Review: The Message

Hi guys! We're back in action... Temporarily.

First I must apologize for the late post on the review/update, we've been very busy with our studies lately (that's a good thing :P ), plus I wanted to play this game a few more times before I make any comment on it. :)

So, let's jump straight to the review.

Objective:

Collect 3 messages that matches your team's colour.

1. FRS wins as a team if any one member collects 3 blue messages.

2. KDR wins as a team if any one member collects 3 red messages.
3. MOF wins individually if he fulfills the winning condition as stated on his character.

4. Forget which team you're on or just for the fun of it, mess with everyone! (Most sought after objective =P)

JC: Haha! These are my cards! Someone sent a trap as a "Exposed message" and to be honest, I can't remember whether I was KDR, FRS or MOF but I took it anyway since if I was on the team, I would want it, if I wasn't then I wouldn't want them to have it and if I was MOF, I needed 3 red msgs I think hehe! 

Pathophysiology/ Expatiation:

(kudos to all the rules-reader out there who understands "expatiation".)

(a) Each player would be dealt a secret loyalty card, which reminds me of Battlestar Galactica and even The Resistance or Bang! So you're either FRS (blue), KDR (red) or MOF (individual/neither). I think the MOF really adds a lot of fun to the game, they ALWAYS spoil your plans.

(b) Player also start with a character card, which gives them special abilities.

**Some cards with has a "S" on the top right hand corner requires you to play it face down and only revealed when certain conditions are fulfilled. These special cards are quite fun to play since some of them have powers that you can use multiple times or a cool power that you can only use once per game =)!

The Message is a card game, pretty easy to pick up actually. During your turn you basically:

1. Draw a card
2. +/- play cards for their effects
3. Transmit a message (play a card for it's color - blue, red or black. If anyone gets 3 black messages, he dies.)

The meat of the game is during the message transmission, where people can intercept or peek at it using cards or do all sorts of thing to it to mess with each other.

JC: The peeking part requires some level of poker face =).

JC: Normally MOF's play like KDR or FRS to either gain trust or get Red or Blue messages as their secret or revealed agenda =P!

Thoughts:

+ FUN, especially with the right crowd.

+ Short version of Battlestar (one of our FAVOURITE game, Hans was supposed to guest blog about it sometime in the future... stay tuned!)..... But actually we played this game so often that I think we could have finished a few games of BSG. The difference is that in BSG, you get to mess with your friends once in 3 hours. The Message allows you to mess with your friends a few dozen times in 3 hours. Of course, they both give different kind of satisfaction. BSG tells an epic and memorable story, this game on the other hand is comprised of a lot of funny moments.

+ Relatively cheap. http://www.boardgamecafe.net/store/shopexd.asp?id=706

+ I like the artwork.


- Need a few games to really grasp how the game works, at times I worried that a few of my friends would lose interest in the game after the first 2 rounds.

- You tend to lose focus after a few consecutive games, sometimes even forgot who your teamate was. (hmmmm did I prove you this round, or was it the previous game?)

- The rulebook. And the words on the cards............. Can be REALLY hard to understand (due to direct translation from Mandarin, I suspect). But the plus point is that we had a good laugh at most of the cards when someone reads their character/cards out loud. This is not a big issue for me, but I expect that many potential buyers/players would be put off by this issue. The translation by Hiew is a MUST.

Prognosis:
The Message is a fun and casual game, and it comes with a pretty attractive price tag and a lot of good quality cards. It's not a game that one can play the whole night (you'll be really confused, with memories mixed up from game to game), but certainly deserves a play every once in a while, e.g while waiting for everybody else to show up for Dominant Species.
1-year survival rate (what are the chances that I'd still ask to play this game  after 1 year of playing this game) - 95%

The last few times I went to OTK Cheras, the people there was playing this game. And boy it was so funny, just looking at them laugh. I tend to gravitate towards middle-heavy games, games that basically gives the mind a good exercise, but games like this reminds me how boardgaming should be - fun.

JC: All in all, absolutely fun =D! It can be a filler or just a game you can play over and over again since there are so many different character cards that you'll never get bored of playing the same old one many times =D!

