Boardgamecafe.net Meetup Report @ OTK Cheras 27/12/2013 – First play of Madeira in Msia
By jack208

EXCERPT
Read all about MADEIRA in the first play of this Essen 2013 release in Malaysia at OTK last December. Three other Essen 2013 games – BANG THE DICE GAME, ORIGIN and CAPPUCCINO – and some old faves like PUERTO RICO, TICKET TO RIDE. Adios to a great 2013 of gaming!

Games: Madeira, Let’s Catch the Lion, Takenoko, Dixit Journey, Bang the Dice Game, Origin, Cappuccino, Puerto Rico, The Castles of Burgundy, Ticket to Ride USA

Location: OTK Cheras | Google Map | Lat-Long: N 03° 06.179′ E 101° 44.237′
Date/Time: 27 December 2013 (Fri) 9.00 PM – (Sat) 4:00 AM

This was the last Friday in 2013 as the regulars and some new faces gathered at OTK for the last gaming Friday evening to sign off a fantastic year! Arguably one of the better Essen Spiel in recent years, a fabulous 2-day BGC Retreat held end of Nov (oh, I still owe the eventrep for this) and many many unforgetabble gaming sessions this year.

However for tonight, let us focus on one of the highlighted games from this year’s Spiel 2013 – MADEIRA.

MADEIRA‘s one of the highly anticipated complex game from Essen that we missed bringing to our BGC Retreat as the game did not reach us on time. Therefore it looked like the first play would have to wait till we get it to the OTK table, and this Friday we were all set to give this game a testdrive (thanks to Ivan for getting the rules sorted).

Let’s read on for our first impression from the first play of this medium-weight Euro in Malaysia. MADEIRA has lots of moving inter-related parts and it’s not an easy game to describe or explain. So do bear with me for another longish write-up. 😛

The board is a very busy one (see above) … and similar to CAYLUS, the board contains all the necessary infographics for you to remember the details of the game rule. But you do need to go thru the initial learning curve of understanding all the symbols and icons. It’s time well spent coz once you have gotten past this learning curve, playing the game is a breeze.

The board is basically divided into 6 main areas – the Islands (where you get to harvest resources), the Cities (the section at the bottom left of the board), the Windmill (your food track), the Markets (for selling goods), the Colonies (where you send resources further out to colonize in the name of Portugal) and the City Watch (where you send guards to post as night watch against the pirates/invaders).

ISLAND REGIONS

There are two Island spaces on the board, each marked by a large NUMBER to indicate one of three regions. The fields in each region allows you to harvest goods – wheat, sugar, wine and wood – though to get continuous access to wood, you’ll need workers with access to a forest space (the most obvious one is the Switzerland-like forest field in the middle of the larger island).

Wood is the most basic of all resources (bread comes a close second) and most of the actions you would want to perform in the game would require wood so do make sure you get at least a worker into the forest field to ensure you have access to buy wood when needed.

 Benefit of Island / Region
– harvest goods (wheat, sugar, wine, wood)

CITIES

The lower left side of the board shows the Cities section where you place workers to compete for city dominance (which scores VP via Crown Request). You can also purchase Guild Favor tiles from the district spots inside each city. Guild Favor tiles give you one-use-per-round special ability. There are 12 different Guild Favors, each granting you specific abilities to help you customize your  game strategy.

Benefits of Cities
– gets you resources (reals, wood or bread) when you re-distribute workers among the cities
– obtain Guild Favor tiles granting you one-use-per-round special ability to customize your strategy
– scores VP for city dominance thru the Urbanization crown request
– and if you also acquire Guild Favor tiles, you can score VP thru the Influence of the Guilds crown request also

WINDMILL

The Windmill is your food engine. It provides a steady source of food (bread) for you each round. You need bread to feed your workers (one bread per worker deployed onto the board). It’s also useful alternative source to exchange for bread and reals (money) quickly but the conversion rate is certainly not very favourable. But then hey, if you need a quick fix the windmill is where you gotta go.

