<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<feed xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" xml:lang="en-US"><title type="html">BoardgameCafe.net</title><subtitle type="html">Weekly testdrives, monthly meetup and gaming session reports for events organized by KL Boardgames Meetup throughout Malaysia.</subtitle><id>http://boardgamecafe.net/community/blogs/boardgamecafe_net/atom.aspx</id><link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://boardgamecafe.net/community/blogs/boardgamecafe_net/default.aspx" /><link rel="self" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://boardgamecafe.net/community/blogs/boardgamecafe_net/atom.aspx" /><generator uri="http://communityserver.org" version="2.0.60404.2676">Community Server</generator><updated>2006-10-15T23:16:00Z</updated><entry><title>Fri BGC Meetup at OTK Cheras - Imperial, Cash &amp;amp; Guns, Dominion and Le Havre</title><link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://boardgamecafe.net/community/blogs/boardgamecafe_net/archive/2009/01/05/Fri_Boardgamecafe_net_Meetup_at_Old_Town_Kopitiam_Cheras.aspx" /><id>http://boardgamecafe.net/community/blogs/boardgamecafe_net/archive/2009/01/05/Fri_Boardgamecafe_net_Meetup_at_Old_Town_Kopitiam_Cheras.aspx</id><published>2009-01-04T19:06:00Z</published><updated>2009-01-04T19:06:00Z</updated><content type="html">&lt;TABLE id=table7 cellSpacing=5 cellPadding=3 width="100%" border=0&gt;

&lt;TR&gt;
&lt;TD vAlign=top&gt;&lt;B&gt;Gamers:&lt;/B&gt; Alvin (keealvin), Wei Yii (weiyii), Ken (wolfx), Allen (blownfreaks), Cliff (cliff), Heng (ayheng), Aw (aw) and Jeff Au&lt;B&gt; &lt;/B&gt;(jack208); and special mention to Wai Yan (waiyan), Isabel and Yee Ling (crabzai) who dropped by to chit-chat only. :P 
&lt;P&gt;&lt;B&gt;Games:&lt;/B&gt; &lt;A href="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/store/shopexd.asp?id=232"&gt;Imperial&lt;/A&gt;, Cash-n-Guns, Dominion and Le Havre&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;B&gt;Location: &lt;/B&gt;Old Town Kopitiam Cheras (Boardgamecafe.net) &lt;A href="http://www.wikimapia.org/#lat=3.102585&amp;amp;lon=101.734507&amp;amp;z=18&amp;amp;l=0&amp;amp;m=a&amp;amp;v=2&amp;amp;search=old%20town%20cheras" target=_blank&gt;Location Map (wikimapia)&lt;/A&gt; &lt;BR&gt;&lt;B&gt;Date/Time:&lt;/B&gt; 2 January '09 (Fri) 8.00 PM - 4.30 AM&lt;/P&gt;&lt;/TD&gt;&lt;/TR&gt;&lt;/TABLE&gt;
&lt;HR&gt;

&lt;P&gt;&lt;B&gt;KL BOARDGAMES MEETUP REPORT @ OLD TOWN KOPITIAM CHERAS 2/1/09&lt;/B&gt;&lt;BR&gt;&lt;I&gt;by jack208&lt;/I&gt;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;TABLE id=table12 cellSpacing=1 width="100%" border=0&gt;

&lt;TR&gt;
&lt;TD vAlign=top bgColor=#66ffff&gt;&lt;STRONG&gt;JAN2 MEETUP R1&lt;/STRONG&gt;&lt;/TD&gt;
&lt;TD style="WIDTH: 120px" bgColor=#66ffff&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/TD&gt;&lt;/TR&gt;&lt;/TABLE&gt;
&lt;P&gt;It has been a while since I write meetup reports... Well, we do post quick updates via the OTK thread but it's not the same somehow as writing a full-fledge report. Now that I'm starting to move our photo gallery to Flickr, let's get back into the report writing as well. &lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;Here's to another GREAT YEAR OF BOARDGAMING! &lt;/P&gt;
&lt;TABLE id=table9 cellSpacing=1 width="100%" border=0&gt;

&lt;TR&gt;
&lt;TD bgColor=#66ffff&gt;&lt;STRONG&gt;&lt;A href="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/store/shopexd.asp?id=232"&gt;IMPERIAL&lt;/A&gt;&lt;/STRONG&gt;&lt;/TD&gt;&lt;/TR&gt;&lt;/TABLE&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;STRONG&gt;&lt;A href="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/store/shopexd.asp?id=232"&gt;Imperial&lt;/A&gt;&lt;/STRONG&gt; - just how do you start to describe this game? A game that combines an economic engine with military actions? One that fans of Axis &amp;amp; Allies may love - after all, what's the objective of war? To control and manipulate so that you reap the riches of the countries you conquered... no?&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;A game that those who like &lt;A href="/community/forums/104/ShowForum.aspx"&gt;18xx games&lt;/A&gt; but find that it's not confrontational enough would luv to jump in... forget about sending incompetent engineers to mess up your rival's railway network... here in Imperial, you can just send your armies to invade and suppress your opponent's factory!! buahahahaa......&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;We haven't bring this to the table for some time... and since I heard it's name mentioned twice; once when blownfreaks asked if we can do Imperial (he probably came across it while browsing BGG after we did &lt;STRONG&gt;Hamburgum&lt;/STRONG&gt;, the 3rd game in the Rondel series), and the second time when our Imperial Lord (aka aanemesis) said he's coming to OTK tonight and would luv to re-visit some &lt;EM&gt;old flames&lt;/EM&gt; (ie Imperial). This was before MH233 took off from &lt;EM&gt;Putrajaya Airport&lt;/EM&gt;. &lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;A title="BGC Meetup - Imperial by boardgamecafes, on Flickr" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/boardgamecafes/3166701251/"&gt;&lt;IMG height=377 alt="BGC Meetup - Imperial" src="http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1167/3166701251_14b6228e50.jpg" width=500&gt;&lt;/A&gt;&lt;BR&gt;&lt;SPAN&gt;ayheng recapping some pointers on the game as keealvin, weiyii, cliff and blownfreaks paid full attention&lt;/SPAN&gt;&lt;BR&gt;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;As there were some newbies to Imperial, we recap the rules for them and then promptly set up the board and draw for starting bond distribution. We played with the standard Investor mode (yes, &lt;EM&gt;potential newspaper-reading time &lt;/EM&gt;hehe).&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;A title="BGC Meetup - Imperial by boardgamecafes, on Flickr" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/boardgamecafes/3166701607/"&gt;&lt;IMG height=377 alt="BGC Meetup - Imperial" src="http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1099/3166701607_b6e27a6ec6.jpg" width=500&gt;&lt;/A&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;BR&gt;&lt;SPAN&gt;jack208 starting with Russia and having some interest in the welfare of France (controlled by blownfreaks)&lt;/SPAN&gt;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;I drew majority control in Russia ($9m) which comes with minority stake in France ($4m). The smaller number below the bond value is the potential dividend that you'll receive if that country pays out ("Investor" action). The interesting thing about Imperial bonds is that the lower value bonds have higher ROI ie. the 4m France bond gives me a ROI of 50% while the 9m Russia bond only gets 44%.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;ayheng drew Austria (minority: Germany) so he'll start the game, while wolfx got England (minority: Russia), keealvin/weiyii got Italy (minority: England), cliff ran Germany (minority: Italy), and blownfreaks had France (minority: Austria)&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;A title="BGC Meetup - Imperial by boardgamecafes, on Flickr" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/boardgamecafes/3166702143/"&gt;&lt;IMG height=377 alt="BGC Meetup - Imperial" src="http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1342/3166702143_f93a696d34.jpg" width=500&gt;&lt;/A&gt;&lt;BR&gt;&lt;SPAN&gt;England (red) starting with two naval factories (blue) which would grant it the naval superpower status&lt;/SPAN&gt;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;wolfx was commenting on England's options before the draw.. and well, he drew England so this means he'd full opportunity to try out his strategy (or not). England starts with two naval factories which is true to its nature as a naval force. The rest tend to be more balanced starting with an army and naval factory each.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;A title="BGC Meetup - Imperial by boardgamecafes, on Flickr" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/boardgamecafes/3167535606/"&gt;&lt;IMG height=377 alt="BGC Meetup - Imperial" src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3256/3167535606_45327f0a37.jpg" width=500&gt;&lt;/A&gt;&lt;BR&gt;&lt;SPAN&gt;Looked like Factory action's the most popular... England building an army factory to complement it's two naval bases.&lt;/SPAN&gt;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;This session started with Austria doing Factory then Production and everyone following suit. Hmm... groupthink at its zenith? &lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;Anyhow England was smart to build an army factory and the rest all expanding to either army or navy depending on their expansion plans. Russia opted for an army factory in Kiev in order to expand south. &lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;A title="BGC Meetup - Imperial by boardgamecafes, on Flickr" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/boardgamecafes/3167537248/"&gt;&lt;IMG height=377 alt="BGC Meetup - Imperial" src="http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1041/3167537248_22d0d40bfd.jpg" width=500&gt;&lt;/A&gt;&lt;BR&gt;The Rondel that lets each player choose their action! There are now four Rondel games - Antike, Imperial, Hamburgum and (latest) The Princes of Machu Pichu.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;Unfortunately Austria (ayheng) was also thinking the same thing.. and her armies started capturing neutral cities south of her borders with her naval forces entering the Ionian Sea, and soon the Russian forces clashed with the Austrian in Romania and Bulgaria.....&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;A title="BGC Meetup - Imperial by boardgamecafes, on Flickr" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/boardgamecafes/3167538190/"&gt;&lt;IMG height=377 alt="BGC Meetup - Imperial" src="http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1312/3167538190_33eb295499.jpg" width=500&gt;&lt;/A&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;BR&gt;&lt;SPAN&gt;In the east, Russia (purple) and Austria (yellow) were fighting over Bulgaria and Romania while Italy (green) silently built her forces&lt;/SPAN&gt;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;Westward, England started her expansion once she has trained up sufficient armies.... and when England expands, that will either go into Germany or French territories. In this game, England went for France, and she went for the throat and landed her elite forces to take Paris and Holland.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;A title="BGC Meetup - Imperial by boardgamecafes, on Flickr" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/boardgamecafes/3167537700/"&gt;&lt;IMG height=377 alt="BGC Meetup - Imperial" src="http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1149/3167537700_fa6a3ae166.jpg" width=500&gt;&lt;/A&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;BR&gt;&lt;SPAN&gt;England drew first blood by successfully landing her armies into Paris and suppressed France's economic growth&lt;/SPAN&gt;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;EM&gt;Note:&lt;/EM&gt; In such scenario, Russia (jack208) needs to switch her attention northwards to check Germany's growth since a Germany unimpeded by England or France will expand rapidly into the Ultras! However the ongoing war with Austria south of Russia kept me pre-occupied there.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;A title="BGC Meetup - Imperial by boardgamecafes, on Flickr" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/boardgamecafes/3167538786/"&gt;&lt;IMG height=377 alt="BGC Meetup - Imperial" src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3258/3167538786_6fd8c6d2f3.jpg" width=500&gt;&lt;/A&gt;&lt;BR&gt;&lt;SPAN&gt;Germany's dream scenario.... England vs France and Russia vs Austria&amp;nbsp;allowed her to grow unimpeded. Note that England (red) and Austria (yellow) were the first countries to tax.&lt;/SPAN&gt;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;France were slowly reclaiming back lost ground - with some help from Germany - as she pushed back against the English (see below). France's successful control of the English Channel and Germany's powerful naval presence in the North Sea kept England pegged back.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;A title="BGC Meetup - Imperial by boardgamecafes, on Flickr" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/boardgamecafes/3166707135/"&gt;&lt;IMG height=377 alt="BGC Meetup - Imperial" src="http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1101/3166707135_ac6151cf0d.jpg" width=500&gt;&lt;/A&gt;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;The English then cranked up their ship production in an attempt to push out against the French and Germans on both sea fronts.... all parties gearing up for a fierce naval battle!&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;A title="BGC Meetup - Imperial by boardgamecafes, on Flickr" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/boardgamecafes/3167540954/"&gt;&lt;IMG height=377 alt="BGC Meetup - Imperial" src="http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1052/3167540954_7b8b4a8769.jpg" width=500&gt;&lt;/A&gt;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;Italy (keealvin) - which has been building quietly - launched a quick raid when her armies went eastward and attacked Austria from the back while she's engaged on the Eastern front with Russia. The Italian forces were swift, merciless and quickly cut-off Austria's main naval forces from its mainland leaving it stranded in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;A title="BGC Meetup - Imperial by boardgamecafes, on Flickr" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/boardgamecafes/3166708491/"&gt;&lt;IMG height=377 alt="BGC Meetup - Imperial" src="http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1078/3166708491_0839935e01.jpg" width=500&gt;&lt;/A&gt;&lt;BR&gt;&lt;SPAN&gt;Italy's (green) attack left the Austria (yellow) fleet stranded in the Mediterranean Sea&lt;/SPAN&gt;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;Italy's conquest of North Africa was left uncontested by a France who's occupied on her northern shores (with England).&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;keealvin's strategy worked well as Italy's first taxation yielded 14m and keealvin received a bonus of 9m for his good work! Most of us were taxing at around the 10m mark (with personal bonus to the President of around 3-5m) with the exception of wolfx who were true to his &lt;EM&gt;unethical &lt;/EM&gt;nature delivered about 4m of net tax for England while he himself pocketed 5m bonus!! &amp;lt;grin&amp;gt;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;A title="BGC Meetup - Imperial by boardgamecafes, on Flickr" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/boardgamecafes/3167538786/"&gt;&lt;IMG height=377 alt="BGC Meetup - Imperial" src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3258/3167538786_6fd8c6d2f3.jpg" width=500&gt;&lt;/A&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;By now, it's too late for Russia to switch it's war to the northern Front as Germany (black) had then grew very strongly controlling both the Baltic &amp;amp; North Sea; while England and France were engaged bitterly over the English Channel. &lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;Being shrewd investor, ayheng then quietly shift from warfare and started picking up stocks in Germany as by this time, Germany were leading the ROI chart with her bonds being worth x3 on the Yield Factor! Me on the other hand were busy taxing and paying out dividends from Russia's treasury.... and slowly investing into Italy.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;A title="BGC Meetup - Imperial by boardgamecafes, on Flickr" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/boardgamecafes/3167542410/"&gt;&lt;IMG height=377 alt="BGC Meetup - Imperial" src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3106/3167542410_082cbc146e.jpg" width=500&gt;&lt;/A&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;BR&gt;&lt;SPAN&gt;jack208 expanding his portfolio to include Italian (green) bonds&lt;/SPAN&gt;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;Italy after having had Austria on its backfoot, then did something .. unexpected. Instead of going for France whose back's were exposed, she wanted to negotiate a pact with the French Government to use the Bay of Biscay to attack England? This is baffling as keealvin has a rather significant minority stake in England.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;A title="BGC Meetup - Imperial by boardgamecafes, on Flickr" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/boardgamecafes/3167542706/"&gt;&lt;IMG height=377 alt="BGC Meetup - Imperial" src="http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1129/3167542706_db54b2ce8d.jpg" width=500&gt;&lt;/A&gt;&lt;BR&gt;&lt;SPAN&gt;England (wolfx) ponders while her minority stakeholders keealvin and weiyii planned their next conquests&lt;/SPAN&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;But on the other hand, this is a typical oversight made by most ppl new to this game. They take this as a "wargame" and set about using their starting countries to conquer others. keealvin did make an interesting observation at the end of the game - that there's a distinctive absence of the players going for aggressive take-over of another's country by buying up bonds (compared to the last session where aanemesis was playing)!&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;A title="BGC Meetup - Imperial by boardgamecafes, on Flickr" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/boardgamecafes/3167542032/"&gt;&lt;IMG height=377 alt="BGC Meetup - Imperial" src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3090/3167542032_5769544bfc.jpg" width=500&gt;&lt;/A&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;There was an attempted buy-out by cliff (Germany) on Italy during mid-game, but that was quickly rebuffed by keealvin upgrading one of his Italian bonds and regained control. After that, no one attempted another take-over. &lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;After almost drying up Russia, I made a grab for a high $20m Italy bond towards the end (taking my Italian investment&amp;nbsp;to $26m) when I see Italy can make her home-run (which she did) but my 26m is still way short of taking over keealvin's 29m stake.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;The objective of this game is to have the most of the high-yield bonds at the end of the game; "high yield" being defined as bonds from countries that are doing well on the economic front (ie. they managed to raise lots of tax!) which is measured by the bond's credit score.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;A title="BGC Meetup - Imperial by boardgamecafes, on Flickr" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/boardgamecafes/3167543772/"&gt;&lt;IMG height=377 alt="BGC Meetup - Imperial" src="http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1176/3167543772_57195c9514.jpg" width=500&gt;&lt;/A&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;BR&gt;&lt;SPAN&gt;Germany (black) running up the Bond Credit score track. Countries that are high on this track provide higher yield.&lt;/SPAN&gt;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;Military expansion obviously helps to increase your tax yield.. but having ONLY shares in one country won't necessarily win you the game coz the rest can easily see your country is winning and start buying up bonds in your country, therefore closing the financial gap with you.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;A title="BGC Meetup - Imperial by boardgamecafes, on Flickr" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/boardgamecafes/3166711707/"&gt;&lt;IMG height=377 alt="BGC Meetup - Imperial" src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3084/3166711707_b99c37ae06.jpg" width=500&gt;&lt;/A&gt;&lt;BR&gt;&lt;SPAN&gt;Italy (green) and Germany (black) were the two strongest nations in this session, and that's accurately reflected in their high Tax position (in the chart at top left of picture)&amp;nbsp;&lt;/SPAN&gt;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;A high taxation (and investment return) doesn't necessarily win you the game; it only helps make your country more attractive to bond raiders (like aanemesis if he's playing) who will snap up bonds in your country. You'll then need to be able to have the cash to defend your position. :)&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;A title="BGC Meetup - Imperial by boardgamecafes, on Flickr" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/boardgamecafes/3166712405/"&gt;&lt;IMG height=377 alt="BGC Meetup - Imperial" src="http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1006/3166712405_2c0605a1da.jpg" width=500&gt;&lt;/A&gt;&lt;BR&gt;&lt;SPAN&gt;Game position almost at end of game&lt;/SPAN&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;Italy ended the game by reaching the 25 credit score on her last taxation (just after Russia did hers to push her bonds to x4). Italian bonds now yielded x5 value while Germany and Russia were at x4.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;cliff (Germany) - as expected - won the game with ~158m while jack208 (Russia) has ~148m and keealvin (Italy) ~138m. An unchecked Germany is simply too strong. But my 20m investment into Italy allowed me to leapfrogged keealvin into 2nd, which serves to underline the economic objective of this game (vs the military focus).&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;I also suspected - &lt;EM&gt;and aanemesis can confirm this for us&lt;/EM&gt; - that the difficulty in timing the take-over is also due to the fact we played using the Investor card and even if we've the money, we dun get to invest (ie buy new bond) until the card comes around to us.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;We've been talking about playing the &lt;A href="/community/forums/thread/12382.aspx"&gt;non-Investor card variant&lt;/A&gt; but have not gotten around to doing so. One of the reasons obviously is that if there are newcomers to Imperial, we shud play with the Investor card to familiarize them with the game. But hey, since this group of 6 now already knew the game - so next game, no Investor card? ;)&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;You can &lt;A href="/community/forums/thread/12382.aspx"&gt;discuss Imperial strategies here&lt;/A&gt;.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;TABLE id=table14 cellSpacing=1 width="100%" border=0&gt;

