Gamers: Jeff Au (jack208), Lai Wah (alw8871), Alan Woon (alanwsl), Jamie, Neoh, Wai Keen, Kah Yee (kahyee), Wai Yan (waiyan), Jacques, Pak Hoe, Stan Pang, *Mohd Hadi, *DK Liew
Games: Puerto Rico, Lost Cities, Ticket to Ride, Werewolf, 6 Takes!, Bang!
Location: Boardgamecafe.net centre
Date/Time: 11 Mar 06 (Sat) 8.30pm - 4.00am
KL BOARDGAMES MEETUP REPORT @ BOARDGAMECAFE CENTRE 11/3/06
by jack208
Our 2nd KL Boardgames Meetup but the 1st that's opened to public. The Fri Meetup is meant for heavier Euro games while the Sat Meetup is great for new members to be introduced to Euro boardgaming. For today, we have two new members - DK Liew and Mohd Hadi. Hadi is a contract SAP consultant from India and in fact a few of his colleagues had meant to join him today but could not make it due to some last minute matters. Hope they'll be able to join us next week. We have 13 gamesters for this meetup.
PUERTO RICO
The usual gamesters arrived sharp 8pm and since we already have 5 gamesters - Alan, Lai Wah, Wai Keen, Kah Yee and Jeff - we decided to start off with a favorite of everyone, Puerto Rico. Both Kah Yee and Wai Keen have not played this before so some game briefing was conducted by Jeff.
Once that's over, we drew for starting position; Lai Wah, Jeff, Alan/Jamie, Kah Yee and Wai Keen. Just nice that the two new gamesters got corn. As usual, we played with our handicap system where the three experienced gamesters (Jeff, Lai Wah and Alan/Jamie) were not allow to take Harbor or Wharf to avoid a fast end to the game.
Lai Wah started with Settlers and she picked a quarry. Jeff took tobacco, Jamie coffee, Kah Yee sugar and Wai Keen another corn. Obviously the three experienced players - Jamie (replacing Alan), Lai Wah and Jeff - had to go for a building strategy or a building/shipping strategy with strong emphasis on building since they do not have access to the harbor or wharf.
The two new gamesters to Puerto Rico
Jeff took Builder role and immediately bought a tobacco storage to build an early tobacco monopoly, forgoing his indigo plantation. Jamie skipped, certainly with the objective of saving up to get her coffee roaster. Kah Yee bought a large sugar mill and this signified her intention to dominate in the sugar market. Wai Keen - since he has corn plantations only - opted for the small market. Lai Wah took a small indigo plant.
Kah Yee took the early Craftsman and produced some corn together with Wai Keen. No Mayor role taken yet so the rest did not have workers manning the plantations and plants. Wai Keen and Kah Yee then shipped their corns for a few early victory points. First blood to the new members!
The 1st trade was made by Jeff who already had a small market too, bringing him a good 5 doubloons for a tobacco. Lai Wah and Kah Yee also managed to sell some indigo and sugar respectively.
LAI WAH, the sugar and plantation queen. Lai Wah started with indigo but found the profits slow-coming and switched quickly to sugar. Even though she's competing with Kah Yee on the sugar business, there's enough demand for sugar such that both made reasonable good profits from their sugar business.
Having an Office in San Juan certainly helped since it allowed her to trade her sugar even if Kah Yee has sold hers. The Office helped her to grow her sugar business into the largest in San Juan.
She also saw great potential for plantation ownership in San Juan and beside her vast sugar mills, she has indigo and corn plantations and was about to embark on her coffee plantation. She did not bother to get into tobacco as she saw that as an overcrowded market. Her large number of plantations gave her reason to open the only Hospice in San Juan.
Lately, she was working on the blueprint to build the first University of Puerto Rico. With her wealth, she offered to build a Fortress to ensure the security of all plantation owners in Puerto Rico.
JEFF, the building magnate. Having secured the early lucrative tobacco monopoly, Jeff was building his town quite rapidly and even had the cashflow to diversify into indigo with the purchase of a large indigo plant and setting up some indigo plantations.