Plus we played it in a way that everyone gets 2 character cards and choose one from the two then the one that was not chosen was placed into a separate pile so that during the next round, you don't get the same cards again.

Exam Period.

We'll update the blog as soon as our exam is over! Probably this weekend. Stay tuned! :)

Agricola, Warhammer and Modern Art

With exam just around the corner, everyone seems stressed, including our usual gamers. Some had to stay home and study instead of joining us for games. Well, that's what boardgames are for right? To help relieve stress. Or in some cases, add on to it :P

Game #1: Warhammer Invasion

 Jacelyn and I purchased this game second hand from a fellow member from the BGC forum, it came with really nice sleeves for a good price. Since then we have been amassing our warhammer army, getting all the expansions available in BGC during the Opening Sales.

JC: When I first saw this game being sold second hand in BGC's forum, I had absolutely NO IDEA what it was about =P! I asked Jun Yet about it and the minute he said that he has played it before and that it was a good game, I bought it immediately =D! Thanks to my hoarding abilities, I now have loads of fun with this game =D!

Jun Yet wasn't lying when he said we bought all the expansions available in BGC =P! I even bought a Battle Pack because I thought the box looked awesome xD! 

That's me getting my gluteus kicked by Jacelyn in Warhammer Invasion.

That's our second game. Chaos (me) was unable to withstand the continuous assault by the massive orc squads. Took me some time to finish deckbuild 8 decks, but boy it was fun! Reminds me of the old time, playing Pokemon cards.

JC:  I would like to think that my skills helped me to win but to be honest, if Jun Yet hadn't help me make the decks, I highly doubt I would've won plus when I see so many cards, I just see stars =P!

Game #2: Modern Art

In denial of my defeat in Warhammer Invasion, I quickly set up the table for Modern Art and hope nobody remembers it.

Jacelyn from New York Art Gallery.

Hans from Paris counting his money.

Hans won by quite a big margin! His investment on Christine P's arts paid off quite well.

JC: Haha! During the last round, 2 people played 2 doubles of Yoko if I'm not mistaken and out of randomness, I just ended the game with only one card out =P! So it was Yoko +30,000 whereas everything else +0 =P!

Game #3: Agricola

Brought out our old favorite today. Haven't been playing this in a while, since the initial surge of 10 games in few weeks!

JC: I'm the type of person who absolutely loves expansions! Half the time, I don't even know what the expansion does but I always feel that no game is complete until I have all (or majority) of the expansions but after playing Agricola and having 10 of each Minor Improvements and 10 Occupations to choose from to discard 3 each, I then realize how many cards the initial base set already had!

These sheep need a bit of love.

Jacelyn swept the whole crowd and placed them in the spacious farm. Roam free!

Now, this is a rare sight - the usually carnivorous Jacelyn didn't slaughter any animals for food. :)

JC: I was too busy farming and getting wood la =P! With a maximum of 3 wood added at that action per round, it's hard to get any wood even with 4 players plus everyone was hoarding wood (Yes Jo! We're talking about you!)

Han's farm. A lot of underutilized spaces, but he's got tonnes of cattle. And a horse. We scored the same amount of points hehe.

JC: His horse was quite cool! Even though points were deducted for not having one of each type of animal, he got bonus 2 points so that helped to neutralize the points lost there =D!

As usual, Jo beat us again. Best farmer award goes to Jo! Smallest in size but not be underestimated.

JC: To those of you who have never played with Jo or Nick, these two people are the most quiet people and suddenly they kick your butts and you'll lose horrendously! Nick & Jo always Cylons on a random note.

Gaming Experience: New OTK! :D

16/9 - Malaysia Day. Public holiday. Also, new BGC/OTK (OTK Cheras ) opening day!

Jacelyn and I have been looking forward to attend this event since we heard about it. We used to play with peeps from boardgamecafe at Old Town White Coffee in Cheras on fridays every once a while, and we're excited to hear that they'll be moving the gaming event to their new place- next door! (3 minutes' walk away).

