Hi y’all. I’ve been working on an alternative blog to overcome the picture upload limits on friendster. See my current post at Blogger: http://aikyong.blogspot.com/
This is just a post to redirect viewings there. I will still continue to update my blog here and I will also post here to inform if I post anything there.
I realise that I have been posting lots of new game impressions and descriptions recently. But that is because I have been playing new games almost every week.
As a consequence, my friendster blog account has reached its photo upload limit. This means that I won’t be posting another game impressions for the rest of the month, until my limit is lifted.
Now why is photos important to my posts? There are two parts to the answer. My first answer is that I’m lazy, and if pictures can speak a thousand words, I’m willing to let the photos fill up my thousand words report.
Secondly, it comes to my mission statement for this blog. I have been focusing on Eurogaming in my blog, which is a narrow enough subject. However, to give it more focus, I try to write my reports with a mind to intro my readers to the wide varied world of Eurogaming. That is why I use a liberal dose of photos, and I also try to explain game rules and mechanics as simply and as interestingly as possible.
I believe everyone loves stories. If by using pictures and storytelling, I can make Euro-gaming come alive as an experience, then I will have succeeded in my blog mission statement.
What do you guys think though? Enough pictures? Or are the explanations getting more complex?
OK, since Jeff has already done some writeup on this meeting at www.boardgamecafe.net, I’ll just put in my two cents on the meetup:
Kuhhandel (You’re Bluffing!)
I arrived late from the traffic jam to observe this game.
Generally, this is a fun negotiation game in which you try to form sets of animals by buying the animals from each other.
The gist of the game is that:
1. You try to get a matching animal from another player by offering them an unknown sum of money.
2. Since an offer can’t be refused, the other player will try to counteroffer with another unknown sum of money that is hopefully more than yours.
3. Both of you then exchange your offers and compare with each other.
4. The player with the higher offer gets the contested animal from the other player, and
5. Both players now continue the game using the money obtained from the offer exchange!
The bluffing aspect comes when you lie about your offer, so that the other player will either give you a lot of money in a supergood counteroffer, or give their animal to you at bargain price.
The fun aspect then comes when the other players pull the same trick on you!
As you can tell by the photos, everybody had fun!
Powergrid - France expansion
3 players squeeze into Paris!
Now, those of you who are my loyal readers will remember my last writeup on the Cameron trip where I lost two games to a ‘trick’. This time, I resolved to avoid the same ‘trick’.
But first, I had to get used to the France map where the connections are different from the US map. There is a special 3-adjacent-sectioned Paris city, an early nuclear power plant, and early cheap uranium.
I started by bidding highly for a low number hybrid power plant. Everyone seems to be scared off by that play and backed off. However, I consider that a good purchase seeing that the low number plant put me in a good position to buy resources and connections first.
My next power plant purchase was a nuclear plant. Again everyone backed off from my high bids. However, I still consider it a good purchase seeing that the uranium resources will be uncontested for awhile.
In mid-game, all the high numbered power plants suddenly came out. I got myself a good high numbered plant uncontested, which put me in the lead several times. Although I overspent on some resources and was screwed out of cheap city connections, I still consider myself in a good position solely because I had a high enough power plant for the end game.
Towards the end, I got myself another high numbered power plant which happens to be a garbage plant. Now, this was critical because:
1. Others are just starting to phase out their garbage plants and I can get cheap garbage resources.
2. Low numbered power plants started showing again, screwing everyone else’s expansion capabilities.
3. Nobody bid for the low numbered plants, causing stagnation in the power plant market.
4. Everyone waited too long for the high numbered green power plants in the futures market to move up, which didn’t, since the current market is stagnant.
5. I pulled the ‘trick’ I learned from Cameron Highlands.
What is the ‘trick’? Essentially, the game ends when someone builds to 15 cities. However, the game rules that you do not have to power all of the 15 cities! So I just make sure I can power 13 cities (which is more than anyone else) and end the game prematurely by building to 15 cities. The phase 3 card didn’t even turn up yet!