Soon there were opportunities for Jeff to be involved in the corn market and so corn became his third business. He even managed to build his corn plantation large enough to challenge the pioneering corn king (Wai Keen). Since he's now producing three types of goods, a Factory looked like the next building to maximize his returns.
The indigo and corn productions helped Jeff spread out his business yield since Kah Yee and Wai Keen have also started their own tobacco business to compete with Jeff, and doing not badly too. With the acquisition of a large market to his existing small market, and the presence of a well-run Factory, Jeff has built a strong financial base for his business and no longer depends on tobacco trading for his business cashflow.
Jeff built two large buildings to house the City Hall and Customs House for the government of Puerto Rico.
JAMIE, the coffee queen. Jamie on the other hand got her coffee roaster early and after a few rounds of coffee trading were doing pretty well financially since she had a good monopoly on the coffee market. Her trading profits from coffee allowed her to branch into indigo processing and she eventually owned the largest indigo manufacturing output in San Juan - one small and one large indigo plant.
She did diversify into sugar mills later but did not have much time to reap profits there as the game ended soon after. Like Jeff, Jamie also contributed two large buildings for the government to house their staff Residence and a Guild Hall to serve as the cultural centre of San Juan.
KAH YEE, the tobacco tycoon. Kah Yee started with corn like all new plantation owners in Puerto Rico. But unlike others (eg Wai Keen) she quickly cross-over her business to producing sugar since she anticipated a high demand for this commodity back home in Spain. With a thriving sugar business, she can then afford to move into the lucrative tobacco business which has been dominated by Jeff all this while.
In fact, at the end she did even better than Jeff in the tobacco business by having three tobacco storage houses compared to Jeff's one. She has diversified the most among all the current Puerto Rico tycoons by also venturing into coffee roasting (she now produces four goods). She then built a factory to maximize all her productions.
WAI KEEN, the shipping king. Wai Keen like Kah Yee also started with corns but unlike Kah Yee, he saw his future with corns (meaning he's going for the shipping strategy). He aggressively built up his corn plantations and soon were having a very prosperous and regular corn shipment which earned him many victory points. However too much shipping meant he's not cash-rich and thus that impeded him slightly in the development of his township.
With limited cashflow, he also did not manage to get a proper warehouse and in a few incidents, he has to throw away a good amount of wasted goods which were not shipped back to Spain on-time. That incident forced him to change his business direction and seeing Kah Yee doing quite well on tobacco farming, he soon started a tobacco business of his own.
While he did not achieve as much profits from his tobacco business as Kah Yee, he did make enough money to afford his own large warehouse and wharf (private ship). He can now produce corns in large quantities and ship them at his own leisure. No more wasted goods to throw away now.
Final Scores
- Lai Wah - VP 23, Building VP 19, Bonus VP 8. Total: 50 (3rd)
- Jeff Au - VP 26, Building VP 25, Bonus VP 14. Total: 65 (1st)
- Jamie/Alan - VP 26, Building VP 18, Bonus VP 13. Total: 57 (2nd)
- Kah Yee - VP 28, Building VP 21, Bonus VP 0. Total: 49 (5th, 1 doubloon)
- Wai Keen - VP 31, Building VP 18, Bonus VP 0. Total: 49 (4th, 4 doubloons)
LOST CITIES
While we were playing Puerto Rico, Neoh brought a new member - Mohd Hadi. Hadi is a SAP consultant from India and now working on contract in KL. Alan offered to show him how to play Lost Cities and he played a few rounds with Alan and Neoh.
TICKET TO RIDE
When our 2nd new member for the night - DK - arrived and as the 1st group (see above) was still playing Puerto Rico, we decided to start the 2nd group on our popular gateway game, Ticket to Ride. We have two new gamesters for this game and needed three more gamesters to make it five. Neoh, Wai Yan and Jacques made up the number.