&lt;TR&gt;
&lt;TD bgColor=#66ffff&gt;&lt;STRONG&gt;CASH &amp;amp; GUNS&lt;/STRONG&gt;&lt;/TD&gt;&lt;/TR&gt;&lt;/TABLE&gt;
&lt;P&gt;After Imperial, keealvin suggested Cash &amp;amp; Guns... yeah good fun game that doesn't need to do much thinking.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;A title="BGC Meetup - Cash &amp;amp; Guns by boardgamecafes, on Flickr" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/boardgamecafes/3166713327/"&gt;&lt;IMG height=377 alt="BGC Meetup - Cash &amp;amp; Guns" src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3084/3166713327_ea06c3bef7.jpg" width=500&gt;&lt;/A&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;A title="BGC Meetup - Cash &amp;amp; Guns by boardgamecafes, on Flickr" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/boardgamecafes/3167546876/"&gt;&lt;IMG height=377 alt="BGC Meetup - Cash &amp;amp; Guns" src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3213/3167546876_468eea0352.jpg" width=500&gt;&lt;/A&gt;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;keealvin quickly walked us thru the rules, and after selecting our character, off we go for glory and money! In the end, wolfx won this hands-down.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;A title="BGC Meetup - Cash &amp;amp; Guns by boardgamecafes, on Flickr" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/boardgamecafes/3167547318/"&gt;&lt;IMG height=377 alt="BGC Meetup - Cash &amp;amp; Guns" src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3107/3167547318_4e3ce63ba1.jpg" width=500&gt;&lt;/A&gt;&lt;BR&gt;&lt;SPAN&gt;Wolfx, the eventual winner for this session of Cash &amp;amp; Guns&lt;/SPAN&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;R2 report coming next; &lt;STRONG&gt;Dominion&lt;/STRONG&gt; (so what do I think of this game?) and &lt;STRONG&gt;Le Havre&lt;/STRONG&gt; with 5 players. Stay tuned....&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;HR&gt;

&lt;P&gt;For more photos of this gaming session, visit our &lt;A href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/boardgamecafes/sets/72157612158969462/"&gt;Flickr set&lt;/A&gt; &lt;BR&gt;For more gaming reports, visit our &lt;A href="/community/blogs/Bloggers.aspx?GroupID=6"&gt;Boardgame Meetup Reports Blog&lt;/A&gt;.&lt;BR&gt;To discuss this gaming session, visit our forum in &lt;A href="/community/forums/51/ShowForum.aspx"&gt;BoardgameCafe.net&lt;/A&gt; &lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;To buy the games played in this meetup, visit our &lt;A href="/store"&gt;Web Store&lt;/A&gt;. We carry over 300+ games and provide prompt delivery to anywhere in Malaysia.&lt;/P&gt;&lt;img src="http://boardgamecafe.net/community/aggbug.aspx?PostID=16868" width="1" height="1"&gt;</content><author><name>jack208</name><uri>http://boardgamecafe.net/community/members/jack208.aspx</uri></author></entry><entry><title>Fri Meetup at OTK and Boardgamecafe.net 21/9/07 - Zombies, Age of Empires III, Age of Steam, 1856</title><link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://boardgamecafe.net/community/blogs/boardgamecafe_net/archive/2007/10/24/11812.aspx" /><id>http://boardgamecafe.net/community/blogs/boardgamecafe_net/archive/2007/10/24/11812.aspx</id><published>2007-10-23T20:02:00Z</published><updated>2007-10-23T20:02:00Z</updated><content type="html">&lt;TABLE id=table7 cellSpacing=5 cellPadding=3 width="100%" border=0&gt;

&lt;TR&gt;
&lt;TD vAlign=top&gt;&lt;B&gt;Gamers: &lt;/B&gt;Jorge (patomas), Ian (shrapnel), Donovan (don), Heng (ayheng), Henry (rhyen), Alan Tan (alantan), Steven Yap (stevenyap) and Jeff Au&lt;B&gt; &lt;/B&gt;(jack208)&lt;B&gt; &lt;/B&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;B&gt;Games:&lt;/B&gt; Zombies, Age of Empires III, &lt;a href="http://boardgamecafe.net/store/shopexd.asp?id=18"&gt;Age of Steam&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href="http://boardgamecafe.net/store/shopexd.asp?id=143"&gt;1856&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;B&gt;Location: &lt;/B&gt;Old Town Kopitiam &amp;amp; Boardgamecafe.net, Cheras&lt;BR&gt;&lt;B&gt;Date/Time:&lt;/B&gt; 21 September 07 (Fri) 8.00 PM - 6.30 AM&lt;/P&gt;&lt;/TD&gt;&lt;/TR&gt;&lt;/TABLE&gt;
&lt;HR&gt;

&lt;P&gt;&lt;B&gt;KL BOARDGAMES MEETUP REPORT @ OLD TOWN KOPITIAM &amp;amp; BOARDGAMECAFE.NET CHERAS 21/9/07&lt;/B&gt;&lt;BR&gt;&lt;I&gt;by jack208&lt;/I&gt;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;TABLE id=table12 cellSpacing=1 width="100%" border=0&gt;

&lt;TR&gt;
&lt;TD vAlign=top bgColor=#66ffff&gt;&lt;B&gt;FRIDAY MEETUP ROUND 1 @ OLD TOWN KOPITIAM CHERAS&lt;/B&gt;&lt;/TD&gt;
&lt;TD style="WIDTH: 120px" bgColor=#66ffff&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/TD&gt;&lt;/TR&gt;&lt;/TABLE&gt;
&lt;P&gt;Another week another meetup. This week we've shrapnel to thank for bringing his nephew Donovan's &lt;STRONG&gt;Zombies&lt;/STRONG&gt; game (from Twilight Creations). I'd wanted to testdrive the game to see if it's suitable for us to play during the upcoming Halloween Party at Outpost Cafe.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;TABLE id=table9 cellSpacing=1 width="100%" border=0&gt;

&lt;TR&gt;
&lt;TD bgColor=#66ffff&gt;&lt;STRONG&gt;Zombies&lt;/STRONG&gt;&lt;/TD&gt;&lt;/TR&gt;&lt;/TABLE&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;A href="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/11785/original.aspx"&gt;&lt;IMG height=266 src="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/11785/original.aspx" width=400 border=0&gt;&lt;/A&gt;&lt;BR&gt;&lt;SPAN&gt;&lt;EM&gt;Alan Tan, shrapnel, Don and rhyen starting the Zombies game&lt;/EM&gt;&lt;/SPAN&gt;&lt;BR&gt;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;In Zombies, you play one of five people stuck in a town full of zombies. You start in the town square and your objective is to get to the helipad. To make things interesting for you, the helipad has zombies packed like sardines! &lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;A href="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/11789/original.aspx"&gt;&lt;IMG height=266 src="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/11789/original.aspx" width=400 border=0&gt;&lt;/A&gt;&lt;BR&gt;&lt;SPAN&gt;&lt;EM&gt;Your objective: Get here and fly away! But you may have to ask those zombies nicely....&lt;/EM&gt;&lt;/SPAN&gt;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;Along the way, you can pick up weapons (skateboard, shotgun and chainsaw!) that allows you to hack them zombies more and faster! You can also pick up more bullet and life-point token. These are useful if you wanna survive longer than your comrades.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;The Zombies are moved by the active player at the end of his turn.. obviously he's going to move some zombies your way! There's one variant where if a zombie has line of sight to any human, it runs towards that person (ie twice its movement point). Now this will induce more stress... hehehe&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;A href="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/11786/original.aspx"&gt;&lt;IMG height=266 src="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/11786/original.aspx" width=400 border=0&gt;&lt;/A&gt;&lt;BR&gt;&lt;SPAN&gt;&lt;EM&gt;Players starting in the middle of the board ie town square&lt;/EM&gt;&lt;/SPAN&gt;.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;STRONG&gt;&lt;EM&gt;Commentary from rhyen&lt;/EM&gt;&lt;/STRONG&gt;&lt;BR&gt;&lt;STRONG&gt;Zombies &lt;/STRONG&gt;(Jeff, Alan Tan, Sharpel and newphew, and me) - sharpel won after we cleared all the zombies and he was first to run to the helipad.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;STRONG&gt;&lt;EM&gt;Verdict? &lt;/EM&gt;&lt;/STRONG&gt;Yup.. certainly a good game to bring to the Halloween table this Oct27! Oh Don's copy is the 1st Edition and thus does not include the female zombies.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;IMG height=347 src="http://www.twilightcreationsinc.com/zombies2/female.jpg" width=300 border=0&gt;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;TABLE id=table14 cellSpacing=1 width="100%" border=0&gt;

&lt;TR&gt;
&lt;TD bgColor=#66ffff&gt;&lt;STRONG&gt;Age of Empires III&lt;/STRONG&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/TD&gt;&lt;/TR&gt;&lt;/TABLE&gt;
&lt;P&gt;Heng arrived while we've started the Zombies game, and were joined later by Jorge and Steven. Since the five of us were busy hacking the limbs of zombies..... he decided to do (wat else?) teach Steven and Jorge the joy of discoveries in &lt;STRONG&gt;Age of Empires III&lt;/STRONG&gt;.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;A href="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/11788/original.aspx"&gt;&lt;IMG height=266 src="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/11788/original.aspx" width=400 border=0&gt;&lt;/A&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;BR&gt;&lt;SPAN&gt;&lt;EM&gt;ayheng (back to camera) teaching Steven and Jorge AOEIII&lt;/EM&gt;&lt;/SPAN&gt;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;There is some interesting chatter going on in the &lt;A href="/community/forums/thread/9247.aspx"&gt;Boardgamecafe forum&lt;/A&gt; about AOE3. Some seems to hate the game, some indifferent and a few gave their thumbs-up. My take is that this is a good game (7/10) but a game which you need to play a few things in order to learn its nuances (especially its capital buildings) before you can play better.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;You don't believe me? In the game above, ayheng stockpiled thousands of spanish coins to thrashed his newbie opponents! &amp;nbsp;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;A href="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/11790/original.aspx"&gt;&lt;IMG height=266 src="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/11790/original.aspx" width=400 border=0&gt;&lt;/A&gt;&lt;BR&gt;&lt;SPAN&gt;&lt;EM&gt;Look at the amount of coins ayheng has stockpiled! Big bully!!!&lt;/EM&gt;&lt;/SPAN&gt;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;STRONG&gt;&lt;EM&gt;Commentary from rhyen&lt;/EM&gt;&lt;/STRONG&gt;&lt;BR&gt;&lt;STRONG&gt;Age of Empires III &lt;/STRONG&gt;- Heng introed Steven and Jorge to AOE3 (that becursed games :P), I presume that by now, Jeff Au has uploaded Hengy's demolition of the field and his stacks of gold doubloons. &lt;/P&gt;
&lt;TABLE id=table15 cellSpacing=1 width="100%" border=0&gt;

&lt;TR&gt;
&lt;TD bgColor=#66ffff&gt;&lt;STRONG&gt;Age of Steam (Rust Belt map)&lt;/STRONG&gt;&lt;/TD&gt;&lt;/TR&gt;&lt;/TABLE&gt;
&lt;P&gt;Finally, a game that we've enjoyed in the past but strangely has not been hitting the gaming table recently... &lt;STRONG&gt;&lt;a href="http://boardgamecafe.net/store/shopexd.asp?id=18"&gt;Age of Steam&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/STRONG&gt;. Since this was our first game of Age of Steam in many many months and there were also some gamers here who were learning this game for the 1st time, we decided to start with the basic map.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;A href="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/11791/original.aspx"&gt;&lt;IMG height=266 src="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/11791/original.aspx" width=400 border=0&gt;&lt;/A&gt;&lt;BR&gt;&lt;SPAN&gt;&lt;EM&gt;6-player Age of Steam on the standard Rust Belt map&lt;/EM&gt;&lt;/SPAN&gt;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;shrapnel, don, jorge and steven were learning this game for the 1st time.. and I think they enjoyed it! Look at their Happy Faces!! Now to take out the North Carolina map for them, hehe&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;A href="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/11792/original.aspx"&gt;&lt;IMG height=266 src="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/11792/original.aspx" width=400 border=0&gt;&lt;/A&gt;&lt;SPAN&gt;&lt;EM&gt;&lt;BR&gt;The four AOS newbies - shrapnel/don, jorge and steven enjoying the Rust Belt map&lt;/EM&gt;&lt;/SPAN&gt;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;STRONG&gt;&lt;EM&gt;Commentary from rhyen&lt;/EM&gt;&lt;/STRONG&gt;&lt;SPAN&gt;&lt;BR&gt;We then did 6 player AOS where Jorge went out and got back into the game (by taking over from team sharpel/nephew, both of whom had to leave early). Hengy pipped Steven into second after Steven got distracted by Jeff Au trying to interrupt my hint to him to urbanized one of their town into a city. I tied with Jeff Au for 3rd, no idea about the tiebreaker, after some help from Jorge that padded my score with runs along my track.&lt;/SPAN&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;TABLE id=table13 cellSpacing=1 width="100%" border=0&gt;

