Monthly Archives: July 2016

Boardgames in the News: Asmodee on the March Again?

It’s been quite quiet recently, but summer is now here and with it, the silly-season of take-overs and mergers, which inevitably means Asmodee are at it again. Asmodee, (originally known as Siroz), started out as a small French game publishing and distribution company, specialising in the family market. Their best-known product was probably Dobble, though there were others too. In 2007, the investment firm, Montefiore acquired 60% of the company and invested €120 million to finance Asmodee’s international growth. Their expansion history began a bit like this:

Acquisition of Belgian game distributor Hodin (2008)
Acquisition of Spanish games developer Cromola (2009)
Acquisition of German producers Proludo (2009)
Acquisition of 60% stake in UK-based distributor, Esdevium Games (2010)
Acquisition of Abalone (2010)
Partnership with Libellud (2010)
Set-up of a subsidiary in Shanghai, China (2012)

Meanwhile, the Canadian F2Z Entertainment, the parent of company of Pretzel Games, also own Filosofia Éditions (who bought Z-Man Games in 2011) and bought the U.S. company Plaid Hat Games last year. Then, in January 2014, the private equity company Eurazeo bought 83.5% of Asmodee and the mad expansion began all over again, but this time in earnest:

- - Acquisition of Days of Wonder (2014)
  - Acquisition of Ystari Games (2014)
  - Acquisition of Asterion Press (2014)
  - Acquisition of Pearl Games (2014)
  - Acquisition of exclusive distribution rights to all Queen Games products (2015)
  - Acquisition of rights to the English versions of the Catan series of games (2016)

Last summer we speculated how long it would be before Asmodee turned their attention to F2Z Entertainment with their enticing range of games including Pandemic and Carcassonne. Well, last week, Asmodee announced that it has entered into exclusive discussions to acquire F2Z Entertainment with closure of the acquisition expected to take place in the coming months. Who will be next, Rio Grande Games perhaps?

– Image from escapistmagazine.com

Next Meeting – 26th July 2016

Our next meeting will be on Tuesday 26^th July, at the Horse and Jockey pub in Stanford-in-the-Vale. As usual, we will be playing shorter games from 7.30pm as people arrive, until 8pm when we will start something a little longer.

This week, to celebrate it winning the Spiel des Jahres Award, the “Feature Game” will be Codenames. This is a very popular word-based deduction game played in teams of “Spies” who are trying to identify the other spies on their side. The idea is that the team leader gives clues to the rest of their team who are trying to choose particular word-cards (code-names) from an array. The trick is for the leader to come up with a clue that covers multiple correct answers so that the rest of the team can identify the complete set before the opposition identify all theirs. It is very quick to play so we can move onto something a little heavier, possibly even Isle of Skye, the winner of this year’s Kennerspiel des Jahres, or one of the other nominees, like Imhotep or Karuba.

– Image used with permission of boardgamephotos

And speaking of Spies…

Jeff was working as an intern for MI5 when, after a month doing some very tedious paperwork, he was summoned to his bosses office on the top floor.

“It’s all very funny,” his boss explained, “The CIA have asked for our help – seems they’ve lost track of an operative in Ireland, chap by the name of ‘Murphy’, do you think you would be able to find him?”

Jeff was very, very excited and very keen to get out of the office – his very own secret mission – Wow! The chief spy continued, “All I can tell you is that his name is Murphy and that he’s somewhere in Ireland. If you think you’ve located him, tell him the code words, ‘The weather forecast calls for mist in the morning.’ If it’s really him, he’ll answer, ‘Yes, and for mist at noon as well’.”

So Jeff got on the next plane to Ireland and stopped in a bar in a small town. He casually said to the bartender, “Maybe you can help me. I’m looking for a guy named Murphy.”

The bartender replied, “You’re going to have to be more specific because, around here, there are lots of guys named Murphy. There’s ‘Murphy the Baker’ who runs the pastry shop on the next block; ‘Murphy the Banker’ who’s president of our local savings bank; ‘Murphy the Blacksmith’ who works at the stables, and, as a matter of fact, my name is Murphy, too.”

Hearing this, Jeff figured he might as well try the code words on the bartender, so he said, “The weather forecast calls for mist in the morning.” To which the bartender replied, “Oh, you’re looking for ‘Murphy the Spy’ – he lives just down the street.”