I was so excited that I couldn't sleep the night before! Yes it's totally not related to the fact that we had a farewell party/stayover at my friend's house the night before which ended at 7.30am.

We arrived shortly after lunch time but we couldn't find the shop as there yet to be any signboard and I forgot the address. Luckily Kareem was there to save us hehe.

JC: Initially, both Jun Yet and I were like "Aww man...!! We'll miss the Open Day!" because we thought the open day was on the 9th of September but still the boardgaming kids beat us to it =P!

Game #1: Modern Art

Modern Art was recommended by someone - we quickly set it up and had a quick game (and later bought it :P)

Basically it's an auction game, where players auction off paintings of different artists, trying to buy paintings at a lower price than the predicted price for the painting. It has quite a few very neat mechanics, and I certainly had lots of fun playing with it hehe.

My money in the 3rd turn muahaha.

My money in the 3rd turn muahaha.

*peeks at Jacelyn's money behind the blind*

*peeks at Jacelyn's money behind the blind*

2 Krypto's paintings going at 150k!

I really liked the game because I won of the player interaction, the suspense and how the market goes. One moment you think this painting is worth this price, another round later you realize that you overpaid for it!

JC:  It's really hard to see which painting you should pay more for because even though I had lots of Krypto's, I did not have any of those double auction cards so in just one round, another painting can just suddenly be the most wanted one!

Both Jun Yet and I definitely enjoyed this game and seeing there was the opening sales of 30%, we quickly brought it home as a part of our collection =)! We sleeved them and soon we'll get to play them =D!

Game #2: Eaten by Zombies

Special thanks to Kareem for bringing his copy of the game. The poor guy didn't even get to play it before this! Heard his gaming group aren't a fan of the theme. But anyways we're among the first in Malaysia to play this game hehe.

Jacelyn and I started the Kickstarter thread for this game on the forum and we managed to get quite a good deal for this game but the kickstarter has already ended. If you'd like a copy of this game, I suspect BGC will stock in some soon.


JC: Kareem also introduced Eaten by Zombies to all of us from BGC and thanks to Kareem, 12 copies of Eaten by Zombies are coming soon!!

Picking up the initial swags.

Essentially its a deck building game with zombie theme, where people can try to win cooperatively (which isn't fun in my opinion hehe), win by being the sole survivor, or by turning into a zombie player.

Kareem has the 40th copy of the game. The first batch are numbered.

Ainul joined us for the game, and he quickly turned into a zombie player... Thanks to us :P

"not my fault!"

The amount of zombies piled up in the later rounds of the game and it became almost impossible to fend them off! You cant kill them all, you cant outrun them too!

I died and joined the zombies.

Zombies (me and Ainul) won though hahahha.
The game was quite tense towards the end as Zharif and Jeremy were the only survivors and they almost won the game by killing all the zombies in the zombie deck! But in the last turn Jeremy drew a hand of zombie cards, which meant that the humans' mind were overwhelmed by the zombie outbreak.

JC:  This game kept me in suspense every round! You'll never know what kind of zombie would be hunting you down and you'll never know what you would draw in your hand which would determine whether you could outrun or kill the zombies.

I thought we might've done better if everyone just kept some zombie cards in their hands to share the load but it seems more fun to just unleash the zombies to your fellow friends =P!!

All in all, absolutely fun but definitely hard!

Game #3 - Cargo Noir


Smugglers. Collect goods via bidding and exchange them for victory point cards :D
Quite an interesting game,  and Kareem the bully was playing too :P

SO CUTE!!

The player mat adds some flavor to the game. This was Kareem's guy, hiding alcohols in his warehouse. My guy was  a Chinese guy :D

Game #4 - Samurai

Knizia's classic, I heard. Players take turns to lay tiles around a monument to collect the monument if your tiles have the most influence on it. There are three types: buddha, pau, and sticky (no idea what their real name is). I think it's interesting how the victory points are calculated. A player is only eligible to win if he has the most of one monument type among the players, and only each other type of monuments you have will contribute to your points. So you'll need to watch out what people are collecting and also balance out your monument collection. If you have 5 buddha, 1 pau and 1 sticky, and you have the most buddha at the end of the game, you are eligible to win, but you only get 2 points in the end (1 pau and 1 sticky). The tricky thing is that you NEED to have a majority share of one monument among all the players to quality for the winning condition, otherwise you dont even get to count your points :O

Setting up the game, we were super blur cos the rule is in German.

