Agricola

This game needs no introduction. :)

 Niyi's first game. Her family had to beg twice this round hehe. Poor kids :P

 I was very satisfied with my farm hehe. No negative points! Plus tonnes of animals :D

Patrik - empty farm except for 3 boars. NOT his first game.

JC: Haha! I still remember Patrik nearly lost to Niyi who was absolutely new to this game.

Patrik had 17 points and Niyi had 18 points (Luckily for Pat, Niyi had two begging cards = -6 so Niyi = 12) then she added some random points from her Minor Improvements and got 16 points haha!

Hans - my competitor. Keep taking the animals I wanted to take!

Jc's farm. It may look empty but she scored quite well. She had an occupation which negates all her negative points (except for empty spaces & begging cards), and she scored a lot from improvements and family members.

JC: I got second or third with 26 points hehe.

Not bad for such an empty farm.

Thinking back.... I have NO IDEA what I did throughout the game, I guess it's because I took loads of animals but killed them all!!!

Agricola 2P

During the first week of purchase, me and JC was quite crazy about the game. We played 2-player version of the game. For 4 times.

 My initial farm, going for the baking strategy.

 One thing I like about 2P is that there are designated spaces to place the resources. Perfect for OCD people.

My happy farm :D I love cattles and sheep hehehe. I had an improvement that gives me food during harvest if I have certain amount of cattles.

 My farm in the second game. I had occupations that let me extend a room for free if i have 4 stone room, and another card that let me extend my house for free if I had 5 rooms. Hence the 6 stone room. Still, not a lot of points there, considering the fact that I worked really hard to get those resources required :P

JC's farm. Needless to say, I lost.

Agricola

By Junyet and Jacelyn (JC)

Agricola. Again.

Players: Junyet (Green). Jacelyn (Red), Jo (Cream), Hans (Blue), Isuru (Scarlet)

 

JC: I'm really glad that I bought this game =)!

Thanks to BoardGameCafe (BGC) who offered 40% off any game in stock if we went for the retreat, I got to buy this game at only RM165 instead of RM265 plus I got free animeeples due to the changes in the exchange rate.

 Isuru trying to self-teach the game. Patrik is clearly not helping him. "Hey that's my wanton mee"

JC: Stella asked the wanton mee dude to put more chilli in Patrik's packet but thanks to me, he took the wrong one =P

JC: Was studying the reference card to see when goodies are coming so that I can spam the "Starting Player" Muahaha!

 Hans' farm. Lots of field and grains. No animals :P

 Isuru's farm. Lots of animals. No field/grain hehe.

 JC's farm. Similar to Isuru's.

 My farm hehe. Rather empty. Built a huge fence to cover up my farm, to reduce amount of unused farm spaces, which gives negative points.

Jo's farm. I have no idea how she won. Yes she beat us senseless. I wasn't even close to her score T.T

JC: If you don't know Jo by now, she's the tiniest girl in the group but she always beats us senseless no matter game she plays even if it's her first try... FML...

Hansa Teutonica

Players: Pat (Yellow), JC (Red) , JY (Blue), Niyi (Purple)

Patrik Ho at his best.

This side of the board is empty except for JC's lone office.

See how fast my hands were moving? I was taking my turns very quickly. Every round. I swear.

JC: He's just covering up for his AP-ness =)! This picture is courtesy of Patrik Ho =D!

Latecomers have to stay and watch us play the game while waiting :P

Patrik AP. With Cheryl at the back.

She wants to take picture with everyone who AP lol.

Final score. JC won, followed by Pat and me.  She upgraded almost all her skills, and that gave her a massive advantage. I tried to score by city chains, and failed miserably evidently.

Space Alert

Players: JY, JC, Jo, Isuru, Patrik.

This was our second game of Space Alert.

We tried moving the cubes around and planning the resources during the game itself, instead of only during the resolution phase. It worked really well for us.

We survived. Next target - advanced simulated mission :P

 Blue spaceman - drinking Coke and moving the mouse once a while.

Other space marines running around frantically soon after they hyperjumped into the unknown space zone.

 Target destroyed!

