1830, the railroad era begins. Jefg8, aanemesis, ceternal and I got together and became railroad moguls, robber barons for a night.
The initial private company sale saw jefg8 going for the CPR sister company, aanemesis experimenting with B&O’s sister company, ceternal trying out PRR’s sister company while myself settled for a random income generator.
The first stock round saw the typical investment of the railroad barons into the complements of their sister company, jefg8 – CPR, aanemesis – B&O, ceternal – PRR. As I took a random private company, I didn’t feel confined to one particular company and thus settled on C&O.
The first operation (OP) round saw CPR, PRR and C&O floating, all within the same par value of $82. All operating companies bought their first train.
The second stock round saw B&O finally floated with its minimum 60% shares subscribed. Aanemesis joined the fray one turn late. Will it be a turn too late? Second OP round saw companies declaring dividends for the first time, while gobbling up their second train. Obviously this being a veteran game means that everyone plan for the extra profit returns despite the short life span of the 2-train.
3rd OP round saw lucrative runs from CPR beating everyone else. But only C&O forged ahead with a risky 3rd train purchase.
The sale of the first 3-train saw the game shifting into higher gear as there are now 2 OP rounds each turn. The availability of the green tiles saw upgrades all around to maximise earnings on routes plied by existing 2-trains. The strategically bought 3rd train in previous round saw C&O’s dividends soaring. A timely joined blockage by PRR and C&O west of PRR’s homebase forced B&O to seek her future eastwards. Continued conservative spending by CPR meant that her dividends fell far below of C&O for the first time.
4th stock round saw aanemesis trying to float NNH in an endeavour to conduct a joined expansion program between B&O’s and New York (NY). Intervention by a certain cash-flushed C&O proprietor saw aanemesis’ plans shattered as NNH was stolen away unceremoniously.
4th OP round saw more route upgrading and expansions but otherwise no answers to C&O’s continued dominance of the dividends payout. NNH operated for the first time to dismal dividends return (due to its isolation from existing tracks). It however was building away from B&O’s home base.
Stock round 5 saw cash-flushed jefg8 and ceternal joining the 2nd-company fray with NYC & ERIE. Started as a means to complement their existing companies, ERIE meant to help CPR with its lonely expansion up north. Meanwhile, NYC worked in conjunction with PRR to tap the riches of NY together.
OP round 5 saw trains purchases flying fast and furious due to the new companies’ needs. Brown tile were made available as 2-trains were made obsolete. The viciousness of the 1830 game was made evident by the limited tiles as ERIE was forced to connect southward as the only tile available to connect northwards was used up. NY was quickly connected to and the lucrative route monopolized by PRR and B&O. Cut off from NY, C&O for the first time looked shaky and had to rely on its western links operation to save its fiscal performance. NYC quickly got in on the NY action together with NNH on the northern approach. Capitalising on NNH’s previous track building, NYC was able to generate a respectable return on the first run.
As the night goes on and the rounds became longer, it quickly became a game of attrition for us four railroad barons as we fought sleepiness to see who has the alertness left to maximize our train runs. Unfazed by his initial failure, aanemesis floated the last company, BM, to bring all players’ public companies to 2 a piece. New developments happened eastside of NY as BM tussled with NNH and NYC. Faced with no competitors, ERIE finally linked up with CPR on the north and complemented each other’s runs perfectly.
The final moments of the game saw ceternal made a mistake in disposing of his permanent 5-train to upgrade to a Diesel. A quick shuffling of trains and an injection from my personal funds saw C&O ending with two permanents while all other companies ran with one permanent train. This mistake was capitalized by C&O’s numerous runs before the bank broke, signaling the end of the game. Jefg8 during this while also developed ERIE and CPR unhindered to finally tapped into C&O’s lucrative western links.
Final game result:
Player Networth:
Ayheng: $9045
Aanemesis: $7434
Ceternal: $7213
Jefg8: $7080
Public companies final EPS (earnings per share), in order of startup
PRR: $32
C&O: $43
CPR: $30
B&O: $31
NNH: $19
NYC: $30
ERIE: $20
BM: $21
Analysis: ceternal would have done better in this game, alas he had a phobia of being hotsun (our term of being dumped with the ownership of a sub-par company), thus resulting in less than optimal share purchases. Jefg8’s CPR did not do too well, probably due to more often than usual dividends withholding. Aanemesis as usual did some funky experimentations that did not quite turn out fantastic results. Above all, I suspect that the purchase of the 2nd permanent train as well as the early risk of running 3 trains pushed the game in my favor.