&lt;TR&gt;
&lt;TD vAlign=top bgColor=#66ffff&gt;&lt;B&gt;FRIDAY MEETUP ROUND 2 @ BOARDGAMECAFE.NET&lt;/B&gt;&lt;/TD&gt;&lt;/TR&gt;&lt;/TABLE&gt;
&lt;P&gt;While shrapnel and don have to leave, we still have 5 players for R2. Since everyone's still &lt;EM&gt;high&lt;/EM&gt; on train and steam engines, we decided to do &lt;STRONG&gt;&lt;a href="http://boardgamecafe.net/store/shopexd.asp?id=143"&gt;1856&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/STRONG&gt; - another old fave that has been missing from our table for a while... another 2 more gamers graduating from the BGC 18xx academy. &lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;STRONG&gt;&lt;EM&gt;Here's rhyen's report on the session&lt;/EM&gt;&lt;/STRONG&gt;&lt;BR&gt;We retired to RD2 in BGC where 1856 returned to the table. Quick instructions and hints to Jorge and Steven and we were off. Seating arrangement was Hengy, Steven, Jeff, Jorge and finally me.&lt;BR&gt;&lt;BR&gt;Many gamers were trying to ride on the coattails of Jedi Council Member Jeff Au early on, capitalizing his LPS early on. but investor Hengy wised up to the potential of my CPR and duly invested as much money as possible thus allowing me to reward him with the first $22 EPS per share in the early part of the 3rd phase while everyone else was stuggling in the low teens. We both sapu-ed all 10 shares of CPR and my $20+ EPS kept him happy all the while.&lt;BR&gt;&lt;BR&gt;Later on, I helped Steven defend his GW from being taken over by Hengy by buying the last share splitting it in a 3-way tie between me, Hengy and Steven (Jorge held the last share, perhaps Hengy could persuade him to sell since either me or hengy would be the first one to snap it up and take over Steven's lonely company). The favor was repaid by Hengy dumping all of his GW shares onto the market (to jumpstart CV) while Steven had to struggle to capitalized his new company WGB after setting a par value too low (perhaps being fooled by Jeff Au's opening par value of $70 for GT, a company that Jeff Au intended to merged into the CGR by taking on govt loans after govt loan). Immediately sizing up the prospect, Jeff Au started egging on Steven to Hot Sun me but Steven repaid my favour by heroically salvaging both companies from the throes of tight cashflows (and managed to buy the last 2 '5' trains). &lt;BR&gt;&lt;BR&gt;Thus setting the grand finale for Jeff Au to buy the first 6 with GT (which fell into CGR), and then proceeding to upgrade his LPS '4' into a diesel rusting everyone else's train except for both of Steven's '5's. But dawn was breaking and Jorge's ride was waiting and Steven needed to crash so Jeff Au wins by consensus (Let's face it, how do you beat a LPS that has a 'D' and '5' and a CGR with '6'; guess we will never know unless Hengy and I managed to dabble in our stockmarket manipulation). &lt;BR&gt;&lt;BR&gt;PS: Also noted, many of us misplayed a few rules, with Jeff Au actually overcapitalizing his GT with funds from investors that were supposed to be held in escrow until he actually destinated but sadly he forgot all about that until someone pointed it out.&lt;BR&gt;&lt;BR&gt;Jeff Au and I then proceed to delay Hengy's return to Klang by talking about the caylus PLE competition and Hengy got so hungry that he joined us for dimsum breakfast. YAY! we finally managed to get Hengy to experience the real 8 AM syndrome. We talked on and on and on about possible moves, computer simulation programs, game annotations; we even found out that only I like chicken feet and jeff doesn't like prawns. Managed to sample the original gyoza, aka wo teap aka, fried leftover sui jiao.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;HR&gt;

&lt;P&gt;&lt;A href="/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/category1276/picture11785.aspx"&gt;Click here&lt;/A&gt; for more photos of this gaming session.&lt;BR&gt;For more gaming reports, visit our &lt;A href="/community/blogs/Bloggers.aspx?GroupID=6"&gt;Boardgame Meetup Reports Blog&lt;/A&gt;.&lt;BR&gt;To discuss this gaming session, visit our forum in &lt;A href="/community/forums/51/ShowForum.aspx"&gt;BoardgameCafe.net&lt;/A&gt; &lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;If you wish to join our&amp;nbsp;boardgame meetups, check out our &lt;A href="/community/calendar/default.aspx"&gt;Meetup Calendar&lt;/A&gt; and sign up now at &lt;A href="http://boardgames.meetup.com/310" target=_blank&gt;KL Boardgames Meetup!&lt;/A&gt;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;To buy the games played in this meetup, visit our &lt;A href="/store"&gt;Web Store&lt;/A&gt;. We carry over 200+ games and provide prompt delivery to anywhere in Malaysia.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;21-09-2007&lt;/P&gt;&lt;img src="http://boardgamecafe.net/community/aggbug.aspx?PostID=11812" width="1" height="1"&gt;</content><author><name>jack208</name><uri>http://boardgamecafe.net/community/members/jack208.aspx</uri></author></entry><entry><title>Fri Meetup at OTK and Boardgamecafe.net 14/9/07 - Ticket to Ride, Lifeboats, Caylus, Pompeji, 18Scan, Powergrid, Manila and Die Handler</title><link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://boardgamecafe.net/community/blogs/boardgamecafe_net/archive/2007/10/24/11810.aspx" /><id>http://boardgamecafe.net/community/blogs/boardgamecafe_net/archive/2007/10/24/11810.aspx</id><published>2007-10-23T19:40:00Z</published><updated>2007-10-23T19:40:00Z</updated><content type="html">&lt;TABLE id=table7 cellSpacing=5 cellPadding=3 width="100%" border=0&gt;

&lt;TR&gt;
&lt;TD vAlign=top&gt;&lt;B&gt;Gamers: &lt;/B&gt;Jorge (patomas), Edel&lt;B&gt;,&lt;/B&gt; Ian (shrapnel), Ken (wolfx), Henry (rhyen), Cheryl (c_mun), Siew Hui, Yee Ling, Dylan, Imran (redtag), Wai Yan (waiyan) and Jeff Au&lt;B&gt; &lt;/B&gt;(jack208)&lt;B&gt; &lt;/B&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;B&gt;Games: &lt;/B&gt;&lt;a href="http://boardgamecafe.net/store/shopexd.asp?id=1"&gt;Ticket to Ride&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/store/shopexd.asp?id=285"&gt;LifeBoats&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href="http://boardgamecafe.net/store/shopexd.asp?id=133"&gt;Caylus&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href="http://boardgamecafe.net/store/shopexd.asp?id=26"&gt;The Downfall of Pompeii&lt;/a&gt;, 18Scan, Colloseum, &lt;a href="http://boardgamecafe.net/store/shopexd.asp?id=24"&gt;Power Grid&lt;/a&gt;, Manila, Die Handler&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;B&gt;Location: &lt;/B&gt;Old Town Kopitiam &amp;amp; Boardgamecafe.net, Cheras&lt;BR&gt;&lt;B&gt;Date/Time:&lt;/B&gt; 14 September 07 (Fri) 8.00 PM - 6.30 AM&lt;/P&gt;&lt;/TD&gt;&lt;/TR&gt;&lt;/TABLE&gt;
&lt;HR&gt;

&lt;P&gt;&lt;B&gt;KL BOARDGAMES MEETUP REPORT @ OLD TOWN KOPITIAM &amp;amp; BOARDGAMECAFE.NET CHERAS 14/9/07&lt;/B&gt;&lt;BR&gt;&lt;I&gt;by jack208&lt;/I&gt;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;TABLE id=table2 cellSpacing=1 width="100%" border=0&gt;

&lt;TR&gt;
&lt;TD bgColor=#66ffff&gt;&lt;STRONG&gt;A QUIETER MEETUP&lt;/STRONG&gt;&lt;/TD&gt;&lt;/TR&gt;&lt;/TABLE&gt;
&lt;P&gt;After the rousing meetup last week (&lt;A href="/community/blogs/boardgamecafe_net/archive/2007/09/11/10141.aspx"&gt;7/9/07&lt;/A&gt;) where we also hosted one of the &lt;A href="/community/blogs/boardgamecafe_net/archive/2007/09/11/10141.aspx"&gt;Catan Qualifier&lt;/A&gt; Legs, we are back to a more quiet meetup week especially since a few of the OTK regulars could not make it due to other commitments.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;We still managed to squeeze in a good range of games from the old classic &lt;STRONG&gt;Ticket to Ride &lt;/STRONG&gt;to faves like &lt;STRONG&gt;Powergrid&lt;/STRONG&gt;, new games as in &lt;STRONG&gt;Lifeboats &lt;/STRONG&gt;and an OOP game in &lt;STRONG&gt;Die Handler&lt;/STRONG&gt;.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;TABLE id=table12 cellSpacing=1 width="100%" border=0&gt;

&lt;TR&gt;
&lt;TD vAlign=top bgColor=#66ffff&gt;&lt;B&gt;FRIDAY MEETUP ROUND 1 @ OLD TOWN KOPITIAM CHERAS&lt;/B&gt;&lt;/TD&gt;
&lt;TD style="WIDTH: 120px" bgColor=#66ffff&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/TD&gt;&lt;/TR&gt;&lt;/TABLE&gt;
&lt;P&gt;Jorge and his wife Edel were the first to arrive to OTK. Ian (aka Shrapnel) joined him and together with Waiyan, they started one of the old classic, Alan Moon's &lt;STRONG&gt;&lt;a href="http://boardgamecafe.net/store/shopexd.asp?id=1"&gt;Ticket to Ride&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/STRONG&gt;while waiting for the others to arrive.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;A href="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/11742/original.aspx"&gt;&lt;IMG height=266 src="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/11742/original.aspx" width=400 border=0&gt;&lt;/A&gt;&lt;BR&gt;&lt;SPAN&gt;&lt;EM&gt;Alan Moon's bestselling game for 4p: Waiyan, Ian, Edel &amp;amp; Jorge&lt;/EM&gt;&lt;/SPAN&gt;&lt;BR&gt;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;The remaining three - Wolfx, Henry and myself - started a quick game of &lt;STRONG&gt;&lt;a href="http://boardgamecafe.net/store/shopexd.asp?id=133"&gt;Caylus&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/STRONG&gt; on another table.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;A href="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/11743/original.aspx"&gt;&lt;IMG height=266 src="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/11743/original.aspx" width=400 border=0&gt;&lt;/A&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;BR&gt;&lt;SPAN&gt;&lt;EM&gt;T3p Caylus between wolfx (in pic) henry &amp;amp; jack208.&lt;/EM&gt;&lt;/SPAN&gt;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;Cheryl (c_mun) and Siew Hui were the next to arrive. They brought two other friends - Yee Ling &amp;amp; Dylan. After getting introduced to everyone (this was their first time to OTK Cheras) they settled down for a game of survivor ala &lt;STRONG&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/store/shopexd.asp?id=285"&gt;LifeBoats&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/STRONG&gt;.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;A href="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/11757/original.aspx"&gt;&lt;IMG height=266 src="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/11757/original.aspx" width=400 border=0&gt;&lt;/A&gt;&lt;BR&gt;&lt;SPAN&gt;&lt;EM&gt;Six new players for Lifeboats: waiyan, ian, cheryl, yee ling, dylan and jorge&lt;/EM&gt;&lt;/SPAN&gt;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;The 3p &lt;STRONG&gt;Caylus&lt;/STRONG&gt; game ended pretty quickly at our table and since wolfx has not experienced the joy of throwing meeples into volcanoes, we brought out &lt;STRONG&gt;&lt;a href="http://boardgamecafe.net/store/shopexd.asp?id=26"&gt;The Downfall of Pompeii&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/STRONG&gt; for him. Looking at the happy face on rhyen, this looks like a game he enjoys very much.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;A href="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/11759/original.aspx"&gt;&lt;IMG height=266 src="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/11759/original.aspx" width=400 border=0&gt;&lt;/A&gt;&lt;BR&gt;&lt;SPAN&gt;&lt;EM&gt;Time to chuck your fren's meeples in volcanoes.... aarrrgghhhh!&lt;/EM&gt;&lt;/SPAN&gt;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;They were still Lifeboating when we completed our game of Pompeii. Redtag made a surprise impromptu appearance (he probably thinks we are playing TI3) and since the only 4p game we've were 18Scan, we decided it's time to introduce these two to the joy of 18xx. &lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;rhyen was initially given the honor of doing the 18xx intro (via &lt;STRONG&gt;18Scan&lt;/STRONG&gt;) but halfway thru the game, the Lifeboats table finished theirs and shrapnel wanted to learn &lt;STRONG&gt;Colloseum&lt;/STRONG&gt;. &lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;A href="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/11762/original.aspx"&gt;&lt;IMG height=266 src="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/11762/original.aspx" width=400 border=0&gt;&lt;/A&gt;&lt;SPAN&gt;&lt;EM&gt;&lt;BR&gt;rhyen, the 18xx teacher&lt;/EM&gt; &lt;EM&gt;with new students redtag and wolfx on the Scandinavia map&lt;/EM&gt;&lt;/SPAN&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;TABLE id=table13 cellSpacing=1 width="100%" border=0&gt;

&lt;TR&gt;
&lt;TD vAlign=top bgColor=#66ffff&gt;&lt;B&gt;FRIDAY MEETUP ROUND 2 @ BOARDGAMECAFE.NET&lt;/B&gt;&lt;/TD&gt;&lt;/TR&gt;&lt;/TABLE&gt;
&lt;P&gt;We concluded R1 at OTK with half-completed &lt;STRONG&gt;18Scan&lt;/STRONG&gt; and &lt;STRONG&gt;Colloseum&lt;/STRONG&gt;. Some left but 5 gamers continued to BGC for Round 2.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;Started off R2 with an old fave that has not been played for some time; &lt;STRONG&gt;&lt;a href="http://boardgamecafe.net/store/shopexd.asp?id=24"&gt;Power Grid&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/STRONG&gt; on the Germany map. The signs were indeed there that we haven't been playing this for some time as we forgot that with 5 players, we only play 5 areas - we played with all 6 areas hence the map felt "relaxed".&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;A href="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/11763/original.aspx"&gt;&lt;IMG height=266 src="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/11763/original.aspx" width=400 border=0&gt;&lt;/A&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;BR&gt;&lt;SPAN&gt;&lt;EM&gt;First Powergrid game for redtag&lt;/EM&gt;&lt;/SPAN&gt;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;A href="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/11764/original.aspx"&gt;&lt;IMG height=266 src="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/11764/original.aspx" width=400 border=0&gt;&lt;/A&gt;&lt;BR&gt;&lt;SPAN&gt;&lt;EM&gt;New Padawan trying out his jedi mind trick.... on the game components!&lt;/EM&gt;&lt;/SPAN&gt;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;STRONG&gt;Manila &lt;/STRONG&gt;(courtesy of wolfx) was next. This is a good filler game (though some games can take 1hr+) for 4-5 players, and since some have not played this, we decided to do this after Powergrid. Wolfx taught the game and off we go pushing our luck in Manila. &lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;A href="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/11765/original.aspx"&gt;&lt;IMG height=266 src="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/11765/original.aspx" width=400 border=0&gt;&lt;/A&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;BR&gt;&lt;SPAN&gt;&lt;EM&gt;Jorge and Wolfx in a game of Manila.&lt;/EM&gt;&lt;/SPAN&gt;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;STRONG&gt;Die Handler &lt;/STRONG&gt;was next (and the last game for R2). This is one of my fave trading/bidding game where the objective is to climb the highest in the social status ladder. Money gets you there but money by itself does not win you the game. &lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;A href="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/11766/original.aspx"&gt;&lt;IMG height=266 src="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/11766/original.aspx" width=400 border=0&gt;&lt;/A&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;BR&gt;&lt;SPAN&gt;&lt;EM&gt;The wooden wagon where you placed your trade goods to be shipped to another city to sell&lt;/EM&gt;&lt;/SPAN&gt;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;In this game, each of us are traders... and we can buy any of the five types of goods, store them in warehouses (in any of the 6 cities) and later send them onto the wagons to other cities to sell them. From the sales proceeds (and hopefully not losses), we become rich and pay to get our social status updated.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;Sounds reasonably simple yet the game is full of screwage almost in every round. It starts from the bidding to become the Wagon Master. The Wagon Master determines what goods can and cannot be loaded onto the wagon (before it rolls out to another city).. and at what price (yes, you gotta pay to have your goods loaded onto the wagon, and you pay the Wagon Master!) &lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;Somewhat similar to Manila's bid for Harbor Master except in this case, you get to make money off the wagon loading and also control which types of goods are loaded onto the wagons. Usually if you have goods stored in the warehouse, you would want them loaded onto the wagon so that the goods can be sold.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;A href="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/11767/original.aspx"&gt;&lt;IMG height=266 src="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/11767/original.aspx" width=400 border=0&gt;&lt;/A&gt;&lt;EM&gt;&lt;SPAN&gt;.&lt;BR&gt;&lt;/SPAN&gt;&lt;/EM&gt;&lt;SPAN&gt;&lt;EM&gt;Mr Blue's not keeping up with the Joneses...&lt;/EM&gt;&lt;/SPAN&gt;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;Strangely some players dun quite get the game. This game is a big fave of the Pudu Gamers too but I think some OTK regulars (aanemesis, ayheng) have played the game and were lukewarm to it.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;wolfx is probably joining the Lukewarm Club as he gave up halfway thru the game and became Mr Randomizer (ala LostBoyz in the last Railroad Tycoon game at BGC). He literally took out his frustration via random bidding for wagon master!! LOL Anyway rhyen won this game after piping Jorge in the last turn.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;R2 ended 630am; Jorge went home while three amigos (wolfx, rhyen and jack208) went for dimsum at Yulek. Not a bad session considering we got to play about 8-9 games.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;HR&gt;