 Perhaps Isuru wasn't as AP-prone as we thought.

Captain Patrik was very pleased with himself after we survived (the simulated mission) under his command.



Test Run: Agricola & Space Alert

Players: Pat, JC, JY, Jo Hans.

Agricola - #1 game on BoardGameGeek.

In this game basically we're farmers, and we're supposed to get animals, plant grains, vegetables, upgrade our houses etc.

So the essence of the game is that we need to have a good food income to feed our family during each harvest, so that we can focus on developing other parts of our farm. Both specialization and diversification are important, specialization tends to give you more food (usually via improvements/occupations), but you lose points for not having something (e.g you lose 1 point at the end of game for not having a sheep).

 Cattle joining the foursome to procreate.

 My farm at the end. I went straight to the animal strategy. Because the animals were so CUTE. I didnt slaughter any of the animals :P

Space Alert

Cooperative game. We're space marines with a simple mission- hyperjump to an unknown space zone, scout for 10 minutes and hyperjump back.  Oh there's one catch - monsters will come at you in waves after you jumped to the space. And having a Sitting Duck class ship is not very comforting.

The flow and pace of the game are dictated by the audio tracks provided in the CD. Some people find this lame. But honestly I think it's the best part of the game! Essentially every mission has a time limit and one simply cannot afford to AP during the mission.

 "Am I really gonna play this game? It looks so lame!"

Green: I'm gonna shoot these bastards. *Press Button A*. Nothings happens. *Jabs Button A*. Nothing happens. *Click Jab Punch Lick Press Button A*. Nothing happens.
Who forgot to put energy on the blue zone?

Meanwhile, in the white zone - the captain was playing with the pulse cannon. *Clicks Button A*. Charged pulse cannon with one energy and fires into space. Literally. This was repeated for another 6 turns, well-timed to miss every enemy.

Guess who was the captain? Me. :P

The leviathan tank wasn't so happy when we teleported into his backyard. He came at us angrily.

From the blue zone.

We died.



Hansa Teutonica

Players: Niyi, Pat, JC, JY

Game #1

Another game of Hansa. Niyi and Pat quickly became regulars to our boardgaming group. :)

 I really liked this picture. I was going with the blocking strategy, freeing my merchants early game and making sure my presence was felt all over the board hehehe. She displayed the expression that I wanted to see in everyone muahahaha I'm so evil wth.

 My skill development. I upgraded my Liberte Sophiae thingy to get more merchants :P

Game #2 

 This time I went for the longest chains - upgraded my chain multiplier :D

Establishing trade route from the west all the way to the far east hehe.

Yeah. My score.Way ahead of everyone's.  Because we played the rules WRONG. We're supposed to only replenish the bonus markers after the player's turn. I played like this - replenish each bonus markers immediately after you take one. So I claimed like, 2-3 bonus markers every round, exploiting those that gives extra actions.

Hey, I won. That's all that matters right? :P

Test Run: Hansa Teutonica

By: Jacelyn and Junyet

Players: Jun Yet (green), Jc (blue), Niyi (yellow), Nick (purple), Hans (red)

I quite like this game. Compared to other games, this game has very few components to handle. Games like, Battlestar Galactica, World of Warcraft and Power Grid etc requires playes to replenish this, arrange that, shuffle the cards every now and then, and I think it affects the game experience a little bit for me.

Hansa Teutonica is a simple, elegant game with a lot of strategy involved. And all you have to manage is your cubes. No cards, no resources to replenish, nothing. Just your hand of cubes, and your stock of cubes.

The theme of the game is that we're merchants trying to increase our reputation in the merchant's guild, by establishing trade routes.  Actually the mechanic drives the game, instead of theme.

Latecomers dont get to play! :P

JC: That annoying green piece came from Jun Yet =P. He specializes in denying easy tokens and upgrades and gets displaced 90% of the time.

 Staring intently at that corner of the board...... All of them planning something sinister there.

JC: My main aim of the game is just to upgrade anything and everything :P

Final score: Jacelyn won with quite a big margin. She upgraded most of her skills and was pretty much unstoppable.