12th July 2016

The hungry were feeding when an itinerant gamer from the north-west wondered in to join us. In the area for work, Yellow has been visiting several local game groups recently and was nice enough to come and join us for the evening. In addition, Grey made another unexpected appearance; apparently Cerise was away with the little one, so he was free to come out and play with us. Unfortunately for them though, our start was delayed a little while Blue and Burgundy scoffed their supper as quickly as they could and everyone else talked politics. Normally politics is a topic of conversation people avoid for fear of arguments, but it is amazing how everyone in the group seems to agree at the moment. In fact, as the evening wore on, it felt like history was being made as we watched: news come in that the Labour NEC had decided that Jeremy Corbyn should be able to stand as leader without needing the usual support from members of the Parliamentary Party, and the Petitions Committee had decided to schedule a referendum debate for 5th Sept, following the petition that garnered over four million signatures.

– Image by boardGOATS

Eventually, we decided to get on with it with Blue and Magenta keen to play the “Feature Game”, Puerto Rico. Surprisingly (as Puerto Rico is Green’s favourite game and it was with him in mind that we chose it), Green was keen to play Amerigo instead. He had missed out on playing it on Friday night with the Didcot group and it had clearly been playing on his mind over the weekend. By the same token, Burgundy and Black were less keen to play Amerigo as they had played it on Friday and they quite fancied Puerto Rico instead. Purple had played it on Friday, but was keen to play again, so the group naturally split into two with Pine joining those playing Puerto Rico and Grey and Yellow joining the Amerigo group.

– Image by boardGOATS

Puerto Rico is an older game, and in many ways the archetypal Euro game. The idea of the game is quite simple in that on their turn, the active player chooses a “roles” then everyone takes it in turns to carry out the action associated with that role. Each role has a “privilege” which the active player gets which gives them a little bonus (as well as the opportunity to take the action first. Once everyone has chosen a role, the remaining role cards are “improved” by the addition of money, the used role cards are returned to the pool and the start player (The Governor) moves one player to the left before the new Governor starts the next round. The aim of the game is to get victory points which are awarded for buildings and for shipping goods. However, to build, players need money, and before they can ship goods, players need to be able to produce the goods with a plantation (and where necessary process them in the appropriate building).

– Image by boardGOATS

Each building/plantation has a special bonus, but for a player to receive this, the building needs to be occupied by a “colonist”. All these activities are carried out through the role cards. For example, the Builder enables players to construct a building, but the player who chooses the role gets the privilege of paying one doubloon less than they would have done otherwise. Similarly, the Craftsman is used to produce, but the privilege allows the player who chose the role to produce one extra item (of those they had already been able to produce). Other roles include the Captain (enables players to ship goods); the Trader (allows players to sell goods for money); the Settler (players can take a plantation tile and add it to their island); the Mayor (the ship of “colonists” arrives and they are divided amongst the players), and the Prospector (everyone does nothing except the person with the privilege who takes a doubloon from the bank).

– Image by boardGOATS

The “colonists” arrive by ship, are dark brown and work on the plantations, so many gamers have assumed the term is a pseudonym for African slaves and in the USA this means some people have refused to play the game. We are not like that in our group and, though we have no problem talking about slaves, we had far more fun talking about “colonists” in a way that everyone knew what we really meant. What with that and the references to the Big Meerkat (that’s in the centre of Newcastle you know), the Orifice building (otherwise known as the Office), Worf (Son of Mogh), and the Big and Little Whorehouses (or perhaps they were really warehouses), much of the game was carried out in a sort of code. This special group understanding was continued in the game play too where Magenta kept getting in Burgundy’s way, much to everyone else’s obvious delight, though Magenta insisted that it was all purely accidental.

– Image by boardGOATS

Burgundy started, so he, Blue and Black began the game with an indigo plantation while Magenta and Pine started out with a corn field. Pine found it quite hard to see what we needed to do, but he soon got past that and, as the game wore on, he quickly monopolised the tobacco market. He remained the only player dealing in tobacco for most of the game which was quite important due to the way shipping works: when a player chooses the Captain role, players take it in turns to place goods on one of the three ships. Each ship can only carry one type of cargo and they all have a finite space. As the only player shipping tobacco, whenever Pine was able to transport some of his tobacco he simultaneously prevented others from shipping their goods. Since this is the key way to get victory points, before long, Pine had built a sizeable pile and looked to be romping away with it. Meanwhile, Black, then Magenta and Burgundy moved into sugar which made them uneasy allies, sometimes working together to get sugar into a ship, but otherwise competing to get their goods into the last space on a ship.

– Image by boardGOATS

While everyone else was engaged in building a productive plantation, Burgundy began by by using his land for quarries, lots of quarries. These make building cheaper, but don’t provide goods when someone chooses the Craftsman role. Seeing where he was going, Magenta picked up a Construction Hut which enabled her to choose a quarry instead of a plantation each time anyone chose the Settler role. Blue managed to pick up one quarry, but otherwise, between them, Burgundy and Magenta were in danger of getting all of them. Burgundy got round the potential for a lack of plantations by building a Hacienda which gave him an extra plantation every time anyone else Settled. He then coupled this with Hospice which meant that one of these plantations/quarries arrived complete with a “colonist” – a very powerful combination. For a long time Black havered over whether to try to get in on the quarry game or not. To begin with he decided not before picking one up anyhow.

