Board games I've tried before

Played once in September 2008.

The first advice: never sit on the right of an aggressive player. This applies to all games where the starting position is determined by an auction or game action. Conversely, you want to sit on their left!

(I have bad experience in such games. Manila comes to mind. It's a game that I would otherwise like very much.)

Agricola is a game that I should like — I like games with variable powers/actions — but I dislike my first game very much. I guess trying to look at the board upside down takes its toll on me.

(I dislike Race for the Galaxy initially too, but later I grew to like it. I dislike that game for its lack of blocking element. Later, I thought that made it better, not worse.)

I also dislike replenishing the board for Agricola. It's too confusing. I'm fine with replenishing Power Grid's resource table, so it's case-by-case.

The easiest way to explain Agricola is to list out what you need to do. You figure out the how part yourself.

What you need to do at first:

• Build one more room
• Get one more family member
• Feed three people (six food)
• Get one grain
• Plow one field
• Sow the field
• Get a fireplace or oven (to convert stuff to food)
• Build one pasture
• Get two animals of the same kind so that they can reproduce
• Keep another animal as a pet

Once your base is secure, you can then expand:

• Build one more room (total four)
• Upgrade rooms
• Get one more family member (total four)
• Feed four people (eight food)
• Get one vegetable
• Plow 1 – 2 more fields (total 2 – 3)
• Sow the fields
• Build one more pasture (total 2)
• Build stables
• Get another two animals of the same kind so that they can reproduce
• Keep another animal as a pet

The main tension in Agricola is food. If you don't have enough food during the harvest phase, you get one begging card for each food that you lack. Each begging card is -3 VP, just having three of them is enough to kill your game.

The other thing is actions. You get one action per family member. It's important to have three family members, so you need to get resources to build one more room and have a way to get six food.

Player order is important early on, because the actions can only be used once per turn. The player who goes last is extremely disadvantaged. There are usually 1 – 2 good actions and 1 – 2 okay actions. There's nothing left for the last player. It's not so serious in later turns as there are a lot more actions to choose from, but it remains an issue.

Played once in May 2007. Nice tile laying game. Reminds me of Ticket to Ride due to the actions available: either build or draw in your turn.

Played once in October 2006. Needs many players to play well; four is probably too few. The game takes a while to come up to speed for the outlaws to reveal themselves. If everyone plays conservatively, it takes a really long time to play out.

There are two basic ways the game plays out. The renegade is a key role. In the first way, the renegade masks as a deputy and helps to kill the outlaws. When they are all killed, the sheriff has to kill all the deputies, since he doesn't know who is the renegade. The renegade will be quite weak if he survives. In the second way, the renegade joins the outlaws and helps to kill all the deputies. When they are killed, he switches side to kill the outlaws and finally a one-to-one showdown with the sheriff.

Played once in October 2006. An abstract thinking game. I think this game is overrated. You just place your tiles randomly until you almost make contact with tiles of other colors, then you try to block them. Put aside a few tiles that can be used easily at the end game, and you are set!

Played once in October 2007. The mines follow the standard two die roll probability — two and twelve mines give the most gold, six to eight the least. However, there are not enough die rolls to give the expected results.

Played twice, first time in September 2006. Needs many players, at least five, to be fun. Needs to be played very aggressively; the room will resemble a marketplace. During everyone's turn, all I did was to announce what I have and what I want. Can be very annoying.

The order of the cards on hand cannot be changed, that's a frequent almost-mistake during our first game. The game should come with card holders to hold the cards.

Also, I'm not convinced we are playing correctly with all the rules.

Played twice, first in October 2006. Interesting concept, move back to draw cards. Needs some strategy to move back optimally to maximize the number of cards to draw. A player who is able to do this for a few turns is at an advantage. I was never able to do that. When it was my turn, each space was already filled up with three pirates.

Very simple game. I like the part where you point the gun at others. You roughly have an idea who will be shooting who. It's fun to see if you guessed right! Otherwise, it is too simple.

Played twice in December 2006. Either I played it wrongly or it's too simple.

Played once in December 2008. Played very similarly to Agricola. I found that I don't like these kind of games.

Played once in June 2007. Quite nice, but am still reserved about the variable power.