Benefits of Windmill
– food engine (provides a steady source of food to feed your workers per round)
– emergency source of fund for bread or reals

MARKET ROUTES

Markets are where you get to sell goods. Only the three basic goods – wheat, sugar and wine – are traded here and Markets provide a quick source of reals thru your trading.

Benefits of Market Routes
– quickly sell goods (wheat, sugar, wine) for profit (reals)
– gains you VP via the Market Routes crown request
– the profit you gain may also get you VP via the Wealth of the Nation crown request (where you spend reals to buy VP)

The disdvantage of the Markets (and the Colonies) is that you need “ships” to activate them and while it costs only 1 wood to build a ship (and requires the Commander character action), you’ll also have to pay upkeep cost of 1 wood per ship each round (similar to feeding your workers).

COLONY EXPEDITIONS

The Colonies section of the board depicts three faraway land – Acores, Brasil and India – where  sending workers on expedition to any of the three colonies helps get you the King’s Reward tiles (which gains you either goods, reals, VP or an extra action) and an offshore income (based on which colony land and the number of workers sent).

Benefits of Colony Expeditions
– gets immediate VP (based on the number of ships you sent to each expedition)
– gets you a one-use King’s Reward
– provides recurring income at the end of each round; depending on which colony you have ent expeditions to
– gains you VP via the Expeditions crown request

CITY WATCH

Sounding similar to the Night’s Watch of a popular TV series, workers sent to the City Watch helped to protect Madeira from invaders (pirates). However once sent to the City Watch, you won’t be able to move them out of the Watch at-will. You do however gain access to the (limited) black Pirate’s Die which provides you with an additional Character action.

And there’s also a City Watch “honor” bonus at the end of each round which is given to the player who has the most workers in the City Watch. No bonus given in the event of a tie.

Benefits of City Watch
– access to Pirate Die (black) to use as extra character action
– scores City Watch Honor VP if you have dominance of the City Watch (most number of workers, tie voids the VP bonus)
– sending worker(s) to the City Watch also helps you reduce the number of pirates tokens you have in your possession

GUILD BOARD

There’s a Guild Board (separate from the main board) where Guild Dice (ie green action dice) are rolled & placed in groups of three. Each player gets to select a group of Guild Dice from one of the rows and that influences the turn order for the current round. The player’s choice of turn order row is partially influenced by their choice of Crown Requests (mission) since you get to pick (for free) a Crown Request tile from one of the four Guild rows above.

I’ll write more about the Crown Requests later but it’s good enough for now to mention you get the chance to “fulfill” your Crown Requests in three of the five rounds of this game, possibly fulfilling all 5 crown requests (max). With each Crown Requests giving you generous amount of VP, the player who can fulfill more Crown Requests than his opponents would stand a better chance in winning the game.

DICE in MADIERA (aka Actions)

There are dice in MADEIRA – lots of them – but they are used in similar fashion to TROYES in which the number on the die indicates the type of actions you may perform. These are known as Guild Dice and their dice value ranges from 1-3 only. Higher dice value obviously is better but not necessarily game-defining. Each die provides you with an “action”.

In each round, a number of Guild dice are rolled and grouped in batches of three on each of the four Guild rows in the Guild Board. Beginning with the turn order from the last round, each player gets to select a group of Guild Dice and also choose one Crown’s Request tile along the same row.

For eg, Yellow who’s first in turn order might decide to go for the last set (which has all the high 3s). However that would mean 1) he has to pick one of the Crown Request in that row (which may not be what he wanted) and 2) he would go last in turn order this round.

Each of the Guild Die allows you to take an action. Each player has three action discs (to go with each Guild die). If you have workers in the City Watch, you may also make use of the (black) Pirate die to get an extra action or two. However when you take/use a black pirate die, you’ll also lose one worker in the City Watch (back to your worker pool) which means you’ll lose the ability to compete for the City Watch honor VP at the end of each round.