&lt;P&gt;&lt;A href="/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/category1275/picture11742.aspx"&gt;Click here&lt;/A&gt; for more photos of this gaming session.&lt;BR&gt;For more gaming reports, visit our &lt;A href="/community/blogs/Bloggers.aspx?GroupID=6"&gt;Boardgame Meetup Reports Blog&lt;/A&gt;.&lt;BR&gt;To discuss this gaming session, visit our forum in &lt;A href="/community/forums/51/ShowForum.aspx"&gt;BoardgameCafe.net&lt;/A&gt; &lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;If you wish to join our&amp;nbsp;boardgame meetups, check out our &lt;A href="/community/calendar/default.aspx"&gt;Meetup Calendar&lt;/A&gt; and sign up now at &lt;A href="http://boardgames.meetup.com/310" target=_blank&gt;KL Boardgames Meetup!&lt;/A&gt;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;To buy the games played in this meetup, visit our &lt;A href="/store"&gt;Web Store&lt;/A&gt;. We carry over 200+ games and provide prompt delivery to anywhere in Malaysia.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;14-09-2007&lt;/P&gt;&lt;img src="http://boardgamecafe.net/community/aggbug.aspx?PostID=11810" width="1" height="1"&gt;</content><author><name>jack208</name><uri>http://boardgamecafe.net/community/members/jack208.aspx</uri></author></entry><entry><title>Fri Meetup &amp;amp; Catan Qualifier at OTK/Boardgamecafe.net 7/9/07 - Settlers of Catan, Manila, Modern Art, Caylus, Havoc, Saboteur, Bang!</title><link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://boardgamecafe.net/community/blogs/boardgamecafe_net/archive/2007/09/11/10141.aspx" /><id>http://boardgamecafe.net/community/blogs/boardgamecafe_net/archive/2007/09/11/10141.aspx</id><published>2007-09-10T21:04:00Z</published><updated>2007-09-10T21:04:00Z</updated><content type="html">&lt;TABLE id=table7 cellSpacing=5 cellPadding=3 width="100%" border=0&gt;

&lt;TR&gt;
&lt;TD vAlign=top&gt;&lt;B&gt;Catan Qualifiers: &lt;/B&gt;Karan Dhillon, Steven&lt;B&gt; &lt;/B&gt;Yap,&lt;B&gt; &lt;/B&gt;Jorge, Phuah, Dominic, Kah May, Bi Lin, and Wai Yan &lt;B&gt;&lt;BR&gt;Other Gamers: &lt;/B&gt;Long (lostboyz), Ken (wolfx), Chris Yap (chrisyap), Daniel Tan (randomhit), Ian (Shrapnel) with two frens, and Jeff Au&lt;B&gt; &lt;/B&gt;(jack208)&lt;B&gt; &lt;/B&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;B&gt;Games: &lt;/B&gt;&lt;a href="http://boardgamecafe.net/store/shopexd.asp?id=41"&gt;Settlers of Catan&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href="http://boardgamecafe.net/store"&gt;Manila&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href="http://boardgamecafe.net/store/shopexd.asp?id=133"&gt;Caylus&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href="http://boardgamecafe.net/store/shopexd.asp?id=120"&gt;Havoc&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href="http://boardgamecafe.net/store/shopexd.asp?id=218"&gt;Saboteur&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href="http://boardgamecafe.net/store/shopexd.asp?id=15"&gt;Bang!&lt;/a&gt; with &lt;a href="http://boardgamecafe.net/store/shopexd.asp?id=82"&gt;Dodge City&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href="http://boardgamecafe.net/store/shopexd.asp?id=69"&gt;Modern Art&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;B&gt;Location: &lt;/B&gt;Old Town Kopitiam &amp;amp; Boardgamecafe.net, Cheras&lt;BR&gt;&lt;B&gt;Date/Time: &lt;/B&gt;7 September 07 (Fri) 8.00 PM - 6.30 AM&lt;/P&gt;&lt;/TD&gt;&lt;/TR&gt;&lt;/TABLE&gt;
&lt;HR&gt;

&lt;P&gt;&lt;B&gt;KL BOARDGAMES MEETUP &amp;amp; SETTLERS OF CATAN QUALIFIER REPORT @ OLD TOWN KOPITIAM &amp;amp; BOARDGAMECAFE.NET CHERAS 8/7/07&lt;/B&gt;&lt;BR&gt;&lt;I&gt;by jack208&lt;/I&gt;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;TABLE id=table2 cellSpacing=1 width="100%" border=0&gt;

&lt;TR&gt;
&lt;TD bgColor=#66ffff&gt;&lt;STRONG&gt;A ROUSING MEETUP AT OTK/BGC&lt;/STRONG&gt;&lt;/TD&gt;&lt;/TR&gt;&lt;/TABLE&gt;
&lt;P&gt;Usual Friday.. usual Boardgames Meetup&amp;nbsp;at OTK (Old Town Kopitiam) Cheras for R1 (round 1). I've to admit I've been occupied with another "council" (ie. work) lately and therefore have not been writing any meetup reports. Hope to get back to my weekly routine of posting updates here.... &lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;Let's begin with last Friday's Meetup which was attended by the largest crowd so far at OTK with 16 gamers dropping by and in spite of 3-4 regulars not being able to attend due to various other commitment. Last Friday also happened to be the&lt;STRONG&gt; Settlers of Catan M'sia Qualifier &lt;/STRONG&gt;at OTK. &lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;Last year, two of our (M'sia) best Catan players - &lt;A href="/community/content/SettlersofCatanMalaysiaQualifiers2006.aspx"&gt;Ryan and Kok Keong&lt;/A&gt; - were sent to Essen to represent Malaysia in the Settlers of Catan World Championship.&amp;nbsp;They came back and said the experience of taking part in the World Championship was an immense experience.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;This year's Catan Qualifier (sponsored by Imagine Games) started at the Asia Gaming Zone event in July 07 and it went to Toybox, Mage Cafe, Outpost, GACC (the 1st qualifier outside KL) and last Friday, it was Boardgamecafe.net's turn to host the last open qualifier at Old Town Kopitiam Cheras.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;TABLE id=table9 cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width="100%" border=0&gt;

&lt;TR&gt;
&lt;TD vAlign=top bgColor=#66ffff&gt;&lt;B&gt;SETTLERS OF CATAN QUALIFIER @ OTK CHERAS&lt;/B&gt;&lt;/TD&gt;
&lt;TD style="WIDTH: 100px" bgColor=#66ffff&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/TD&gt;&lt;/TR&gt;&lt;/TABLE&gt;
&lt;P&gt;So far, 12 players have already qualified for the Catan Malaysia Finals&amp;nbsp;(to be held tentatively Sep 22) - Ryan &amp;amp; Kok Keong (last year's finalists), Rob Street &amp;amp; Henry (Asia Game Zone), Kai &amp;amp; Joshua (Mage), Vincent &amp;amp; Foo (Toybox), Mohd Amran &amp;amp; Sujatha (GACC) and Daniel &amp;amp; Tracy (Outpost). &lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;There are 4 more places left with 2 seats coming from Boardgamecafe.net and another 2 from a closed Qualifier for last year's 14 finalists (&lt;A href="/community/blogs/tournaments__competitions/archive/2006/08/10/3199.aspx"&gt;read the Settlers of Catan M'sia Finals report for the full list of the 16 finalists&lt;/A&gt;).&amp;nbsp;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;A href="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/10092/original.aspx"&gt;&lt;IMG height=266 src="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/10092/original.aspx" width=400 border=0&gt;&lt;/A&gt;&lt;BR&gt;&lt;EM&gt;Two of the players having a warm-up session with their friends before the Qualifier starts.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/EM&gt;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;Once all the 8 registered players turned up, we started the table-draw and divide the players into two groups of four; occupying both the coffee table sofa sets in OTK Cheras.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;A href="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/10111/original.aspx"&gt;&lt;IMG height=266 src="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/10111/original.aspx" width=400 border=0&gt;&lt;/A&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;Table 1 consists of Steven Yap, Phuah, Kah May and Dominic. Steven raced to an early lead and never looked back. Kah May who managed to get 6 pts - when Steven ended the game - took 2nd place for the Final Round.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;A href="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/10093/original.aspx"&gt;&lt;IMG height=266 src="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/10093/original.aspx" width=400 border=0&gt;&lt;/A&gt;&lt;BR&gt;&lt;EM&gt;Table 1 (from left): &amp;nbsp;Phuah, Kah May, Dominic and Steven&lt;/EM&gt;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;Table 2 was made up by Karan, Wai Yan, Bi Lin and Jorge. That game was quite evenly matched in the beginning until Karan made the breakthrough. He quickly established his 10th VP to win the game with Jorge coming in 2nd at 7 VP.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;A href="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/10097/original.aspx"&gt;&lt;IMG height=266 src="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/10097/original.aspx" width=400 border=0&gt;&lt;/A&gt;&lt;BR&gt;&lt;SPAN&gt;&lt;EM&gt;Table 2 (from left):&lt;/EM&gt;&lt;/SPAN&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;SPAN&gt;&lt;EM&gt;Jorge, Karan, Wai Yan and Bi Lin &lt;/EM&gt;&lt;/SPAN&gt;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;Steven, Kah May, Karan and Jorge took a short break before coming back to the OTK coffee table for the Final Round of today's qualifier; with the top 2 winners going to compete in the Settlers of Catan M'sian Finals 2007 for the right to represent Malaysia in the Catan World Championship in Essen, Germany.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;A href="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/10115/original.aspx"&gt;&lt;IMG height=266 src="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/10115/original.aspx" width=400 border=0&gt;&lt;/A&gt;&lt;EM&gt;&lt;BR&gt;The gameboard for the Final Round&lt;/EM&gt;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;Player turn order - Steven, Kah May, Jorge and Karan. With the desert hex being right in the middle of the board, the players took some turn analyzing the board to decide on their starting positions for the settlements.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;A href="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/10114/original.aspx"&gt;&lt;IMG height=266 src="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/10114/original.aspx" width=400 border=0&gt;&lt;/A&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;BR&gt;&lt;SPAN&gt;&lt;EM&gt;The Final Round starting with Steven (in white on right), Kah May, Jorge and Karan&lt;/EM&gt;&lt;/SPAN&gt;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;A href="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/10122/original.aspx"&gt;&lt;IMG height=266 src="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/10122/original.aspx" width=400 border=0&gt;&lt;/A&gt;&lt;BR&gt;&lt;SPAN class=style1&gt;&lt;EM&gt;Mid-game position for the Final Round. Kah May had an early lead but the others were very close behind.&lt;/EM&gt;&lt;/SPAN&gt;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;A href="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/10121/original.aspx"&gt;&lt;IMG height=266 src="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/10121/original.aspx" width=400 border=0&gt;&lt;/A&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;BR&gt;&lt;SPAN&gt;&lt;EM&gt;Jorge (on right) looking pensively at the board. He's the eventual winner for this Qualifier.&lt;/EM&gt;&lt;/SPAN&gt;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;A href="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/10123/original.aspx"&gt;&lt;IMG height=266 src="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/10123/original.aspx" width=400 border=0&gt;&lt;/A&gt;&lt;BR&gt;&lt;EM&gt;&lt;SPAN&gt;Almost end-game position for the Final Round&lt;/SPAN&gt;&lt;/EM&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;I would like to thank all the 8 participating players for taking part in this qualifier. To those who did not succeed to enter the M'sian Finals this year, I wish them better luck (and more practice) for next year. To the two qualifiers from OTK - &lt;STRONG&gt;Jorge and Karan&lt;/STRONG&gt; - I wish them all the best in the upcoming &lt;STRONG&gt;Msian Settlers Finals&lt;/STRONG&gt;.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;Thanks to OTK for allowing us to host the qualifiers there, and to Imagine Games for sponsoring the eventual prizes.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;TABLE style="WIDTH: 620px" cellSpacing=5 cellPadding=5&gt;

&lt;TR&gt;
&lt;TD&gt;&lt;A href="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/10100/original.aspx"&gt;&lt;IMG height=99 src="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/10100/original.aspx" width=150 border=0&gt;&lt;/A&gt;&lt;BR&gt;&lt;STRONG&gt;Dominic&lt;/STRONG&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/TD&gt;
&lt;TD&gt;&lt;A href="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/10101/original.aspx"&gt;&lt;IMG height=99 src="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/10101/original.aspx" width=150 border=0&gt;&lt;/A&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;BR&gt;&lt;STRONG&gt;Steven Yap&lt;/STRONG&gt;&lt;/TD&gt;
&lt;TD&gt;&lt;A href="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/10102/original.aspx"&gt;&lt;IMG height=99 src="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/10102/original.aspx" width=150 border=0&gt;&lt;/A&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;BR&gt;&lt;STRONG&gt;Phuah&lt;/STRONG&gt;&lt;/TD&gt;
&lt;TD&gt;&lt;A href="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/10103/original.aspx"&gt;&lt;IMG height=99 src="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/10103/original.aspx" width=150 border=0&gt;&lt;/A&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;BR&gt;&lt;STRONG&gt;Kah May&lt;/STRONG&gt;&lt;/TD&gt;&lt;/TR&gt;
&lt;TR&gt;
&lt;TD&gt;&lt;A href="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/10104/original.aspx"&gt;&lt;IMG height=99 src="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/10104/original.aspx" width=150 border=0&gt;&lt;/A&gt;&lt;BR&gt;&lt;STRONG&gt;Karan Dhillon&amp;nbsp;&lt;/STRONG&gt;&lt;/TD&gt;
&lt;TD&gt;&lt;A href="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/10105/original.aspx"&gt;&lt;IMG height=99 src="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/10105/original.aspx" width=150 border=0&gt;&lt;/A&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;BR&gt;&lt;STRONG&gt;Jorge (Patomas)&lt;/STRONG&gt;&lt;/TD&gt;
&lt;TD&gt;&lt;A href="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/10106/original.aspx"&gt;&lt;IMG height=100 src="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/10106/original.aspx" width=150 border=0&gt;&lt;/A&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;BR&gt;&lt;STRONG&gt;Bi Lin&lt;/STRONG&gt;&lt;/TD&gt;
&lt;TD&gt;&lt;A href="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/10107/original.aspx"&gt;&lt;IMG height=99 src="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/10107/original.aspx" width=150 border=0&gt;&lt;/A&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;BR&gt;&lt;STRONG&gt;Wai Yan&lt;/STRONG&gt;&lt;/TD&gt;&lt;/TR&gt;&lt;/TABLE&gt;&amp;nbsp; 
&lt;TABLE id=table12 cellSpacing=1 width="100%" border=0&gt;

