King of Siam
Crabzai making a move
Phuah, Ooi, Lim and Ng enjoying Hamburgum
blownfreaks, crabzai, waiyan and jack208 fussing over moves in Iceflow
blownfreaks, crabzai and jack208 doing Le Harve
Phuah and gang’s turn doing King of Siam
Hamburgum, Londinium map
Session ends with Taluva with everyone together
Nice 3D effect!
Started with wolfx in McD for dinner, then went over to OTK to find blownfreaks ready and waiting.
Blownfreaks brought out his newly bought Dominion and away we go!
As this was wolfx’s first game, we played the beginner’s multiplayer solitaire setup. Wolfx seems to have no complaint as he readily lapped it up better than Race for the Galaxy.
Soon, waiyan and jack208 arrived, bringing with them the highly coveted Le Harve, which is done by the makers of Agricola. This version, jack208 heavily stressed, is the Australian-English version. As jack208 proceeded to tear the wrappings off and read the rules, blownfreaks showed off another new game to myself, wolfx and waiyan.
This game is called Wasabi! (exclamation mark for emphasis). In this game, the players are sushi chefs trying to score their sushi recipes on a common board, which can lead to some screwage as rival chefs chopped, switched, stacked their creations on each other. There is a crossword puzzle element to the game as players need to craft their creations sequentially across the increasingly crowded board.
It is a simple game with some challenges for the experienced gamers. I suspect the pattern recognition aspect of the game might even appeal to rhyen even with the competitive screwage.
waiyan reaching for her sushi recipes
Iron chef wolfx scores some style points for his sushi recipes.
As the night grows old, gaming continues with phuah and his friends arriving to learn Dominion. Thanks to blownfreaks, phuah and gang did TEN games of Dominion throughout the night. The game is that addictive. Lim ended up winning EIGHT of all games… something come naturally to some. Phuah also commented that he finds Dominion more interactive than Race for the Galaxy, hhmmm, is there a pattern going on here?
Thanks to blownfreaks again for lending his set for playing. I’m sure he’s frantically laminating/sleeving his set of cards to protect against the guaranteed constant plays.
Meanwhile, jack208 wasted no time in setting up and explaining Le Harve for our next game.
It is a difficult game to describe as it is a combination of Caylus, Agricola to create something new that’s quite fun, in my opinion.
There are the Agricola-angst of picking resources at the right time, feeding workers at the end of turn, and a Caylus-angst of strategising well in advance the resources needed to convert to victory points/francs.
The fun part to me is the common buildings available for construction that are randomise in their order of appearance. There are also the handful of special buildings available each game which should subtly change the game structure everytime. This of course is the designer’s response to the critisism that Agricola’s games are influenced by what players get for their personal starting hand of occupation cards.
As jack208 did not read the rules well before hand and never setup the game before, we managed to get lots of rules wrong, critical of which was that one of the building stacks weren’t organised properly and we never got to produce steel till late. The other issue was that we also sold goods freely when it actually requires building and activation of a building called the Shipping Line.
Despite that, the game is still interesting, but it is heavier than Agricola. Casual gamers might find the planning few turns in advance too much to bear. If you like Caylus‘ severe advance planning and wanted some randomising element to throw some spanner into the resource conversion building works, then Le Harve is the game for you.
As the activity on OTK 1st floor winds down and we shifted operation downstairs, phuah and gang continued with Dominion.
wolfx setup Castle for All Seasons on the next table and taught myself, blownfreaks and wolfx.
Again an almagation game, and one in which the results are also pleasing. Players compete to build a central castle and along the way try to outguess each other on their actions.
The outguessing mechanic is done via a simultaneous role selection mechanic a-la Citadels and it is completely bearable in this game as the game is fast and short. The only trip-up in this game is the calculation of resources for building, otherwise it is quite light and breezy.
We also played the alternate setup for the game using the winter board where some random events will happen to shake up the game in case the player outguessing mechanic wasn’t chaotic enough.
Overall a gaming session in which two extremities were seen. Casual gamers phuah and gang did TEN games of a single game which still continues to fastinate them while experienced gamers did FOUR new games and learnt new rules enough to send heads spinning. hehehe.
Feeling a little lazy, so just cut and paste jack208’s report from Boardgamecafe.net here:
Wow…. two new games seen on OTK tables tonite! Probably these two games were played in Msia for the first time - all courtesy of blownfreaks (who gets his stuff from Spore!!)