Arrived 9pm to find rhyen teaching john, ceternal and shrapnel Mystery of the Abbey. Since phuah and myself knew the rules, we just jumped right in. A fairly friendly game, all of us shared information unreservedly. By the end of the first round, we have eliminated the Franciscans from the suspect list, a bunch of holy do-gooders.
Round 2 saw some scrambling for a cohesive process of elimination as the suspect cards began to move around. Information tracking became hard, but the narrowing down of suspects continues, albeit at a slower pace.
Round 3 saw some reckless questioning as the questions became more and more direct, to the point of asking whether a certain priest was being eliminated as a suspect, to the delight of all involved. This, of course is a bad move, as it allows other people to capitalise on the information.
Round 4 saw rampant accusations flying as it becomes harder and harder to eliminate suspects. Two innocent priest were fingered before rhyen finally accused the correct murderous father.
General impression was that the game take too long and the process of elimination bogged down towards the end. There were many a happy faces as the game end. Verdict: Mystery of the Abbey does not gel with 6 player. probably 3 or 4 is best.
Meanwhile at the next table, cmun and her gang of FHMs have arrived and started a game of That’s Life!. This is lostboyz’s favourite game as evidenced by his participation. jack208 and waiyan also arrived at this point and had a cuppa while waiting for the present games to finish.
After Mystery of the Abbey, table #1 moved to Race for the Galaxy, as instigated by the arrival of Sith Lord darth aa-nemesis. A few games was played while rhyen attempts to decipher the rules of 1870 on the spot. aanemesis and myself grabbed some victories each while ceternal struggled to emulate his 64-points feat. phuah got creamed as his military theory founded 2 weeks ago was shot to pieces.
Table #2 by now had moved on to Carcassonne and this is also lostboyz’s favourite game as evidenced by his continuous involvement. shrapnel also joined in at this point to observe. Later, cmun’s galpals bid adieu and a newly opened Cafe International was played between cmun, lostboyz, rhyen and jack208, not sure if shrapnel joined or not.
After Cafe International was done, rhyen and jack208 came over to table#1 and gave some pressure to aanemesis and ceternal to move on. And so they did move on to play 2-player Race for the Galaxy while rhyen, jack208, phuah and myself setup 1870.
The two Race crack addicts dropped by once a while to poke fun at the 1870 players every 15minutes or so, giving a running commentary of the game progress:
“still explaining rules ah?”
“still bidding for privates?”
“first stock round ah?”
“i see the first line of railroads on the board!”
…
yes well, for the 3 hours it takes for 1870 to reach the mid-game, aanemesis and ceternal probably played like 12 games of Races already. Then as table #2 gradually left, table #1 continued until the wee hours of the morning. I made a mistake this round of not ordering coffee and paid the price as my caffeine-starved brain struggle to compute the best route.
jack208 meanwhile took it like any other 18xx game and execute his ‘in-famous’ train shuffle tech. rhyen caught on too late to float his 2nd company while phuah steadfastly refused to start another. jack208 was then forced to take on a 3rd company to force the train rush.
Initial impressions is that the train rush is slower in coming. Perhaps we weren’t familiar with the ropes yet and started companies later than expected. Since the companies starts with 100% capital after 60% of the shares are subscribed, there’s no further incentive for more capital injection to be made into the companies. Player’s cash should then be used to startup new companies and I believe this can be done much sooner than what transpired in our game.
Furthermore, there were not a lot of share poaching in our game (buy at par and sell at current market value for a quick profit). Since unsold IPO shares will earn companies dividends, there is an incentive to poach the bonds and junk it to the market immediately.
There is also an element of share protection and share revaluation, but since poaching was not done often enough, this part of the game was not explored thoroughly.
The share protection mechanism (as read by us) allows a player to go above the 60% limit on the company ownership, as exercised by rhyen. But the cost in doing so would be the startup of a new company and the subsequent flexibility in shuffling trains and influencing the train rush.
Train qty limits are a constraint on the train rush sequence and if all companies’ train qty limits are maxed out, the onus is on the player owning the lowest level of trains to startup a new company and drive the train rush forward. This is one of the subtleties in this game.
