It was a quiet night and Blue was late, so everyone else got on with a quick game of Love Letter.  Played with just sixteen cards, this is a great little game to play while chatting and doing other things (like eating).  The idea is that each player starts with a card on on their turn, draws a second and chooses one of them to play.  Each card has a number (one to eight) and an action; players use the actions to try to eliminated each other and the player with the highest card at the end, or the last player remaining is the winner.  This time, we played Green’s Lord of the Rings themed version which comes with a pile of tiny magical rings, which certainly had an effect on Pine.  Almost every round he had the highest value card, Smaug.  While this can be an advantage, it can also be a curse as it can make you a target, but only Magenta managed to profit at all.  Pine ran out the winner taking three rounds with Magenta taking the other two and everyone else failing to win any at all.

– Image by boardGOATS

With everyone fed, we moved onto our “Feature Game” which was Pi mal Pflaumen.  This is a German game where the name is a play on the expression “Pi mal Daumen”, which roughly translates as “rule of thumb” or “roughly”.  In this game, players are not interested in thumbs, but plumbs and other fruit. The game is a trick taking game with elements of set collecting and lovely artwork.  The idea is that each card features a fruit, a number and most also have some sort of special action.  Each player begins with a hand of cards and, starting with the start player, everyone takes it in turns to play one card.  Then, the player who played the highest value card chooses one of the cards which they place face up in front of them, before they carry out the action associated with the card.

– Image by boardGOATS

The action could be steal a card from another player; take the “watchdog” card (which guards against other players stealing cards), or take three “pi” cards.  Instead of an action, some cards indicate a scoring condition and the points awarded for achieving it.  These are of the form of, for example, ABC or AAA, indicating three different fruit or three identical fruit respectively.  The more fruit involved and the more similar the fruit, the more points they are worth.  When a player owns both the scoring card and the matching Fruit cards, they are all removed from their display and put to one side to score at the end of the game.  The game is played over three rounds and winner is the player with the most points at the end.

– Image by boardGOATS

We started off a bit tentatively, but by the end of the first round we were getting the hang of it and some people were just starting to get an appreciation of how clever the game is.  Burgundy collected a huge pile of cards and Pine starting the stealing and then getting a lot stolen from him.  In the end, it was a very close game with almost everyone finishing with thirty-one points, except Green, who much to his surprise was two points clear.  The game, on the other hand, received a mixed response:  Pine and Magenta really liked it, while Green, despite his win was largely unimpressed.  No doubt it will get another outing and we’ll see if opinions change.

– Image by boardGOATS

Pi mal Pflaumen had taken much longer than expected, and Magenta fancied an early night, but felt she’d be able to squeeze another game in so long as it wasn’t too long.  After a quick debate, Green’s eye fell on Port Royal, which we’ve played a few times now and were all convinced we’ve played several times in less than half an hour, certainly way less then the fifty minutes maximum the box claimed.  In the end, the fifty minutes proved quite accurate and we decided that the time was probably dependent on the number of players…

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor msaari

The game is a fairly simple combination of “push your luck” and strategy, the idea being that players reveal cards until there is something they want, or they go bust.  The active player can keep turning over cards until either they choose to stop or they draw a second ship card that they cannot repel.  Assuming they choose to stop, they can then take a ship card or buy a character card before the remaining cards are offered round the table with players paying the active player one doubloon if they choose to buy/take a card.  The clever part is the dual use of the cards as money and ships/characters, which means the distribution of cards changes for each game giving variety.  The key to the game is the character cards though, as they are what enable players to build an engine and get an advantage over the opposition.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor bovbossi

This time we included the Gambler promotional cards that were being given away by the manufacturer at the UK Games Expo at the start of June.  This card allows the active player to take a gamble by turning over four cards at the same time and, if they don’t go bust, they can choose to take an extra  card.  Unfortunately, the Gambler didn’t seem worth the gamble, so nobody gave it a  try which was a shame as the cards kept coming up.  Despite this, the game was a tight one, with several layers in the running in the going into the final round.  Burgundy had started the game and it was he who triggered the final round.  Green went next, but couldn’t quite make the cards work for him.  Pine and Blue followed, but had too much ground to make up.  Magenta went last and drew level, but Burgundy had plenty of money left and was able to take the lead back finishing with fourteen points, one ahead of Magenta.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

Learning Outcome:  Little card games can be just as much fun as big boardgames.