BGC OTK 26/8/2011

This is the first time we're going to OTK meetup in ages! Finally had a chance to attend this meetup when we're back for the Hari Raya break.

We arrived at 9pm and we thought we were early, but actually there's already one group of people playing Nightfall when we arrived! Missed out on that game :O Would love to try that some day.

JC: I also thought we were early but when we got there, there were about 9 people there already! I guess games start once there is 4-5 players but we wanted to do a trial run of Eruption first before we went to OTK =)

Interestingly, on my first play, I was lucky enough to get 2 Rain cards which could reduce 30 degrees of heat from my village each so I played it towards the end and it really helped cool down my nearly burning village =)!

Game #1: Eruption

This game is yet to be released, and they are offering a PnP version in exchange for a review so I took their offer on BGG hehe.

I made this game last minute (the night before OTK, in fact) and grabbed whatever I have at that time as temporary component for the game. Used Power Grid (the only box that fits the map nicely), Citadel cards (it was sleeved already so I can just slide in the new paper in front of the card) and Cashflow (which explains the cheese). Blasphemy, some would say.

JC: Actually, I'm quite shocked! People are really familiar with boardgames and cardgames!! People who saw the components immediately recognized that they were from games they knew and identified them nearly immediately! I'm quite new so... If Jun yet didn't tell me where they were from, I most prob wouldn't have known xD!

Yeah yeah I know, the board is not perfect. Some of the things seem out of place. But hey, it's free :P
(well technically speaking the printing and cardboards aren't free )

Soon after the game began, the lava began to flow towards the purple and blue villages. Note the straw (yellow) wall that CK (blue village) build.

Whoa my village (orange village) is burning up after a new eruption spot happened right next to my village! No one is spared, everybody has got some lava to deal with. But it looks like Jacelyn's red village is taking heavy fire :P

JC: Very heavy fire to be exact!! I was surrounded!!! By lavaaa! It's payback for me directing lava flow to the other side =P

You know something bad has happened to you when your opponents are celebrating.

I managed to direct some lava flow to the sea, but I didn't have enough walls to defend my village. And my straw walls sure don't look promising against the LAVA.

WOW. Jacelyn is holding up pretty well against the heavy flow of lava! She managed to build so many stone walls to protect the village... for now. The lava has yet to challenge the wall.

JC: Next time, I should just build straw walls =P!
Seems like CK's straw walls were stronger than all our walls put together!!

One of the final moments - note CK's straw wall (finger pointing)?  It stood, for a very, very long time despite the continuous lava challenge. Way to go, wall!

CK won the game in the end, with the most 'chilling' village.

JC: CK definitely had the coolest village (literally xD)
He actually manage to stay at zero degrees for ages and when I was at the 3rd Danger zone, he was only at the first! We only spotted CK's lack of damage somewhere midgame but it was too late to bring up the heat on CK.

Game #2: Imperial

After Eruption, Imperial was brought to the table. I've seen the cover of the game many times but never bothered to read more about it. But after playing this, I realized how much I've missed out :P

Boss teaching the game.

"Switzerland, the boring place."

Impending war.

All the nations come with unit-producing factories. Hmm does factory produce infantry? Rhymes a bit, but sounds wierd. Maybe they produce artillery, since the land unit meeple looks like one.

 I controlled the mighty German Empire, and it came along with some Italian share. Hail Hydra!

 Mid-game. German (black) is taking heavy suppressive fire from the French (blue, Kareem). *hisses* French was trying to stop the German from imposing tax on German land. 

Such noble cause.

 German is still in the lead for credibility hehehe. But not for long. In fact, German's credibility has not gone up since that glorious times.

 England decides to destroy Germany once and for all. Yikes, his ships and troops are coming in!
I decided to abandon ship. It is beyond salvation. I took all the money in the nation and left muahaha.

I was proud to say that I once have control over 2 nations. I bought over England's majority shares! But I lost my control before I even got the chance to move those pesky Englishmen out of my land.

 Jacelyn's Italian shares. Didn't take a picture of Austria, but he was holding almost all his shares. Austria won in the end, though French was the one who triggered the end game condition (credibility of 5). Even though Austria's credibility multiplier was only 3, he had like, 20+ points of Austria share. That easily gave him a 80-90 points. Nobody else invested in Austria because he's not taxing his people (which means his credibility was relatively low), and this allowed him to wallup all the shares himself.

GG. Got my ass kicked.

JC: To be honest, when we started this game, I had ABSOLUTELY no idea what to do or what's going on!
One moment I'm randomly building up artillery and ships and suddenly the French (Kareem) comes and attack me!!
Since then, I just kept building up on factories, artillery and ships and shoo'ed whoever to came to disturb me (i.e. Kareem) then when I was near the Investor or Taxation, I just randomly went and did it xD.
In short, I enjoyed the game although I had no idea what was going on =P!