The tiles mix are quite generous and we did not experience too much ‘incompetent engineer’ syndrome. However, like jack208 pointed out, perhaps the players weren’t familiar enough yet. There exists choke points on the board but there is quite often an easy way to bypass them as the board has a wide-open feel to it.
As mentioned, there are still aspects of the gme left unexplored, like the shares poaching, protection and revaluation, so can’t wait to get this game back to the table again.
After the game, rhyen opened to show his 18EU beautiful mounted boards and mounted tokens. The quality of the components are nice, typical of the high end of the deepthoughtgames line, but the map was a let down after the initial hype by jack208, as i thought it was fairly typical. However, the large number of minor companies in the game look nasty as is the crowded nature of the board. Soon perhaps we can play this game?
Arrived at Old Town Kopitiam (OTK) Cheras at 9pm. Found the usual suspects missing as aanemesis had to go holiday while lostboyz had to babysit children. I wasn’t to wait long, thankfully, as wolfx, jack208, keealvin and friend samuel arrived in quick succession.
The beautiful TTR: Switzerland map
Before the madness that is Rave for the Galaxy (RftG) started, I vetoed Ticket to Ride (TTR): Switzerland and proceeded to teach keealvin and samuel this game. This version of TTR is similiar in play to other versions, except that this map only accepts 2-3 players. The reason for this restriction becomes clear early as the three of us managed to block each other right at the beginning! Only a few routes claimed and the three of us already started groaning. Really mean game, lots of blockages and there are no stations a la TTR: Europe to save your ass.
Keealvin (left) and friend Samuel (right)
Samuel gave up on completing his tickets first and tried a different tack by drawing more tickets. keealvin soon gave up as well and followed suit. Not long after, even I panicked and tried to draw more tickets as it became apparent that connecting that last destination is going to be A Route Too Far. On hind sight, this is a powerful tactic as there are now city-to-country as well as country-to-country tickets. These tickets have 3 and 4 variable destinations. If you’re lucky, you get to score the maximum points for connecting the furthest location and even if you fail, you can still score less points for nearer destinations. If you’re unlucky enough not to connect to any destinations listed, you are only penalized the minimum amount of points. The effect is that drawing tickets are now a viable strategy against long routes.
The other innovation brought into this version of TTR is that the wildcards can only be used to claim tunnel routes. This decrease in power is matched by a loosening of a restriction: you can draw more than 1 face-up wildcard a turn. The effect again here is that face-up wildcards are more balanced as claiming one does not hamper your resources at all. The fact that there are lots of tunnel routes in Switzerland also helps.
So far so good, TTR: Switzerland’s a map that plays a tight 2-3 player game when you have less players. It’s a map that ‘fixes’ the face-up wildcard unpopularity. It’s a map that brings ticket-completion strategy up to par with long-route strategy. 100% recommendation from me. Beware, though, people suffering from complete-itis should not play this game, as there is a high probability of failing to complete tickets.
In our game, all of us failed to complete at least one ticket. Since keealvin and Samuel failed to anticipate my ending the game, they had a higher number of uncompleted tickets. Blocking also occurred rampantly as Samuel and I snapped up tunnel routes that keealvin failed. Keealvin is probably asking the gaming gods what wrong he did as he was hit with the maximum penalty to rescue his tunneling operations 3 times in a row. Painful!
The RftG madness has started! jack208, patomas deep in thought while wolfx giving his characteristic peace sign
Meanwhile, patomas arrived to help jack208 and wolfx kick start a Perlumbaan Cakerawala (RftG). Friedricetheman also came in shortly after to start a subsidiary Perlumbaan Cakerawala after the TTR: Switzerland game. Thank goodness that friedrice was there to do the induction, so that i was able to sit back, relax and chat about Ikariam with waiyan while he taught newbie racers keealvin, Samuel and wonglc. As wonglc did not catch the full rules, i stepped in and had a four way duel with Darth friedrice and newly initiated racers keealvin and Samuel. Darth friedrice and myself proved too powerful for the newbies and instead became Perlumbaan Cakerawala’s instant road kill on the first game. Darth friedrice’s score was slightly above mine and I thought i was holding my own. The second game proved me wrong as he proceeded to steam roll everyone with New Sparta. The wave of conquest just came out planet after planet amid cries of “This. Is. Sparta!”. There were 3 instant road kills in that game. Kudos to friedrice as he played fast and gave pointers to keealvin and Samuel at the same time. As we wrapped up and the keealvin friends took leave, friedrice intoned ominously that he’s been training up aanemesis the apprentice 4 times a week at the Mage cantina… Oh my gawd, more Perlumbaan Cakerawala Masters in the making!