There are also other repercussions when the pirate die is used, more of that later in this write-up.

STARTING RESOURCES

There is a set of four starting Crown’s Requests – every player picks one at random – which is used to determine initial turn order. The Crown Request is also an in-game goal that you should strive to achieve as the VP from crown requests are crucial to winning the game.

In the above example, I drew the “Wealth of the Nation” crown request (the tile leftmost) which allowed me to buy VP with reals (up to 15 VP) at the end of the first round. I think it’s a rather strong Crown Request and drawing this crown request tile made me start last in turn order.

Everyone gets the same starting resources (what, sugar, wood, wine and bread) and in turn order, each player gets increasing amount of starting money (to balance out the first turn advantage). Starting player gets 7 reals and me (above) being the 4th player got 10 reals.

Before starting the 1st round, each player (starting from the 4th player ie me) gets to place two of his workers into existing fields in the island regions. That helps set up your initial goods production. In the picture above, you can see some fields that started with stacks of wood that can be harvested (as opposed to having to purchase wood). In this session, most of us thought it was useful to start our initial workers in one of those fields to provide you with early access to wood.

BUILDINGS in ISLAND REGION

Each island region has 1-2 “buildings” connected to it. Each building confers specific building actions for eg the Alfandega building in Region #1 above is for sending your workers for an expedition to any Colony land (see COLONIES) where you earn immediate VP based on the number of your ships already present in that colony and also the chance to earn recurring income (goods) on the basis of one good per worker.

There are four more Buildings which allows a different set of building actions:

– Moinho in Region #2 provides you with bread (food)
– Capitania in Region #2 allows sending of workers to the City section (for dominance scoring)
– Casa da Coroa in Region #3 allows you to flip (re-set) one of your used Guild Favors tile (so that you can use it again in this round)
– Fortalze in Region #3 allows you to send workers to the City Watch

CHARACTER in BUILDINGS

In addition to the five buildings mentioned above, there are four characters – Steward, Guild Master, Commander, Mayor – that would be randomised each round and took up resident in four of the five buildings. There’s a fixed sequence in determining which one of the five buildings is vacant each round without a character (and Madeira plays over 5 rounds).

Above: The Guild Master character placed in the Alfandega building in Island/Region #1

A building without a character, by default provides the Harvest action (with the bonus of getting a 2nd harvest from one of your fields) while those with a character provide another alternative action based on the character (see below). Even if the building has one of the specific character (below), you can also choose to do the Harvest action as a character action (without the bonus harvest).

Steward – moves up to 2 of your workers to any of the fields in the island/region. You move workers to harvest fields having the type of goods (wheat, sugar or wine) that you wish to produce later in the game.

Guild Master – allows you to buy one of the Guild Favor tiles from the cities section. You pay with wood – and if you do not have sufficient wood, you can always buy wood from the marketplace (not cheap to do so). Guild Favor tiles provide you with once-per-round special ability.

Commander – allows you reassign your ships in the Colony or Market slot. If you do not have any ship yet, you can use this character action to build ships (at the cost of 1 wood per ship). You only have max 6 ships and if you are heavy on the shipping lane strategy, you would have wished for more than 6 ships! Therefore you’ll need to prioritize where you send your ships.

Mayor – allows relocation of workers between City spots. Relocating workers between the city spots earn you immediate resource bonus (bread, reals or wood) but more importantly they help you to position yourself for city dominance scoring.

There are plenty of locations where you can send your workers – the fields (to harvest), the city (to score for dominance), the colony (recurring income), and the City Watch (to have the ability to use the pirate die and also vie for Honor VP). However you have only 12 workers and would need to prioritize how you intend to spread out your working force (not to mention each worker deployed would cost you 1 bread to feed per round).

SENDING GUILD DIE to a BUILDING (or TAKING AN ACTION)

There are two types of action you can perform with your Guild dice – 1) Character action, and 2) Building action. To take a character and/or building action, you send in one of your green Guild die as a worker placement action (except in this case, your “worker” is represented by the Guild die and one of your square action markers). This is where the “die value” comes into play.

