September 2008 Archives

After a quick round of Da Vinci Code, it wasn't hard to get a Mahjong table going. There were more than four interested players.

We used the new set I had bought. It's a cheap set, made in China but Japanese in style. That means it's small (the tiles seemed very small the first time I saw them, but after playing with them a little, I think they're actually all right and not that small), there are no western indices, the white dragons are blank and there is one red five in each suit.

The lack of indices was a bit of a problem. I think it's one of those things you learn with practise (and it's a lot easier task than learning the Shogi pieces, for example, since you only need to learn the characters and winds, and few of the characters are really easy, too) and I also think it's something mahjong players should learn at some point. We had cheat sheets, of course. I think it slowed our game a bit, but not much. Don't let the lack of indices stop you from getting an otherwise cool set.

Anyway, since we had a Japanese set, we played riichi. We played for almost three hours and almost finished the game. A full game of riichi is two rounds or eight hands, but there can be more if there are draws or dealers win hands. We played 11 hands in total, I think, and were two hands (+ extra hands) away from finishing the game.

It was swingy, like riichi is. I think I scored the biggest hand in the game, for 11 600 points, but in the next hand I made a mistake that cost me 12 000 points, since I had to pay 4 000 points to other players for an incorrect winning hand. So, after few more failures I ended up dead last.

Few more words about the set. I bought it from MahjongMart (it's the white/yellow Dragon set), because it was dirt cheap. Of course, as usual, cheap means "low quality". The material is nice, but you can smell - from quite a distance - that it's made cheaply in China. The tiles are fine, but the case reeks. Hopefully it'll get better.

The carvings are decent, but the paint job isn't very good. The colours have been applied with a wide brush, it's not very exact work. Again, that's what to expect from a cheap set, really. The biggest problem colour-wise is the bamboo tiles. They are not green, but more like really dark brown.

So, if you want a cheap Japanese-style set, it's a valid option, but I'd probably suggest investing a bit more to get a nicer set. After all, it's going to be something you'll use for years. I actually sold the Dragon set already and have ordered this riichi set from Yellow Mountain Imports. Based on the pictures, it looks nicer: the colours are bright, clear and exactly applied. It's not very expensive, either, just $47, but the shipping costs were a lot more expensive. Apparently shipping stuff from Japan is fairly cheap. Of course, US folks will be fine since Yellow Mountain Imports is in USA and the shipping starts from $11.

Oh, by the way - remember my Board Game Auctions site? It's been doing great. People are really shopping for games in eBay. Old mahjong sets have been the biggest bestsellers there (and since they're often quite expensive, the commissions are good), but I've also made some money from old war games.

Since that site is doing so well, I thought I'll expand to other niches and now I'm seeing how Kids' Stuff Auctions will do. For that site I'm still waiting for Google to get to it and start bringing people in (which is, of course, part of the reason I'm mentioning it here, because Gameblog's front page is well-loved by Google - and why not!).

I visited board game club today for a while. I had to leave early, but I did have time for a round of New England Railways. We got five players and this time, since I was carrying Age of Steam as well, we replaced the cardboard chits with actual wooden cubes. It was much better.

This time the results were slightly different than in our last session. Tero won with $65, Olli had $19, I had $9, Outi had $4 in the red and Robert was $14 in the negative. So, no debt death spirals, but no really good results either. Even Tero had some debt left and he was the only one to pay any debt at all.

The shortness of the game - just half of the three-player game - is obviously one reason. We also had a nasty case of plenty of blue cubes in the main network and no access to blue cities. An earlier link to the blue cities on the edge of the board would've increased the incomes, I believe.

My own game was bad... I got a bad start and took many, many turns to get any income (I didn't buy a link on the first turn, then bought two useless unconnected links, way to go!). I was tight on the loans, so in the end that didn't hurt too much, but it was somewhat boring.

It was fun, or at least fun enough, but I don't think I'm playing the game again with five players any time soon. Someone might enjoy this - or even play with six players, but I prefer the three-player game with more turns and more time to enjoy your network. Four-player game might be the best, I'll have to try and see. But five's too much for me, that I know.

My Thursday games started with a quick 2-0 loss in Truc and a four-player game of Race for the Galaxy. It's been a while since I played Race, but I was in good form and able to win (ok, so we had two newbies in the game).

The main course for me was, however, Winsome's New England Railways. I was able to score a copy from Northumbria Games earlier this year and now the game got on the table. I'm glad to say it's a really good game and clearly the best of the bunch I got (West Riding and Dutch Intercity were the other two).

This Early Railways game is an ancestor Age of Steam and shares some ideas: players build railroads on loaned money and move goods to get income. However, there are some big differences as well. The track-building isn't freeform: there are set connections between cities auctioned each turn. The loans are more expensive, but they can be paid off.

The loans cost 20% each round, like in Age of Steam, but they feel more expensive. In Age of Steams, shares pay 5 and cost 1 per round, while in New England Railways loans start from 10 and cost 2, and it's not rare to have, say, $100 in loans that costs you $20 per round in debt service. Income, however, is usually less than in Age of Steam. I found that going over 40 income was possible, but staying there for more than one round was hard.

So, ending up in a deadly debt spiral is fairly easy. In our game, it was common to take new loans to pay the debt service on old loans. In that sense our game was a fairly accurate simulation of typical debt-based economy.