&lt;TR&gt;
&lt;TD vAlign=top bgColor=#66ffff&gt;&lt;B&gt;FRIDAY MEETUP ROUND 1 @ OLD TOWN KOPITIAM CHERAS&lt;/B&gt;&lt;/TD&gt;
&lt;TD style="WIDTH: 120px" bgColor=#66ffff&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/TD&gt;&lt;/TR&gt;&lt;/TABLE&gt;
&lt;P&gt;Beside the eight Catan Qualifier players, we also have&amp;nbsp;LostBoyz and Wolfx hanging around giving moral support or otherwise known in gaming terms as &lt;STRONG&gt;K.P.C. &lt;/STRONG&gt;(kay poh chee).&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;Two of the &lt;STRONG&gt;Terasek Gamers &lt;/STRONG&gt;decide to make a special appearance - after a long hiatus from the (face-2-face) boardgaming scene. The two are Chris Yap (aka BSW Caylus sifu) and Daniel Tan (randomhit). &lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;A href="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/10113/original.aspx"&gt;&lt;IMG height=266 src="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/10113/original.aspx" width=400 border=0&gt;&lt;/A&gt;&lt;BR&gt;&lt;SPAN&gt;&lt;EM&gt;Chris Yap, Daniel, LostBoyz and Wolfx playing Manila&lt;/EM&gt;&lt;/SPAN&gt;&lt;BR&gt;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;The five of us non-Catan players were about to start a game of &lt;STRONG&gt;&lt;a href="http://boardgamecafe.net/store"&gt;Manila&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/STRONG&gt; with Wolfx running thru the rules for us. In the end I could not join their game as I've to attend to the Catan Final Round but the four who did play, enjoyed the game tremendously.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;A href="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/10119/original.aspx"&gt;&lt;IMG height=266 src="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/10119/original.aspx" width=400 border=0&gt;&lt;/A&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;BR&gt;&lt;SPAN&gt;&lt;EM&gt;The wooden punts in Manila. Nice game bits.&lt;/EM&gt;&lt;/SPAN&gt;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;STRONG&gt;Manila &lt;/STRONG&gt;is what you would term as a push-your-luck type of game where you attempt to make the most money (Pesos) by whatever means possible; legal or otherwise... A light filler that plays under 1 hour; it's a game that I feel many would luv to play! &lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;SPAN&gt;&lt;EM&gt;Note&lt;/EM&gt;&lt;/SPAN&gt;: There was a misconception that &lt;STRONG&gt;Manila&lt;/STRONG&gt; is a broken game due to a misplayed rule that allowed the Harbor Master to buy unlimited shares (of ware)! However if played correctly, it is definitely not broken... &lt;A href="/community/forums/thread/4210.aspx"&gt;Refer here for the misplayed rule clarification&lt;/A&gt;.&lt;BR&gt;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;A href="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/10118/original.aspx"&gt;&lt;IMG height=266 src="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/10118/original.aspx" width=400 border=0&gt;&lt;/A&gt;&lt;BR&gt;&lt;SPAN&gt;&lt;EM&gt;The usual Friday crowd streaming into OTK as we continue to play on....&lt;/EM&gt;&lt;/SPAN&gt;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;Those Catan players who did not get into the Final Round then decided to have another round of friendly &lt;STRONG&gt;&lt;a href="http://boardgamecafe.net/store/shopexd.asp?id=41"&gt;Settlers of Catan&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/STRONG&gt;. ah... the magic of Catan!&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;A href="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/10120/original.aspx"&gt;&lt;IMG height=266 src="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/10120/original.aspx" width=400 border=0&gt;&lt;/A&gt;&lt;BR&gt;&lt;SPAN&gt;&lt;EM&gt;More trading in Catan&lt;/EM&gt;&lt;/SPAN&gt;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;After their game of &lt;STRONG&gt;Manila&lt;/STRONG&gt;, I joined the Terasek/Wolfx group and we did one of Knizia's finest and arguably the best pure auction game, &lt;STRONG&gt;&lt;a href="http://boardgamecafe.net/store/shopexd.asp?id=69"&gt;Modern Art&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/STRONG&gt;. The Terasek Gamers were bemused in the beginning as they began to comprehend how to evaluate the "value" of the painting that's being auctioned.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;A href="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/10129/original.aspx"&gt;&lt;IMG height=266 src="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/10129/original.aspx" width=400 border=0&gt;&lt;/A&gt;&lt;SPAN&gt;&lt;EM&gt;&lt;BR&gt;&lt;/EM&gt;&lt;EM&gt;Terasek Gamers Chris and Daniel figuring out how to put a value to the paintings put up for auction in Modern Art&lt;/EM&gt;&lt;/SPAN&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;Meanwhile another occasional OTK gamer, Ian (shrapnel) dropped in with two of his lady friends... and guess what he brought along as a gateway game? Yes - &lt;STRONG&gt;Settlers of Catan&lt;/STRONG&gt;!! Boy.. I think we are having too much of Catan on one night!&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;A href="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/10127/original.aspx"&gt;&lt;IMG height=266 src="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/10127/original.aspx" width=400 border=0&gt;&lt;/A&gt;&lt;BR&gt;&lt;SPAN&gt;&lt;EM&gt;Ian (shrapnel) playing Settlers of Catan with two of his friends over at the other table&lt;/EM&gt;&lt;/SPAN&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;The Catan Qualifier concluded with Jorge and Karan taking the top 2 seats (congrats!) but it was a close finish. Guess what they did after stressing out over two rounds of competitive Catan? You would expect them to play a filler for eg Coloretto, yes?&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;A href="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/10128/original.aspx"&gt;&lt;IMG height=266 src="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/10128/original.aspx" width=400 border=0&gt;&lt;/A&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;BR&gt;&lt;SPAN&gt;&lt;EM&gt;Jorge showing some Younglings the art of jousting in &lt;/EM&gt;&lt;STRONG&gt;&lt;EM&gt;Caylus&lt;/EM&gt;&lt;/STRONG&gt;&lt;/SPAN&gt;.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;But they started a game of &lt;STRONG&gt;Caylus&lt;/STRONG&gt;! Some of them have not played Caylus before so Jorge volunteered to be the jousting instructor in the absence of our resident jousting Jedi Knights &lt;STRONG&gt;ayheng&lt;/STRONG&gt; or &lt;STRONG&gt;aanemesis&lt;/STRONG&gt;. It is rumoured aanemesis went south to search for the mythical dragonlance... while ayheng was busy preparing to hand-over his trusted lightsaber (vanilla Caylus) to padawan Wolfx. &lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;Meanwhile after our table (Terasek/Woflx) finished our game of Modern Art, we decided to do another OTK favorite - 5p &lt;STRONG&gt;&lt;a href="http://boardgamecafe.net/store/shopexd.asp?id=120"&gt;Havoc&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;/STRONG&gt;the poker-like card game based on the 100-Year War.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;TABLE id=table13 cellSpacing=1 width="100%" border=0&gt;

&lt;TR&gt;
&lt;TD vAlign=top bgColor=#66ffff&gt;&lt;B&gt;FRIDAY MEETUP ROUND 2 @ BOARDGAMECAFE.NET&lt;/B&gt;&lt;/TD&gt;&lt;/TR&gt;&lt;/TABLE&gt;
&lt;P&gt;OTK's Round 1 soon came to a close... and as usual, those-who-can adjourned to Boardgamecafe.net for R2 (round 2). Initially I thought we've a group of 10 for R2 and was excitedly talking up &lt;STRONG&gt;&lt;a href="http://boardgamecafe.net/store/shopexd.asp?id=97"&gt;Werewolf (Lupus in Tabula)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/STRONG&gt; to the Terasek Gamers.&amp;nbsp;Alas, I found out later that Phuah and Dominic have to take their leave....&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;EM&gt;Note: If only some of our regulars were present - ayheng, rhyen, aanemesis, vincent; we could have a 15p Werewolf!&lt;/EM&gt;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;So that left us with 8 players. Two or three short to do a good Werewolf session, but two extra to do 6p Power Grid (or 1856, hehe). We finally settled on party-fun-card games.... and &lt;STRONG&gt;&lt;a href="http://boardgamecafe.net/store/shopexd.asp?id=218"&gt;Saboteur&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/STRONG&gt; hit the table.&amp;nbsp;Wolfx did the rule explanation and soon we were digging and mining our way thru to the gold mine!&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;A href="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/10130/original.aspx"&gt;&lt;IMG height=266 src="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/10130/original.aspx" width=400 border=0&gt;&lt;/A&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;BR&gt;&lt;SPAN&gt;&lt;EM&gt;Wolfx teaching Saboteurs&lt;/EM&gt;&lt;/SPAN&gt;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;In the 1st round, halfway thru Lostboyz started acting like a saboteur. Very soon, he was hit with broken equipments from some concerned miners which drew the assistance from another would-be saboteur. &lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;The broken equipments kept coming out.. and soon we have the 3rd saboteur.. and then the 4th saboteur?? Cannot be ma.. coz even in a 8p Saboteur there can be at most 3 saboteurs only! Now we have 4 prime suspects!!!&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;A href="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/10133/original.aspx"&gt;&lt;IMG height=266 src="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/10133/original.aspx" width=400 border=0&gt;&lt;/A&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;Turned out Lostboyz misunderstood the game to be "competitive" for the miners&amp;nbsp;and halfway thru the round decided to "sabo" his own miner friends.... causing the other saboteurs to be confused as well! LOL&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;A href="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/10135/original.aspx"&gt;&lt;IMG height=266 src="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/10135/original.aspx" width=400 border=0&gt;&lt;/A&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;BR&gt;&lt;SPAN&gt;&lt;EM&gt;Wolfx showing how to draw a gun (er... card) quickly in Bang Dodge City&lt;/EM&gt;&lt;/SPAN&gt;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;STRONG&gt;&lt;a href="http://boardgamecafe.net/store/shopexd.asp?id=15"&gt;Bang!&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/STRONG&gt;was next to the table. With 8 players, we put in the &lt;STRONG&gt;&lt;a href="http://boardgamecafe.net/store/shopexd.asp?id=82"&gt;Dodge City&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/STRONG&gt; expansion ie we have one Sheriff, two Deputies, three Outlaws and two Renegades. The two Renegades will initially be helping out each other until they are able to confront the Sheriff for a one-on-one in which case, the renegades then need to turn on each other to decide who's the eventual winner.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;Wolfx as Vulture Sam demonstrated the art of the quick draw... but that didn't seem to help him as he was quickly knocked out in the 2nd round! &lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; Finally time for some to call it a nite around 430am. There four of us left, and an hour and a half to 6am. So the four of us continued with another round of &lt;STRONG&gt;Modern Art. &lt;/STRONG&gt;&lt;EM&gt;Was so tempted to open 18Scan!&lt;/EM&gt;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;A href="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/10138/original.aspx"&gt;&lt;IMG height=266 src="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/10138/original.aspx" width=400 border=0&gt;&lt;/A&gt;&lt;EM&gt;&lt;SPAN&gt;.&lt;BR&gt;&lt;/SPAN&gt;&lt;/EM&gt;&lt;SPAN&gt;&lt;EM&gt;Pssst.... did you see 1856 somewhere in the picture above??? :P&lt;/EM&gt;&lt;/SPAN&gt;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;We finally say sayonara around 630am. It has been a great nite of gaming at OTK/BGC for gaming (and also the Catan Qualifier). &lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;Besides the absent regulars, the other missing gamers tonight were the &lt;STRONG&gt;Pudu Gamers&lt;/STRONG&gt;, who initially were supposed to come for the Catan Qualifier but could not make it last minute. If they came, it would be an even greater gaming&amp;nbsp;nite at OTK!&amp;nbsp;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;p/s The icing on the cake would be if we'd brought 18xx to the table for R2. The bright news is that some of the gamers in tonite's session are very keen to try 18xx. So perhaps we'll get to see two 18xx games going on at the same time at OTK/BGC one fine day.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;HR&gt;

&lt;P&gt;&lt;A href="/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/category1274/picture10092.aspx"&gt;Click here&lt;/A&gt; for more photos of this gaming session.&lt;BR&gt;For more gaming reports, visit our &lt;A href="/community/blogs/Bloggers.aspx?GroupID=6"&gt;Boardgame Meetup Reports Blog&lt;/A&gt;.&lt;BR&gt;To discuss this gaming session, visit our forum in &lt;A href="/community/forums/51/ShowForum.aspx"&gt;BoardgameCafe.net&lt;/A&gt; &lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;If you wish to join our&amp;nbsp;boardgame meetups, check out our &lt;A href="/community/calendar/default.aspx"&gt;Meetup Calendar&lt;/A&gt; and sign up now at &lt;A href="http://boardgames.meetup.com/310" target=_blank&gt;KL Boardgames Meetup!&lt;/A&gt;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;To buy the games played in this meetup, visit our &lt;A href="/store"&gt;Web Store&lt;/A&gt;. We carry over 200+ games and provide prompt delivery to anywhere in Malaysia.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;/P&gt;&lt;img src="http://boardgamecafe.net/community/aggbug.aspx?PostID=10141" width="1" height="1"&gt;</content><author><name>jack208</name><uri>http://boardgamecafe.net/community/members/jack208.aspx</uri></author></entry><entry><title>Fri Meetup at Boardgamecafe.net 8/6/07 - Formula De, Wallenstein, Pompeji</title><link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://boardgamecafe.net/community/blogs/boardgamecafe_net/archive/2007/06/12/7845.aspx" /><id>http://boardgamecafe.net/community/blogs/boardgamecafe_net/archive/2007/06/12/7845.aspx</id><published>2007-06-11T21:40:00Z</published><updated>2007-06-11T21:40:00Z</updated><content type="html">&lt;table border="0" width="100%" id="table7" cellspacing="5" cellpadding="3"&gt;
	&lt;tr&gt;
		&lt;td valign="top"&gt;&lt;B&gt;Gamers: &lt;/B&gt;Heng (ayheng), Long (lostboyz), Lai Wah 
		(laiwah) and Jeff Au&lt;B&gt; &lt;/B&gt;(jack208)&lt;B&gt; &lt;/B&gt;
		&lt;P&gt;&lt;B&gt; Games: &lt;/B&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/store/shopexd.asp?id=282"&gt;Formula De&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href="http://boardgamecafe.net/store/shopexd.asp?id=103"&gt;Wallenstein&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href="http://boardgamecafe.net/store/shopexd.asp?id=26"&gt;The Downfall of Pompeii&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;B&gt;Location: &lt;/B&gt;Boardgamecafe.net, Cheras&lt;BR&gt;&lt;B&gt;Date/Time: &lt;/B&gt;8 June 07 (Fri) 
9.30 PM - 4.00 AM&lt;/P&gt;
		&lt;/td&gt;
	&lt;/tr&gt;
&lt;/table&gt;
&lt;HR&gt;

&lt;P&gt;&lt;B&gt;KL BOARDGAMES MEETUP REPORT @ BOARDGAMECAFE.NET CHERAS 
8/7/07&lt;/B&gt;&lt;BR&gt;&lt;I&gt;by ayheng &amp;amp; jack208&lt;/I&gt;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;TABLE id=table2 cellSpacing=1 width="100%" border=0&gt;

&lt;TR&gt;
&lt;TD bgColor=#66ffff&gt;&lt;b&gt;PRELUDE: YUMCHA @ OLD TOWN KOPITIAM&lt;br&gt;
&lt;i&gt;reported by jack208&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/TD&gt;&lt;/TR&gt;&lt;/TABLE&gt;
&lt;P&gt;It's our usual Friday Meetup at the Cheras area which we've been doing 
regularly for the past few months just that I've been busy and haven't been 
diligently updating this blog with meetup reports and photos. &lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;We started off with yum-cha and chit-chat session at Old Town Kopitiam. I was 
there having dinner with another buddy of mine (Koh) to do some catching up. 
OTK's White Coffee is always a good companion to chit-chat with.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;LostBoyz was the first gamer to drop in.... looking a bit &lt;em&gt;lost&lt;/em&gt; (hehe) 
as he was scouting OTK 1st Floor looking for signs of any gaming activities. He 
joined us and chit-chat while having his curry chicken rice dinner. &lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;Koh left, Heng arrived. Dinner for Heng while we changed topics to (what 
else) boardgames.... Surprisingly when Koh was around, we were actually talking 
about Xbox gaming; Xbox Live, Second Life, WOW all crept into the conversation.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;TABLE id=table9 cellSpacing=0 width="100%" border=0 cellpadding="0"&gt;