Played twice in January 2007. This is a very simple game where you collect cards of 7 colors. Only your top 3 colors count towards your score. The other colors subtract, so you want to keep them to a minimum — but there's no need to worry too much about them as they subtract very few points. The luck factor is pretty high.

Played once in September 2008.

The game feels a bit like Power Grid! (But it's really closer to Princes of Florence.)

The whole game ends in five rounds, each round has five phases. They are, invest, auction, trade, event, score. Every player gets a turn in each phase.

In Colosseum, the player who produces the biggest event wins. This is usually the last event. As such, there is no need to produce many different events. You start with two events. You can directly aim for only one more event, or you can aim for two more events.

The new events should be "upgradable" from your starting events to maximize the reusability of your tiles. (If another player clashes with you, good luck!)

Although there are just five invest phases, you can increase it by playing the investment token (2 emperor medals). This is usually necessary because you need to expand the arena twice, buy a season ticket, build an emperor's loge, and buying one or two events.

You bid for assets in sets of three. It is not known whether players are allowed to collude here. If they are allowed to, they may not bid against each other, but trade later.

The trading phase plays like Bohnanza. This phase increases the chance that you will get the asset that you want.

There is an official intense auction variant where a player is allowed to bid even after he won a bid. This makes money much more important and trading less important.

Problems with Colosseum:

• The trade phase reduces the tension of the auction phase
• Moving the nobles is too random
• Very limited strategy

Colosseum is like Manila: good theme, nice bits and promising mechanics, but the flaws means the game is only suitable for casual gaming.

Played thrice in May 2007. This is a game of dare — how long do you dare to stay in the cave in the ever rising presence of danger? The longer you stay, the more potential treasures you can have, but you only take them with you when you leave the cave.

Diamant plays differently with 3 and 8 players. When there are few players, there are few leftover ones, so most people won't leave. When there are many players, there will be many leftover ones and people will leave.

The luck element is very high cos if you are the only one who choose to leave, you get all the leftover treasures. Likewise, if you are the only one who choose to stay, you get all the potential treasures. Just don't be too greedy!

First played in Dec 2008. You play only 10 out of the 25 possible "Kingdom" cards in a game, so there's high varability and replayability.

Let's start from the beginning.

There are three piles of cards on the table: treasure cards (money), victory cards (vp) and Kingdom cards (action). All cost money to buy, and you must pay using the money on your hand.

You have two piles of cards, a draw pile and a discard pile. You always draw five cards from your draw pile. If your draw pile is depleted, you shuffle your discard pile and it becomes your draw pile.

During your turn, you play an action card from your hand, and then buy a card on the table using the money in your hand. The new card goes to your discard pile. Both actions are optional. Your turn is then over. You then discard the played cards and any remaining cards in your hand and then draw five cards as your new hand for the next round.

The beauty of the game lies in the action cards. Some cards allow you to buy cards up to a certain cost, so if you play it, you can effectively buy twice. Some cards allow you to draw more cards into your hand. Some cards give you one or more actions, so you can play more action cards. Some cards give you additional money (for that round). Some cards allow you to upgrade your cards on hand for another card. There are other special powers, but most are a variant or combination of the above.

What you want are to get action cards that add cards to your hand, that give additional actions, and those that allow you to upgrade your cards. You don't really want a huge deck; you want an efficient deck.

Consider your starting hand. It consists of 7 Copper cards (worth $1 each) and 3 Estate cards (1vp each). It is essential to upgrade them to higher value cards so that they become more efficient. For example, the Copper cards can be easily upgraded to Silver cards ($2 each).

Another take

It turns out that Dominion, just like Race for the Galaxy, has a dorminant strategy.

It is very simple:

1. Has 8 coins or more: buy Province
2. Has 6 coins or more: buy Gold
3. Else: buy Silver or a card better than Silver

Not surprisingly, the third step is called "The Silver Test".

This strategy does not work as well against attack cards, though.

Played once in May 2007. Place five cards face-down and then all players open them one by one. Plays a bit like Robo Rally in this aspect.

It's extremely difficult to control your movement, as any illegal move sends you back to your starting place.

Played once in October 2007. To tell the truth, I was disappointed that this game is just going around the board collecting tokens. I expected more theme.

You need at least four players to play this game to overlap each other's routes. For 2 to 3 players, you're just going your own way, playing a solitaire game.

