttle the people up and down the floors, however I know a lot of players are still playing it till this day, my brother in law included. When this came out, I was instantly hooked. I am not sure why but I reason that perhaps it scratched a particular itch for me. Sort of like Airlines Europe or a train-like boardgame, you get to shuttle people and cargo to various airports you setup around the world using planes that you choose. You can improve upon the planes and personalize them in various color schemes. Best of all, you can participate in world events to win rare airplanes and bucks (in game currency). All in all, I am thoroughly addicted to this game and along with my lunch group, our lunches now devolve into lunching and then managing our flights and the occasional grunts and talks :D Check out my stats right now:

I am about 1 airport away from linking Osaka and Sydney to Casanova (latest global event location) and North america. I think once I hit the first Class 3 airplane the excitement may wane for me. But as a lunch mate will say to me..... LIES :P

Weekend Gaming: 10 June 2012

Yay ! My weekly fix of boardgaming with a small group. I gotten a few 4 player games and I have been hoping to try them out. Today's the day I got to try a few of them out. Still have a few more to go (Antiquity anyone? :P)
Here we go!

Walnut Grove

We played a 3 player first while waiting for our 4th player. Afterwards we played a 4 player one. It is quite an interesting game, not too hard to teach but hard to master. As always, the first game we had some rules wrong and we played correctly this time after clarifying some of the rules the second round. Finding enough food to feed and keep our farmers is quite a pain. Its an exercise in efficiency and tile placement. Basically you will get a certain number of tiles to choose from to add to your farm in Spring. In Summer, you choose where to place your farmers. In Autumn, you go to the town (board in the upper half of the picture) and choose a location to perform the action on. In Winter, you have to feed your farmers and keep them warm. That's it and after 8 rounds, you do a final scoring and the player with the most points is the winner. Points wise its quite a tight game as long as your tile placements are efficient. Otherwise I think you will have a hard time with the game. I will try the solo plays and see how it goes. 35 points seems a whee bit hard to get to :)

Helvetia
Played this once on another friend's copy and I decided to get my own. There's something about marrying off your workers and making babies that make this game and its mechanics interesting for me. Its not too difficult to teach as well and there will be a lot of replayability. However the theme is wrong though. I mean what we really are, are Evil Dictators and we can order our workers to perform actions at our whim. Sort of like Sims as another friend put it. We are even Genetists as we can control what gender our workers produce :p Maybe there should be a retheme of this into a sort of Evil Genius type of theme. Ought to be more thematic and exciting :D

Master Merchant

Another game from the same publisher as Maistar (and same artist), this is a fast filler like game which involves elements of deck building but with a LOT of interaction and screwage. The winner is the player who can first obtain 8 gold OR 8 different cards (which is usually how the game will be won). It comes in a very small package and plays up to 4. Easy to teach but seems hard to master as if all 4 players are experienced players, I believe there will be a lot of interaction to be had. Granted its only our first play and I suspect replayability maybe a problem after 10 plays or so, still I think it is intriguing and I wouldn't mind more plays of this. The art I love as I have never seen this before and it is quite good to look at.

Dungeon Petz

Brought this out as the box art looks very cute and buddy of mine wanted to play it. I had quite a hard time teaching as there are a lot of little details that is easy to miss and its been so long since i played it once. Play wise though all players agreed that its fun but can be a little brain draining. Thematically I think it does have and thus keep us interested even though the thinking part maybe a little brain draining as you are trying your best to choose what you want as well as keep your pets happy. But I think I will not keep it though because of the long time required to explain as well as how often I will bring it out to play. Of course the same can be said for some of my recent purchases (i.e. Antiquity) but at least I want to play it once and see how it goes :)

Weekend Boardgaming - 3rd June 2012

After a long week at work and falling sick, I finally managed to get a weekend boardgaming in. When I fall sick, I really fall sick. Interestingly, I checked my sick leave record and since Jan 2011 up to now, I have only had 1.5 days of MC. Man that's gotta be worth something to someone.. hmm
As we are preparing for the Singles event the coming Friday at the Library, we played mostly space-themed games (all except for 1 :P) to familiarize ourselves with the games we may be introducing to those that are coming.
So space games, I played Martian Dice, Eminent Domain, The Resistance twice, Rocket Jockey, Cosmic Encounter (with both expansions), Mag.Blast and Sunrise City.