Yup, I stole victory right under everyone’s noses. In this game, I consider power plant purchases to be the critical points of my victory. However, I recognise that power plant purchases are subjective and everyone has their own assessment of the ‘correct’ price for a plant. Feel free to discuss on the four plants buying decisions I made, would love to hear opinions!
Powergrid, serious gamers’ game!
St. Petersburg
Contrary to popular belief, I don’t observe every game intimately. I was distracted soon after Rob’s game explanations, by Jeff who proceeded to teach me…
Battleline
me at battlelines, rob at st petersburg
Now this is a tough abstract mathematical game by the creator of Lost Cities. Like that game, there’s some luck in the drawing of the cards. But my mistake was committing my low valued armies too early, resulting in a breakthrough loss. Now that I get a taste of the game, maybe next time I can strategise instead of praying for the right cards to turn up! 
Diplomacy
This game we didn’t play, but Jeff brought it out to be oggled by Long, Henry, Rob and myself. The board was a close reproduction of the map of Europe, but the graphics, the components and the bits! Antique, man. Old Skool.
Yumcha
This is not a game but a hawker session at the nearby foodcourt. (It can be a future M’sian game, where the first expansion will be imaginatively titled ‘mamak’…:P)
For those of you wondering what sort of topics that went around, here’s a sample:
Interest in Gaming Getaway?
Where to go for Gaming Getaway?
Long games or short games for Gaming Getaway?
7 Ages long game Genting Getaway Gaming Galore?
Are Chess, Scrabble and Go considered boardgames?
Are Chess, Scrabble and Go heavier than 18XX?
Are Chess, Scrabble and Go dependent on genius intellect or laborious ‘moves’ and ‘vocab’ memorisation?
Why is ____ considered a word in Scrabble?!
Ticket to Ride & Puerto Rico, are they equally suitable as gateway games?
Why does Long prefer teaching Puerto Rico than Ticket to Ride?
Why does Jeff prefer teaching Powergrid than Puerto Rico?
Bear in mind that the above are a snapshot of the discussions that day, which may be modified by the effects of a 9pm-5am boardgame meetup session length and coffee.
Footnote: Reach home at 6am. So darn tired!
Tempus, a new release from Cafegames, is billed as a civilisation-lite game in the vein of Antike. For those not familiar with these terms, see my previous explanation on civilisation games and impression of Antike in an earlier posting. Civilisation ‘lite’ in this game means a short 90-minute game (shorter than Antike). This however, means that most of the civilisation details are even more abstracted out than Antike.
Coming from the respected designer of Age of Steam - Martin Wallace, Tempus receives a lot of hype prior to its release but subsequently gets mixed feedback after that. It is praised in some quarters but blasted in others.
Amid these interesting developments, fellow gamer Chua receives his copy of Tempus. Billed as the first copy of Tempus in Malaysia (information correct at posting time :P), it arrives through the mail rather than waiting for the usual friendly local crack dealer services.
A call quickly went out in the forums and four brave civilisation pioneers answered. Dave, KJ, Jeff Goh and Heng, join Chua 3pm sharp on Saturday 9 Sept 06 in Games Circle to answer a very important question: Is Tempus good or bad?. Jeff Au, despite registering his interest early, came late and his civilisation was replaced. In the world of Tempus, time waits for no civilisation (sorry Jeff!). Jeff Au was instead relegated to journey as a nomad Through the Desert (But that is another tale for another game…).
Jeff Au, as one of the nomads in Through the Desert!
In the beginning (of Tempus), the world was void, without form. Then, thee board was layeth and lo, the sea of Tempus formeth. By God-given-1st-turn powers, the Davian civilisation chose the first snowflake-landmass and created an island amid the sea. KJian, Jeffian, Chua-ian and Hengian civilisations followeth suit in clockwise order, extending the landmass across a turbulent sea. The creation continues anew with the Davians until all landmasses were used. The primitive civilisations all then stood back and surveyed their world:
"Hmm, there’s a peninsular and a lake."
