This session started with Race for the Galaxy with expansion.
As you can see, me and wolfx are totally absorbed in the cards and didn’t even notice jack208 taking our pictures
And now it is lim, ooi and phuah’s turn to be absorbed. I think phuah did a good job explaining the game to ooi and lim as they seem to understand how to play the game better.
jack208 then surprised us by bringing out a game which most of us have not played before: A Game of Thrones. As there were 6 of us: lim, ooi, phuah, wolfx, jack208 and myself, the Clash of Kings expansion was also brought out to accomodate the extra player. wolfx commented that this game is an ameritrash game with euro components. The ameritrash style comes from the gameplay that focuses on player diplomacy, backstabbing and war, while the euro components comes from the wooden meeples used to represent armies on the board.
The battles are however, not resolved with dice but rather from a hand of cards that will be depleted as the war rages on. The cards’ strengths are equivalent between the players but the special effects are different depending on which House the player plays.
The army sizes are restricted according to a supply chart pictured here. This encourages players to take over more territories in order to ‘grow’ their army.
There are 3 ‘roles’/special powers up for bidding at certain points in the game. The Iron Throne power determines turn order, The Fiefdoms gives military advantage while the King’s Court grant access to special order tokens not unlike those found in Starcraft. In fact, since this was the earlier game, Fantasy Flight reused this mechanic in Starcraft. Unlike Starcraft where the players play their marching orders on the location which they wish to march to, marching orders in this game are played on the location of the origin of the march. This can lead to some interesting subterfuge as the target for an attack may not know it until the opponent marches.
Ooi and wolfx pondering on their moves. Although allied strikes are supported in the game through the support order, in reality alliances are used in our game only for truce as we pummelled the other guy across the table.
For instance, Martell (orange) did their 700-years war with Tyrell (green) by having a truce with Baratheon (yellow), while Tyrell had a truce with Lannister (red).
Stark (white) started in the north relatively unmolested but was hampered somewhat by their initial low supply. Greyjoy (black) to the east was too close for comfort with Lannister and hence had a truce with Lannister to expand into Stark later in the game.
Locations on the board had cities, supply and power icons. The objective of the game is to capture 6 cities. Armies are mustered in cities. Supply is used to raise larger armies while power is used to bid for the roles/special powers as well as to fend off the wildlings.
Towards the end of the game, the board fills up with troops. However with a limited supply of playing pieces, players are encouraged to attack with them as they reach their unit limit.
Baratheon end the game a winner as it grabbed territories off Lannister over a poor play. Otherwise Martell would have won over its numerous victories over House Tyrell. Stark expanded too late south and was hammered in the end by Greyjoy. An early battle over the seas with Baratheon ended poorly as Stark could scarcely raise a fleet fast enough to challenge Baratheon’s fleet. Lannister end the game in obscurity as it failed to capitalise on its truce with Greyjoy to neither hit Baratheon nor Tyrell effectively.
Overall an interesting game but one that took us 6 hours to play.
For the last game of the night, Caylus Premium Limited Edition was brought out
wolfx here helping me punching out the tiles and jack208 playfully wince along with each punch
pseudo-medieval art style for the Caylus PLE. I called the building that produces two food/one cloth, the Nando’s
Ka-ching! The metallic coins of Caylus. Now I really feel like a rich medieval merchant
Player’s pieces: solid wood pawns
Me analysing my game moves
the board with its lush colours
Caylus PLE: a game of castle building with medieval art. I (red) barely pipped jack208 (black) for first position. I got the first stone production building but then let jack208 grabbed the other two. wolfx who was left with none finished way behind. My last-turn provost action of denying jack208 a prestige building ensured my squeaked-by victory.
Me and my wife Li Li met up with wolfx at 7.30pm to have dinner at Midvalley before zooming over to OTK Cheras. The drinks are alright at OTK but we got bored of the food there, hence the early dinner at Midvalley.
We reached at 8.30pm and blownfreaks reached shortly after to drop us his ‘Red Bomb’ for next month.
With his wife crabzai elsewhere to give out her own ‘Red Bombs’, blownfreaks alone joined us in our first game of the night - King of Siam. Yes, it’s a bit heavy for a first game and jack208 who came in not much later commented as much.
A strange situation developed in this game where wolfx, blownfreaks and myself were jostling to end the game early by getting the British faction to control 4 provinces and then be the last to play an action card. However, too many cooks proved to have spoilt the soup as Li Li stalled the British assault with her saved up actions and then took the Malai faction to victory.
In this game we played a house variant whereby all four players played individually and the influence cubes gained were kept secret. The secret cubes reduced some of the Analysis Paralysis but the players’ motives for the British was too well known and barely disguised. As a consequence, some over-analysing still occurred.