– Image by boardGOATS

Pine was sat next to Magenta quietly coveting her Construction Hut, but it was pointed out that it wasn’t a good time to buy it and there were better things he could do, advice he took. It obviously rankled a little though because every time after that when quarries were mentioned he added, “Though I’m not allowed a quarry…”. Eventually, Blue decided she was struggling from a lack of both cash and victory points and needed to do something drastic to get back into the game. So, taking a leaf out of Pine’s book, she expanded into coffee and then screwed everyone else up by starting a coffee ship which took several rounds to fill. Eventually, she was joined by Pine who then variously helped her and got in her way.

– Image by boardGOATS

Blue and Black both made a hash of their timing with the crafting and shipping, and when Blue finally worked out what she was doing and planned what she needed for a large building she lost the plot and failed to choose the Builder role when she had the chance. So, when Magenta took the builder a couple of turns later, everyone had enough for a large building and Blue was left without her first or second choice. Magenta who had filled less than half her plantation spaces took the Residence just to stop Burgundy and Blue who had been able to fill theirs and would have been able to get maximum points for it (thanks to their Haciendas). So, Burgundy took the Fortress (which gave him one point for every three “colonists”) and Blue took the Customs House (which gave one extra victory point chip for every four already held). This left Black with the dregs from which he took the Guild Hall (giving him points for his production buildings). Meanwhile, Pine ominously kept producing vast amounts of tobacco and shipping it.

– Image by boardGOATS

By this time, Blue and Black were convinced that Pine was miles ahead, and everyone else was playing for the minor places. Pine in turn was convinced Magenta had a healthy lead; Magenta was certain she was losing, but continued to innocently obstruct Burgundy and the game turned nasty as everyone began to struggle to ship what they wanted. With the number of victory point chips available dwindling faster than the number of “colonists”, everyone scrabbled to build that last utility and ship those final crates. It turned out that it was a very close game: Magenta had a misleadingly large pile of singleton victory point chips; Pine probably would have won if the game had the game ended a round or two earlier, and Burgundy may well have won had it gone on another for another couple of rounds. In the end though, despite being quite convinced she was nowhere close, Blue finished in first place with fifty-six, just three points ahead of Pine with Black taking third on a tie-break.

– Image by boardGOATS

Meanwhile, on the next table, Amerigo was going full steam ahead. In this game players are exploring the islands of South America, securing trading routes, and building settlements. The game board is made up of a four by four grid of large tiles that make an archipelago. Players then have two ships each which they sail through the maze of islands, mooring at natural harbours to build trading posts, and then expanding settlements. The actions available to players are determined through the use of a special cube tower that contains lots of buffers and buttresses. The idea is that each of the seven actions has an associated set of coloured cubes: blue for sailing, black for loading cannon, red for buying buildings, green for settling etc. At the start of the game, all the cubes are put into the top of the tower a small number get stuck and remain inside the tower to be potentially knocked out at a later point in the game.

– Image used with permission of
BGG contributor punkin312

There are four rounds and each round consists of seven phases, corresponding to each action where all the cubes available of that colour are poured into the tower. Most of these cubes come out again, but some dislodge cubes previously caught in the baffles, while others others get stuck themselves. Of the cubes that come out, the colour that is in the majority dictates the number, while all the colours dictate the actions. Thus, if five blue, one green and one black come out, players can choose between sailing, building settlements or loading cannon, and in each case, they have five “action points”. So, the actions that are available are largely predictable, with a slightly random element meaning there is a tactical element (taking advantage of the actions currently available in the best way possible) as well as a strategic (long term plan) element to the game.

– Image by BGG contributor mcfer

Points are available throughout the game for all sorts of things, including being the first person to land on an island and establish a trading post; building settlements on an island; completing an island by settling on its last available space; collecting gold, and moving along the progress and special action paths. At the end of each round, however, the pirates attack and players have to fire their cannon to repel boarders. Anyone who has not loaded sufficient cannon to fend off the pirates, loses points which is particularly nasty, because these players lose as many points as they would if they’d had no cannon at all, and they also have to fire the cannon they had loaded!