To take a character/building action, you need to send in a Guild die with a face value no lesser than the Region Number (where the building is located) for eg to take a character/building action in the Casa da Coroa which is in Region #3, you need to use a Guild die of value 3. However you can always use a lower-value Guilde die but have to make up for the shortfall with bread (one bread for each point short). So all things being equal, a Guild die of 3-point is better than the others.

Selecting low-value Guild Dice is not game-defining as you can always use bread to compensate (caveat: that’s provided you have taken care of your food engine and able to afford the surplus bread, else struggling to get enough bread to feed your workers is not a viable strategy too).

TAKING CHARACTER ACTION

When you send in a Guild die into a Building location, you must immediately take the Character action. In the example above, Red sends in a Guild die of 3-point and immediately took the Harvest (+1) action which allowed him to harvest goods from all the fields in Region #3 where he has placed workers.

In addition, you place one of your colored (red) action marker disc in the Building Action space which would be used in the next phase TAKING BUILDING ACTION to determine which building actions you may take.

Using the black Pirate die (character action only)

If you have workers in the City Watch – and there are still available black Pirate die – you may, instead of using one of your green Guild die, take one of the black Pirate die from the City Watch and send it into a building to take the Character (or Harvest) action.

You’ll need to “sacrifice” one of your workers in the City Watch (by returning him to your unused worker pool) but you gain an “extra” Character action. When using the Pirate die, you do not get to place your action marker disc into the Building Action space.

Same die placement rule applies, a Pirate die of value-3 can be placed in buildings from any region, while those with lower values would be restricted to region #1 or #2 unless you pay the difference with bread.

In a 4-player game, each building can take up to 4 dice (Guild + Pirate). This means you may take the same Character action more than once (by placing another Guild or Pirate die) as long as the building has not reached the 4-dice limit.

There can only be at most one Pirate die in each building so if you intend to use the Pirate die for a Character action, you’ll probably have to place the Pirate die early before the “single Pirate spot” is claimed by your opponent.

Above – the overall game board showing the two islands, 3 regions and the five buildings among the islands/regions. That’s the main game area where you place your Guild (or Pirate) Dice & action marker disc.

TAKING BUILDING ACTION

Building actions are performed in a separate phase AFTER all Character actions are completed (or players have chosen to pass and not commit further Guild or Pirate die). However the same Guild die that provided you with the Character action in the earlier phase is used to offer you the option to take a Building action in this phase.

In the above example, there were three Guild dice in Capitania (even though the building could have accommodated a 4th die, be it Guild or Pirate) and they were placed by Purple, Blue and Red (the order is inconsequential as the turn order to decide on building action follows the turn order in the Guild Board).

Cost for performing Building action

Unlike Character actions – which are free, you only need to commit a Guild / Pirate die – Building actions require reals (money) to be paid. To determine the cost for the Building action (which is different for each building), you take all the Guild (green) dice that’s committed to the building and rolled them. The cost of this Building action is 10 reals less the total value of the rolled Guild dice. You may choose not to pay and forego the building action.

This introduced a somewhat cooperative element to the game where a building with a full-deck of 4 Guild dice would help to lower the Building action cost (possibly making it free). So it seems to indicate one should go where the crowd is. 😛

On the other hand, a Building with only two Guild dice committed during the Character action phase (eg above) would meant Purple and Blue players would be looking at a minimum of 4 reals to perform the Building action (Guild die has value 3 as highest).

Whereas Red player above, all by himself in Casa da Coroa would be looking at a very expensive Building action should he chose to take it. MADEIRA does not seem to encourage you to walk the road less taken. 😛

The other aspect of a Building action is the no. of workers you have placed in the fields located in the same region. If you have only one worker in the fields, you perform the Building action in the top row (usually a lesser action) but if you have 3 or more workers committed to the fields in this region, you get to perform the Building action in the bottom row (which gets you a better return for the reals you would be spending).