Eminent Domain
I had this game before but have since sold my copy. It feels very basic to me (even though there are rumors of expansions) and I would love to see how they make use of the different components that are available but as it is right now, it does not grab my attention enough for me to want to play it again and again and again. I have heard from The Secret Cabal Podcast how the crew raved and played it several times in a row but it just does not work that way for me. It feels blend, very solitaire like and not much interaction. I would like to try it again with the expansion when it releases but its a Meh for me for now.

The Resistance
A Werewolf like game but with a Space theme. This time I was the saboteur twice in a row along with another in the gaming group and I guess we were lucky in a way to have won quite easily. This game will be interesting to observe this friday when the Singles play it. For me as the saboteur, if I get chosen to go for the first mission, I will make sure it succeeds so as to throw off the scent. Subsequently, if they select me, I will play sabotage for the mission if it gets selected. My buddy though argues that if it were him, he will definitely play sabotage right at the beginning because then you will just need 2 more to succeed. I will report more on this when Friday comes.

Rocket Jockey
This is a maths like game where you are trying to earn as many points as you can by transporting goods in as long-winded a manner (i.e. as many planet hops) as you can. The game has a rather simple mechanism but it does make you think a lot during your turn. A little too much for a game of this weight. We did not finish playing and stopped halfway through. For the amount of effort, we would have preferred something more medium or heavy weight. Meh for me too.

Cosmic Encounter
This game was rather interesting to me in that I think the essence of the game was lost to some. Remember that the Destiny card choose whom you have to attack but I had a feeling it got a bit personal. Nevertheless, I was the Cyborg and I definitely played this wrongly. Instead of trying to cycle through the draw deck as fast as I can to keep the better cards, I was just holding onto the 3 and waiting for a good time to use them. Unfortunately for me that was a bad move and did not help my cause. Btw, have you SEEN the ships that Tom Vasel had painted for him?

They look so AWESOME! I wonder how much he paid. SO NICEEEEEEEEEEEE *drool*

Mag.Blast

I had not seen this Fantasy Flight game before and was interested to try it out. The art is cartoony and light hearted but still the ships are all unique (with subtle differences and different names and attributes). Essentially, you are trying to surround your capital ship with other ships and prevent your opponents from destroy you while using those same ships to attack others. I mistakenly attracted too much attention by exclaiming my 2 Star Destroyer-like ships and merrily playing the Imperial March song via my iPad. I was quickly decimated (from my sides) and boom I was out of the game. Subsequently its a long weight before dinner happened and we stopped the game but did not continue afterwards. It feels like Bang in space and well player elimination will cause the players to lose focus on the game while waiting for it to end. So while it could be a light filler, its a Meh for me.

Sunrise City

When I heard someone else from the gaming group bring this, I wanted to play it.  I have heard a lot of hype and given my recent purchases of city building games (see my previous blog posts), I wanted to give it a try. So right at the beginning you will draft 3 roles to play for the 3 rounds (its quite a short game). At the beginning of each round, you will select a role and then starting with the player with the lowest role number, place district tiles onto the board (following certain rules). Right at this point you can start to score on the score track. Once all the tiles are placed, you now begin to place your round tokens to lay claim to a district. Other players may place their tokens above yours to overrule your claim. This continues until all tokens have been placed. Now the round really begins.
Players will place building tiles given to them at the start of the round and score accordingly. The score board is an interesting concept in that if you manage to score or reach the 10th point score and stop, you will get 2 yellow stars. If you exceed, you will just get 1. At the end of the game, the player with the most yellow stars win.
Gameplay wise is ok I guess, reminding me of City Tycoon but not particularly fantastic for me. Component wise its very good but I feel WAY WAY overproduced. I mean the tiles are so thick and so big. The discs are big and everything just feels way too overproduced and even borders on unwieldy at times. I just feel that the game could have saved up on a lot by providing adequate but still high quality components. Art wise the colors are a little too blend for me and some of the building tiles have marks on them as if the other building tiles had pressed on them too hard. So in summary, its a Meh for me and I will not get a copy unfortunately. I had wanted to like it and it does look nice all built up but nahh....

Other Loot
My other loot finally came though and I cannot wait to break out Helvetia, Maharaja, Welcome to Walnut Grove, Steel Driver, Empires of the Void and Curse of the Mummy which I will play in office tomorrow!
Wait for my blog posts! :)

Weekend Gaming or Sporecon 2012 day 1

so this is the first day of Sporecon 2012! Sporecon is an annual boardgame event (only one in Singapore alas!) held by a FLGS (Friendly Local Gaming Shop) PI at Pasir Ris East Community Center. For 2 days, there will be tournaments and space to play boardgames. Tournaments typically are miniature gaming (with Warhammer 40k seeming to take most of the space) however this year there are more boardgame tournaments. Still, Sporecon is rather small scale and I expect Gencon 2012 will definitely be an eye opener! Can't wait for then :P On to the games we played today.

