Thanks to Marcus ‘friedricetheman’ aka ‘the laminator’ lau, we did Indonesia the boardgame after hearing about this game from various places. The best recommendation came from ‘boardgameswithscott’ who is a hardcore gamer whose gamer taste include the 18xx train series. This game also witness the return of Dark Jedi, I mean Datuk Long to the gaming table. We spent a few moments debating who seen him last and where. hehehe. We are joined by hardcore gamer Alvin and his friend Edwin. Indonesia is no problem to them since they cut their teeth on the 1856 boardgame.

Indonesia is an economic game which takes the players through 3 distinct eras in which rice production were overtaken by rubber and lastly oil. There is also an interesting dynamic between the production companies and the shipping companies which are played quite differently.

At the start of each of the 3 eras, there will be new companies put up for acquisitions. Players can acquire these companies as long as they have free slots. No debt in this game as the companies are free and the goods are automatically generated every turn to ship to cities for cash.

There is player interaction in which they decide which city to supply and grow as well as which plantation to start and develop. Mergers is when the game start to become a little cutthroat as the winner might end up paying too much or the loser end up getting too little! As monopolies are formed, the rich will get richer while the poor, well, just have to watch the rich dominates.

There are tech tree developments called R&D and they are quite simple but essential to the game strategy. A production heavy company might need to go for expansion tech and turn order tech while a shipping company will have better luck going into hull tech and mergers.

wolfx and wonglc looking on as Indonesian players run their operations phase. The game itself is deceptively simple to explain and the notoriety of the game comes from the fact that as more companies come into play in each era, the operations phase gets more and more bogged down. Our first operation lasted moments but the final one ran for half an hour or so. A game time of about 3 hours is just about right.

In this game, Alvin jumped to an early lead being the winner of a rice merger. I managed to snag marcus’ shipping company with a 3 company merger but did not finish the game to watch it return on my investment.

The other table in Cassian Kitchen that day: Aanemesis converting disciples to the dark ways of the Agricola.

jack208, wolfx and wonglc killing each other with Greek Mythologically creatures in Cyclades. Release the Kraken!

Game aftermath and discussion. We did not finish the game as I had to make a run for it. But all of us sure had fun!

Hey, stop merging my companies away from me!