Obviously if you have no worker in any of the fields in this region, you won’t be entitled to perform any of the building action – even if you can afford to pay. Therefore the decision to choose where to place your harvest workers is influenced by your overall game plan.

Paying Penance for not taking Building action

I did cheat slightly when I mentioned you can choose “not to take” a building action (by not paying the building action cost). Yes you may. However if you have action marker disc in the building and then chose not to perform the building action (or if you cannot perform due to having zero worker in the region) then you need to pay your penance by accepting “pirate tokens”.

Pirate tokens are bad news, man.

If there’s no Pirate die used in that Building, then all you have to take is one Pirate token (not disastrous). However if someone had used a black Pirate die to take a Character action in that building, then you roll the black die and take pirate tokens equal to the rolled Pirate die plus 1!

In the example above, the three Guild dice were rolled to determine the Building action cost and the black Pirate die’s also rolled to determine the Pirate token cost if one chose not to take the building action. In the example with a Pirate die of 3, a player not able to pay the Building action cost would have to take 4 pirate tokens!

Money solves all problems, as they say. If you can afford to pay the Building action cost (even if you cannot take the Building action), you do not have to take any Pirate tokens. 🙂

Be Careful of Pirates

Why are Pirate tokens bad? Pirate tokens are accumulated during the course of the game – you also get pirate tokens when you are unable to feed your workers or upkeep your ships etc – and it’s pretty hard to avoid taking any. It’s fine as long as you are not the one with the MOST Pirate tokens. 😛

At the end of the game, everyone total up their Pirate tokens, and everyone then loses some VPs based on the following

– player with most Pirate tokens loses 16 VP
– player with second-most tokens loses 8 VP
– player with third-most tokens loses 4 VP
– player with 4th-most tokens still has to lose 2 VP!!

The only exception not to lose VP is if you have zero Pirate tokens. L

P/s There are ways in which one can get rid of pirate tokens – the Forteza building action, some Guild Favors, sending workers to the City Watch, etc – but best to try to keep your pirate tokens to a more manageable haul.

Phew…. that’s basically the game of MADEIRA! There are some minor details I’ve left out but if you have read this far, you would have gotten the gist of the game. Props to Ivan (left) for doing a fantastic – and patient – job walking the three of us thru the rules.

There are lots of “moving parts” in MADEIRA though by itself each of these parts are not too difficult to understand for eg you would easily understand how the Windmill or the Island Regions & Harvest fields work on their own. It’s only when you attempt to connect all these moving parts together, trying to form a cohesive plan that things start to get a whole lot more complex!

MY THOUGHTS ON THE GAME?

The first question is “Are the dice too much of a random element?” Some might not like this game due to the perceived random nature of “dice” however I don’t think there was any round when I felt I was hampered by not having the fortune of picking the right set of dice.

And what exactly would be the “right set” of dice? All 3s? Well, even if you got all 1s, you can still perform Region #3 character actions by paying the difference in bread.

What’s more important than selecting the “right set” of dice is to be able to pick the right set of Crown Requests, meaning you need to be early in turn order passing so that you have earlier dibs on the choice of which row of Guild board to pick from.

In the example above, the last row of dice “3-3-2” would arguably be the “best set of dice” to pick from. However does that Guild row provide you with the correct Crown Request tiles? If not, you might not want to pick those dice even if you are first in turn order. The opportunity to string together Crown Requests that you can fulfilled to maximum points – I think – outweights the dice values.

CROWDING THE CITIES

In our session, three players were competing rather fiercely for the Cities favour (resource bonus) and also the complementary Urbanization crown request. I was the only player (purple) not actively competing in that space. That allowed me to focus on other areas of the board for resources and bonus points.

In that sense, Madeira appears to allow “true” multiple path to victory. We only did one session so it’s too early to talk about deep strategy etc. I can only share early observations of possible strategic paths.