"I don’t know what we are doing."
"First game doesn’t count, right?"
Exercising their God-given-1st-turn powers again, the Davians establish their 1st three tribes in the rich fields of the northwest, an area large enough for the expansion of one civilisation yet discourages other civilisations from setting up nearby. As a consequence, the KJian tribes went to the far north, while the Jeffian tribes establish themselves in the east. The Chua-ians and Hengians face a dilemma. All that is left are barren, rocky mountains, unable to grow civilisations. After much deliberation, the Chua-ians set up east of the Jeffians while the Hengians set up isolated in the south.
An island in the sea of Tempus! Davians (yellow), KJians (black), Jeffians (red), Chua-ians (light blue) and Hengians (purple) wage a contest of civilisations (Picture taken in mid game).
"The objective of each civilisation," proclaimed the almighty rulebook, "is to be the most civilised people on Tempus."
"This you do by building cities and controlling terrains."
"Like any good eurogame, I shall limit your actions to the following: you can only
1. move your tribes to new pastures
2. have babies and multiply your tribes
3. have ideas and draw cards to give your tribes bonuses
4. build a city to improve your chances of technological superiority, or
5. have a fight and eliminate your neighbours"
"You shall start off uncivilised and you only have limited actions per round. You shall move slowly, have few babies, have few ideas, build small cities, have small fights."
"But fear not. You all shall advance through the ages every round and discover technologies to increase your civilisation’s efficiency."
The Tempus civilisation technology advancement track.
"At all times, one of you will be one step more advanced than others.
This is determined from the terrain you control and the technology being contested.
e.g. if you own more forest than others when advancing into the technology of writing or printing, theoretically your civilisation will have an advantage in producing more papers and hence gain the benefit of the writing or printing technology first.
The rest of you will automatically catch up to the leader at the end of the turn."
With the knowledge thus gaineth, the civilisations went off on their business of being civilised. From the onset, it was clear that there were advantages to being the civilisation that is one step ahead in the technology advancement track. Each turn, the civilisations spent the bulk of their actions manuevering to dominate different types of terrain depending on the next technology advancement. Their tribes thus went back and forth: over the hills, forest, fields, pastures… This manuevering proved to be the focus and continuing effort of all civilisations.
Ai yah, where to manuever next? - Heng
Gotta stand up when making a bold manuever! - Dave
> Look! From this end you can still see me manuevering! - Jeff Goh
All together now! Hands-on-chin + Arms-folded analysis mode. Where to manuever?!
In addition to manuevering, the civilisations discover that having ideas are also very important. The idea (cards) add some randomness to the game when you draw them. However, they give extra benefits during actions and can also be used as +1 modifier cards during contest of fights or technology advancements.
The idea (cards)
In the end, the KJians emerge victorious with their multitude of civilised cities. Davians came second, followed by Chua-ians and Jeffians. The Hengians was badly beaten due to a combination of bad city placement, emptying of hand at the wrong time, and the misfortune of being set upon by vicious neighbours. Oh well… first game doesn’t count!
The winner in action - KJ (person in middle) consulting with Dave
KJ scratching head in thought
KJ massaging his fingers
Notes: The history of Tempus recounted above was obtained from the annals of the failed Hengian civilisation, which in turn referenced the records of a Chua-ian historian found here: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/125737
Footnote: So, is Tempus good or bad? Overall, I feel that the landmass generating mechanic is nice and the randomness provides replayability. However, the abstracted nature of the civilisation theme kinda throw me off the experience. It feels more like a brain burning exercise in area manuevering-controlling instead of civilisation building. Playing this game gives one mixed feelings, one must try Tempus to ultimately decide whether they like it or not.
Courtesy of Mun Leng and Kin Seong, we have… news of gaming in Adelaide!
