Gamers: Henry (rhyen), Alvin (aycee), Ainul (aanemesis), Nelson (nelson), CK Au (jack208), Heng (ayheng), Afif Ter (afif), Reza (reza), Allen (blownfreaks), Yee Ling (crabzai), and Wai Yan (waiyan).

Games: Powergrid Korea, Small World, Chicago Express, Bang!, Factory Manager

Location: Old Town Kopitiam Cheras Google Map 
Date/Time: 29 January 2010 (Fri) 8.00 PM – 2.30 AM

Boardgamecafe.net Meetup Report Part 2 @ Old Town Kopitiam Cheras 29/1/2010
by jack208

The last meetup for the month of January saw the Return of the Empire when aanemesis (one of the two missing Jedi Lords) dropped by to say “Hi” and participated in a game of Powergrid. Read ayheng’s sessrep on our Powergrid Korea session.

 
Panoramic photo courtesy of aycee

With aycee also in attendance and afif/reza able to make it for this week, we split into two tables for R1 where beside Powergrid, other games played were Small World, Chicago Express and Bang! before some of the early-nighters said good-nite and left five to round up the nite with Factory Manager.

While six of us were playing Powergrid Korea on table #1, the other table saw blownfreaks starting Small World and teaching waiyan who’s playing this for the 1st time.

Apparently their 3-player game was done on a board wrongly set up for 2-player… hence theirs was a Very Small World indeed. 🙂

waiyan’s initial impression on the game is good though she’ll like to play it again with the proper board size. hehe….

Apologies for not having any good photos on the Small World session as I was over at the Powergrid Korea table, and didn’t venture over to take much photos. 😦

After the Small World session ended, waiyan has to say goodnite as it was already 11pm but the arrival of Afif and Reza (they first came to OTK Cheras during Hiew’s Automobile session) led to table #2 continuing with their next game: Chicago Express.

blownfreaks briefed Afif and Reza on the game rules, and soon they were enjoying their railroad barons time in Chicago…. 

Chicago Express is essentially a race to Chicago, with an interesting share revenue system that you need to play once or twice to understand it’s flow. I understand blownfreaks already has the expansion for this game but have not found out what it adds to the base game yet.

 
Afif sure was enjoying his time as a rail baron in Chicago!

Table #1 started with 6-player Powergrid on the Korea map which has the interesting feature of two resource pools (North & South Korea).

Read our full sessrep for this game here.

After table #1’s Powergrid session ended, table #2 was still with their Chicago Express game (hmm.. looks not like “Express”) so four of us did a quick session of Bang!

In a 4p Bang, you get a Sheriff without any deputy; two Outlaws and a Renegade. The Renegade should be helping out the Sheriff to take out both Outlaws, before going man-on-man with the Sheriff… or at least that’s how the script was supposed to be written as.

Not so in our game.. to Sheriff Rhyen’s dismay!

After Sheriff Rhyen (above)’s turn, ayheng who was next-in-turn immediately opened fire on the Sheriff. This would obviously mark him out as an Outlaw but given the Sheriff has no deputy protection in a 4p Bang!, it’s not a bad move.

aycee on his turn also opened fire on the Sheriff…. now Sheriff rhyen at this juncture was probably thinking this would meant jack208 (who has yet to take his turn) would be his “helpful” Renegade.

Not so.. on jack208’s turn, he also opened fire on the Sheriff!! Looks like the Sheriff was an open game to everyone. LOL

I suppose this confused the Sheriff totally and he’s now not sure who the Renegade was… and being unable to tell ally from enemies, he’s put under tremendous pressure every round…. And there was even a round where two dynamites were in-play!

However he did have an “ace” in his pack… his character the Apache Kid prevents any diamond cards being played on him… and there were a few rounds where the Sheriff was caught exposed (without any card in hand and therefore can’t play any Miss card) yet I could not fire on him becoz my Bang or Indian cards are diamond cards!! Grrr….

His Barrel and Mustang above didn’t do him much good as they were promptly Panic or Cat Balou away…

The Renegade turned out to be aycee.. who actually did quite well to cause the death of both Outlaws (jack208 and ayheng) and set himself up for a one-on-one with the Sheriff, an encounter which proved too much even for the Apache Kid and in the end Renegade Aycee took over the town as their new “Sheriff”.

While some gamers bid us good night, R2 kicked off with five gamers who stayed for a session of Factory Manager.

This would be the 2nd session of Factory Manager at OTK (the first was played on the 1st Jan) but three of today’s players have not played Factory Manager – aycee, afif and reza – so rhyen did the rule explanation prior to starting the game.

Workers are the key element in this game… and you do need to manage the number of free workers available to you as they determined the number of actions you can take in this game (unlike Powergrid where there’s no concept of workers).

Each player starts with the same factory setup ie. two machines capable of producing 2 units of goods, and storage facilities that hold up to 3 units. Your revenue however is the lesser of these two elements hence your factory is only set up to make $20 at the start.

There’ll be a cost the factory needs to spend to produce all the goods for you to sell. The “cost element” is represented in the level of energy usage (above). The unit energy cost will increase at the game progresses and will determine how much you need to pay for energy (ie. production cost).

Hence your net income is a factor of lesser(production,storage) less energy cost.

ayheng quickly conclude in our first session a few weeks back that maintaining your energy cost is far more important than scaling up your production or storage capabilities.

Similar to Powergrid, turn order is a key element of the game. Here you can bid to determine if you start early or late in the turn order. Starting early gives you a good choice of tiles to buy; tiles that you need to buy to upgrade your machines, add storage, improve your productivity or reduce energy usage.

Going later provides good discount on the tiles you are buying….

reza (left) and aycee doing some heavy thinking on their Factory Manager moves…

 
reza’s factory in mid-game. In his last turn, he managed to upgrade his factory capacity to do a turnover of $100 gross earnings.

afif’s winning factory config at end-game… running at the session’s highest capacity of $130 gross earnings, albeit with high energy usage. However energy cost remained at a low $4/unit therefore didn’t impact his net earnings to allow him to win this game (in his first try of the game). Well done, mate!

rhyen’s end-game factory… he did not bad at $120 gross earnings and very low energy usage. However since the final energy cost was a low $4, his more-energy-efficient factory did not help him to overtake afif’s $130 earnings.

Mine was at a poor $90 gross earnings level (energy usage is low though the bar is hidden from above pic). Doesn’t look like a game I’ll do well… hehe. I overbid by one worker more… otherwise could have upgrade or bought one more machine to improve my gross earnings to $100 as I still have $30+ in cash. This highlight the importance of managing your “free workers” in this game.

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