If one focuses on the Cities, I think you can craft a good strategy that provides you with more effective resource collection (than sending your workers everywhere to harvest) and if you can string up Urbanization crown requests, you could set yourself up for some early bonus VPs.

COLONY EXPLORATION

Not having too many resources tied up in the Cities (see above) allowed me to expend some of my resources (ships in this instance) to explore the Colonization path.

If you chose this path, the Expeditions and possibly the Market Routes crown requests would be your chosen choice for VP. This path – and the Market Route path – needs to be set up early since you’ll need to have ships (and to build them, you’ll need to choose the Commander character action often) – and to set yourself up with good access to wood since ships require 1 wood for upkeep every round (like bread to feed your workers). The upside obviously is the higher barrier of entry for others trying to come into the Colonies or Market Routes path.

The Colonies strategy also provides a recurring and passive resource income. This income does require you to commit workers. It also gives you the opportunity to perform one of the two King’s Rewards whenever you send in a ship.

Above: My early entry into the Colonies allow me to dominate for Expeditions crown request scoring since it’ll cost more for late ships coming into the colonies. It’s not an easy strategy to pull off since you only get 6 ships and most likely you’ll need to spread your ships between the Colonies and Market Places (see next).

MARKET ROUTES

The somewhat complementary path if you are taking the Colonies route. Market Places require ships – and of course, the right resources you can sell – but it brings in the moolah which in turn provides you with flexibility.

Blue was the early one to tap the Market Places and once the others see how “easy” it was to raise funds, the Market Places started getting crowded. The Market Places also offered bonus VPs via the Market routes crown request tiles.

Purple (that’s me) went full tilt here, all 6 of my ships were built and deployed between the Colonies and Market Routes. I think more plays would reveal this would not be an optimal strategy since splitting your ships between these two spaces is unlikely to maximize your returns.

CITY WATCHING

The City Watch is an interesting deviation from the other sections. It’s main purpose is likely to provide the background to having black Pirate dice we can use as an “extra” action. The black Pirate die is both a boon and a curse. A boon obviously to the player who picked it up as an additional Character action (you won’t be able to take a Building action with the black die) and in this game of very limited actions, every extra action matters.

It’s a curse when someone uses a Pirate die on the building which you happen to have committed one or more of your Guild dice, since it’ll now make it more painful if you cannot afford to pay the Building action cost (and therefore have to take pirate tokens).

The City Watch also scores you a 4 VP Honor bonus at the end of each round but since you need to remove one worker to earn this bonus VP, I felt it’s not a strong differentiator. Then again, 4 VP in exchange for one worker might be what you need to tip you over in a tight game.

The City Watch is also a place where you should consider using more frequently especially if you have accummulated a fair amount of pirate tokens. Sending workers into the City Watch allows you to remove 3 pirate tokens. Much more important than that, you won’t be able to make use of a Pirate die unless you have worker(s) in the City Watch.

Above: Ong used the City Watch effectively to pare down his Pirate tokens. I think he has the least or 2nd least Pirate tokens at the end of the game. On the other hand, I’d the highest Pirate tokens and lost 16 precious points at game end. 😦

I like how Paulo & Nuno designed the City Watch and it’s black Pirate dice to add something unique to this game.

THE WINDMILLS

This was rather neglected in our session. We certainly need a food engine once we started ramping up our worker count but most of us seem to have more immediate use of our wheat (selling at marketplace etc) instead of sending them here to improve our food engine.

At one stage of the game, (below) Yellow was trying to see if the Starvation strategy works here! 😛

More plays should see us understanding how to leverage this section better.

CROWN REQUESTS

Every player starts with one crown requests (which also determines your initial starting turn order) and you’ll also get to acquire five more in the course of the game. There are only five different types of Crown Requests – Market Routes, Expeditions, Influence of the Guild, Wealth of the Nations and Urbanization – so you might get similar ones (be that a choice or forced decision).

There are three rounds in the (5-round) game where you are given the chance to fulfill your crown requests. To do well in the game, you’ll need to fulfill most (if not all) of your 6 crown requests and attempt to get maximum points off each.