Elsewhere on another table, waiyan, cmun and shrapnel played games with kids while rhyen and jack208 taught and played Wasabi and Winner’s Circle.
With the arrival of Keealvin and his brother, the King of Siam game finished up and moved to Battlestar Galactica.
“All that has happened before, will happen again.” With these ominous intoned by keealvin and jack208, the humans of Battlestar Galactica again failed to reached Kobol! The humans faced a string of morale sapping crisis one by one badly, let down in no small part by Gaius Balthar’s uninspiring presidential speech.
I got my wish of playing on the winning side in this game but was forced to reveal myself as the cylon early in the first round due to a first turn crisis card that enabled wolfx to look at my loyalty card. However due to his convincing performance as a lying cylon in the past game, his cries of ‘wolf’ was took up too slowly by jack208 who had to make sure wolfx was not a lying cylon again. Of course, that meant that I had the chance to reveal myself outside the brig and send wolfx to the brig as my reveal ability.
The next turn I played my supercrisis and took out the presidential Colonial One, thus depriving the replacement president, Gaius, of Morale inspiring quorum cards.
A crisis card indiscretion by Li Li in the 2nd round was detected by keealvin, forcing her to reveal Helo as the second cylon. So far 2 cylons had reveal themselves in the first 2 rounds, it should be easy for the humans to focus on beating the cylons without traitors among them, right? WRONG! Crisis upon crisis piled upon the humans and at jump 6, all hope was lost. Humans 0 - Cylons 6.
After that, rhyen joined jack208, blownfreaks, keealvin and his brother to play Le Harve while I sent my wife back home and wolfx to his car.
Later as I returned, Le Harve wrapped up and keealvin and his brother call it a day. Caylus was then brought out and a battle ensued between jack208, blownfreaks, rhyen and myself. Definitely am creaky at this game as I finished last while jack208 powered away unchecked by his stone production buildings. blownfreaks finished a respectable second while rhyen piped myself for 3rd place. Perhaps next week I shall bring out the Premium Limited Edition as Caylus again makes its round.
blownfreaks then broke out Chicago Express at my insistence to let rhyen have a taste. Both rhyen and myself overcommited to the initial share auction to get the shares at premium prices while jack208 and blownfreaks snapped up shares at subsequent offerings at a discount. This was a miscalculation on my part and subsequently made another miscalculation as I helped pushed PRR railroad to reach Chicago at express speed even though it was evident that blownfreaks had more to benefit from his double share in the company.
I also let Wabash railroad off at a reasonable price to rhyen who proceeded to come back from his disastrous initial share purchase to finish at a respectable position. blownfreaks won in the end, helped in no part from my misguided assistance. So there’s still more strategy to learn for this game before I can get the game down pat.
Last, we finished with Race for the Galaxy at rhyen’s request. Not sure if jack208 upgraded his comments but rhyen and blownfreaks still liked it. I myself felt it was more chancey and random with the new expansion added, but hey, it’s harder to manage the random element this time round. We played two rounds and then called it a night.
I have noticed a malaise afflicting certain gamers that is called Gaming Jadeditis, or commonly known as gamer burn-out. Gamers at one point or another can find systems repeating itself over different games, or find the patterns even in games considered ‘complicated’ by the general public.
As the task of finding the strategies to these games becomes less of a challenge and more of a systematic application of similiar strategies found in games with similiar mechanics, gaming actually becomes a bore. Hence jadedness.
As I pointed out on Hiew’s blog, I have some solutions to this conundrum (no, none of them involved taking a break 
):
1) Super complex euros - Like Le Harve. The interactions are quite numerous to the point where it is difficult to ’solve’ the game with an optimum strategy. Shipping strategy? Building strategy? That’s so Puerto Rico. Have wood, cloth, food, stone and gold as resources? That’s so Caylus. Let’s throw in wood, charcoal, fish, smoked fish, coal, coke, cattle, beef, hide, leather, iron, steel, grain, bread, clay and brick just to mix it up. Oh, and give them their own building and shipping strategies to go with it. Not enough? let’s add numerous buildings with numerous way to combine the numerous resources and oh, have 4 different types of ships. CCCOOLLLL….
2) Wargames - More complexity means more complicated interactions and as a bonus, there’s a theme in there with historical references. Wargames have lots of armies and pieces moving around and a podcaster once described a certain wargame as a 500-pieces, 3hr puzzle considered as ‘easy’, and another as a 5000-pieces, 6hr puzzle ’hard’ wargame (I).