Friedricetheman getting up close and personal in his RftG tutorials
wonglc looking blur as a sotong (left) while friedrice explains a point to keealvin and samuel
As rhyen arrived, a game of Mystery of the Abbey was then setup to intro BGCers in solving murders. Monk jack208, wonglc, patomas, wolfx and nun waiyan joined abbot rhyen in hunting for the murderer. Their game took a long, long time as their game had more participants than our previous hunt. More participants = more clues being spread out = more investigating time. More players also meant that questions such as “how many brothers have you seen?” could not be used to narrow down the suspects quickly. The general impression I had of the game that night was that the players are as ‘blur as a sotong’. This was supported by the fact that there were 3 wrong accusations made before rhyen fingered the right perpetrator. Although monk jack208 had his misgivings about the game and the rapid shifting nature, I guess that patomas and waiyan had fun playing detective. Wolfx and wonglc again i can’t tell their reactions but it should be a unique experience for them.
wolfx, patomas and wonglc investigating murders in an abbey
jack208 looking as blur as a sotong, waiyan plotting her next move and rhyen reviewing his notes
the mystery of the abbey board. as colourful as a days of wonders board can be.
On the other side of the table, a mini Perlumbaan Cakerawala was being held between phuah, who came straight from a friend’s bachelor party, and myself. Phuah played to acquaint himself better with the cards when suddenly, Darth friedrice showed up again. Apparently, he misplaced one of his Perlumbaan Cakerawala card and came back for it. In the process, he took time to give some random training to apprentice phuah who then proceeds to decimate me! Phuah then made a comment which could, or could not, be true: “The Race is won on military strength.”. Now, certainly the strength of an early dropship conquering a military genes windfall world is hard to beat… but i suppose with more plays subtle strategies may yet show. All Race games I played that night were won on the back of a strong military, a timely windfall world to replenish the hand and a Galaxy Imperium (or whatever the 6-cost military development is called) to deliver the coup de grace. I have faith that the game is not-so-easily-solved and i look forward to the next gameday to prove me wrong.
wonglc contemplating his moves, phuah drawing his cards, jack208 biting his nails in anticipation
As phuah and myself wind up our umpteen galaxy game (RftG is perfectly cool as a 2-player game too!), rhyen finally fingered the culprit in Mystery of the Abbey. As waiyan called it a night, phuah and myself joined patomas, wonglc, wolfx, rhyen and jack208 to have some good ol’ Bang!-ing action. As pointed out repeatedly by jack208, the outlaws need an early coordinated attempt to bring down the sheriff and in the 3 games that we played, I shot the sheriff at the first chance I got to rally the outlaws. Some confused shootings by the deputies meant that sheriff rhyen was quickly taken down in the first game. The second game the outlaws were going guns a blazing again and just when it seems that we were running out of steam, a stray dynamite fell onto the sheriff’s lap and took out a surprised wonglc! Hehe. The third game ended a little prematurely as wolfx did a ‘lostboyz’ and revealed the renegade even before the game was over. Yes, a gentle reminder to everyone AND this is stated in bold on the sheriff’s card: Sheriff and his deputies win ONLY when all the outlaws AND the renegade is taken down. Wolfx of course blame it on excitement and offer to shuffle the role cards of the renegade and the deputies to make amends. But since wonglc was tired and had to work tomorrow, not to mention that the renegade revelation had potong steam in the situation, we ended the game there and gave the game to the sheriff team.
jack208 plotting with his cards while rhyen showing off his fastest hand in the west
wolfx sez, that’s nothing! as he shows off his fastest hand in the east. patomas chuckles while wonglc tries hard to suppress a smile
The time honored tradition of late-nite gaming was upheld this day as patomas, phuah, jack208, rhyen and myself continue late into the nite by hunkering down to a deep game of Die Macher. Jack208, rhyen, phuah and myself had played the short 4-round version of this German election game previously. This time, patomas joined us and we took about an eternity to explain the intricacies of the system. As there’s no good place to start other than the deep end of the pool, we dived in this time playing the full 7-round game.
phuah tries hard to channel Angela Merkel while jack208 and patomas concentrates on the board
In this second game of ours, jack208, phuah, rhyen and myself deduced correctly that contesting each and every big state is key to winning the game. As the votes from the states are awarded according to a table instead of splitting between the victors, losing a state election may not be a disaster if you still gain lots of votes from it. In fact, the winners only get to influence the national opinion, and thereby gaining a few more supporters out of the result. Thus it stands to reason to contest for a big state solely for the huge votes it generates.