Each type of Crown Requests is tied to a section of the game for eg the Market Routes crown request is tied to the Market Place section therefore if you are planning to fulfill Market Routes type of crown requests, you would be shaping your game plan to play out the market place.

The Crown Requests range from 15 – 20 points per request. If you can get 5-6 of them fulfilled, that’s a lot of points!

You get new Crown Request each round when you select your choice of 3 Guild dice at the start of the round. As I’ve described earlier, the choice of Crown Request would determine which row you’ll pick from the Guild Board rather than the dice values.

Above: Since I was predominantly plying the colony expedition path, it made sense to pick more Expeditions crown requests.

MADEIRA is certainly a thinky and heavy game; one where the sum of its parts is definitely more complex than the parts taken individually.

On the downside, teaching the game is not easy so I’ll suggest if you wish to pick up this game do read the rules first. That’ll help you to understand some of it’s core concepts or at the very least understand how each of it’s parts play before getting down to the table to learn how the parts work overall.

I didn’t write much about the Guild Favours (obtained by buying from the Cities section) and the King’s Rewards (when landing expeditions to colonies). These two elements are no-less-important in helping you to maximize your game strategy and knowing which Guild Favours to get is as important as getting the right Crown Requests to fulfill.

We’ll certainly see more plays of MADEIRA at OTK tables in future and I might write another impression of this game after a few more plays.

NIPPON after MADEIRA?

Btw Nuno & Paulo (the designers for MADEIRA) have put up their next prototype NIPPON. Hmm.. In time for Essen 2014? I’m certainly looking forward to test this. 😛

BOOK YOUR COPY OF MADEIRA NOW!
Boardgamecafe.net is bringing in some copies of MADEIRA (retail RM209) and should be arriving in our store anytime soon. Preorder your copy now at RM189 or if you have 500 BGC Points to spend, you can get yours at the special price of RM167.20 (until stock runs out).

Shout your reservation to us here http://community.boardgamecafe.net/index.php?/topic/4337-feb-2014-preorder-madeira

While it looked like we only did MADEIRA, on the contrary it was a busy Friday nite at OTK. Let’s take a quick whistle stop through the other games played tonite.

LET’S CATCH THE LION is a re-themed animal chess game set in a simpler Shoji board.  You get four animals – chicken, giraffe, elephant and lion. Your aim is to catch your opponent’s lion (before he catches yours)!

You can buy this game from our webstore

Amanda’s in town and she decided to drop by with some of her frens to try out some of the newer boardgames. TAKENOKO was one of the first to get a run on their table. Ladies can’t resist the cute panda. 🙂

It’s now almost a well-known fact that when Hengy’s in OTK, ORIGIN is on the table.

Hengy was in OTK tonite… so….

Yay! ORIGIN again on OTK tables… this game has to be one of the Essen 2013 releases that’s getting the most plays. 🙂

The light and easy CAPPUCCINO… I find it can be brutal. And depressing seeing your cups being swallowed by the taller bullies!

Another semi OTK regular gaming groups getting introduced to BANG THE DICE GAME, a rather surprise hit from this year’s Essen.

Above: Dith taking the group thru the simple rules of BANG THE DICE GAME.

Apologies that our incoming stocks of this game’s all accounted for but fret now, we are bringing more in the next shipment. Reserve your copies with us now. 🙂

Another popular game with this group. I think they did DIXIT JOURNEY.

Ah.. an old-time fave of mine.. PUERTO RICO. Interesting that Sonia (of the Taipan group) brought this game to the table with Amanda and her frens.

Feld has released a lot of games recently but one that has a sticky effect would be THE CASTLES OF BURGUNDY. I’d even acquired some Championship maps of CASTLES while in Essen. Let’s hope to see those on the OTK tables.

waiyan said she enjoyed the game. So Feld doing good. 🙂

Another classic Euro. Nice to see these games getting play-time at OTK tables.

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