… continued …
At this resort, on level three, in Jelatek Room, an amazing event is happening:
Eurogame Retreat is here!
A group of grown ups gathering to play boardgames!
Over the course of one and a half days,
The gamers are kept occupied with an organised schedule
The results of every game tabulated and recorded
I myself get to play:
Pickomino (a.k.a. Heck Meck, a dice rolling game)
Caylus (a castle building game)
Through the Desert (a camel caravan laying game)
China (an area influence/control game)
Santiago (a plantation and canal laying game)
Torres (tower building game), and
Acquire (company merger and acquisition game)
In between break times, I get to:
try Pompeji (toasting-citizen-by-lava game)
learn 1856 (stock & train game)
teach Thurn and Taxis (postal service game)
watch a Pirates Cove game in progress
joke around
lie down on a soft retreat-sized bed
win some prizes
make lots of new friends! From left: Ryan, Denise, KP, Ric, Alvin (old friend), Jen Fai, Melissa, Chris, Shaun, Edwin, Teddy, Melody, BK, Rob (GC regular), Heng (myself), Jeff (GC regular)
Pleased to meet all of them and look forward to seeing them in next year’s Eurogame Retreat!
Games - Lotsa, lotsa games:
Gamers - Lotsa, lotsa gamers:
The background - A Genting Gaming Getaway Galore idea was mooted in an after-gaming-yumcha session. See my blog here, under Yumcha, for the first occurrence of the idea: http://aikyong.blogs.friendster.com/hengs_gaming_blog/2006/09/boardgamecafene.html .
After a period of ingestion by a group of intrepid Eurogame enthusiasts, Edwin finally organised a Eurogame Retreat scheduled for 7-8 October 2006 at:
Awana
And what a getaway from work and the haze in KL! There’s:
Beautiful surroundings
Swimming pools
Golf courses
Cable car to gambling den, erhem, I mean to Genting, the amusement park…
… to be continued …
Games - Tikal
Gamers - Wai Yan, Jeff, Ainul, Heng
I arrived late again to find my friend Alvin and his friend Paul playing Ticket to Ride: Europe (TTR:E) with Chua and Jeff Goh. I’m sure that the gateway game TTR:E was played for the benefit of Paul rather than Alvin, whom I understand thrash everyone else as he had played lots of times with me and my Klang group.
I watched awhile before… Jeff Aw and Wai Yan came to the rescue! They brought forth Tikal and Ainul coincidentally drop in at the right time to setup a four player game. It’s my first played game (I watched the last time). However, since I already know all the rules, we all just started playing. We’ve got a good pace going and Jeff Goh came and have a look after hie TTR:E game.
Here is a closeup of a beautiful board, with red (Wai Yan) initially going north, orange (Jeff) going northeast, white (Ainul) going east and black (me, Heng) going last and picking up the scraps.
And here’s an obligatory shot of me in my Analysis-Paralysis mode.
To give me some pressure, the other gamers put this hourglass thingy in front of me… tick tock!
(Please note, the retail copy of Tikal does not come with this hourglass!)
The stage is set for the future rounds: camps (the triangular thingies) side by side each other. Red against orange in the north and white against black in the east.
Ainul here, enjoying the Analysis-Paralysis of choosing a place to put his temple-tile.
The veteran duo, orange and white, demonstrating their experienced strategy by going for the early temple guard.
In midgame, white and black engaged in a fatalistic conflict over control of a meagre 6-point temple.
The temple goes to 7-point, the battle goes wild!!! What a mass of explorers!!!
The other conflict raging on the other side. Mass of red and orange over a 6 and an 8-point temple!!!
An overview of the board at midgame. Red and orange clearly locked in battle while black and white having their own little conflict going. If you look closely enough, red managed to cordon off the right side of the board all to herself.
The eventual winner, Wai Yan, queen of the temples surveying the board… Judging by the end score where she scores 100++ and almost double the next player’s score, that serious look means business, man!
We end up playing the game for two-half hour. Meanwhile, on the other table, Jeff Goh and Chua brought up a game of Memoir 44. An interesting 2 player WWII game which I heard is easy to teach and involving to play.
