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KL BOARDGAMES MEETUP REPORT @ CITI CAFE PUDU 7/2/09
by jack208

The Pudu gamers have been rather quiet on the boardgame scene lately. It's customary for us to gather for a prosperity dinner during Chinese New Year, and last week after our dinner gathering we did a session of Agricola and Phase 10, and this week they've been asking for Agricola to come to the table again!

There are reasons why Agricola appeals to a wide group of people; the theme of farming and the cute animeeples and vegemeeples are two of the many. But it's relatively (deceptively) non-brain-burning gameplay is probably another.

Now dun get me wrong. Agricola is not a light (nor easy) game.. but compared to Le Havre, Caylus, Die Macher or even 18xx it's so much more pleasing to play Agricola than those mentioned. I suppose that's it's key appeal. And why it's staying at its #1 position in Boardgamegeek.

This is only their 2nd game so I suppose everyone's still exploring things around the game...

alanwsl going for stables to keep animals and also to claim unused spaces. He also has some interesting minor improvements and went for the clay oven (below) as his primary food source.

jacquesaw who had a bit too many points deducted for unused spaces in the last game, improved in this session by quickly getting his fences up and plowing a good number of fields (below).

jacquesaw also had the Yeoman Farmer occupation in place which helped him to keep deductions low at end-game.

jamie faced tough challenges in this game keeping her family well-fed (below).

jack208's rather bare farm, and his occupations and improvements (below).

stanpang spent a bit too much time getting more than a fair share of occupation cards to the table. While they helped him in alleviating his food problem, they didn't do much to help him set up his farm for the end-game scoring...

And he was screwed twice towards the late-game stages - once when I took the 4 food in the Fishing space (he has a card that can double the food in that space) and later when alanwsl took the last fencing in the last round of the game resulting in stanpang not being able to fence - even though he already has the woods. Ouch.

Everyone enjoyed their 2nd game of Agricola, and I'm sure they'll be back for more!

Citi Cafe closes at 2am unlike OTK which runs 24-hr in Cheras. Therefore we need to pick a short game after Agricola and there's no better game that gives you tough decision making in a short 1.5 hrs time than In the Year of the Dragon.

I bought this while I was in Sydney last Nov, but have only played it once. The OTK group has played this a couple more times than me. :( So this is just my 2nd session for ItYofD yet the rules are still clear in my head!

In the Year of the Dragon is essentially a forward planning game where you know what resources you can have, the sequence of events - usually bad - that'll happen and what resources/actions are needed to avert them. You do have to adjust your plans according to the actions of your other players as everyone's basically fighting for the same resources or actions to stave off the catastrophes that are ahead of them.

Lots of tough decisions in this game.. yet the game plays in around 1.5 hours (assuming ppl do not AP) which is very good as a filler in-between those heavy games.

Need to remind myself to get this to the table more often.

I went for the banker strategy (money) early in the game but having a good supply of money - which allowed me to go last in turn order - did not do me much good as alanwsl was the eventual winner in this game.

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