We had a great game session yesterday. We played Indonesia! The appearance of the new third edition made me realize Indonesia would be a great match for my current game group, so I quickly reacquired a copy. I got the first edition, from a friend who upgraded to the third.
We had full five players. The game was wild, with mergers shaking things up a lot. As far as rules go, Indonesia is a straightforward game, but the system is so delightfully chaotic, especially when everybody is still learning the ropes.
At one point of the game, I had a nice shipping line. Competing shipping lines were merged, and I thought I want to be the shipping master, so I bid a hefty 120% premium, paying 22 Rp per ship for that line. Right after that, my original shipping line was also merged. I was out of money at that point, so I couldn’t keep it, but the buyer paid an even bigger premium for that, paying 28 Rp per ship. I owned most of the ships in that merger, so I made a lot of money – and I still had a solid shipping line, just a different one than I started with.
With lots of goods production on the map and long shipping lines, the shipping companies stole the game. I won, and Hannu who got the other shipping company (and who was ready to flip the table at point as he was doing very badly) was second. The final scores were 1247–1023–634–614–441, so it’s safe to say shipping can be lucrative in Indonesia.
The game took us about three hours, excluding the rules explanations. The five-player game is fast, in rounds. I think the five-player game should be a three-hour affair once everybody knows the rules, which makes it fairly easy to play on weeknights.
We then wrapped up the evening with a quick (and a weird) game of Chicago & NorthWestern on my new map redraw (a post about that is coming up soon), which worked well.
It’s good to get back to Indonesia. It’s a top-notch game and as expected worked great in our group. Everybody loved it, and I’m sure other people in the group will also enjoy it. I originally bought the game in 2005 (directly from Splotter at Essen), but I sold it later as it didn’t fit my needs then. Now it was a good time to get back to it.
It was also a lot of fun to meet someone new. Tuukka, who writes for Lautapeliopas, lives in Tampere and occasionally plays with his game group on Wednesday nights in Taverna, joined us for this game. We’ve been talking about playing games together for a while now, and this was a great opportunity: he’s been wanting to try Splotter games. He’s also keen to try 18xx, and I’m sure we can accommodate that. Tuukka was a great match for our group, and everybody was ready to welcome him again.
While we were playing, a delivery was made at home: I now also have a brand new third edition Indonesia. It sure looks pretty, and the board has been improved a lot. I was also surprised to find my name listed in the rulebook credits. I’m not sure what I’ve done for Indonesia, but I accept the credit!