There were very early confrontation on the eastern side of the board, with almost every other players claiming their routes before others do. Yellow (Jacques) and Black (Wai Yan) were the early leaders and they maintained their lead throughout the game. Yellow were doing a great job in building towards the Longest Route bonus while Black achieved what's considered a record in our meetups - the 1st Ticket to Ride player to complete a 6 Destination Ticket trip! Black (Wai Yan) completed the following 6 tickets for a total of 64 bonus points:
- Duluth - El Paso (10)
- Los Angeles - Chicago (16)
- Winnipeg - Little Rock (11)
- Portland - Phoenix (11)
- Chicago - New Orleans (7)
- Seattle - Los Angeles (9)
The gameboard at the conclusion of the game
At the end of the game, it was still Yellow and Black in the lead. Jacques (yellow) completed only two of his three destination tickets and suffered an 8 point deduction. His total score including ticket bonus were 103 points. By claiming the Longest Route, he added another 10 points to give him a total score of 113 points.
Wai Yan (black) completed the record 6 destination tickets that gave her a total of 64 ticket bonus points and added to her onboard 62 points, her total of 126 points were clearly ahead of Jacques (black).
The most important point however was that the two new members enjoyed this game very much (as they always do). <grin>
WEREWOLVES
Alrite, now that everyone has had their chance to play one or two rounds of games, we assembled everyone for the highlight of the evening, a game of Werewolf. In our enthusiasm, we did 4 games of Werewolf last week but we were conscious of limiting that to perhaps 2 games for this week so as to be able to fit other games into the agenda. But let's get the 1st Werewolf game started.
Werewolf - Game 1
Alan offered to be the moderator for the evening so this meant Jeff got to play. This was a 12-player game of Werewolf; with two werewolves, one seer, one medium and one bodyguard. We did not add any new roles as we have two new members who have not yet played Werewolf - DK and Mohd Hadi. Jeff started by briefing the newcomers on the gameplay.
Then everyone got seated and roles were shuffled and distributed by Alan.
1st night was as usual pretty uneventful. Nothing much happened except the Seer got to finger someone and know more about that person's identity. Daytime, everyone got together to throw suspicions around. The villagers were deliberating on the noises they heard last night when DK, who has just settled in this village recently and have been keeping very much to himself suddenly started asking "funny" questions about who the seer is, does the village have a medium, etc.
Perhaps he's new and therefore can't be faulted but this village ever since it survived the last Werewolf's rampage many moons back have always been sitting on its edge... and the angry mob can be stirred easily on the mere mention of the seer and medium! They still could not forget how the last seer died so valiantly trying to protect the village.... Even though the new seer has been practicing for years now and have acquired quite a talent for spotting the differences between human and wolves, the villagers were only too conscious of the need to protect the seer's identity as much as they could.
So when DK rocked the boat by making one too many inquiries about the seer, he was nominated to be lynched by the villagers. There was not even a second of hesitation.. the entire village chose to lynch him! He didn't survive to see the light of another day. sigh.
The medium as expected went to his grave and seek him out at night, only to be scared off by the sound of wolves howling! Could it be the new man DK was indeed a werewolf? The medium dug out the grave... and indeed inside was the body of a werewolf, dead and buried. The discovery chilled the medium's bones as werewolves always hunt in pairs which mean there is still one werewolf hiding among the villagers!
DK is the guy in black t-shirt
The following morning, Jeff took up the courage to declare himself as a medium and told the villagers that he has spoken with the dead and found the lynched villager DK was a werewolf. The curse of the wolves was back among this village. They know everyone is not safe now until they have found, hunted and killed the 2nd werewolf.
Medium Jeff knew his life is now endangered but by braving his own identity, he has also given Neoh the courage to make contact with him and identify himself as the Seer. Through eye contact, both the medium and the seer now know each other. But can they believe each other? Can the villagers believe them? Were they really the Medium and Seer - or were they the two Werewolves playing on the villagers' insecurities?
Nevertheless the villagers knew evil was upon them, and quickly must they act or else more will perish under the bloodthirst of the cursed.
They held a deliberation in the Town Hall, attempting to flush out the 2nd werewolf (if they indeed believed the words of Jeff). A commoner Jacques stepped out to verify to the others that he believed Jeff was indeed the medium. But then who was the 2nd wolf? The villagers was getting edgy... and someone claimed he saw Wai Keen out in the forest at night.. Wai Keen couldn't present a good alibi and in the absence of one, the angry mob decided it's better to kill a wrong villager than to let loose a wolf.