Game#3: 7 Wonders

Jacelyn has been meaning to play this game for a long time. Guess why? The artwork.
I admit the game looks quite pretty though. I've done card drafting before for other CCG/Agricola, but this is the first time I see a game with card drafting as it's core mechanic. Interesting.

Sifu sitting out and teaching the game.

They seem to know what they're doing.

Honestly I don't get the game at all. I don't know what resource is used for what and I just built blindly haha. And ended up that I have to keep buying resources from my neighbors.

JC: Haha! I too was puzzled as to what to do! I knew I most probably needed resources most so I just randomly kept stocking up on my resources =P!
Wasn't sure what else to do actually so I built up on military forces as well xD!

She looks confused but her nation's a violent one.

JC: Hey.. Hey.. You attacked me too k! =P!
Plus, I was really blur!! It was 12am+ (Not good time for brain to work)

 

 Yup, the lowest score belongs to me.

 We played another round, this time with Leaders. Boy, the leader cards looks super pretty!

Jacelyn's

JC: I was lucky enough to get the starting card which made it free for me to play leader cards which I enjoyed since all the money just came in from left and right for my resources hehe.

Thinking back, it was a fun yet absolutely confusing game because I tend to AP quite a bit and card drafting doesn't make AP go away =P.

I do like the variability of each game play since you'll always get a different set of cards everytime and you'll never know what the person on your left or right will have =D!

Yes, I have no idea what was I doing :P

We left around 3am, and I suspect others stayed till dawn. Good game guys, see you all in the next meetup!

We have been promoted! Hehehe.

JC:

It all started right after the Boardgame Retreat by BGC at the beginning of June. We were so new that we knew no one at the retreat except that Jun Yet knew CK and Wai Yan. Me, I had absolutely no idea who was who.

That definitely did not deter me from coming from the Boardgame Retreat by BGC! I only started playing boardgames last year and I really enjoyed it so having a chance to try out numerous boardgames in 2 days was an awesome treat!

A few weeks after BGC's Retreat, I had my holidays so I was back in KL and I was itching to play games, especially new games so I kept bugging Jun Yet to bring me to the well known BGC's OTK gaming sessions on Friday. We went the first week that we got back to KL and the second week that we were there. It was so much fun!! Right after these two initial visits to OTK, I made sure that if I was in KL on a Friday night and I wasn't half or totally dead tired, I would go to OTK with Jun Yet =)! (Can't wait to go OTK this Raya Break!)

A few weeks after that, I signed up for the BGC Community forums and it was a blast! I absolutely enjoy discussing, chatting and sharing with people, most of whom I have not met, my love of boardgames! Everyone is just so friendly and it feels great to know that there is such a great forum for Malaysians.

Our boardgame frenzy started with one innocent pledge on the boardgame "Startup Fever" by Jun Yet in June. After that, I saw "The Manhattan Project" and I was attracted to it immediately =D! To my surprise, Jun Yet approved! So I pledged for that game and somehow a wave of Kickstarters just followed!

Jun Yet and I even discovered a few Kickstarters ourselves! We were sure we were going to pledge for it but we wanted to ask CK for permission before we announced it on BGC's Facebook page or the forum but I was absolutely anxious! "What if CK says no?", "What if CK doesn't like the game?", "What if no one else wants to pledge?" were some of the thoughts that ran through my mind.

Jun Yet being the more calm and collected one assured me that even if no one pledged, it's okay but still I was nervous.. It might sound silly but trust me, for 2-3 days, I was a wreck waiting for a reply CK =P!

We had so much fun just being involved with boardgaming and boardgamers so I was shocked when CK casually mentioned "at this rate she's going, I may have to give her the BGC Evangelist badge soon... " in one of our forum threads! I was excited and shocked but I felt that I wasn't ready.

So you could only imagine how elated and dumbfounded I was when we saw this update on BGC's Facebook.

I was just about to go to sleep that night when I saw that update on Facebook. I got so excited that I was calling Jun yet ever so urgently and when he came over, he was jumping all around and I was too =)!

A big thank you to BGC and CK! :)

Dominant Species (Again)

Kam sau: Junyet/JC (Insects), Pat (Reptiles), Jo (Arachnid), Niyi (Birds), Hans (Amphibians)

JC: Hehe. This is the first time I've paired up with Jun Yet even though we could play one more player

I've always liked insects! We picked our animals randomly this game.

Everybody getting into position, ready to kill each other. This game is gonna end bloody.

Insect (green) was among the first to gain access to a sea tile. Unchallenged, insect dominated there for the first few rounds muahahaha.