Again, SO CUTEEEEE! Cant see his face here though.

JC:  Haha! I had loads of fun during this game! Jun Yet and Jeremy was battling it out to get the pieces up there whereas Zharif and I just did our own thing at our little corners. 

At the end, I realized that it was most rewarding to fight it out since all you need is to have a majority of the number in the tile to get the pieces up there so sometimes Jun Yet does all the hard work and Jeremy just gets it like that or Jeremy does all the hard work and Jun Yet manages to get it instead.

Other games:

Survive! Escape from Atlantis

I have yet to give this game a try, it looks like a really cool game!

Troyes

Jacelyn went over to play a game of Troyes. I dont really know how she fared but I hope she liked it because it's already on my preorder lisy with BGC hahhaa.

JC: Haha! I kept obtaining those black cards at the lower part of the board and raised suspicion that I might have the card that gives VP's for black cards but actually, I had the card that gives VP's for having most money =P! I lost but I had loads of fun buying awesome dice rolls by Peter =P! Peter always gets 6's.

Emil's laugh - classic. :D

18xx

The adults were playing 18xx after dinner. I wish I could have joined them for this game but I had to leave early at 10pm so I missed my chance! :( Been wanting to give this game a try! Gosh so many games I wanna play :D

Spot our name!

Congrats BGC for the opening! :D
Will definitely visit here often after exams hehe. There's even a picture of us on the wall!

No Kidding :P

And the best part is - 30% off all games and possibly our pre-orders as well!

It's quite a cool place- the owner, CK moved quite a number of games in his collection to the new shop. There's even a copy of Space Hulk 3rd edition *drools*. And there were so many games on display for sale! Not good for impulsive people :P


Quick shoutout especially to monash ppl - boardgamecafe is having a promo, you get 20% discount on games during your first visit there! Check their page out!


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Hi everyone! JunYet and Jacelyn here. This blog was created to document our journey together as boardgamers. We hope you enjoy reading our blog as much as we enjoy writing it! JunYet's comments will be in BLACK, while's Jacelyn's will be in BROWN.

Our First Post in BGC Blog!

Check it out :)

http://blog.boardgamecafe.net/2011/09/04/bgc-otk-meetup-292011/

Dominant Species

A brief post.

Animals: Hans (Green), JC (Black), Isuru (Blue), Jun Yet (Red)

JC: Isuru was busy AP-ing so I posed for the shot while waiting xD!

JC: Whoaa!! If I remember correctly, this is Jun Yet hoarding loads of the sun adaptation!

Quite dangerous to adapt too many of one type in case Blight comes about =S..

Reptiles huddling at this corner after eating up the insects hehehe.

JC: I'm very happy here because I got to adapt to 2 water and that really helped me get more flexibility =D!

This game was just about the competition between insects and reptiles. Really. He killed my reptiles, and I kill his insects, then he kill mine, then I kill his.

JC: Hmm... What should I do... Kill or be killed? Breed or not? Definitely must dominate!!

My 4 sun adaptations paid off, coupled with well-timed abundance in the last turn, I was able to claim dominance in many tiles.

Patrik had to go so Hans took over.
JC: Hans is deep deep in thought......

This is just to highlight the points difference between reptiles and insect in the end hehe. Patrik was so shocked to find out that he lost the game :P
The ice age scoring game me a lot of points. Take that, Patrik!

Isuru - Amphibian won this game. He stayed in tundra tiles and scored crazy amount of points in the last few turns :O Actually, that has been his strategy in all his previous games lol, but it works!

Hmm.. Insects, mammals and reptiles have yet to emerge as the dominant species in the games we played so far... I wanna try playing mammals next time!

Review: Eruption

Since we're medical students, I'll do this the medical style.