Me and new guy Tuukka were more heavy-handed with our debt, while Tuomas was more careful. The difference between me and Tuukka was the health of our railroad networks. I got the best network and after Tuomas' strong few rounds I was in the lead. Tuukka, on the other hand, took a while to get any income. The result? I was deep in debt but in the end of the game I had paid all my debts and I got $110 in cash. Tuukka was deep in debt and in the end was even more in debt, finishing the game with $294 in the red. Tuomas paid off almost all his debts, ending up with $34.

Add to that the value of the network, and the final scores were 180 for me, 114 for Tuomas and -240 for Tuukka. In this light the mercy of going honestly bankrupt seems welcome... My victory was a result of a good network. I had a strong network : Boston, Providence, Worcester, Plainfield, Hartford, New Haven... I also got plenty of income from Tuukka, as my network connected well with his network. Tuomas had a nice network, but had a bit of a lack of good cubes to ship and support from Tuukka. Lesson learnt: a good, central network is a key to victory, and getting help from friends is nice.

New England Railways has a nice income reduction mechanism, by the way. Each round two dice are rolled. Each player loses 1/(2d6 +1) of his or her income, rounded down. It's a nice mechanism, less gamey than the income reduction tiers in Age of Steam. There's some randomness involved, but it hits everybody equally (relative to their income levels). We had few depression rounds when I rolled 3 or so - I lost 11 income twice. That hurt, since getting income was a lot harder than in Age of Steam - I made few 5-link shipments, but mostly shipped three links or so.

So, New England Railways is a really good game. It's similar to Age of Steam, but different enough. I definitely want to explore this game a tad more. Our session took a nice 1 hour 45 minutes. Of course the production quality is typical Winsome level, but using poker chips and wet-erase pens helped and replacing the low-quality goods chips with wooden cubes would help even more.

Since the Finnish mahjong resources are so scarce, I wanted to fix that. Thus, Mahjong-opas was born. Currently the site has some basic information on mahjong and the rules to the Chinese Official game and Riichi, but more will come - while it probably won't be another Sloperama Mahjong FAQ, I'm interested in developing this site a lot. That means lots of writing, but it'll be fun.

My timing is pretty good, as the anime/manga/Japan kids are starting to discover mahjong, thanks to Akagi, a manga (and an anime) about mahjong. It's the Hikaru no Go effect all over again.

Our Thursday sessions have returned to Thursdays! We got our old location back now the university is again open in evenings. Actually, that happened last week, I just missed the first meeting. This time we had a nice turnout, I think we had four tables going on at the same time.

My table was playing Mahjong, again. This time we tried playing Riichi, the modern Japanese game. It's a gambler's game, where concealed hands and major point swings play the leading role. It's fun, fairly simple and moderately short.

We played one three-player practise round, then the East round. One of the players had to leave early, but she was replaced with another, so we could finish the round. Everybody was more or less a newbie, particularly with the Riichi rules. Riichi has a minimum score, too, the hand needs to be worth one yaku (a double) - that's not as hard as the 8-point minimum of the Chinese official rules, but still, with newbies we probably should've played without it.

Anyway, it was fun, and I'm definitely playing Riichi again. I've played about ten games with Four Winds and I do like the ruleset. The biggest flaw of Riichi is the tendency for draws, but fortunately there's the tenpai-noten rule: after a draw, players who are tenpai (waiting) get points from those who are not (noten).

So, more Riichi!

Next up was Bausack, the old favourite from 1987 recently released in Finnish as Bandu (I did the rules). This is the dexterity game that looks like the odds and ends collection from a carpenter's workshop. We played the Knockout game, where the last tower standing is the winner. To spice up the game, the blocks are auctioned, either "pay to take it" or "pay to not to take it".

It was great fun, particularly our second game. The towers got outrageous. Petri, who has a history of doing miniature paintings, demonstrated his capabilities to put down difficult blocks between heartbeats while Make had definitely the worst case of shaky fingers, that was just nasty to even look at. Petri won the game, even though Harri had one more token - Petri had to add two tough blocks to his tower but he did it and won the game when Harri was simply unable to add anything to his tower.

There's a bit of a luck element in the end game, I think, as the order of players can play a bit of a role in the end, but I suppose it's not a huge problem, because in the end Bausack is such a fun game and watching the grand finale of the second game was just about as much fun as playing the game.

In the end I had the time to play a single round of Le Truc with Olli - another convert!

Yesterday I re-installed 4 Winds Mah Jong, now that I have a Windows laptop in addition to my Mac. It's still as good as it was in 2002 when I bought it.

The game shines when practising new rule sets, particularly those with minimum scores - always pesky for new players. Having a computer opponent helps to get those practise games done so you can focus on actually playing the game.

I've been playing Riichi aka Japanese modern, which is more fun than I originally expected. I also tried the Korean game, which is played with just characters and dots, no bamboo tiles at all. Making pure hands is easier, but there are few tricks in the game.

I've got a copy of Winsome Games' West Riding for sale and it's ridiculously cheap for something that difficult to find: just 20 euros (under $30), including economy shipping anywhere in the world. If you want it, just head to the BoardGameGeek Marketplace.

I'm doing a translation here and got stumped by a word. Are there any Germans reading this blog? If someone could help me translate "sofortlosspieler", I would be most grateful. I understand the parts of the word, but can't figure out what it actually means as a whole.