First up, Carcassonne! With many, many, many expansions:
Look at the length of the game! (and notice the Adelaidean carpet)
Look at the tiles, can you spot the pig from the expansion?
Next up, Thurn & Taxis!
A beautiful game which I had a taste here in Malaysia. Simple, fun, lots of eye candy.
The whole board.
Unfortunately, Mun Leng and Kin Seong got too excited of the games that they forgot to include themselves in the picture, but we assure you that the picture is from Adelaide!
We promise more news from gamey Adelaide as I reminded Mun and Kin to now try to get themselves into the pictures!
Boardgame session @ Toybox on 31 August 06
Six-player Age of Steam (AOS) with Jeff Au, Chris, Rob, Daniel, Ricky and Heng on the original board.
As this is the first game, I’ll put in a bit of explanation on AOS’ gameplay. I will assume everyone is familiar with Railroad Tycoon (RRT). If not, then you should direct yourself here to read Marcus’ excellent review on the game first: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/125335
AOS is like a complex version of RRT. Players still build tracks, pick up goods and deliver them for income AND victory points. There are however some key differences with RRT which makes it more complex:
Differences which makes AOS more complex:
1. The auctioning now is for player order rather than 1st place. The first 2 players have to pay full for their bid, the rest half of their bid and the last nothing.
- Gotta watch what you put out, getting second still cost money!
2. There are roles to choose following the player order. These roles give powerful abilities which can influence the way the turn plays out.
- Gotta think what role you need, what role to deny people and whether you should bid higher in player order to make sure you get it!
3. Tracks can be built 3 at a time, connecting any number of cities.
- Gotta think how much you need to bid to grab all the short links first!
4. You don’t have to own the starting city to deliver goods.
- Gotta deliver off goods in cities where you think the opponent might sneak off deliveries of their own!
5. There are limited goods on board, with future goods coming in shown on the production track.
- Gotta make sure you connect cities that can make deliveries of goods currently on board, as well as deliveries of goods coming on board in the future!
6. Last of all, shares can only be issued at the beginning of the turn.
- Gotta make calculations to make sure you got enough money to bid for the turn order you want, get the role you want, build the tracks you want, service the shares you have and still make sure you don’t over-issue shares or go bankrupt before the end of the turn!
Phew! Fever, man, steam-ology on the brain!
Differences where AOS is better:
1. Player order is determined exactly by the amount of money you bid. No clockwise around the 1st player nonsense.
2. The auctioning of player order feels more intense when there are roles at stake, rather than RRT operation cards which can be redundant at times.
3. Smaller board, tighter gameplay, more interaction.
Differences where RRT is better:
1. Income and Victory track are combined into one streamlined track. No income reduction nonsense and fiddliness. End of game calculation is simple, no need to do multiplication and track counting as in AOS.
2. The boards and components, just so much more beautiful and appealing.
With that in mind, we now report on the game session:
1st, we randomly generate the goods in the cities and immediately, Jeff immediately mention that this is a resource poor board. The gamers, agreeing with him, begin their analysis…
Hmm… no deliveries possible… the analysis continues…
Chris, breaking the analysis, made his first move. He gets ‘First Build’, and…
…connects the cities with the rich 3 goods! He draws an applause from Ricky…
… who proceeds to ‘Urbanize’ a new city, to create a possible first turn 2 goods delivery!
Sensing oppurtunity, Jeff connects the newly urbanized city, directly competing with Ricky (ouch, sabotage!) Daniel agrees with Chris’ analysis and muscled in on the rich south-eastern cities action.
Branching out, Rob and Heng decide to be cowboys and went west (yee-haw!) for their riches.
By the midgame, Ricky (red) had developed a north-south line east of the lake, while Daniel (yellow) and Chris (green) battled over an east-west line stretching from the far east to the middle of the board.
Over the far west, Jeff (black) abandons his contest with Ricky and mix it up with the cowboys Rob (purple) and Heng (blue). Soon, cries of "Hey, that’s my goods cube!" was heard. Goods start to run low.