Still the kills continued at night (so it was obvious Wai Keen was not a wolf)..... the hunger of the werewolf cannot be satiated.
Everyone proclaimed their innocence. The Seer didn't manage to spot the werewolf among the villagers. The Medium on the other hand only talks to dead people and since only villagers were slain, not much information was derived from that source. Soon, even the Medium was not spared. Jeff was found with his stomach brutally torn opened one morning... the werewolf has finally gotten to one of the two Great Powers in the village. Only the Seer remains...
The villagers got angrier in the day.. and in their anger, they were ready to lynch just about anyone. Obviously this didn't help them... the number of surviving villagers grew less and less as the day passed. Only 4 remained (Neoh, Jamie, Pak Hoe and Stan)..... and one of them is the werewolf. Jamie was among the four but she has been spared from any suspicion as she was one of the few villagers who were very keen to lynch DK (the dead werewolf).
However as night slowly drift upon the village, the other three villagers were starting to eye Jamie suspiciously. Could she have been the werewolf... hiding cleverly among the villagers? Night falls... and when dawn broke, Jamie and Pak Hoe saw Neoh dashing over to Stan's house with a fork... they heard what appeared to be some fierce fighting.. but by the time both of them rushed over, they saw Neoh on the floor with his neck ripped opened and Stan with the fork stabbed deep into his chest, and transformed halfway into a werewolf.
Once again, the Seer have given up his life to save the villagers from the threat of the accursed half man half wolf creatures. Jamie and Pak Hoe walked off, wondering whether this is the end of the curse of the werewolves on their village?
The Actors and Actresses
- Werewolves - DK and Stan
- Seer/Fortune Teller - Neoh
- Medium - Jeff
- Bodyguard - Kah Yee (hmm.. she also get the luck of the shuffle with a special role)
- Villagers - Wai Yan, Lai Wah, Jamie, Wai Keen, Pak Hoe, Jacques, Mohd Hadi
Note:
Actually the game ended wrongly. Neoh was actually killed by werewolf Stan in the night phase but he was indeed the Seer and he pointed at Jamie. The moderator informed him Jamie was a villager and since Neoh had already found out Pak Hoe was also a villager, by deduction he knew Stan has to be the werewolf. But he took matters into his own hands and opened Stan's role card, exposing him as the 2nd werewolf - and therefore ending the game prematurely. He should have allowed the three surviving players - Jamie, Pak Hoe and Stan - to make the lynch vote.
Werewolf - Game 2; introducing the Owl
As usual one round of Werewolf won't be able to satisfy this crowd, and they bayed (in keeping with the spirit of the game) for a second game. Everyone agreed (obviously) and the moderator (Alan) shuffled and distributed the roles again. Same group of players, but with change of seating positions.
Since everyone in this group has had a game or two of Werewolf under their experience, we decided to introduce a new character, The Owl to liven things up a little. The Owl (aka Sorceror) works for the werewolves though the werewolves and the Owl do not recognize each other. The Owl has its own turn in the Night Phase. He can point to any player and the moderator will show him a card to indicate whether the player is a Villager, Werewolf or Seer (Fortune Teller).
Therefore the Owl's mission is to find out who's the Seer and pass that information to the Werewolves. The Seer is the Werewolves deadliest foe since only the Seer can know who is the werewolf. With the Seer dead, the villagers can only go by gut feelings or random deductions.
But since the Werewolves do not know who the Owl is, they run the risk of killing him at night too.
On the 1st day, Wai Keen suddenly turned all chatty... and since this did not seem like his normal behavior, he was lynched! Auch... when you play this game you gotta be careful. If you do something the group considered not your "normal behavior", you go up the Werewolf Suspicion Meter pretty quickly <LOL>. Well, if it's any consolation, Wai Keen broke our group record for highest kill votes received (he got ALL ten votes)!
Wai Keen getting a record 10 kill votes on the 1st day!
On the 2nd day, Pak Hoe was nominated for lynching. When given his turn to explain why he shouldn't be lynched, Pak Hoe was suddenly a little expressive trying to hint to us that he was really innocent. Now, from the past few games Pak Hoe played, when he was nominated, he usually shrugged his shoulders and just said, "I'm a villager if you believe me." and leave his fate to the hands of the villagers.
