Yesterday, we had a really good game night. We played a game called Indonesia. I saw that a new third edition of the game came out. This made me think that Indonesia would be perfect for my current group of friends. I quickly got a copy of the game to play. I bought the first edition from a friend who was buying the new third edition instead.

We had a full group of five players for the game. The game was very wild and exciting. There were many mergers that changed things up a lot. As far as the rules go, Indonesia is a straightforward game to learn. But the system is delightfully chaotic, especially when everyone is still learning how to play.

At one point in the game, I had built a nice shipping line. Other competing shipping lines were merged together. I thought I wanted to be the master of shipping. So, I bid a hefty 120 percent premium for a line. I paid 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 could not keep it. But the buyer paid an even bigger premium for that line, paying 28 Rp per ship. I owned most of the ships in that merger, so I made a lot of money. 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 show in the game. I won the game. Hannu got the other shipping company and he was second. He was ready to flip the table at one point because he was doing very badly. The final scores were 1247, 1023, 634, 614, and 441. So, it is safe to say that shipping can be very lucrative in Indonesia.

The game took us about three hours to play, not including the rules explanations. The five-player game is fast and played in rounds. I think the five-player game should be a three-hour affair once everybody knows the rules. This makes it fairly easy to play on weeknights after work.

We then wrapped up the evening with a quick and weird game of Chicago & NorthWestern. We played on my new map redraw. I will write a post about that map soon. The game worked well and we had fun.

It is good to get back to playing Indonesia. It is a top-notch game and as expected, it worked great in our group. Everybody loved it. I am 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 did not 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. He occasionally plays with his game group on Wednesday nights in Taverna. He joined us for this game. We have been talking about playing games together for a while now. This was a great opportunity because he has been wanting to try Splotter games. He is also keen to try 18xx games, and I am 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 of 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 am not sure what I have done for Indonesia, but I accept the credit!

This post was originally posted on Mastodon.