The bidding process was skewed in this newbies game as players bid up obscene amounts to get first place. Urbanization was a popular role choice just to get a proper delivery destination at first, and to get goods cube onto the board towards the end. Debts from bidding wars start to run high…
… "you’re at turn 3 and you issued that much shares??!!"… (Chua gasping at the madness)
… "oh no, I can’t run away from this game!"… (Edwin lamenting at the gameplayers… probably from some AOS bankruptcy experience…)
… "what to do?"… - Rob
… "what to do?"… - Daniel
… "i’ve got this wrapped up, now on to my mobile games…"… - Ricky
(no, that’s not what they thought but it sure looks like it… :P)
Towards the end of the game, things got a little chaotic. Left with no alternatives, players start delivering goods using his track, your track, my track, any track. Some king-making action was going on as certain actions by certain players push certain leaders higher. At the start of the last turn however, it was certain that Ricky was in the lead, with Heng one step behind. The rest was certainly some distance back and Rob certainly overextended himself with his bidding for the urbanization role.
Being with the least shares, Heng issued enough shares to guarantee a first place player order. Taking the ‘locomotive’ role, Heng was able to upgrade his engine just in time to make 2 consecutive 4-link deliveries to boost himself neck-to-neck with Ricky. When the dust settled, Heng was just slightly ahead after adding the victory points from the number of tracks built.
On the other end of the spectrum, Rob managed to get himself into negative points territory… "Jet lag, man, jet lag…"
Overall, a tight race for the finish, with some king-making chaos muddling up the end game, but woo hoo! I won the game!
We now take a break from our regularly scheduled boardgame reporting to bring you… News of other people’s gaming! First up, Alvin. We’ve just found out my fellow secondary school mate gamer has went to the Settlers Boardgame Cafe in Damansara Jaya… with three of his friends! See his report here: http://niched.blogspot.com/2006/09/of-cities-and-knights.html While we congratulate Alvin on his boardgame evangelising achievements, we also want to say… why didn’t you ask us along?! (Jus kidding, we know settlers play with 4 person max onli…) Next up, Teng Hock. This piece of news more difficult to find but our spy network still manage to pick up this picture: And it looks like Teng Hock the hardcore TI3, Puerto Rico, Power Grid gamer is doing Villa Paletti??!! Luckily we found this picture or else he won’t admit his preference for childish games. (Maybe we should do Niagara at Settlerscafe DJ sometime just to indulge the childish self…) Again, we congratulate them on bringing more gamers to know the wonderful world of boardgaming. That’s all the time we have for today. Thank you for watching EuroGameNews, brought to you by Aikyong.com. 
Six-player Niagara (with half an expansion :P) with Henry, Chua, Ainul, Rob, Jeff Goh, Heng (left early) and Jeff Au (replace Heng) So this is a children’s
screw-your-friends game which Jeff introduced to the bunch of us.
In this game, players have to paddle their canoes up and down the niagara falls to get gems along the river.
Players get a set of paddle cards numbered 1-6 to play. Each round, players have to put down paddle points to move their canoes. Since you have to play all the cards before you get all of them back, planning in advance is required.
Furthermore, you need to also plan your gem loading, thieving and general evilness from the paddle points you allocated. The game becomes contest of guessing and double-guessing your opponents’ moves. As Ainul, Rob and Jeff Goh can attest, hatching evil plans takes some deliberation…
Ainul, Rob, Jeff Goh, Henry, Chua each thought independently… what should I do this turn? Perhaps a 7-paddle? I hope the others put something smaller so that the river doesn’t move so fast…
Holy crap! we all put 7-paddle! we are so screwed. The river’s gonna move 7 spaces this turn! Get back, get back! Everybody back!
That’s too close to the river edge for comfort!
‘No, you gotta load these gems and get back to safety…’
‘Hey, why can’t I steal the gems from yours instead?’
