ÿþ<html> <header> <title>My boardgame hobby</title> </header> <body bgcolor="#FCFCCC"> <center><h2>My boardgame hobby - August to October 2005</h2></center> <hr> <table cellpadding=10><tr> <td valign="top"> <u>Sep - Oct 2005</u> <p>No big boardgame gathering recently. Usually just Han. Still only one regular kaki. </p> <p>I finally got to play Taj Mahal, which I have bought for a long time. This is minimum 3 players. Michelle and I played each controlling two players. Taj Mahal is often said to be best with 4 players. Hopefully soon I'll get to play a real 4 player game.</p> <p>I discovered that I have played Lord of the Rings with many rules mistakes. Now Michelle and my target is to win the game at difficulty 12 (i.e. normal difficulty) using the correct rules. We've only beaten the game at 12 once before. Our mistakes include:</p> <ol> <li>When completing a scenario, the new ringbearer draws two hobbit cards <li>Players are not allowed to pool their shields together to seek Gandalf's help. A single player must have 5 shields in order to call Gandalf. <li>If playing two cards, the cards are resolved independently and can be for different activity tracks. <li>Frodo can only use white Hobbit cards as jokers, not white feature cards (which often have two symbols instead of one). <li>Cards with two stars can be treated as different symbols, except for when applying it to activity tracks. <li>The "Sauron advance one step or player advance two steps" event tile need not be applied to the active player. Another player can choose to advance two steps. </ol> <p>I played Aladdin's Dragons (Han bought it recently), a game by Richard Breese. It has blind bidding as a key mechanism, but I enjoyed it more than I expected. There is quite a bit of strategising and planning to it.</p> <p>I taught Mei and Chee Cheng to play Lord of the Rings and Mei is very impressed with this Reiner Knizia design. We won the game, although I tried not to give many directions and let them explore and discover the game and the strategies by themselves. We did start at 15 (easy level), and I think we were lucky with the tile draws. Maybe next time 13. </p> </td></tr> </table> <table cellpadding=10> <tr><td valign="top"> <center><a href="hcs_20050911_0066.JPG"><img src="hcs_20050911_0066.JPG" width=450 border="0"></a><br><i><a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/54">Tikal</a>: I waited a long time for this to be republished. This was the winner of the SDJ award (German Game of the Year award) in 1999.</i></center> </td><td> <center><a href="hcs_20050911_0071.JPG"><img src="hcs_20050911_0071.JPG" width=450 border="0"></a><br><i><a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/54">Tikal</a>: Designed by Wolfgang Kramer (& Michael Kiesling), who also designed <a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/555">Princes of Florence</a> (with Richard Ulrich), one of my favourite games. Illustrated by Franz Vohwinkel and this is his proudest work.</i></center> </td></tr> </table> <table cellpadding=10> <tr><td valign="top"> <center><a href="hcs_20050917_0137.JPG"><img src="hcs_20050917_0137.JPG" width=300 border="0"></a><br><i><a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/475">Taj Mahal</a>: Middle of the game.</i></center> </td><td valign="top"> <center><a href="hcs_20050917_0138.JPG"><img src="hcs_20050917_0138.JPG" width=300 border="0"></a><br><i><a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/475">Taj Mahal</a>: Bored Shee Yun to sleep</i></center> </td><td valign="top"> <center><a href="hcs_20050922_0007.JPG"><img src="hcs_20050922_0007.JPG" width=300 border="0"></a><br><i><a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/823">Lord of the Rings</a>: Finally I remember to take a proper picture of Lord of the Rings. This photos shows a game with the Friends & Foes expansion.</i></center> </td></tr> </table> <table cellpadding=10> <tr><td valign="top"> <center><a href="hcs_20050925_0037.JPG"><img src="hcs_20050925_0037.JPG" width=450 border="0"></a><br><i><a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/106">Mystery Rummy - Jack the Ripper</a>: Michelle and Han</i></center> </td><td valign="top"> <center><a href="hcs_20050925_0038.JPG"><img src="hcs_20050925_0038.JPG" width=450 border="0"></a><br><i><a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/12">Ra</a>: Jeanne and Han. I played this a lot with my Taiwan boardgang last year.</i></center> </td></tr> </table> <hr> <table cellpadding=10><tr> <td valign="top"> <u>Wed 31 Aug 2005</u> <p>Only one kaki managed to come on Merdeka Day. I taught Han Java and Lord of the Rings, both new to him. Originally I thought about playing Tikal, which he brough to me that day (I bought Tikal from Edwin through Han), but since it'll take time to punch out the pieces Han suggested we try another one in the series (the other one being Mexica). Java is the 2nd in the series and also the most complex. </p> <p>Java went well. This series of games is well known for AP - Analysis Paralysis. Not a game to play with people who tend to take a long time to think about their moves. Java went quite smooth for us. It took us just a bit more than an hour to complete the game (including rules explanation). Initially I had a lead, but Han later caught up and at the end of the game we drew at 103 points.</p> <p>After Java we played Lord of the Rings. I like teaching it to new players and observing how they learn and play the game. By the time we reached Mordor, Sam (ringbearer at the time) was only one step away from Sauron. We still had many cards, and I thought we still had a decent chance of fulfilling our quest. Unfortunately I forgot about the "ringbearer corrupted by one step" event tile, which I drew, and killed me (playing Sam). Aarrgghhh... perhaps I should have spent my previous turn to recover one step on the corruption path.