Henry and Alvin teaching Paul the ropes in Puerto Rico. (Hope Paul didn’t get thrash too hard by happy gamers Alvin and Henry…)
Another day, another gaming session complete. Hope to see Alvin and Paul at Games Circle again! =)
p.s. Been enjoying Tikal online lately. Completed one game and having two ongoing games currently. Anyone interested in learning without having to meet face to face can go to www.spielbyweb.com or drop a message to me here… (And now, back to my online games, let’s see which temple to claim…)
Games - Samurai, Elfenlands and Blokus
Samurai
When I reach the shop after dinner, there are tables already up and running with other games. Seeing Jeff Goh, we started the game night with my current favourite, Samurai. A great game with three player, we roped in a newly met friend - Wilson Wang - to play together. It’s both their first game, so I sapu them with my ‘ninja’ tricks :P. Sorry guys, no breaks for newbies. Although they lost, they still have lots of fun. I’m enjoying it while my luck at Samurai holds.
Next, we move on to Elfenlands. Edwin explained this to us and as I realised later on the Eurogames Retreat, his explanation was very good and hard to emulate. Respect, man.
This is Edwin, sharing a joke with us
Basically, in this game, the players are Elves going on a journey through the Elfen Lands as their coming-of-age test. Players draw cards and markers every turn in order to play them to travel to the different Elven cities.
This game is actually marketed as a children’s game in Germany but I still find it to be a challenging game. You have to think to arrange your cards and markers for the most efficient travel. I guess the children aspect in this game comes from the fantasy setting and the players’ Elves travel through Elfenland on unicorns, dragons, gnome carts, magic pigs(!), etc.
We actually got a few laughs from the rest of the group, including Marcus, who took picture of us and couldn’t believe that a few grown ups are playing a children’s game. But I think it’s requires some brain power, ok, and I like it (I’m young at heart!).
Next we move to Manila. Now this game, the person who taught us the rules got an important rule wrong which messed up the whole game. We stopped the game and it was only later which we found out the correct rule. No matter, looking forward to try this game next time with the correct rule. Hope the crew from Toybox teaches this game correctly next time as it was a shame that no one can play it with the wrong rules!
We end the night with a game of Blokus.
A really, really simple game with only two lines of rules, all the players need to remember was that the pieces of the same colour played must touch each other at the corners ONLY. And off we go playing two games of Blokus.
Some one later commented that the game we played was very vicious, cut-throat with lots of blocking and undermining. This is probably due to everyone at the games table being experienced gamers!
We end up getting owned by a Toybox veteran, who managed to put all his pieces onto the board. Fun game, nice pieces, and fast playing time.
A word about Toybox, it’s only 2.50 per day to game here and although their games collection is not as good as Settlerscafe, they do sell drinks and tidbits. not a bad place.
Look at me, look at me! I’m in there! I’m one of the 16 Psycho gamers play 1.5days non-stop (excluding eat and sleep) for a grand total of 9 games played!!! The report will come soon… after Alvin uploads the photos he’s taken to me…
In the mean time, here’s Edwin’s report: http://web.mac.com/imagine_newszine/iWeb/Site/Home/09E0927F-0051-4C1E-A412-EC022C57E6C4.html
Next Page »
Eurogame Retreat is here!
A group of grown ups gathering to play boardgames!
The gamers are kept occupied with an organised schedule
The results of every game tabulated and recorded
Pickomino (a.k.a. Heck Meck, a dice rolling game)
Caylus (a castle building game)
Through the Desert (a camel caravan laying game)
China (an area influence/control game)
Santiago (a plantation and canal laying game)
Torres (tower building game), and
Acquire (company merger and acquisition game)
try Pompeji (toasting-citizen-by-lava game)
learn 1856 (stock & train game)
teach Thurn and Taxis (postal service game)
watch a Pirates Cove game in progress
joke around
lie down on a soft retreat-sized bed
win some prizes
make lots of new friends! From left: Ryan, Denise, KP, Ric, Alvin (old friend), Jen Fai, Melissa, Chris, Shaun, Edwin, Teddy, Melody, BK, Rob (GC regular), Heng (myself), Jeff (GC regular)
