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.