Another huge source of points is in the media markers. In this respect jack208, phuah and myself are in agreement and we wasted no effort in securing victory over states by using coalitions. Sure, you will bring the other guy up with you but seeing that 3 other parties without coalitions will fall behind, it is worth it. In my case, I went for the hard and fast media blitz, to secure those early and high pointers media markers. However, there is a drawback to the media blitz campaign and that is…
Late game media marker can be used influence the final national opinions. People say Malaysians are ‘mudah lupa’, but apparently Germans are the same as well, since the final national opinions is the only one that matters and provide valuable points. Regardless of how well your policies matched that of the national will/opinions during the mid-game, only the final opinion matters and in this respect, a conserving of media markers to influence the late game opinions are important. In this respect rhyen did well enough by winning the final state election and thus influencing the final opinions. Jack208 also did well enough to anticipate rhyen’s move and thus brought up his scores in this area respectably.
here’s a picture of rhyen, behind him the emptiness of an early morning cafe… as in 4am early morning.
The final area of importance is in the party membership. It stands to reason that the larger the party membership, the more influential and the more votes will be generated for the election. Thus the party membership numbers also count towards the final score. In addition, the party with the highest or the second highest members also will receive a bonus score. Phuah and myself focused well on this aspect of the election and gained the first place and second place bonus respectively. Interestingly enough, I held the upper hand throughout the first part of the elections but phuah gained on me through the ingenious bid on cheap public opinions and withheld their release to gain supporters. In effect, whatever detrimental consequences that his acceptance of corrupt campaign funds had, was offset and superceded by the subsequent use of the funds for massive publicity campaign. Simply ingenious.
In one of the pivotal battles of the state, I, as the initiative winner selected phuah as my coalition partner. One of the key reasons that I selected him was that he did not have a media control marker in the state and even if our coalition won, I would be the sole beneficiary of the media marker bonus. Opposing us was rhyen, jack208 and patomas. Under the Die Macher rules, a single party can never win against a fully maxed out coalition and the three of them knew that an opposing coalition is the only answer. After much deliberation, jack208 formed a coalition with rhyen. Perhaps it was the right move, or perhaps it was not. The end result was that rhyen suffered too much scandals in the state from my party’s smear campaign to fall short of the votes needed to beat our coalition.
A snap shot of the final tally. The points system explained: (from top) election vote points, media points, party member points, bonus majority, national opinion and final tally.
End result: me winner with the party FDP, followed by phuah’s Die Linken, jack208’s CDU/CSU, patomas’ Die Grunen and rhyen’s SPD. From the end results table, it can be seen that at least a focus on 3 of the 4 campaign areas is needed to secure a winning score.
As night approaches morning, patomas and phuah call it a day (night?) and retired home. Rhyen, jack208 and myself went dim-summing and end up discussing the various activities to come. There’s a June trip down south to Singapore while August sees a boardgaming event at Taylors. July’s my wedding date, all my boardgaming friends are invited! Will pass out the invitation cards soon.
I arrived with Phuah at 9pm to find ceternal already brought out his copy of Race for the Galaxy (RftG) and teaching it to lostboyz, aanemesis and rhyen.
Had a quick dinner and then proceeded to open another table of RftG with my set. Taught jack208, Phuah and jeffgoh and they all love the game!
A RftG game in session.
I’ve posted elsewhere my description of the game, which i reposted bellow:
So how does the game play? It plays like San Juan/Puerto Rico, in that there is a role selection mechanic. However, in RftG, the role selection is simultaneous. The term role selection is also a misnomer too. It’s more like action-selection. Allow me to explain.