What do we have here? Aaah.... "unusual behavior". So guessed what happened? He was lynched.
When the Medium checked on Pak Hoe's status, he was given the Villager status and everybody mourned his wrongful lynch the following day. But what nobody knew at that time (as the Owl's role is not revealed until the end) was Pak Hoe actually was the Owl! He was working for the werewolves and trying to find out who is the Seer. Innocent my foot!!
Jeff asked for the Seer (no one knew who's holding this role) to point at Jamie to check whether she's a werewolf. And lo and behold... Jamie was killed during the Night Phase. This immediately led everyone to believe there must be an inexperienced werewolf around that resulted in this kill. Everyone looked at Mohd Hadi (one of the two newcomers to our gaming session today) and turned on him...... agreeing to lynch him regardless of whether he's the wolf or not.
Jeff was then killed in retaliation in that night for suggesting Mohd Hadi to be lynched. Jacques came out and told everyone he's the Medium and Hadi was indeed a werewolf. If we believe him then it meant there's only a lone werewolf now and easier for us to hunt down and kill. But the fact that we have not heard from the Seer till now got us worrying.
Jacques didn't survive that night too. Looked like this werewolf kills in retaliation. Whether Jacques was really the Medium nobody knew but at least everyone knew he is a villager and upped their effort to flush out the werewolf within themselves in order for the death of so many villagers not to be in vain.
The werewolf then got careless. During one of the night kills, it left a trace.. that the Seer followed and suddenly she (yes the seer was Kah Yee) saw a vision that showed Lai Wah as the werewolf! She let out a gasp and when morning came, quickly round up everyone and accused Lai Wah of being the werewolf. Mob mentality ensured everyone followed to lynch Lai Wah. Did we lynch the wrong person again?
Lai Wah's body slowly turned into the form of a werewolf... and the villagers then know they have finally killed the last of the werewolves (at least for this week!)
The Actors and Actresses
- Werewolves - Mohd Hadi and Lai Wah
- Seer/Fortune Teller - Kah Yee (again, she got a special role!)
- Medium - Jacques
- Bodyguard - Wai Yan
- Owl - Pak Hoe
- Villagers - Jamie, Wai Keen, DK, Jeff, Stan, Neoh
6 TAKES!
Stan and Pak Hoe had to take their leave as Stan has an early long distance trip to make tomorrow. This leaves 10 of us and someone proposed for a 10 player game of 6 Takes!
We play to 75 bull-heads which means the game does not end in one round but instead we kept going until one person has scored 75 bull-heads or more. The game then ends and the winner is the player with the least bull-head.
This is the first time we are playing 6 Takes! with 10 players (the maximum allowed for). All the cards will be distributed, 10 to each player and 4 as the starting card for the 4 facedown rows.
In a 10-player game, it's very common for the 4 rows to be filled with 4 or 5 cards which meant on the next turn, someone will have to take the face-up bull-heads. This made the game more tense. Mohd Hadi commented he quite enjoyed this light card game.
Hmm... someone forgot to tell Jeff this game is won by having the lowest score, not highest <keke>
The game ended in just three rounds since Jeff seemed to be taking in all the bull-heads in large quantity!! LOL. He already had 69 bull-heads by end of round 2 (the game-end threshold was just 75). Wai Yan and Wai Keen were the two lowest player at end of round 2 having just 9 and 10 bull-heads respectively. So in round 3, they were just competing with each other not to take any more bull-heads in order to emerge as the winner.
What they forget was that Mohd Hadi was not doing too badly with 21 but he managed not to get any more bull-heads in round 3 whereas Wai Yan and Wai Keen took quite a substantial amount of bull-heads. This helped Mohd Hadi win the game with just 21 bull-heads. Wai Keen came in 2nd.
BANG!
Our next game is set to become a "legend" in our Bang! gaming history. A 7-player game of Bang!, the only gamesters who have not played this game was Mohd Hadi. The other gamesters joining this game were Alan, Jacques, Neoh, Jeff, Wai Keen and Kah Yee.
Read the full report here.
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