I have tried ASLSK#2 and even after having someone taught me the basics, I am still floundering. In this case, the puzzle is not in the number of pieces but the number of rules and the complicated interactions between them.
Next I tried Target Arnhem by MMP and find it easier to understand. The rules are managable and there are only 30 or so pieces.
As a move upwards, I bought one of the simpler ones from Victory Point Games . I haven’t played it yet but the rules read simple enough.
3) Games with metagaming - Sometimes simple games can have complex social interactions and it is interesting to ‘game’ people and their social tendencies. I’m refering to games like Bang! in this context where player interactions and mannerisms are subtle hints to their purposes.
I consider games like Imperial to fall into this category as well, as the alliances and negotiations are as much a part of the game as optimising finances and manuvering armies.
4) There is also the 18XX series which I consider a sort of cross between the thematic-focused wargames and the optimisation-heavy eurogames. I was surprised to find prominent gamers like Scott Nicholson who is hooked on this genre of games. I find the interactions to be suitably complicated and I find myself fudging my decisions more often than not.
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In conclusion, I guess my advise to boardgamers suffering from gaming jadeditis is not to take a break, but to move up and play more complicated games! It will be a break from the application of the same old strategy to the same old games. Unless of course, the cause of the burn-out is something different entirely like having a family and less time for gaming. That is another article with its own solutions.
Note: (I) Point 2 Point Podcast, by Jason and Scott.
A boardgame friend proposed a campervan trip to New Zealand a few weeks back and I like the idea.
Spending most of the time away from civilisation and sleeping under the stars was one of the best experience I had in Australia, albeit in a river boat then.
So I did some research and came up with some itinery and budgeting.
The details are put permanently here:http://aikyong.com/new-zealand-campervan-trip-proposal/, as there might be others who will be interested to join/organise on their own.
My own plans are not firmed yet as other than my friend and our spouses, we had no other confirmation. Also the trip is estimated to take 2 weeks and even then it is still considered a bit of a rush because of the number of places on the list. Two weeks leave is rather hard to take even if planned early. One option is to wait for Hari Raya, but that will only yield two off days.
So feel free to have a look at the New Zealand planning page for the planning so far.
Session started with some Race for the Galaxy with Phuah and rhyen.
Lim watched while rhyen tried explaining the game mechanics to him. Lim joined in the second game but still found it difficult to grasp the concept. Li li meanwhile gave up on ever understanding the game properly and took the pictures above.
After RftG, jack208 arrived with Battlestar Galactica and took this pic of li li. Li li was two times lucky as the undercover cylon.
This is me and Lim. Lim had the misfortune of getting the cylon card in his first game and understandably spend some time in the brig appealling meekly to the others to rescue him before realising that the game is up and revealed himself.
This was Phuah’s second game. Aanemesis made a surprise appearance and proceeded to read the rule book while the rest of the players debated among themselves on how to survive the waves of crisis.
The beginning of the end. The centurions were unleashed by li li’s super crisis card. Even though the humans made every priority to deal with the threat, the dice rolls were not with them.
Admiral Adama is twice the villain now.
The end. With two cylons moving the centurions, the humans were on a short clock.
While I sent li li home after the Galactica game, jack208 brought out Le Harve and gave aanemesis a brain burning treat.
aanemesis really likes this game!
Phuah and aanemesis burning their brains on Le Harve
aanemesis got such a brain burn that he finished last, after his previous record of finishing first.
While I returned for 18EU, aanemesis decided to go home and rest, leaving Phuah, rhyen, Lim and jack208 to play with me.
rhyen’s 18EU, my first play, but the second for rhyen and jack208.
There are 15 minor companies in this game and the initial brain burning started with the question of how much each was worth.
The public companies are started by consolidating the minors and the earlier one starts the minors, the further ahead it is on the share track. Unfortunately our game hit a snag as there weren’t any change to be had for the dividends declaration. This was weird to rhyen and jack208 as they had no such issues in their first game. Perhaps the delay of the minor consolidation meant that money was stuck in the minors with no way to spend it.
This problem was compounded by the fact that the train rush was oh so slow and totally non-existent. From comments on BGG, this was clearly not the case it was supposed to be.
There’s a key decision on how early one starts the minors in this game. On one hand, the returns are definitely higher in the short term by running the minors by itself. On the other hand, the minors have no mechanism to increase their share value and this will in turn impair the future returns. Furthermore, the minors are prohibited from upgrading their tracks to the more lucrative and versatile green tiles and this will greatly impact the minors’ growth.
The key issue here therefore is to balance between getting enough money from the minors and then to merge them into public companies to start reaping the rewards from the growth and share price movement.
I’m willing to try this again but hopefully the money shortage problem will be solved by then.
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