Mentioned previously:
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.

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 )

Some issues with the PnP version:
I'm from Malaysia, and perhaps the standard paper size we use is different (we use A4 size), so some part of the board was not printed (out of printer range due to difference in paper size). I'm not good with tech stuff so I cant help it. You can see the white lines, those are areas where the printer missed.

I hope that the publisher can realign the PnP version to make the board centralized in the page, for the sake of other international players who wish to buy the PnP version first. :)

Natural History/Progression:

Game ends when one player's village is burnt, or when all the tiles have been drawn. Winner is the player with the coolest village.
Basically the game is played with each player taking turns doing these 4 things in order:
1. Assess damage
Check if any lava is flowing into your village.
+ Increase 20 degree for each unblocked lava.
+ Walls with lava will be challenged - roll dice for both the lava and the wall (+modifiers depending on material), highest wins and lava wins in case of tie.

2. Place tile
Draw a tile at random and place it on the board. Tile placement rules are pretty intuitive - the new tile must connect to existing tiles logically.
+ Claim resources if place new tile on spaces with resources printed on it.
+ Draw a card for each lava flow you directed into someone's village.
+ The wall have to be challenged and destroyed in order to place a new tile behind the wall

3. Play cards
Each start with a hand of 3. Cards can be used by applying the card effect or traded
+ Trade 2 cards for additional tile
+ Trade card(s) for the resources printed on the card.

4. Build a wall
On any space on board or on your village.
+ Walls provide modifiers for dice roll: +0 for straw, +1 for wood, +2 for stone

Additional rule:
There are 3 Zones. As your village heat up, you'll reach Danger Zone 1, 2, and 3 before your village finally burns up. Each zone unlocks a different advantage for you (build additional wall, draw card, additional tiles).
The first person to reach each zone gets to place a special eruption tile anywhere on the board and then other villages heat up by 30 degrees. This mechanic is designed so that the last player can catch up with other players.

Diagnosis:
A light tile-laying game with some amount of hand/resource management, with dice.


Yay:

+ Rules, especially tile placement, is intuitive and VERY easy to teach and understand
+ The catch-up mechanisms - additional advantage for the player(s) in danger zone, everybody else heats up when someone reaches a new danger zone

+ Love the artwork, the individual tiles look great even in PnP!

Nyeh:
- Your options are pretty much limited to the tile you have drawn, not much 'difficult' choices. This is good I guess for new gamers, so that they don't get overwhelmed. I have a friend who was thrown into Agricola straight and it was traumatizing!


- I didn't like the part where one can draw cards when placing a tile with lava flow directed to other players village. I understand that it sort of provides incentives to direct lava to others, but in most of my games players are very aggressive at claiming cards this way. Personally I'd prefer to see more clever placement of tiles to subtly direct lava flow away from your village. Tiles are often placed offensively than defensively. Maybe it's just my gaming group. But thematically speaking, one's priority would be to protect his village and in the process of doing that lava had to be directed to other villages for survival. Instead I see players kept finding ways to place tiles next to opponents' village and drawing cards, hoping other village burns faster than you.

Prognosis: 5-round survival rate - 70% (how likely that I would still want to play this after 5 plays).

First I must say that I tend to gravitate towards medium/heavy games with less luck and more control, so my opinion can be somewhat biased. I suspect that for me, I won't be actively suggesting my usual gaming group to play this game. But if someone wants to play, I'll be OK with it. When there's a group of new gamers, Eruption will be a game that I would introduce to them first.
I can't comment on the quality of the actual component of the game, but I expect that there will not be a problem with it. I'd recommend that you try this game first before buying it.

This is the kind of game that you might want to bring out once a while when your mind needs a break from heavy games or while waiting for your other friends to arrive to play Dominant Species with you.

In the end, one must keep in mind that this is a light gateway game. Don't expect it to be what it isn't, and I believe you'll have loads of fun with your friends playing this game.

"Hey hey, not my village again!"
"What?! My stone walls were crumbling one after another and his straw wall still stands! That's one crazy straw wall!!"



Reposted from BGG.