&lt;TR&gt;
&lt;TD bgColor=#66ffff valign="top"&gt;&lt;B&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/store/shopexd.asp?id=282"&gt;Formula De&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;
&lt;i&gt;reported by &lt;/i&gt;&lt;/B&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;ayheng&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/TD&gt;
&lt;TD bgColor=#66ffff style="width: 100px"&gt;
&lt;IMG src="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/bgc_internal_-_meetup/images/5681/original.aspx" border=0 width="100" height="108" align="right"&gt;&lt;/TD&gt;&lt;/TR&gt;&lt;/TABLE&gt;
&lt;P&gt;Last night's session was a rousing success, guanranteed by
&lt;a href="http://www.boardgamecafe.net"&gt;Boardgamecafe.net&lt;/a&gt;'s three stooges: 
namely Jedi Council jack208, Jedi Knight ayheng and Jedi Padawan-Knight-to-be-coming-soon 
lostboyz.&lt;br&gt;
&lt;br&gt;
The session was dealt a terrible blow early on as people started dropping out 
like flies and ayheng was delayed by urgent work. lostboyz and jack208 soldiered 
on at 8pm at OTK with a starting meal.&lt;br&gt;
&lt;br&gt;
9pm and an urgent message was sent out: where are you? ayheng finally made it to 
OTK and the three power figures started discussing the serious business of the (boardgaming) 
FORCE. (yeah well, we talked mostly about upcoming and favourite releases while 
I ate my curry chicken rice dinner).&lt;br&gt;
&lt;br&gt;
10pm thereabouts we adjourned to BGC and enticed laiwah to a game of &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/store/shopexd.asp?id=282"&gt;Formula De&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;! 
This fun racing game uses dice in a creative way, namely, you get a 
progressively better dice with higher numbers as you shift gears up, until you 
are in a lean-mean-unstoppable racing machine flying down the straight at gear 
5! (of course, that is before you realize the wicked corners that are coming up 
and you burn rubber and metal to slow down frantically)&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;
&lt;a href="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/7800/original.aspx"&gt;
&lt;IMG height=265 src="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/7800/original.aspx" width=400 border=0&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;
&lt;span class="style1"&gt;&lt;em&gt;Laiwah and Ayheng discussing the La Rascasse corner.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;Each player got 2 cars and as a result, there were 8 cars racing on the 
board. This game amazingly can handle 5 players with 2 cars each, or 10 players 
with one car each! A good game to have for the occasion of having 8+ players.&lt;br&gt;
&lt;br&gt;
Lots of reckless drivers abound as the newbie racers went neck to neck into the 
corners, scratching paintjobs and occasionally, doing damage to their own 
bodywork. In a car that's designed for two races, some of the 
(shall-not-be-unnamed-to-protect-their-identity) players limped past the 
chequered flag in the first lap with a badly damaged car.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;
&lt;a href="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/7803/original.aspx"&gt;
&lt;IMG height=265 src="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/7803/original.aspx" width=400 border=0&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;br&gt;
[jack208]&lt;/em&gt; &lt;span class="style1"&gt;&lt;em&gt;Lostboyz's Williams (blue) zooming past 
jack208's Ferrari (red) &lt;br&gt;
in the final straight when Lostboyz threw a 20 in 5th 
Gear! jack208's Ferrari &lt;br&gt;
was actually almost a total wreck; having gone into 
corners aggressively and &lt;br&gt;
&amp;quot;bumped&amp;quot; into a few too many cars. :P &lt;/em&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br&gt;
&lt;br&gt;
The corner mechanics are pretty neat as it forces the racers to stop a requisite 
number of times in the corners in a low gear before shifting up for the exit. 
The lane changing mechanic is also quite inspired as it often creates a 
situation where the front driver can benefit from an open lane to change lanes 
according to how fast his car is going. Whereas the back driver will find 
himself putting the brakes on his car when confronted by the blocking maneuver 
of the front car. Definitely a game to play for the experience of car racing.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;
&lt;a href="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/7795/original.aspx"&gt;
&lt;IMG height=265 src="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/7795/original.aspx" width=400 border=0&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;
&lt;em&gt;[jack208]&lt;/em&gt; &lt;span class="style1"&gt;&lt;em&gt;The two leading teams - Renault 
(yellow) and Williams (blue) &lt;br&gt;
attempting to block off the corner from the 
incoming pack.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br&gt;
&lt;br&gt;
The game comes with two tracks and lots of expansion tracks to bid on e-bay. The 
tracks that came with the game are quite good as it features the technically 
demanding
&lt;a target="_blank" href="http://www.formula1.com/race/circuitmap/774.html"&gt;
Monaco&lt;/a&gt; circuit and the (comparatively) more relaxed Holland circuit.&lt;br&gt;
&lt;br&gt;
The game's a bit longish as it took the 4 of us about 2 hours to finish 1 lap. 
The rules are not particularly tough and the main strategy is in trying to get 
out of a corner fast enough to outrun the rest.&lt;br&gt;
&lt;br&gt;
In our game, lostboyz's first car on the starting grid ended up finishing second 
last due to his prudent taking of the corners while his last car ended up 
finishing first due to his risk taking on going into the corners. jack208 also 
did well with one of his cars, showing us how to go into a corner fast and then 
take a minor fuel penalty to fast-downthrottle rapidly. I did okay with both my 
cars finishing consistently in the middle. laiwah took too many a safe approach 
and was thus left in the dust by other maniac pedal-to-the-metal drivers. 
Although, to be on the fair side, she would have won if we did two laps like we 
originally promised to.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;
&lt;a href="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/7807/original.aspx"&gt;
&lt;IMG height=265 src="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/7807/original.aspx" width=400 border=0&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;br&gt;
&lt;span class="style1"&gt;&lt;em&gt;The race result for 070608 Monaco&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;hr&gt;
&lt;table style="width: 100%"&gt;
	&lt;tr&gt;
		&lt;td valign="top"&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;span class="style1"&gt;Jack208's comment on 
		the BGC Monaco race.&lt;br&gt;
		&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;span class="style2"&gt;This was a 1st race for 
		everyone (except me who had done a 2-lap race on Monaco a couple weeks 
		back). We initially decided to do a 2-lap race so that we can use 
		pitstop as part of our strategy. In the end, as the cars were limping 
		towards the end of Lap 1 we decided it's better to just end the race 
		there as.... i) this is a learning game and hence a 1-lap race is 
		equally satisfying, and ii) a few of our cars probably won't make it 
		till end of Lap 2. hehe.....&amp;nbsp;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/td&gt;
		&lt;td style="width: 120px"&gt;
&lt;IMG src="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/bgc_internal_-_meetup/images/5723/original.aspx" border=0 width="100" height="119" align="right"&gt;&lt;/td&gt;
	&lt;/tr&gt;
&lt;/table&gt;
&lt;P&gt;
Obviously this kinda messed up the plans of those who were driving a little bit 
prudently as a 2-lap strategy (eg. laiwah's Honda) since they'll likely not be 
in the lead coming into the end of Lap 1, as compared to those reckless drivers 
who burn tyres like there's no tomorrow and scrapping each other's bodywork off 
by driving too close to one another.
&lt;img src="/community/emoticons/mad.gif" width="22" height="16"&gt;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;
&lt;a href="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/7796/original.aspx"&gt;
&lt;IMG height=265 src="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/7796/original.aspx" width=400 border=0&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;span class="style1"&gt;&lt;br&gt;
&lt;em&gt;The Mirabeau corner and the subsequent Loews Hairpin turn is the first test 
&lt;br&gt;
for budding F1 drivers.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&amp;nbsp; &lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;
We did a 4 team race on the Monaco track with each team having 2 cars. The 
roster of F1 cars and their managers.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;ul&gt;
	&lt;li&gt;Williams (blue), manager: lostboyz&lt;/li&gt;
	&lt;li&gt;Renault (yellow), manager: ayheng&lt;/li&gt;
	&lt;li&gt;Honda (green), manager: laiwah&lt;/li&gt;
	&lt;li&gt;Ferrari (red), manager: jack208&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;
&lt;P&gt;
The &lt;a href="http://www.formula1.com/race/circuitmap/774.html"&gt;Monaco&lt;/a&gt; track 
is a slow and tight track. You hardly get to test your car in 6th gear and 
there's only a couple of long straights where you get to zoom into 5th. But if 
you get into those long straights not at 5th gear then you'll likely lose 
ground. Therefore the ability to get into corners fast and sharp so that you can 
exit at speed would be key in determining how well you do in this track.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;
The &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Mirabeau Corner&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; is often the first key - and in 
the first lap, it can be deadly as most cars would bunch in to this corner at 
the same time making it very congested.&amp;nbsp;After Mirabeau you get a short straight 
and immediately you'll be confronted with the 180&lt;span class="style3"&gt;º&lt;/span&gt;
&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Loews Hairpin&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; turn. It's not uncommon to see cars 
dragging thru this in 1st Gear. &lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;
The Loews&amp;nbsp;turn is also where blocking tactics can be employed to fend off the 
chasing pack. In the picture above, the two leading teams (Renault and Williams) 
were closing off the Loews turn to prevent the chasing pack from overtaking 
them.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;
&lt;a href="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/7797/original.aspx"&gt;
&lt;IMG height=265 src="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/7797/original.aspx" width=400 border=0&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;br&gt;
&lt;span class="style1"&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Ferrari managed to squirm itself into a good 
position between the &lt;br&gt;
Renaults and Williams, coming into the Portier 
double-corners.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;
However fortune favors the bold and aggressive. If you can maneuver the Loews 
Hairpin and gain a good position coming out of the turn and into the Portier 
sharp-right, you stand a chance to open a gap with the chasing pack (or catch-up 
with the leading cars).&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;
&lt;em&gt;In another race also at Monaco (Landak Gamers), another driver did a very 
aggressive but sharp turn into this section and not only caught up with the pole 
leader, but overtook him as he sped out of the Portier turn into the tunnel 
straight....... he went on to win the race.&amp;nbsp;Obviously if he mistimed his 
corners, he would end up a total wreck!&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;
&lt;a href="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/7798/original.aspx"&gt;
&lt;IMG height=265 src="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/7798/original.aspx" width=400 border=0&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;br&gt;
&lt;span class="style1"&gt;&lt;em&gt;The leading cars once out of the Portier corners, 
speeding off in high gear &lt;br&gt;
while the chasing pack is still navigating the double 
right-handers.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;
However Ferrari's aggressive driving in the Mirabeau-Loews-Portier section was 
not without cost as it sustained some bodywork damage due to minor collisions 
with the other cars as everyone jostled for position in those tight corners.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;
&lt;a href="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/7799/original.aspx"&gt;
&lt;IMG height=265 src="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/7799/original.aspx" width=400 border=0&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;
&lt;span class="style1"&gt;&lt;em&gt;The cars speeding past the Piscine &amp;quot;S&amp;quot;. You can see the 
swimming pool in &lt;br&gt;
the middle of the photo.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;
Renault were driving a hard race with both their cars in the leading pack. 
Williams obviously still has one of its car in the lead while Ferrari managed to 
insert one of its among the leaders. Honda was driving more prudently obviously 
planning to go the distance in the 2nd lap.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;
After Piscine is a very tight 180&lt;span class="style3"&gt;º&lt;/span&gt; right-hander 
named the &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Rascasse Corner&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;.&amp;nbsp;The corner looks rather 
&amp;quot;harmless&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;easy&amp;quot; but appearance can be deceiving. This is the corner that 
can win (or lose) you the race especially since it's just one more corner away 
from the final straight (grandstand).&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;
&lt;a href="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/7801/original.aspx"&gt;
&lt;IMG height=265 src="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/7801/original.aspx" width=400 border=0&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;br&gt;
&lt;span class="style1"&gt;&lt;em&gt;Cars speeding into the tight La Rascasse corner which 
is a 180&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="style3"&gt;&lt;em&gt;º&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="style1"&gt;&lt;em&gt;-turner&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/span&gt;.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;
In this race, Renault was in pole heading into the Rascasse with Ferrari and 
Williams closing the gap. A combination of aggressive (and some said reckless) 
driving and sharp positioning allowed the Williams (blue-white) to close the gap 
and overtake the Renault (yellow-blue).&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;
&lt;a href="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/7802/original.aspx"&gt;
&lt;IMG height=265 src="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/7802/original.aspx" width=400 border=0&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;
&lt;span class="style1"&gt;&lt;em&gt;LostBoyz (right), team manager for Williams (blue) 
pondering on his next &lt;br&gt;
move as he watched his leading Williams car being 
overtaken by a reckless &lt;br&gt;
Ferrari in the Rascasse Corner.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;
Ferrari (red-yellow) taking advantage of a slight hesitation from Williams then 
cut across the corner and claimed pole for the first time in this race, coming 
out of the Rascasse. Thus in the blink of a corner, Renault has dropped from 
pole to third position. This is the importance of taking the Rascasse well.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;
&lt;em&gt;In another incident from the Landak Gamers race, the driver who was in 3rd 
position coming into the Rascasse Corner for the final lap, with the 4th placed 
driver in hot pursuit, attempted to take this corner too fast, spun and can only 
watched while his pursuer sped past him to a podium finish (3rd).&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;
So neglect the Rascasse at your own peril.
&lt;img src="/community/emoticons/emotion-1.gif" width="19" height="19"&gt;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;
Even tho' Ferrari did well to grab pole from Williams in the Rascasse, the 
Williams driver were not to be denied this victory! He floored the accelerator 
(rolled 20 in 5th Gear!) and raced neck-to-neck with the Ferrari in the final 
straight, piping Ferrari to the chequered flag by a nose-length.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;
&lt;em&gt;Note&lt;/em&gt;: Oh, by then we'd decided to change this race into a single-lap 
race. Therefore the results don't really matter as we took this as a learning 
game for everyone.&amp;nbsp;As Heng mentioned in his report (see above), Honda would have 
done better if we did complete this as a 2-lap race.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;
&lt;a href="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/7805/original.aspx"&gt;
&lt;IMG height=265 src="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/7805/original.aspx" width=400 border=0&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;
&lt;span class="style1"&gt;&lt;em&gt;Williams taking the chequered flag. Ferrari lost by a 
nose-length while &lt;br&gt;
Renault took the last podium finish.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;
&lt;strong&gt;MONACO STATISTICS&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;
- 18 corners (15 marked corners in the Formula De track)&lt;br&gt;
- 3.34 km in real distance (1+ hr per lap in Formula De time)&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;
&lt;strong&gt;FORMULA DE LEAGUE&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;
On the following day, the gamers at Mage Cafe also brought this game to the 
table and did the Zandvoort (Holland) track. They enjoyed this game so much we 
are planning to do a Formula De Championship which would cover a few different 
tracks such as Sepang, Shanghai, Suzuka, Imola, Buenos Aires, etc. Points will 
be scored for Drivers and Constructors. If you are interested to take part in 
our Championship,
&lt;a href="/community/forums/thread/7774.aspx"&gt;sign-up at 
this thread&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;
&lt;em&gt;NOTE&lt;/em&gt;: For those wishing to
&lt;a href="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/store/shopexd.asp?id=282"&gt;buy this game&lt;/a&gt;, 
sadly it is already OOP (out-of-print) and also out-of-stock with us.&amp;nbsp;The last 
(and final) reprint from Asmodee has now been sold out. You may scan eBay for 
listings but do expect to pay a lot for those listed there. &lt;/P&gt;
&lt;TABLE id=table12 cellSpacing=1 width="100%" border=0&gt;

&lt;TR&gt;
&lt;TD bgColor=#66ffff valign="top"&gt;&lt;B&gt;&lt;a href="http://boardgamecafe.net/store/shopexd.asp?id=103"&gt;Wallenstein&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;
&lt;i&gt;reported by &lt;/i&gt;&lt;/B&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;ayheng&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/TD&gt;
&lt;TD bgColor=#66ffff style="width: 120px"&gt;
&lt;IMG src="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/bgc_internal_-_meetup/images/5681/original.aspx" border=0 width="100" height="108" align="right"&gt;&lt;/TD&gt;&lt;/TR&gt;&lt;/TABLE&gt;
&lt;p&gt;One game down, one more to go. Round 2 started at 12am with jack208 
explaining the rules of &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href="http://boardgamecafe.net/store/shopexd.asp?id=103"&gt;Wallenstein&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; to ayheng and lostboyz. 
rhyen temporarily got the boyz' hopes up by declaring that he was making his way 
from Mages to Boardgamecafe. Which however he did not turn up. And so we settle 
into a three player game.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;
&lt;a href="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/7808/original.aspx"&gt;
&lt;IMG height=265 src="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/7808/original.aspx" width=400 border=0&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;
&lt;br&gt;
The game's of area-control game with some wargaming elements settled by the 
infamous cube-tower! How it works is like this: you take your army cubes, you 
take your opponents army cubes, shake it up in your hand and throw them into the 
cube tower! some cubes will get stuck, and other cubes got stuck there before 
might come unstuck! So what happens is an interesting result which favors the 
person with the more cubes... MOST of the TIME. Not always. Sometimes your cube 
just don't want to drop out. &lt;br&gt;
&lt;br&gt;
Cube towers aside, there's some planning to be had each round which seriously 
causes some mind-f*** going on. Players start guessing and second guessing other 
people's actions. As all actions are put down first and then revealed 
simultaneously, this will cause some serious screwage to happen as players' plan 
are thrown into wreck by unforeseen moves. Glorious!&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;
&lt;a href="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/7814/original.aspx"&gt;
&lt;IMG height=265 src="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/7814/original.aspx" width=400 border=0&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;
&lt;em&gt;[jack208] &lt;/em&gt;&lt;span class="style1"&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Action Cards that determine the 
sequence those actions will &lt;br&gt;
be executed. Players plan their actions for each 
season based on this sequence.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br&gt;
&lt;br&gt;
jack208 seems to get the strategy on this one as he finishes a respectable 2nd 
after losing precious points in the first year to a peasant riot. Myself did 
badly as I didn't manage to get building majority on many provinces. lostboyz 
with his devil-may-care attitude went on a province grabbing spree managed to 
finish first as he was able to put down his rioting-starving-peasants. Nice 
game.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;
&lt;a href="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/7818/original.aspx"&gt;
&lt;IMG height=265 src="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/7818/original.aspx" width=400 border=0&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;
&lt;em&gt;[jack208] &lt;span class="style1"&gt;LostBoyz (blue) seems to be heading for a 
major peasants' revolt &lt;br&gt;
during Winter coz his provinces haven't been producing 
any grain!&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note&lt;/em&gt;: Wallenstein is already an OOP game. However it has recently 
been republished as &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/store/shopexd.asp?id=281"&gt;Shogun&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;; fully English edition, improved 
game board with scoring track, and some enhancement to the rules. You can
&lt;a href="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/store/shopexd.asp?id=281"&gt;get Shogun here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;TABLE id=table13 cellSpacing=1 width="100%" border=0&gt;