There are 7 types of actions to be chosen. These 7 actions corresponds to one of 5 phases in RftG. The phases and possible actions are:
Phase Actions
1. Explore - Deep Exploring (draw 7 cards, keep 1) or Wide Exploring (draw 3 keep 2)
2. Develop - Build new developments
3. Settle - Settle peaceful planet or subjugate hostile planet
4. Trade/Consume - Trade goods for cards and/or consume goods for VPs
5. Produce - Produce trade goods.
Depending on what the players chooses, only those phases will occur. And unlike San Juan, some actions, like Explore and Trade/Consume, have two special bonuses for the action-chooser.
The game ends when all victory points are exhausted, or when a player has built his/her 12th card.
This can happen quite fast as there are only 12 victory points per person in the game. If all players pursue a produce/consume strategy, the game can end fast.
Another way for the game to end and this happens in both our games, a player can set himself up to play two cards a turn - a build development card and a settle world card. (a develop/settle strategy) This can also quickly end the game with 12 cards built.
The key interaction in the game is that you have to guess and out-think your opponents on what actions they are going to choose. ideally you would like to do a few actions a turn and you like to get away by having your opponents choose those actions for you. You also have to be careful not to choose action that will benefit other players.
Other than that, the game itself can be quite… solitaire-like. you managing your own hand, settling, producing, consuming. Actions are simultaneous, so it feels like everyone is doing their own thing at times.
The good thing about this game is that there are lots more strategies to pursue than in San Juan. There are two card draw options in the Exploration action which lets you choose to go deep or go wide.
There are also two types of world to conquer, which require different strategies.
There are also 4 different type of trade goods for 4 different types of consume strategy.
There are also about 9 - 16 types of end game big VPs developments to pursue.
Except for a few duplicates, most of the cards are singletons. This makes for a different game everytime. The strategies will be subtly different depending on the cards you get.
This unfortunately also makes it difficult for beginners as the multitude of cards can overwhelm and makes card discarding a slow and involving affair. You have to read all the cards and then choose between them.
The symbols on the cards are simple but takes some getting used to. But for a newbie, it’s downright intimidating.
But for gamers who presevere, you’ll find RftG a meaty filler. a 30-60 min satisfying meals before the next game.
an 8/10 for me
Jeffgoh (right) snickering with his good military cards, whereas jack208 (left) contemplates his hand of alien technologies
Lostboyz (left) giving some pointers to Phuah (right) for his first game.
After that, we moved on to Darjeeling, with rhyen joining our table after getting confused by the RftG game at ceternal’s table. Phuah won this handily as nobody stop his timely flooding of the market with his tea as everyone else was struggling to scrounge together a shipment.
here’s a pic of the game at ending to make up for the lack of a pic for the last session.
Jack208 and jeffgoh wondered what went wrong in Darjeeling as they head on to the other table to join ceternal, aanemesis and lostboyz in an ‘easier’ game of 18AL. Highlights of the game was heard to be lostboyz’s almost triple hotsun in 18AL’s brutal economic system.
(from left) ceternal, jack208, jeffgoh, aanemesis (back towards camera) lostboyz playing 18AL.
Over at this table, a competitive game of Mystery of the Abbey was held between four Sherlock Holmes wannabes. There’s Phuah Holmes, Patomas Holmes (fresh from an indoctrination of RftG at the other table), Rhyen Holmes and myself.
Mystery of the Abbey is a cluedo like game with lots of special rules/powers thrown in. The game is played on a map of a monastery where the players will visit rooms to trigger certain actions. The Parlor Room acts like a traditional Cluedo room in that you may ask another player to show an innocent murder suspect that matches a certain description.
The Scriptorium, Library and Crypt each grants the players special powers to aid in their quest to uncover the murderer. The confessions and cell rooms will yield some random information about innocent suspects from the other players.
In addition, there is also a chamber for the players to declare their accusations and/or information about the murderer.
The winner of the game is the player who made the correct accusation and/or provide the most correct information on the murderer’s characteristics.
In first game, the players were too cooperative, resulting in a quick elimination of suspects and a dash to the chamber to make the first accusation.
The second game saw a bit more information restriction as the players used their vow of silence to deny vital information.
However the game has more subtle strategies than that and in both games, questions asked were either too inane to be of use or too direct such that it helps everyone else at the table. There’s is also the possibility of making false accusations early to confuse other players and send them down false paths.
This is certainly an interesting game and one which is far from being ‘broken’ as someone had suggested.
Phuah Holmes asked too much direct questions which results in the whole table sharing too much information about the murderer.
Patomas Holmes on the other hand asked too specific questions which is too slow in withering down the suspect list.