</p> <p>Hey, this is the first time Shee Yun didn't appear in any of the photos. She was sleeping upstairs when we played.</p> <ul> <li><a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/855">Java</a>: Han & me 103 <li><a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/823">Lord of the Rings</a>: Han as Frodo, me as Sam. Failed our quest. Score 53. </ul> </td> <td valign="top"><center> <img src="hcs_20050831_0013.JPG" width=450><br><i><a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/855">Java</a>: Almost at the end of the game</i> <br><br> <img src="hcs_20050831_0014.JPG" width=450><br><i><a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/855">Java</a>: An interesting 3-dimensional game</i></center></td> </tr> </table> <hr> <table cellpadding=10><tr> <td valign="top"> <u>Sat & Sun 20-21 Aug 2005</u> <p>A good gaming weekend, with gaming sessions on both Saturday and Sunday afternoons. Saturday was with my Accenture friends, and Sunday with Han my regular kaki and Russ my colleague - a newbie. </p> <p>On Saturday we started with Coloretto, the game that everyone is familiar with. Alex, who is new to the game, won both games! After that I taught them Bohnanza and Ticket To Ride Europe. They liked both a lot. I knew they'd like Bohnanza, because it's very interactive - definitely good for an outgoing bunch. It was my long-awaited plan to start introducing them to boardgames (in addition to card games), thus Ticket To Ride Europe. It's easy to learn, and I prefer it over the original Ticket To Ride (which is probably more suitable for newer / casual players). I came dead last! One of Say Young's tickets (Paris - Edinburgh) overlapped squarely with a portion of my long ticket (Athena - Edinburgh), and I had to use 2 train stations. Plus some bad risk-taking and bad luck (failed to claim the 6-train route 4 times in a row). Ai Rin won hands down - happily building her routes on the eastern edge while everyone else is fighting and blocking one another over central Europe.</p> <p>On Sunday I taught Russ Lost Cities, and after Han arrived, we played Domaine. I haven't played Domaine for a long time. Not one of my favourites, but it's a medium-light game, which is suitable for newbies. I did pretty badly in both games, coming in last in both. Hmm... I need to improve. Russ enjoyed the games. Hopefully another regular kaki in the making for me. :-)</p> <p>On Sunday night Shee Yun slept earlier than usual, so Michelle and I managed to play a game of Lord of the Rings and two games (on internet) of Ticket To Ride Europe. This time playing LOTR we increased the difficulty and started Sauron on 14. It didn't make much difference though, as the winning or losing was determined by the event track in Mordor. We played through the first three scenarios - Moria, Helm's Deep and Shelob's Lair - pretty smoothly. Not too corrupted by the ring, and managing to keep a decent number of cards. We had collected a lot of shields at the start of the last scenario, Mordor, and we haven't even used a single Gandalf card. However things went bad in Mordor. I (as Frodo) died. (at the time Michelle as Sam was the ringbearer) We had to use all 5 Gandalf cards. And events went all the way down to the second last one. If we reached the last event, we'd lose immediately even if the ringbearer is not caught by Sauron yet. Michelle managed to reach the Crack of Mount Doom to destroy the ring just in time. If it had taken her another turn, we would have failed in our quest to destroy the One Ring, because the next tile was an Event tile. That was a REALLY close and very enjoyable game. </p> <p>Games played:</p> <ul> <li><a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/5782">Coloretto</a>: Alex 25, Ai Rin 24, me 23, Chai Ling 19 <li>Coloretto: Alex 32, Chai Ling 29, me 29, Ai Rin 25 <li><a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/11">Bohnanza</a>: me 15, Chai Ling 14, Alex 11, Ai Rin 10 (only played through the deck once) <li>Bohnanza: Ai Rin 18, Chai Ling 17, Alex 15, Say Young 15, me 13 <li><a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/14996">Ticket To Ride Europe</a>: Ai Rin 134, Alex 107, Chai Ling 106, Say Young 73, me 70 <li><a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/50">Lost Cities</a>: me (winner), Russ (only played 1 hand) <li>Lost Cities: me (winner), Russ (only played 1 hand) <li><a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/5737">Domaine</a>: Han (winner), Russ, me <li>Domaine: Russ (winner), Han, me <li><a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/823">Lord of the Rings</a>: Michelle as Sam, me as Frodo (killed in action), won with 66pts <li>Ticket To Ride Europe: Michelle 128, me 124 <li>Ticket To Ride Europe: me 139, Michelle 130 </td> <td valign="top"><center> <img src="hcs_20050820_0052b.jpg" width=450><br><i><a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/9674">Bohnanza</a>: I'm green and I stink</i> <br><br> <img src="hcs_20050820_0055b.jpg" width=300><br><i><a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/14996">Ticket to Ride Europe</a>: Don't worry, Shee Yun is not eating a train.</i></center></td> </tr> </table> <hr> <center>Back to <a href="http://hecose.tripod.com/boardgame/boardgame.html">boardgame page</a><br> Back to <a href="http://choksienhiew.tripod.com">homepage</a></center> </body> </html>