Played twice, first time in October 2006. The luck factor is pretty high. Due to the number of players, we played with two monsters, which increased the random factor even more.

I think the way to play is to use two of your characters to draw away the monster and let one get away first while the characters can still resurrect. Later, use one character to divert and let the other get away.

Played once in January 2007. It's like a simplified poker-style trick taking game. Pairs are pretty strong already. I think the luck element is very high.

Played once in October 2006. The concept is very simple, so the game looks overpriced. Despite its use of tiles, this is actually a number game. Can be replaced with cards.

Played once in September 2006. Not familiar with the card powers. Although I like the game initially for its variable card power, I now rate it slightly lower due to its variable game time. A round ("day") can end pretty quickly if you play the right card.

Press the bell as soon as you see five of one fruit. Game of speed and reflex. Very similar to Jungle Speed and Slamwick, but is much easier as the shapes are familiar fruits.

Played once in April 2007.

Played once in May 2007. Very simple filler. The idea is to eat the most fishes and cave off islands for yourself. Doesn't seem to have any strategy.

Played once in April 2007. Quite similar in feel to Munchkin, but in the business world context. The first step is to negotiate for shares in a company, then others who are left out will try to intercept in various manners, and you try to counteract them.

Played twice in December 2006. Quite similar to Blokus, but no blocking capabilities. I'm not good at color and pattern matching in several directions. Spare me!

I believe the trick is to slowly move three to four of your counters up, and wait for big openings for the others. Another strategy I'll try is to block everything (or at least one color) from growing, so everyone has a low score.

Played once in October 2006. Needs to be fast. Frequent mis-grabs. Probably have a good laugh for a few rounds, but no mental stimulation at all.

Played once in October 2007.

Played once in October 2007. This is just a simple color matching game with pretty art. Each card has two colors: one on top and one below. When a card is placed on the table, find a card in your hand with a color on the top that matches the card's bottom color and be the first to put it down. And repeat.

Played once in May 2007 in Pitstop Cafe. Needless to say, I played with the wrong rules, but I still enjoyed it very much. It's a very nice and light speculation game, but it's too random as it depends on 3 dice rolls.

The commodity speculation reminds me of Modern Art. As you need to be the harbour master before you can buy additional stocks, you have to bid to be one sooner or later. Good stocks are worth 30 pesos each at the end of the game, so they contribute a lot to the final scores.

Played a few times in March 2008. It takes a while to learn each character's ability and how to combine them effectively, especially when you have two turns in a row.

I think Sergeant Goodley's ability is really powerful because it allows you to move two characters in one turn.

Played twice in Feburary 2007. As expected, I don't like this kind of game. It's too free-for-all.

Played twice in December 2006. I'll probably like it better if the game doesn't remove 9 out of 33 cards before the start of game. That's too many cards and results in a high random factor. In many cases, whether you have any chance of winning depends whether you can collapse two sequences of numbers into one. As too many cards are removed, the high cards are simply not attractive at all.

No Thanks! also goes by the name No Merci, so if you can't find one, look for the other.

Played once in August 2007. I like the pass-one-card along mechanism, but it is the only way in the game to affect other players.

Played once in Oct 2008. Feels like Shadows over Camelot, but without the traitor element.

Played once in Mar 2007. Seems to have some strategy, but doesn't.

Played once. Unfinished due to lack to time.

Played once in August 2006. Very similar to Hearts. Poison is a pure number game, plays pretty quickly, and offers very little variability, so the game is very expensive for its experience.

Started playing in April 2008. Very hyped game, but it does live up to its hype.

The secret to this game is to find good combos — cards that work together.

Played once in December 2006. A simplified version of Ra (120 cards vs 180 tiles and no disasters). More portable as it is card based. The theme is more fitting too, IMO.

Played once in August 2006. A bit simple. Miners just aim straight for the mines and the saboteurs just sabotage from step one. The tunnel is pretty short, so saboteurs need to do their work quickly.

Played once in December 2006. While the game intrigue me, I believe there is in fact very little depth. There are two phases in this game. Phase one, generate cash; that means focus on workers. You need to keep pace with other players, especially in a two player game. If you are the first to buy workers, try to have odd number of spaces (so you get one more dip). If not, try to have even number of spaces so both get the same number. Buildings and aristocrats are secondary and are bought mainly to open up the board. The observatory is very useful in that it gets you one extra worker per turn. Phase two, generate victory points and get as many aristocrats as possible. Duplicate aristocrats are essential for upgrades.