&lt;TR&gt;
&lt;TD bgColor=#66ffff valign="top"&gt;&lt;B&gt;&lt;a href="http://boardgamecafe.net/store/shopexd.asp?id=26"&gt;The Downfall of Pompeii&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;
&lt;i&gt;reported by &lt;/i&gt;&lt;/B&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;ayheng&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/TD&gt;
&lt;TD bgColor=#66ffff style="width: 120px"&gt;
&lt;IMG src="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/bgc_internal_-_meetup/images/5681/original.aspx" border=0 width="100" height="108" align="right"&gt;&lt;/TD&gt;&lt;/TR&gt;&lt;/TABLE&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The night finishes with more talk and finally a lite game of &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href="http://boardgamecafe.net/store/shopexd.asp?id=26"&gt;The Downfall of Pompeii&lt;/a&gt;
&lt;/strong&gt;to intro to lostboyz. This game is very lite and is right up 'litegamer' 
lostboyz' alley. Another satisfied tossing-meeples-into-da-burning-volcano 
customer.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;
&lt;a href="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/7822/original.aspx"&gt;
&lt;IMG height=265 src="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/7822/original.aspx" width=400 border=0&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Woo hoo! three games in a nite, we finished at 4-ish. Highlight for me tonite 
was Formula DE. But I don't recommend anyone to get it because I WANT IT (wait 
till my next budget, sigh).&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The above report is also published in
&lt;a target="_blank" href="http://aikyong.blogs.friendster.com/hengs_gaming_blog/2007/06/boardgame_sessi.html"&gt;
&lt;strong&gt;Heng&amp;#39;s Gaming Blog&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;HR&gt;

&lt;P&gt;
&lt;a href="/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/category1266/picture7795.aspx"&gt;Click here&lt;/a&gt; for more photos of this gaming session.&lt;BR&gt;For more gaming reports, visit our 
&lt;a href="/community/blogs/Bloggers.aspx?GroupID=6"&gt;Boardgame Meetup Reports Blog&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;BR&gt;To discuss this gaming session, visit our forum in 
&lt;a href="/community/forums/51/ShowForum.aspx"&gt;BoardgameCafe.net&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;If you wish to join our&amp;nbsp;boardgame meetups, check out our
&lt;a href="/community/calendar/default.aspx"&gt;Meetup 
Calendar&lt;/a&gt; and sign up now at &lt;A href="http://boardgames.meetup.com/310" target=_blank&gt;KL Boardgames Meetup!&lt;/A&gt;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;To buy the games played in this meetup, visit our
&lt;a href="/store"&gt;Web Store&lt;/a&gt;. We carry over 200+ games 
and provide prompt delivery to anywhere in Malaysia.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;/P&gt;&lt;img src="http://boardgamecafe.net/community/aggbug.aspx?PostID=7845" width="1" height="1"&gt;</content><author><name>jack208</name><uri>http://boardgamecafe.net/community/members/jack208.aspx</uri></author></entry><entry><title>Fri Meetup @ Old Town Kopitiam 16/3/07 - Caylus, 1856</title><link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://boardgamecafe.net/community/blogs/boardgamecafe_net/archive/2007/03/17/6364.aspx" /><id>http://boardgamecafe.net/community/blogs/boardgamecafe_net/archive/2007/03/17/6364.aspx</id><published>2007-03-17T01:27:00Z</published><updated>2007-03-17T01:27:00Z</updated><content type="html">&lt;TABLE id=table7 cellSpacing=5 cellPadding=3 width="100%" border=0&gt;

&lt;TR&gt;
&lt;TD vAlign=top width=958&gt;&lt;B&gt;Gamers: &lt;/B&gt;Ainul (aanemesis), Alan Tan, Vincent, and Jeffrey Au&lt;B&gt; &lt;/B&gt;(jack208)&lt;B&gt; &lt;/B&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;B&gt;Games: &lt;/B&gt;&lt;a href="http://boardgamecafe.net/store/shopexd.asp?id=133"&gt;Caylus&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;B&gt; &lt;/B&gt;&lt;a href="http://boardgamecafe.net/store/shopexd.asp?id=143"&gt;1856&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;B&gt;Location: &lt;/B&gt;Old Town Kopitiam, Cheras&lt;BR&gt;&lt;B&gt;Date/Time: &lt;/B&gt;16 March 07 (Fri) 8.00 PM - 2.00 AM&lt;/P&gt;&lt;/TD&gt;
&lt;TD vAlign=top&gt;&lt;IMG height=185 src="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/bgc_internal_-_meetup/images/5723/original.aspx" width=155 align=right border=0&gt;&lt;/TD&gt;&lt;/TR&gt;&lt;/TABLE&gt;
&lt;HR&gt;

&lt;P&gt;&lt;B&gt;KL BOARDGAMES MEETUP REPORT @ OLD TOWN KOPITIAM CHERAS 16/3/07&lt;/B&gt;&lt;BR&gt;&lt;I&gt;by jack208&lt;/I&gt;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;TABLE id=table2 cellSpacing=1 width="100%" border=0&gt;

&lt;TR&gt;
&lt;TD bgColor=#66ffff&gt;&lt;B&gt;THE FUTURE OF 18XX IS BRIGHT&lt;/B&gt;&lt;/TD&gt;&lt;/TR&gt;&lt;/TABLE&gt;
&lt;P&gt;Our usual Fri evening meetup at Old Town Kopitiam (OTK) but this week looks like a weak turnout day with many of the regulars on dinner appointment, and one going down to Singapore for some event involving shifting alphabets around. &lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;However Boardgamecafe.net do have an event earlier from 6pm. We hosted a 2-hr &lt;A href="/community/blogs/tournaments__competitions/archive/2007/03/17/6361.aspx"&gt;&lt;STRONG&gt;Children Birthday Boardgames Party&lt;/STRONG&gt;&lt;/A&gt; at Old Town Kopitiam and thus some of us were there earlier to facilitate the children boardgames.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;TABLE id=table9 cellSpacing=1 width="100%" border=0&gt;

&lt;TR&gt;
&lt;TD bgColor=#66ffff&gt;&lt;B&gt;CAYLUS&lt;BR&gt;&lt;I&gt;reported by jack208&lt;/I&gt;&lt;/B&gt;&lt;/TD&gt;&lt;/TR&gt;&lt;/TABLE&gt;
&lt;P&gt;If &lt;B&gt;&lt;a href="http://boardgamecafe.net/store/shopexd.asp?id=143"&gt;1856&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/B&gt;looks like the staple diet of OTK, then &lt;B&gt;&lt;a href="http://boardgamecafe.net/store/shopexd.asp?id=133"&gt;Caylus&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/B&gt; seems to be the staple appetizer here! &lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;After facilitating a round of &lt;B&gt;&lt;a href="http://boardgamecafe.net/store/shopexd.asp?id=2"&gt;Memoir '44&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/B&gt; for the children, I found Ainul trying to start a 2-player Caylus game with Alan Tan. &lt;I&gt;How can! &lt;/I&gt;So I prompted interrupted and got myself inserted into a 3-player game.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;IMG height=266 src="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/6355/original.aspx" width=400 border=0&gt;&lt;BR&gt;&lt;FONT color=#0000ff&gt;&lt;I&gt;Sorry, picture out of focus but still must post coz it's Ainul's inaugural win of Caylus, yah!&lt;/I&gt;&lt;/FONT&gt;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;I believe after this evening's game, Caylus went up to 9 in Ainul's rating (coz he won our 3-player game!) Well played Ainul!&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;TABLE id=table10 cellSpacing=1 width="100%" border=0&gt;

&lt;TR&gt;
&lt;TD bgColor=#66ffff&gt;&lt;B&gt;1856 (UPPER CANADA)&lt;BR&gt;&lt;I&gt;reported by jack208&lt;/I&gt;&lt;/B&gt;&lt;/TD&gt;&lt;/TR&gt;&lt;/TABLE&gt;
&lt;P&gt;Next we did... ar... &lt;B&gt;&lt;a href="http://boardgamecafe.net/store/shopexd.asp?id=143"&gt;1856&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/B&gt;.&amp;nbsp; &lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;Actually I brought &lt;B&gt;&lt;a href="http://boardgamecafe.net/store/shopexd.asp?id=28"&gt;Puerto Rico&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/B&gt; which I intend to bring to the table but since Vincent (our new member from last week) arrived and he's like &lt;B&gt;V E R Y&amp;nbsp; K E E N&lt;/B&gt; to learn the 18xx games, we thought it would be good to do a learning game for him, fixing the end-game to 2am (that's when OTK closes on Fri).&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;IMG height=266 src="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/6356/original.aspx" width=400 border=0&gt;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;I won't go into details for this session as it was meant to be a learning game for Vincent (&lt;I&gt;read: very the friendly&lt;/I&gt;) to learn the ropes of the various phases and trigger points in the game. The four public companies started at SR#1 were GW (jack208) at $80, BBG (vincent) at $75, LPS (alan) at $65, and CPR (ainul) at $65.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;Trains were sold quite slowly... but it did get to a tense stage when the last type-4 trains were sold. At that time, Ainul and jack208 have 2 companies each. Ainul's CPR and CV having one Type-4 train, while my GW has a 4/5 and CA has 3/5. BBG (vincent) has a 3/5 while Alan's LPS has 3/4. &lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;That was an interesting moment including the chance for &lt;B&gt;&lt;FONT color=#ff0000&gt;Double Hotsun&lt;/FONT&gt;&lt;/B&gt; which Mr CPR was kind enough not to execute as he wanted the session to be &lt;I&gt;&lt;B&gt;Friendly&lt;/B&gt;&lt;/I&gt; one mah...&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;IMG height=266 src="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/6357/original.aspx" width=400 border=0&gt;&lt;BR&gt;&lt;FONT color=#0000ff&gt;&lt;I&gt;BBG did manage to drive quite far and has potential for good runs&lt;/I&gt;&lt;/FONT&gt;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;IMG height=266 src="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/6358/original.aspx" width=400 border=0&gt;&lt;BR&gt;&lt;FONT color=#0000ff&gt;&lt;I&gt;The usual western trinity. Some interesting builds here with a key build in the small towns south of Kitchener&lt;/I&gt;&lt;/FONT&gt;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;IMG height=266 src="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/6359/original.aspx" width=400 border=0&gt;&lt;BR&gt;&lt;FONT color=#0000ff&gt;&lt;I&gt;CV coming out from Toronto but later getting tokened out (an important choke point)&lt;/I&gt;&lt;/FONT&gt;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;IMG height=266 src="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/6360/original.aspx" width=400 border=0&gt;&lt;BR&gt;&lt;FONT color=#0000ff&gt;&lt;I&gt;Our 18xx Vice Prez (right) showing new 18xx "fan" Vincent (left) how to feel the Force&lt;/I&gt;&lt;/FONT&gt;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;We find that 4-player 1856 is a very good set up for learning game. If you decide to play the game for a fixed amount of time say 3 hrs, a newbie can learn the ropes easily without having to invest in a break-the-bank session as it's very likely the early choices made by the newbie won't be very advantageous. &lt;/P&gt;
&lt;TABLE id=table16 cellSpacing=1 width="100%" border=0&gt;

&lt;TR&gt;
&lt;TD bgColor=#66ffff&gt;&lt;B&gt;BUILDING THE FOUNDATION FOR 18XX&lt;BR&gt;&lt;I&gt;reported by jack208&lt;/I&gt; &lt;/B&gt;&lt;/TD&gt;&lt;/TR&gt;&lt;/TABLE&gt;
&lt;P&gt;Remember I mentioned about the children having their boardgames party earlier? They enjoyed themselves tremendously till 930pm.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;A href="/community/blogs/tournaments__competitions/archive/2007/03/17/6361.aspx"&gt;&lt;IMG height=266 src="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/kids_edusoft_my/images/6341/original.aspx" width=400 border=0&gt;&lt;/A&gt;&lt;BR&gt;&lt;FONT color=#0000ff&gt;&lt;I&gt;The new younglings enjoying their boardgame sessions (&lt;A href="/community/blogs/tournaments__competitions/archive/2007/03/17/6361.aspx"&gt;&lt;STRONG&gt;read report here&lt;/STRONG&gt;&lt;/A&gt;)&lt;/I&gt;&lt;/FONT&gt;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;But more importantly, they represent the future of 18xx! We'll be assigning some Padawans to monitor the progress of these younglings as they undergo their &lt;B&gt;Jedi (Boardgame) Initiate&lt;/B&gt; programme. The bright ones from these younglings shall be chosen by the Padawans and be sent to the &lt;B&gt;&lt;FONT color=#0000ff&gt;Jedi 18xx&lt;/FONT&gt;&lt;/B&gt; camp for fast fast induction into our 18xx programme.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;So the future looks bright! More mini &lt;B&gt;&lt;FONT color=#ff0000&gt;HotSun&lt;/FONT&gt;&lt;/B&gt; coming.... hehe&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;IMG height=266 src="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/6354/original.aspx" width=400 border=0&gt;&lt;BR&gt;&lt;FONT color=#0000ff&gt;&lt;I&gt;The identity of these two Padawans shud be kept secret to prevent disturbance from the Dark Lord Sidious&lt;/I&gt;&lt;/FONT&gt;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;HR&gt;

&lt;P&gt;&lt;A href="/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/category1250/picture6354.aspx"&gt;Click here&lt;/A&gt; for more photos of this gaming session.&lt;BR&gt;For more gaming reports, visit our &lt;A href="/community/blogs/Bloggers.aspx?GroupID=6"&gt;Boardgame Meetup Reports Blog&lt;/A&gt;.&lt;BR&gt;To discuss this gaming session, visit our forum in &lt;A href="/community/forums/51/ShowForum.aspx"&gt;BoardgameCafe.net&lt;/A&gt; &lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;If you wish to join our&amp;nbsp;boardgame meetups, check out our &lt;A href="/community/calendar/default.aspx"&gt;Meetup Calendar&lt;/A&gt; and sign up now at &lt;A href="http://boardgames.meetup.com/310" target=_blank&gt;KL Boardgames Meetup!&lt;/A&gt;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;To buy the games played in this meetup, visit our &lt;A href="/store"&gt;Web Store&lt;/A&gt;. We carry over 200+ games and provide prompt delivery to anywhere in Malaysia.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;16-03-2007&lt;/P&gt;&lt;img src="http://boardgamecafe.net/community/aggbug.aspx?PostID=6364" width="1" height="1"&gt;</content><author><name>jack208</name><uri>http://boardgamecafe.net/community/members/jack208.aspx</uri></author></entry><entry><title>Fri Meetup @ Old Town Kopitiam and Boardgamecafe.net 9/3/07 - Caylus, 1856, Werewolves, Puerto Rico, Antiquity</title><link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://boardgamecafe.net/community/blogs/boardgamecafe_net/archive/2007/03/14/6300.aspx" /><id>http://boardgamecafe.net/community/blogs/boardgamecafe_net/archive/2007/03/14/6300.aspx</id><published>2007-03-14T01:14:00Z</published><updated>2007-03-14T01:14:00Z</updated><content type="html">&lt;TABLE id=table7 cellSpacing=5 cellPadding=3 width="100%" border=0&gt;