‘Oh crap…’
As you can see, there’s lots of fun and chaos to be had in the game. We were splitting our sides whenever we did something unexpected. Plus, the moving river disks are just so cool, it’s fun just to push someone’s canoe over the edge! Certainly a game to play again!
Boardgame Session @ Games Circle on Saturday 26 August 06:
I arrived too late to join in the game but was able to observe throughout the gameplay:
That’s me, the guy on the far right end (squint, and you’ll see me, ok? :P)
The game is about the exploration of Mayan temples in the South American region of Tikal. This game is the first of a series of action-points boardgame, followed by Mexica and Java. Tikal has the medium tactical difficulty while Java is the most tactical of the lot. (Note: I helped my friend bought Java but haven’t play it yet, when are we playing this, Teng Hock?!?).
In Tikal, rival archeology groups race against each other to find and restore temple ruins. A new hexagonal tile of the Incan jungle is revealed each turn. Each player is allocated 10 action points to move his explorers, restore temples, set up new base camps, set up temple guards, dig for treasures, trade treasures, etc. As you can see, there are lots of things to do with a limited amount of action points. Most turns can be quite analytical and brain burning… analysis paralysis!
The board is beautiful, and the components are nice:
As the board expands, it really evokes the feeling of jungle exploration!
Definately a keeper, from what I see. Lot’s of tactical play and chance to screw people over!
Before the Tikal game ended, I helped setup a table of Ticket to Ride: Europe for a group of gamers milling around. Yep, I taught my first game at Games Circle to a group of gamers. Here are some photos of me in action
Another shot of me listing some points:
A close up of *gasp* an animated Aik Yong:
I didn’t have enough time to play, so I just taught the game, clarified some rules and became the card dispenser (2 face downs? here you go…)
Special thanks to gamers Chris, Irsal, Daniel and bro for posing as gamer students in the shots!
Note: All pics courtesy of Jeff, the boardgame organiser and addict
Another week another boardgame, this time it’s Antike, a civilisation-type boardgame! What’s a civilisation-type boardgame? Well, they are boardgames which contains elements of building, expansion, technology tree research, army raising, and of course, war! Oh yeah! Knocking down and killing stuffs you just spent the last few turns building. Antike, like a good German boardgame, introduces a streamlined gameplay. Unlike Twilight Imperium III, the building options are limited to temples, ground armies and naval fleets: before army building… peaceful town & villages after army building… War! To Arms! In civilisation-type games, you also get to research technologies to give your civilisation a boost in the competition. The ‘technology tree’ can be seen here, there’s options to boost defenses, economics, movement… (Why is everyone going for marketplace!?): Resource gathering and building is alternated during each player’s turn using a mechanic unique to Antike, called the ‘Rondel’: This mechanic limits the players to resource gathering (of iron, gold or marble) or building (of army, technology or temple) in a single turn. This limitation forces the players to make excrutiating choices on which resource to gather and which strategy to pursue. The ‘Rondel’ also punishes players who are too dedicated to one strategy by forcing them to pay extra resources. This balances the game from situations where there will be one dominating strategy. The objective of the game, is to be the ‘best civilisation’ and score the most victory points, by: 1. Expanding civilisation, 2. Researching technologies, 3. Building Temples, and 4. Conquering opponents. I played this game during the boardgame Session @ Games Circle on Saturday 12 August 06: In my game, I was Greece and was sandwiched between Persia, Carthage and a Germaniac tribe. I went for the iron & army strategy while neighbouring Persia went for a classical marble & temple strategy. Despite his temple defense bonuses, I took his first province. Then I had a change of heart. The guy was on the verge of being eliminated from the game and still did not raise the required army to oppose me. I held back the killing blow. Sigh, needless to say, I lost the game to a technology-rich civilisation. Woe to me for losing steam in my expansion and conquest. Overall, a solid game, but the players have to be aggressive to fully enjoy the game.