Age of Industry (Japan Map expansion)

Not a lot of need for Iron or Coal mines in this map

We started off with Age of Industry that seems to be quite a hit with the gaming group I am with. I am the Blue player btw and you can see that I am not doing very well :p I started off with a lot of Cotton mill cards and was planning to capitalize on that. Often I do not realize the importance of railways and have to catch up with the other players much to my detriment. I suspect that I will get the hang of it after a few more plays but I doubt I will get it into my collection. Graphically its not very exciting to me and quite fiddly at setup. Component wise it could have been better (I dislike the plastic money and player mats). Still if you enjoy such economic games, do take a look!

Livingstone

Doctor? Are you there I presume?

Next we tried Livingstone a game that my gaming buddy got. This is an easy game to teach and is primarily an area control game with a little bit of push your luck. Game turn is indicated by the wooden boat and once it reaches the end of the river, players perform a final scoring and the player with the most victory points win (no surprise there). A final twist though is the amount of coins each player have played into their box. This indicates the amount of money that players have donated and the player or players with the least amount will automatically lose. This mechanism reminds me of Hab & Gut a game that I recently obtained. Components wise, this game is top notch. A lot of other games can stand to learn from this. Overall it is a fun game, quick and fun to play. I like it quite a bit.

The Big Time

My acts which unfortunately did not allow me to win the game alas..

This is a Print and Play production game that my gaming buddy (from here onwards the games are all owned and introduced/taught by the same gaming buddy :P ) and its quite a light game as well and involves the players bidding to purchase troupes for a performance which we will be putting up in each round. The game lasts for 4 rounds and each round, players will have exactly $24 to bid to purchase 4 troupes and 1 headliner act for our show. At the end of each round, players will then tally up how much "star power" the entire show has and the lowest score will cause the show categories represented by his/her show on a chart to decline in rating. The winning player of that round will improve his/her categories. Then all players will score for the categories depending on their final position on the chart. Apparently, the name of the acts are based on historical popular acts. The graphics is quite cute and fun to look at and the components are rather well produced for a print and play produced game. Still, since the game has this rustic feel, I felt that if the cards have the authentic picture from that era and based on the actual person as depicted by the name, I think it might be quite good to look at as well. I found it quite tough to figure out just how much to bid. My strategy was to calculate the total of the people I want to hire and add $1 or $2 but i found it difficult to keep track of the categories (6) and plan and strategize. May need a few more plays to see how it goes. Not a bad little game.

Mai-star

I am this Geisha

I have heard of this game before but kinda forgotten about it till i saw it today in the bag of boardgames. We played this next and it is quite an easy game to learn and play. Players play a particular Geisha (there are several for us to choose from with different characteristics) and the game lasts 3 rounds. Each round ends when a player has no more cards in his/her hand and you can only do that by placing "guest" cards down in front of your Geisha character. You can only place guest cards that your Geisha can meet the criteria of (there are 3). Otherwise, you can place "advertisement" cards to the side of the Geisha to improve her criterias which can allow for more valuable guests to be entertained. Okay its kinda tricky to explain this game without getting some form of giggle or another :) There are cards as well that allow you to mess with another player's tableau. The player with the most points after 3 rounds win. The graphics, as you can see, is rather interesting to me and card stock wise is pretty good. It comes in a very small box, easy to teach and plays fast and is a good filler so far to me. I am not too sure about replayability though as the strategies seems to be pretty standard. Still for what it is, which is a light filler, it is rather ok.

Trajan

Brain melting but not so bad this time...

Last game of the night before we stopped was the brain burning Trajan. Teaching it is a rather tedious affair (but I think Vinhos and Bios megafauna can match it) but when you actually play it, it is not that difficult to play. For me especially, I found it easier to predict and strategize the player mat portion and I could play the game much faster. However I think I need 1 or 2 more plays to tie that into my overall strategy on the map and against other players. I tried to go with the strategy of completing the most Trajans and moving my Leader and Legionnaire but I neglected the ships and orange tiles much to my detriment I think. Trajan still feels like a game that consists of many mini games that all serves to give you points. Thematically I don't feel it is there but game mechanics wise I am certainly getting a lot for my money's worth. Setup is also quite fiddly and I will probably not get it for my collection. I don't mind playing it though.