&lt;TR&gt;
&lt;TD vAlign=top width=958&gt;&lt;B&gt;Gamers: &lt;/B&gt;Heng (ayheng), Alvin (aycee), Henry Yeo (rhyen), Ainul (aanemesis), Alan Tan, Long (LostBoyz), Ken (Wolfx), Vincent, and Jeffrey Au&lt;B&gt; &lt;/B&gt;(jack208)&lt;B&gt; &lt;/B&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;B&gt;Games: &lt;/B&gt;&lt;a href="http://boardgamecafe.net/store/shopexd.asp?id=133"&gt;Caylus&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href="http://boardgamecafe.net/store/shopexd.asp?id=143"&gt;1856&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href="http://boardgamecafe.net/store/shopexd.asp?id=97"&gt;Werewolves (Lupus in Tabula)&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href="http://boardgamecafe.net/store/shopexd.asp?id=28"&gt;Puerto Rico&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href="http://boardgamecafe.net/store/shopexd.asp?id=231"&gt;Antiquity&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;B&gt;Location: &lt;/B&gt;Old Town Kopitiam and Boardgamecafe.net, Cheras&lt;BR&gt;&lt;B&gt;Date/Time: &lt;/B&gt;9 March 07 (Fri) 8.00 PM - 6.00 AM&lt;/P&gt;&lt;/TD&gt;
&lt;TD vAlign=top&gt;&lt;/TD&gt;&lt;/TR&gt;&lt;/TABLE&gt;
&lt;HR&gt;

&lt;P&gt;&lt;B&gt;KL BOARDGAMES MEETUP REPORT @ OLD TOWN KOPITIAM &amp;amp; BOARDGAMECAFE.NET CHERAS 9/3/07&lt;/B&gt;&lt;BR&gt;&lt;I&gt;by aycee, rhyen, and jack208&lt;/I&gt;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;TABLE id=table2 cellSpacing=1 width="100%" border=0&gt;

&lt;TR&gt;
&lt;TD bgColor=#66ffff&gt;&lt;B&gt;BREAKING THE 1856 CODE&lt;/B&gt;&lt;/TD&gt;&lt;/TR&gt;&lt;/TABLE&gt;
&lt;P&gt;The usual Fri evening meetup at Old Town Kopitiam (OTK) after we managed to break-the-bank last week (report still pending, sigh). Our break-the-bank session last 7+ hrs last week and it was even mentioned in our forum that "&lt;I&gt;&lt;A href="/community/forums/permalink/6015/6015/ShowThread.aspx#6015"&gt;doing 1856 in 3 hours is the Holy Grail of Boardgaming&lt;/A&gt;&lt;/I&gt;", but everyone's still keen to come back again for another &lt;B&gt;1856&lt;/B&gt; session, which is fast becoming the HOTTEST game this part of the gaming world. &lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;But I bet surely no one expected what happened next in this week's 1856 session. &lt;I&gt;&lt;B&gt;Read on and you'll find out&lt;/B&gt;&lt;/I&gt;. &lt;/P&gt;
&lt;TABLE id=table9 cellSpacing=1 width="100%" border=0&gt;

&lt;TR&gt;
&lt;TD bgColor=#66ffff&gt;&lt;B&gt;&lt;a href="http://boardgamecafe.net/store/shopexd.asp?id=133"&gt;Caylus&lt;/a&gt;&lt;BR&gt;&lt;I&gt;reported by jack208&lt;/I&gt;&lt;/B&gt;&lt;/TD&gt;&lt;/TR&gt;&lt;/TABLE&gt;
&lt;P&gt;Three gathered at OTK for dinner at 730 pm - Ainul, Alan and Jeff. No. 4 (Henry) joined us soon after and we quickly embarked on our usual appetizer for Fri evening - &lt;B&gt;&lt;a href="http://boardgamecafe.net/store/shopexd.asp?id=133"&gt;Caylus&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/B&gt;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;IMG height=266 src="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/6227/original.aspx" width=400 border=0&gt;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;While the Caylus session was going on, gamer no. 5 Long (LostBoyz) arrived.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;We ended Caylus quickly by pushing the provost forward. Henry won, Ainul continued to wonder at the game, and the rest of the gamers trickled in - Alvin (aycee) and Heng (ayheng). Ken (wolfx) was supposed to car-tag with Heng but he's not here yet. Forgot to ask Heng what happened (but Ken did arrive later around 10ish).&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;IMG height=266 src="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/6229/original.aspx" width=400 border=0&gt;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;We quickly settled our bill and adjourned to Boardgamecafe.net centre for our main agenda for the evening - a &lt;B&gt;6-player session of 1856&lt;/B&gt;!&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;TABLE id=table10 cellSpacing=1 width="100%" border=0&gt;

&lt;TR&gt;
&lt;TD bgColor=#66ffff&gt;&lt;B&gt;&lt;a href="http://boardgamecafe.net/store/shopexd.asp?id=143"&gt;1856&lt;/a&gt; (Upper Canada)&lt;BR&gt;&lt;I&gt;reported by rhyen; with photo comments and notes by jack208&lt;/I&gt;&lt;/B&gt;&lt;/TD&gt;&lt;/TR&gt;&lt;/TABLE&gt;
&lt;TABLE id=table14 cellSpacing=5 cellPadding=3 width="100%" border=0&gt;

&lt;TR&gt;
&lt;TD vAlign=top&gt;&lt;B&gt;The shortest &lt;a href="http://boardgamecafe.net/store/shopexd.asp?id=143"&gt;1856&lt;/a&gt; game ever!!! (In Malaysia that is)&lt;/B&gt;&lt;BR&gt;A.K.A.: Don't need to hotsun one to screw someone!!!&lt;BR&gt;A.K.A.: Learning to be a corporate raider!!! 
&lt;P&gt;Basically, after letting me win another game of 4-players Caylus at OTK (I kid you not. The proof is to your right, I am playing BLUE), the gang headed back to BGCLand to do 6-players &lt;B&gt;1856&lt;/B&gt;.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;We have Jeff, Ainul, Ay Heng, Long, Aycee, Alan and me (7 people). So, how do you play 6-player game with 7? Easy, we paired up Long with Aycee as his consultant/advisor/schemer-in-crime (who somehow managed to also become the banker throughout the game, asking people to exchange dollar notes).&lt;/P&gt;&lt;/TD&gt;
&lt;TD vAlign=top width=165&gt;&lt;IMG height=185 src="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/bgc_internal_-_meetup/images/6225/original.aspx" width=155 align=right border=0&gt;&lt;/TD&gt;&lt;/TR&gt;&lt;/TABLE&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;IMG height=266 src="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/6235/original.aspx" width=400 border=0&gt;&lt;BR&gt;&lt;I&gt;The Six who started - Alan, Long (his advisor Aycee hidden by him), Ainul, Henry, Heng and Jeff (holding camera)&lt;/I&gt;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;The starting order went: Henry (why do I always draw first in 1856?), Heng, Jeff, Alan, Long &amp;amp; Aycee, Ainul.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;IMG height=300 src="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/6237/original.aspx" width=400 border=0&gt;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;Results of Bids for private companies:&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;UL&gt;
&lt;LI&gt;Flos Tramway: bought for cost $20 by Henry 
&lt;LI&gt;Canada: Alan for $45 
&lt;LI&gt;Waterloo: Long &amp;amp; Aycee for $55 
&lt;LI&gt;Great Lakes Shipping: Ainul paid $95 (interestingly, there were 3 bidders on this one, Henry, Jeff and Ainul. Henry pulled out leaving Jeff and Ainul to drive the price up on this one) 
&lt;LI&gt;Niagara: Heng for $105 
&lt;LI&gt;St Claire: Jeff for cost $100&lt;/LI&gt;&lt;/UL&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;IMG height=266 src="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/6239/original.aspx" width=400 border=0&gt;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;1st round of profit taking (from private company) as per usual.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;STRIKE&gt;Private&lt;/STRIKE&gt; Public companies started:&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;UL&gt;
&lt;LI&gt;Alan: GW ($65 per share) 
&lt;LI&gt;Long: LPS ($65 per share) 
&lt;LI&gt;Ainul: CPR ($70 per share) 
&lt;LI&gt;Henry: GT ($75 per share) 
&lt;LI&gt;Heng: WR ($65 per share) 
&lt;LI&gt;Jeff: CA ($70 per share)&lt;/LI&gt;&lt;/UL&gt;
&lt;P&gt;additional stocks brought:&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;UL&gt;
&lt;LI&gt;Henry: 1 share of CPR&lt;/LI&gt;&lt;/UL&gt;
&lt;P&gt;Operating round #1:&lt;BR&gt;All companies laid tracks and bought trains (5 level 2 trains were sold, 1 left.) in their 1st round (except for Jeff's CA since he has no legal train route and cannot be forced to buy). Everyone wonder whether he would connect to a city first before the last level 2 train is sold.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;Stock round #2 (priority with Heng):&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;UL&gt;
&lt;LI&gt;Long: 1 share of LPS&lt;/LI&gt;&lt;/UL&gt;
&lt;P&gt;*Please note that all photos of stock round are taken prior to any trading of shares&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;Operating round #2:&lt;BR&gt;All companies laid tracks and didn't buy any additional trains yet (Jeff's CA still managed to avoid do any train runs at all). GT, CPR, LPS and WR issued dividends while GW withhold dividends. CA still can't run and watches its share prices decline in tandem with GW.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;IMG height=266 src="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/6240/original.aspx" width=400 border=0&gt;&lt;BR&gt;&lt;I&gt;OR#2: Tracks laid by GW (Alan), LPS (Long) and CA (Jeff) in the West&lt;/I&gt;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;IMG height=266 src="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/6241/original.aspx" width=400 border=0&gt;&lt;BR&gt;&lt;I&gt;OR#2: Tracks laid by CPR (Ainul) and GT (Henry) in the North-East&lt;/I&gt;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;IMG height=266 src="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/6242/original.aspx" width=400 border=0&gt;&lt;BR&gt;&lt;I&gt;OR#2: Tracks laid by WR (Heng) in the South-East&lt;BR&gt;&lt;/I&gt;&lt;BR&gt;&lt;IMG height=266 src="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/6243/original.aspx" width=400 border=0&gt;&lt;BR&gt;&lt;I&gt;OR#2: All companies earning $5 EPS except for CA which has no route yet.&lt;/I&gt;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;IMG height=266 src="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/6244/original.aspx" width=400 border=0&gt;&lt;BR&gt;&lt;I&gt;OR#2: Stock market position. CA has no route but GW has $5 EPS but chose to withhold&lt;/I&gt;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;Stock round #3 (priority with Ainul):&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;UL&gt;
&lt;LI&gt;Heng: 1 share of WR&lt;/LI&gt;&lt;/UL&gt;
&lt;P&gt;Operating rounds #3:&lt;BR&gt;There was 2 operating rounds in OR#3 as the 1st sale of the 3-train triggered Phase 4 (where there shall be two operating rounds).&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;1st OR: CPR bought the remaining level 2 train to maximise delivery, necessitating several other companies (LPS, CA and GW) to take on govt loans loan to finance their purchase of level 3 trains. Jeff's CA finally found a legal train route just in time for power through; two level 3 trains remaining. &lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;Dividend: GT, CPR, WR, GW payout. LPS, and CA withhold.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;2nd OR: All companies then started utilising green tracks up upgrade existing tracks rather than expand and everyone's dividends soar. &lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;Dividend: GT, CPR, WR, LPS payout. CA and GW withhold. &lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;(Please note that CA and GW have finally moved into the yellow zone, as noted in the next photo). CA took another govt loan while CPR joined the ranks of company with debts liable to the Chanucks.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;IMG height=266 src="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/6245/original.aspx" width=400 border=0&gt;&lt;BR&gt;&lt;I&gt;EPS chart after OR#3: GW now performing best with $14 EPS while CA with its new level 3 train earned $7&lt;/I&gt;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;Stock round #4 (priority with Jeff):&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;UL&gt;
&lt;LI&gt;Jeff: 1 share of GT at $75 
&lt;LI&gt;Ainul: 1 share of CPR 
&lt;LI&gt;Henry: 1 share of GT 
&lt;LI&gt;Heng: 1 share of WR 
&lt;LI&gt;Jeff: sells GT share at $90 (blast you Jeff, corporate raider) 
&lt;LI&gt;Heng: sell WR shares 
&lt;LI&gt;Jeff: buys 1 share of CA&lt;/LI&gt;&lt;/UL&gt;
&lt;P&gt;Operating rounds #4:&lt;BR&gt;1st OR: GT, CPR and WR upgraded key cities and maximised their runs. CPR &amp;amp; WR both take out govt loans to finance the purchases of the last two level 3 trains. LPS expanded GW's eastern route but neglected to place his remaining station marker, which GW dutily complied to hem in LPS (thereby necessitating LPS to break out northwest of London later). &lt;/P&gt;
&lt;BLOCKQUOTE&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;SPAN&gt;&lt;B&gt;Note from jack208&lt;/B&gt;&lt;BR&gt;Here, LPS missed a good opportunity to completely cut out GW and make his life terribly painful. If LPS has placed a token in the city south of Barrie (see picture below), and CA (which runs after LPS) likewise placed another token, this would have locked out GW (which runs last of the three companies in the West) from i) being able to use both its level 2 and level 3 trains, and ii) unable to destinate until it breaks out of that deadlock.&lt;/SPAN&gt;&lt;/P&gt;&lt;/BLOCKQUOTE&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;IMG height=266 src="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/6248/original.aspx" width=400 border=0&gt;&lt;BR&gt;&lt;I&gt;OR#4: The three companies in the West building up a profitable network. CA and GW have placed their station markers to lock out LPS from going further south.&lt;/I&gt;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;Dividends: GT, and WR issue dividends, CPR, LPS, GW and CA withhold dividends; GW share prices dropped into the dreaded brown zone). CA takes out another govt loan and buys the 1st level 4 train, essentially wiping out everyone's level 2 train.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;BLOCKQUOTE&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;SPAN&gt;&lt;B&gt;Note from jack208&lt;/B&gt;&lt;BR&gt;CA has been planning to get the level 4 train for a few turns earlier by intentionally not connecting to a route and withholding its dividend. By getting that first level 4, CA achieved a few things: i) Everyone's level 2 trains were rusted with the bonus of wiping out GT's only level 2 train and forcing Henry into a FTP situation which nearly bankrupted him but in any case the damage would have set him back a few many good rounds, and ii) CA with a level 3 and now a level 4 train, pumped its EPS up to $20. The early rust of everyone's level 2 trains may meant most companies did not get breakeven from the cost ($100) of purchasing the level 2 trains.&lt;/SPAN&gt;&lt;/P&gt;&lt;/BLOCKQUOTE&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;IMG height=266 src="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/6249/original.aspx" width=400 border=0&gt;&lt;BR&gt;&lt;I&gt;OR#4: WR has now connected to its destination city and has started expanding westward from Buffalo. Pity the game ended prematurely else it would be interesting to see how WR fared in this instance as it has established a virtually unchallenged network in the South-East.&lt;/I&gt;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;IMG height=266 src="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/6250/original.aspx" width=400 border=0&gt;&lt;BR&gt;&lt;I&gt;OR#4: In the North-east, CPR has completed its link to Toronto while GT started branching out to expand (but were hobbled by the FTP situation).&lt;/I&gt;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;IMG height=266 src="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/6251/original.aspx" width=400 border=0&gt;&lt;BR&gt;&lt;I&gt;OR#4.1: Both CA and GW has entered the Yellow Zone. &lt;/I&gt;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;2nd OR: GT's FTP requires Henry to sell off another GT and CPR share, depressing their share prices. but he rummages enough cash to finance the purchase (thanks to earlier profitable dividend issue; but must remember to keep for rainy days, Henry!). GT was unable to issue dividends as its only level 2 train were rusted from the previous round.&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;Dividends: WR, CPR, LPS and CA upgraded their tracks, maximised their runs and issued dividends. GW withheld dividends (dropping it's share prices further into the dreaded brown zone, about $35 per share).&lt;BR&gt;&lt;BR&gt;The finished board after the operating round is to the right (below).&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;IMG height=266 src="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/6253/original.aspx" width=400 border=0&gt;&lt;BR&gt;&lt;I&gt;OR#4: EPS table at the end of Op Round #4. CA has jumped to $20 due to its level 3 and level 4 train combo while GT dropped to $0 due to FTP situation. &lt;/I&gt;&lt;/P&gt;
&lt;P&gt;&lt;IMG height=266 src="http://www.boardgamecafe.net/community/photos/boardgamecafe_net/images/6252/original.aspx" width=400 border=0&gt;&lt;BR&gt;&lt;I&gt;OR#4: CA playing a dicey game with the Govn Loans (has maxxed out to 3 loans) but that's needed in order to quickly finance the purchase of the level 3 and level 4 trains.&lt;BR&gt;&lt;/I&gt;&lt;BR&gt;Stock round #5 (Priority with Alan):&lt;/P&g