It almost seemed too good to be true.... Well Amphibians glaciated my starting tile, wiping out all the grass elements there accidentally in the next wasteland phase. Not life-changing, yet.

I purposely left only 1 grass element on my precious sea tile so that nobody else can survive there.

Ok this was quite random, Terence came over to have some durian while we're playing the game lol.

Insects (green) is happy to be in the sea and desert hehhe. Nobody has decided to disturb me... yet.

 Yikes. Someone played blight on my tile. Suddenly all my species there are endangered :O
Bummer.

Post-apocalyptic scene.

Insects were wiped off the face of the earth in one go. Culprit: Arachnid (Jo, Red)!!!!!!!!

A desperate attempt to regain my position. I made my insects breed there, hoping that I can place a grass element somewhere on the tile via Wanderlust or Aquatic domination card. But Arachnid purposely took whatever I wanted to take, even though it does not benefit her!

Now that's how a real boardgame is played.

WAR.

 But it was too late, insects only have 3 species left. Dang.

Now even the amphibians came over. No chance at all at dominance, with amphibians and water elements around.

Niyi, now finally playing Birds, is doing her thing again. This quickly became her signature move.

Patrik (Reptiles, black), suffering from AP during his last migration action. :P

Arachnids (red) and Reptiles (black) practically has dominance over the whole board. Reptiles major in tundra tiles and Arachnids major in annihilating Insects and taking over their home. :(

My insects will haunt you till the end of time.

Insects with 113 points, 3rd place. Lost because of lack of dominance. End game dominance scoring from Ice Age gave Reptiles and Arachnids at least 30 points each!

Scoreboard:
Arachnids: 2 victories (JC, Jo)
Birds: 1 victory (Isuru)

Post mortem:Perhaps I should have adapted to more elements.. Poor survivability in the mid game really destroyed my chance at winning! I only have 2 grass and 1 meat then.. And certainly things went down the drain when Arachnids took away all the grass elements on my side of the board and put her grubs there.
Luck wasn't on my side too I guess, there was no grub for me to adapt to when I needed one. But I guess I have no chance against Arachnids on tiles with grubs anyway even if I've adapted to grub. Don't mess with spiders.

Dominant Species

We're back for another round of the fight for survival.

Animals: Niyi (Mammals), Pat (Arachnids), Isuru (Birds), Junyet (Reptiles), Jacelyn (Amphibian)

Briefing everybody about the coming Ice Age.

   

Too bad Nick came home late, he was quite interested in the game hehe but coincidentally we always play when he's not free.

Early in game the Reptiles (red) had to compete with Mammals (white) and Arachnid (black) for space. Earth is too small for all of us!

That's Niyi doing her classic  bird eye's view move. Though ironically she's not the one playing as Birds. Err, Jacelyn wasn't the Birds too.

JC: Apparantly, this actually gives you a great view and a good idea of what's going on =D! I tried it but it didn't work that well for me =P!

Hans came to join us later after studying  :P

Even Patrik started doing Niyi's move too. Note that the Bird player was Isuru. He was doing his double migration action again, which needs a lot of calculation I suppose. But to all of us he's suffering from analysis paralysis hehehe.










JC: Isuru really calculates precisely before he migrates or even spawn his birds because he makes sure that the Arachnids and whoever is at the competition area will not be able to wipe him out.

It might take him some time but he was precise in making sure that he gets to conqueer the tundra!!

Scores were quite tight mid-game

Picture courtesy of Hans hehehe.

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Isuru did a very smart move, he migrated to everyone's tile and piggy-backed on everyone's domination scoring. Though he did not have access to Domination cards, he had a very strong position in the game because he practically gets points whenever someone dominates a tile.

By the way, that's his AP look :P



My hands are a wee bit too big for the tiny weeny cubes and element disks.



JC: Trust me, he wasn't posing for this =P! He was actually AP-ing xD!

Hence such a clear shot when normally it would've been blur if he had moved =P!

Somebody is planning something evil at the tile I was on.

With more and more Glaciation tiles coming up, Birds (yellow, Isuru) had more places to go. Isuru scored a LOT of points just by staying in the tundra tiles, and it was extremely difficult to dislodge his position.

JC: Oh yeah! He also adapted to everything! That helped him survive relatively well in the tundra and being able to move 2 spaces meant he was able to maximize his tundra points!! Grrr!!

Birds were already  way ahead of others right before Ice Age. Unstoppable!

Needless to say, Isuru won. It was quite an impressive win. +1 victory to birds!

Score board:
Arachnid: 1 victory (JC)
Birds: 1 victory (Isuru) 


Post Mortem:

As Reptiles, I should have adapted more elements since I have a free regression action. I rushed domination to grab the cards early on, and by the time I wanted to adapt, all the slots have already been taken.

Rawr. Next time, Isuru. Next time.