Rhyen Holmes tried to solicit the help of the powerful Library but both times failed to help him win despite giving him a big edge.
A final RftG game before settling into a long chit chat session before going home.
The winner in this gaming session? The RftG game. everyone who played it seem to like it and instead of playing it as a 30 minute filler, everyone plays multiple times of it!
I had written a review on Agricola sometime back on BoardGameCafe.net but have not got to repost it here. After the recent game with Tom Vasel from TheDiceTower.com, I now feel compelled to post… enjoy:
Gaming with the illustrious Tom Vasel, fellow Malaysian boardgamers Dave, Chua and Edwin with Ryan looking on
Basically macedwin has covered the basics of the game and the descriptions can be found easily elsewhere which are much more comprehensive than what i can do, so i’ll just concentrate on my response and a description of our game:
First off, this game rocks! being a farmer is not easy and it’s fun just to see how much VPs you can squeeze out while attempting to feed your family. Everything counts for points in this game, what you have or do not have will impact positively and negatively on your score.
There is a certain flow to the game as the time for feeding of your family members gets shorter and shorter. so you scramble to get better improvements and learn more occupations to do things more efficiently. even when you are doing better than before, the game still puts you on the rope by up-ing the speed towards the end.
The game manages to feel tense throughout and you always obsess with trying to get just enough food to survive while trying to improve your lot in life when you have spare time/hands. Feeding your family is not enough, it is like what wolfx say during the game, you gotta raise your social stature as well, show your neighbours you have a better lot in life, like renovating your house to a brand new spanking stone-laid, or get that new oven hotness ![Smile [:)]](http://null/community/emoticons/emotion-1.gif)
.
The vaunted variety in occupation and improvement cards are not really game breaking, but they provide just enough of a difference to see people specialising in different ways. of course, it becomes much of a puzzle trying to figure out which cards to get because you can’t get them all (and you still have to do other things, like fencing up pastures) and realise that certain cards interact well with each other.
The two ways to get food: meat (sheep, boars and cattle) versus greens (grain and vegetables) also play off well with each other. Although meat does seem easier to feed your family, the greens can’t be ignored as well. Both resources multiply differently in your farm, in that two animals will get you a baby while sowing a grain will net you two extras. However the way to first grow them (fence up pastures and plough fields) are so radically different that you can’t really tell which is better at times. Plus, actions are limited and if you can’t plough a field because someone has already taken it, you have to keep at least a small pasture somewhere.
Right enough about my responses, how about the session? In this game, I won due to my diversified interest. Yes, yes, i win again, boring, but the scores at the end are quite close which means that specialising to a certain extent should win the game as well.
In this game, I diversified into all meats and greens, had a good field and pasture and work up a good score. The key idea is that I minimise my negative scores as the difference between having a resource or not can mean the difference between a +1 or -1 score. i basically did not attempt to learn new trades or get new toys to play with, I just bring out as many family members as possible to ‘work them fields’
Li Li on the other hand went into pastures. She had so many sheeps and boars and cattles at the end that they scored massive for her. The pastures are also good in reducing the negative scores for fallow fields. She came in 2nd.
Jian Fei went with learning new crafts and gettting new members of his family. By the end of the game, his family members were cabinet makers, pottery makers and basket weavers, sustaining themselves by selling wares and generating a huge VP at the end by stocking up on the materials of his trade: wood/clay.
Shaun the bummer had an interesting occupation which allows him to ignore negative points from resources, so interestingly enough, the whole game he was bumming all the time by fishing in the pond, getting enough food to scrape by and upgrading his house to an impressive stone structure. He could have got more points at the end from the stone house but unfortunately was one turn short so he can’t brag about his solid stonework (hehe). Shaun was fourth.
Wolfx did a boo boo and grew too much vegetables to come in last. The superspecializing backfired as the vegetables only scored points to a certain extent. I’m sure if he know what he knew now, he’ll do much better with his super fields strategy. As it is, still have to give him props for being the fastest player on board, gives me the pressure everytime from sitting left of him.
Macedwin graciously did not play (how can he resist?), as he’s doing translation and explanation duties but i’m sure he’s itching to get it out again. I give this game two thumbs up! Only thing is the comprehensive scoring at the end where anything and everything makes a difference, but who cares? A farming we will go, a farming we will go, hey ho a derry o, a farming we will go. Agricola, anyone?
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