Last but not least.....

I was pleasantly surprised when I received a gift from the gaming buddy that I have been mentioning in this blog and I was even more surprised when it turned out to be a boardgame that was on my wish list! So cool!!! And I am really very touched and grateful for his gesture. AWESOME!!!! :D Now to get it played :P

Thanks again!

Weekend Gaming: 20th May 2012

I do apologize if my gaming frequency has dropped to once or twice a week but that's due to Diablo3 studying I had to do until end June 2012 (exam then). :P
Nevertheless, this is the gaming I did yesterday.

Chateau Roquefort
We started off with this game and I am quickly finding it my go to for a filler while waiting for the rest to come or just to warm up the group. Awesome little game and if you have not gotten it yet, well, WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?
Highly recommended.

Lords of Waterdeep

Check out all my buildings!

Another warmup game and I wanted to show this to my friend who was visiting from Hong Kong. This time around, I found I had the opportunity to build a lot of buildings (4 in total) but I did not have that Lady card. My friend did though but she did not manage to build a lot in the end. Another player won by a lot (like 50+ points ahead) and I need to check if it is a *gasp* tainted victory as one quest card seems to allow him to change multiple cubes into white. This time also, the game took rather longer than usual so while it is a 8 round game, I think once past the 5th round when you have 1 more worker to place, the game feels lengthier. Hmmm.....

Cosmic Encounter

Can you see the stacks at the far side?

Next up before we broke for dinner, an oldie but a goodie. Cosmic Encounter + expansion (to allow for 6 players). We played with the Yellow races because I felt the group could absorb even though this is their first play through. Lots of wheeling and dealing going on and the Fungus was attaching to all of our destroyed ships making her particularly tricky to manage. In the end though, it was between TicToc and Fungus and I was the kingmaker :( So I decided to go with TicToc since she has not played with us for a few sessions :P I hope I get to play with the Red races in the future!

Le Havre

My 2nd-hand copy of Le Havre with all the nice boxes included!

Finally, it was between Inca Empire and Le Havre and I decided to go with Le Havre as I really wanted to see if my players will like the game. Explanation was simple enough and the game progressed rather smoothly. The initial stages was quite fast since we did not have much buildings and much options. Further down the line we did have to think a little more but nothing that made the game drag on. Still, the game took almost 3 hours for us to finish. Since they are playing this for the first time, some of the buildings were not immediately clear to them how they worked or they were not reminded of the functions. This game certainly rewards those who have played it before and my players are certain interested to give it another go. I wonder if I dare to play with 5 though since the last time I did, it took almost 4 hours. Its a very nice game and I do prefer this to Agricola (because the roles and the cards you are dealt with seems to dictate what you will use or build) and to Ora Et Labora (too much different types of scoring making it difficult to tell who is ahead and to block if necessary but the Rondel is nice). Thumbs up for me!

So in a nutshell, a very good day of gaming. I still need to bring to table a few more games I have not played yet and I do hope for a 2 player session for Twilight Struggle and especially Star Trek Fleet Captains. Also all the other goodies that I have ordered I am eagerly awaiting their arrival and another session with this group :D

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!

Dicetower Showdown!

So I'm listening to the dicetower's latest podcast and I am very excited for their new podcast "Showdown" where 2 people will talk about a boardgame and they will take opposite sides (like and dislike) and then debate about it. At the end, there will be a poll for dicetower listeners to vote on whom they feel brought forth their arguments best. Tom mentioned that he will appear in some of these sessions or otherwise be moderating it. I want to be on it! There are some reviews of Tom which I disagree in and it will be interesting to bring my point of view across and see what Tom thinks.

For example, from his Top 100 last year:
Dungeon Run - This totally bombed for my group to play and I am interested to debate on a few points which Tom finds that makes this such a good game.
Cutthroat Caverns - Also a game that is quite raved about but our group did not enjoy this.

Tom, if you are reading this and if I may make a suggestion, perhaps you can suggest a game for each episode and gather people from both sides with a few key points they want to bring across and then pick among them those 2 that will best represent each side and then bring them in on the episode. It should be interesting to listen to :)

Tom is also doing his 3rd great cull of games and if you are interested, you can find the list of games available here. If you are interested, send him an email and all purchases will go into helping to fund the dicetower which I feel is certainly one of the top entertaining podcasts to listen to.