I believe all the games go something like this, as it doesn't look like there is any viable alternative ways to win. Aristocrats have a large end-game score, so you need to have roughly the same number of aristocrats.

Played once in December 2006. Very intriguing, but this is really a 2 player game. I am quite convinced that there is more luck involved than deduction. To catch Mr X, the detectives must be ready to foreclose on him when he surfaces. The next few turns can be traced if the net is tight, but otherwise Mr X would have slipped away safely until the next turn he has to surface.

Since I'm not able to remember all the steps, I would play with some "tracing" beads in my next game. After Mr X surfaces, I would trace his possible moves on the board using different colored beads for each turn. This may make it slightly easier for the detectives, so it's strictly a learning aid.

A very simple game. Everyone puts a card on the table one at a time. Once some patterns match, the first to slam on the cards and shout "slamwich" or "stop thief!" (depending on the card) gets all the cards on the table and shuffle them into his hand. The game continues until one player has all the cards.

Played nine times in December 2006. A bit simple. I believe it's easy to win in this game, but so far I've lost far more than I've won.

Played once in September 2006. You can call this the German-style Monopoly. You roll two die, you get resources and trade them to form sets, which you can then exchange for settlements, roads, upgrades or event cards. The more settlements you have, the more likely you are to get resources per turn. You need roads to link your settlements. You can upgrade your settlement to a city to get double the resources.

Very similar to Ticket to Ride. Which one to get and which to omit?

Played once in May 2007. Without the element of blocking, the game has almost no tension at all.

Pretty simple game. No frills. This is supposed to be a pretty good gateway game, but I don't know if I like the simplicity of the game or not. The USA 1910 expansion is a huge swing in favour of this game.

Played once in PitStop Cafe in January 2007. I was pretty familiar with the rules and declined the help of the staff. Well, we played it mostly correctly, except we used all 48 trains — I forgot there were three spare trains.

First played in Dec 2008. I don't think I'll play it again. I don't like the dumbed down poker rules. There's no suit, so flush don't count (unless it's a straight flush) and an ace cannot trump another ace.

Explore the jungle by placing a new tile every turn. Each player has 10 action points each turn to place a new explorer, dig temples, claim treasures, pitch a tent and do other stuff. I like the variable action points concept, but it leads to too much down time.

Played once in April 2007. Would be better once we played correctly. It's obvious it's not possible to place a tent on a temple tile!

Solve a puzzle and then collect the jewels. The person with the most jewels of the same colors win. Very simple game. The puzzles are a hit-or-miss. Sometimes you are able to solve them quickly. Sometimes it takes a while.

Place ingredients on the board to match your recipes. It reminds me strongly of Acquire.

I suppose I would like this better if it weren't suschi themed. All I can think of is the flaws:

• It is hard to combine recipes. If you can do it, it is usually by luck. A player who is able to take advantage of other people's recipes (by luck) is at a great advantage.
• A player can really foul up your moves by randomly placing tiles.
• A player can hoard the action cards for a long time.

And when I played the game, I wasn't told that I could swap out recipes by missing a turn. I got some useless recipes clogging my hand after I ran out of 3-length counters. Poor planning, I know.

Roll 9 die, then place them on the actions based on the face value. Players take turn choosing actions.

Played once in Feburary 2008. Not to my liking. As the die are random, its distribution can make-or-break a turn. If many die have the same number, the first to go has a distinct advantage. If they have different numbers, the first player is in fact penalized. Players who go later have noticeably poorer options. To migitate this, the alternative actions (taking a card and moving to the cavaran) are very powerful.

Collect face down cards in the right order as quickly as you can from the table to allow you to move from point A to B. Repeat until you get to your goal.

Played once in April 2007. The collecting phase is too short. Some cards are harder to flip than others. Sometimes it's not possible to find even a single card!

Adds stations to work around blocking. Adds tunnel for variable trains. Attempts to solve the problems of the first game, but I don't think it works. I don't think I'll buy this.

Starts from the original premise and adds different variations: passengers and separate short/long routes.

Be the most efficient in connecting your five cities. Seems overpriced for what it offers.