Kingsburg - one from FFG and their Silverline series (according to woflx). This one has dice - aha, aanemesis wud luv this! - but it’s not random (I won… so it can’t be random right? hahaha) A nice blend of mechanics with simple rules. Game plays over 5 years and moves relatively fast! Verdict? I like!!
Galaxy Trucker…. hahaha.. when I see the box.. Ameritrash. When I see the rules… Ameritrash.. and when wolfx/blownfreaks read the rules…. defo Ameritrash.. and when we play… certainly popcorn Ameri-stuff! But it’s fun, it’s easy and it’s great Ameritrash stuff!! Funtastic game!!
In the Year of the Dragon was also started (5p) at the other table, and ayheng finally got to play this with Lily! Hope he likes it…
crushedguava also joined us - think he walked thru Gathering Storm (RftG) with ayheng before he did In the Year of the Dragon.
Alrite, that’s my brief report. Next week, woflx shud have Le Havre, I’ll bring Princes Machu Pichu and blownfreaks Pandemic and Wasabi!!
In the Year of the Dragon game
waiyan and crabzai playing ItYotD
jack208, blownfreaks and wolfx being anti-social Galaxy Truckers!
Busy constructing trucks in Galaxy Truckers!
2nd advanced game for Ryan and myself while 1st advanced game for wolfx. Wolfx is looking particularly happy here because his final conquest of a colony netted him an 11point culture bonus. The scores were quite close, myself barely pulling out first with Ryan hot on my heels.
Ryan’s initial draw of Hammurabi and the Pyramids worried wolfx and myself as we found ourselves lagging 2 actions behind. I tried out an early ‘brain juice’ strat by building a 2nd lab on my second turn, rationalising that the extra invention points can afford me the Code of Law invention later. Wolfx of course barely new what to do as he found himself having to deal with the happiness and corruption rules this time.
A Taj Mahal in mid game saw Ryan’s investment in actions points paid off as he started chalking up the culture points. Theocracy and War Tactics gave me enough military actions to draw lots of military cards, thus affording me lots of bonuses to colonise my first colony. Wolfx at this points was still floundering as he saw the gap widened between himself and the rest.
The key point came as wolfx build up enough military to take the last colony. This particular colony gave him an eleven culture point bonus that put him just within distance of the leaders. Of course the game ended then and there but the gap could have been wider should the game progressed further.
The inventioin strategy did pay off for me in this game and Ryan and Wolfx did manage to catch up in the invention (brain juice) department by mid game. Perhaps the next game I could consistently pushed the invention points, as by the end, I found myself lacking the points for the more advanced technologies.
This game is getting more and more interesting for me and should get a few more plays before graduating to the FULL game.
We did Hamburgum (me, wolfx, jack208, blownfreaks & wonglc) A “better” session in that there was less rushing and more “ooh” and “ahh”-ing over each other’s actions. Points are lower in this game, perhaps more screwage? Wolfx won with an overwhelming advantage in ships points. I have detected a curious tension in the ships whereby uncareful players can be muscled out of the docks and left with no ships to sell their goods. This deals a devastating blow to the pace of the players affected.
In this game, both jack208 and myself were affected by wolfx’s gambit and knocked us a knotch below wolfx. But the points difference is about 10 points and so we were still not too shabby. Blownfreaks, who played this game before and opened with a confident “church” move, ended up way behind, scrapping for 4th place with wonglc. Blownfreak’s red district strategy got screwed over by jack208’s timely grabbing of the associated victory point tile.
Overall, a promising discovery of the ships pacing mechanism, but a potential king making problem with the ease of which screwages of victory point tiles can be done.
Next we did Intrigue (me, wolfx, wolfx’s fren, jack208, blownfreaks). Now this is flat out the type of game which I’m not fond of. It is pure negotiating and backstabbing, the only skill applied here is how well you can trash talk/spin a pretty tale. Basically, it is Santiago style bribing with the added risk of the bribe-ee not honouring the bribes! Yes, take their money and kick them down at the same time. I also did some cooperative trading ala Containers with blownfreaks which saw both our holdings rise significantly against the others. Although I won, it’s still not my type of game. jack208 and wolfx got backstabbed to death in this game and there was nothing they could do to convince the others to give them a chance…
In the Year of the Dragon was also played with waiyan, yeeling and isabel. Alas, I still don’t have the chance to try this game. Perhaps next time!