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

Inevitably we all started off sailing to islands near to us, and generally we all did the main colour action in the first round. Grey toyed with the idea of not doing Cannon’s, but in the end decided to copy the more experienced players. So an easy and simple, first round, in a game that gradually became a more cut throat battle. Purple concentrated on running up her brown track and gaining the bonus action chits and spread across to a few islands. This strategy seemed to leave her struggling for points as the game went on. Yellow was unsure how best to approach the game, so tended to stick to the action colour sequence, but got hold of the red equals green equals red bonus chit, which he used to good effect to build up on his several islands. This strategy netted him a good haul of points as the game progressed.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor jsper

Grey was running an expansionist policy, getting to as many islands as he could. On top of this he, quite slyly, built over the extra empty trading post spaces, thus rendering them useless and gaining a monopoly on several islands, however, his score also seemed to suffer for this. Meanwhile, Green carried out a number of red planning actions to build up a large backlog of buildings to place. This meant he always had something to place in those tricky corners, but he lost out on his big islands by leaving it too late to place them. Early on, he nabbed the big six neutral tile (the only one in the game) and then realised that he was on the wrong side of the big island to be able to place it, so had to make a quick trip to the other side to develop a new trading post before he could place it for a whopping eighteen points. This strategy was proving quite productive and he and Yellow were regularly vying for the lead.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor Oceluna

In the last part of the game, while Purple and Yellow continued their general strategy, Grey decided he had enough islands and started to place his tiles on them to gain the resources. Green, having built as much as he could, was left wondering what to do next. He had lots of tiles still to place, but nowhere to place them without a new trading post. There were four left, all on the other side of the board and they were disappearing fast, so green started sailing. By using his gold and going round the outside he was able to get to the area in just one move. By this time, there were only two trading posts left as everyone else worked together to stop Green. With no more gold, Green was not quite able to get to a trading post and ended just one space away. Yellow took his turn and he built on the other trading post leaving Green to sail once more and place his trading post.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

With only two single spaces left on this last island, there was a bit of a stand-off between Yellow and Green: whoever built first would gain a single point, but leave the other to get the three point bonus for finishing the island. Meanwhile, there was a total of eight pirates on the board which everyone had covered until Purple took the two-plus pirate attack bonus token. Purple was aright of course, but everyone else needed another two cannon if they weren’t going to end up with an eight point penalty. More turns were sacrificed to gain cannon which also sent players to the top of the line and provided extra gold. Purple and Green found themselves with no actions to do, so ended up trading action cubes for gold, while Grey and Yellow mopped-up island bonuses.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

In the very last action everyone swapped their gold for extra spaces on the white turn order track, just to get to that extra scoring location. With the game coming to an end and neither Green nor Yellow prepared to give quarter on the last island, neither took the final three points. Before the final scoring began, Yellow was in the lead, a few points clear of Green. As the final scoring phase began, it became apparent that everyone except for Purple had misunderstood the scoring the resource bonuses. We thought the number on the yellow action chits was its multiplier value, however, this number is irrelevant to the scoring, it only means it costs more to obtain. Grey was particularly annoyed as he had deliberately been going for the high value action tokens and had been choosing the resource tokens appropriately.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

In the end, it was very close with Grey and Purple catching up however, it wasn’t quite enough, and Yellow and Green remained several points ahead, tied on a hundred and thirty-one. The tie-breaker gave it to Yellow, as he was at the end of the turn order track and Green was five spaces farther back. On reflection though, Green later realised that he could have taken it had he known the rules better as he’d finished with six gold. He could easily have spent the surplus gold to move along the track, but had decided against it as, although it would have given him an extra five points, the gold was worth one point each so there had seemed no point.

– Image by BGG contributor jancis

Puerto Rico was still underway, and with Grey deciding he could do with an early night (while the Cat’s away, the Mice will play – and it seemed this Mouse had been playing quite a bit!), Purple, Green and Yellow opted for some quick, light-hearted fun with Om Nom Nom. This is one of our more popular games, and we’ve played it a few times on a Tuesday evening. Purple loves it and it was new to Yellow though, so despite his conviction that it’s completely random, Green joined in. The idea is quite simple, each player has a hand of “Predator” cards, and the dice represent “Prey”. Players simultaneously choose a card to play and then Prey is divided up accordingly. If there is enough Prey for all the Predators to eat, then players take their share of the appropriate dice. If not, the Predator(s) go hungry and the cards are discarded. The catch is that some cards are both Predator and Prey, which is where the game descends into double-think (or Luck as Green prefers to think of it).

– Image by BGG contributor jancis

Green has tried a variety of “methods” to beat the “luck”, but much like an inveterate gambler, a “technique” that works a couple of times almost always fails in the end, and so it proved this time too. In the first card of the first round, Green decided to change his card just before everyone revealed theirs which proved fortuitous as his hedgehog ended up with a bunch of frog dice and cards. So, Green swapped his second and third cards at the last second and he picked up Prey on both occasions. As the round progressed, Purple and Yellow also achieved some success and Green took another card, but by the end of the round, the scores were very even with Purple ahead by just one point. Probability can be a funny thing, but it was still quite a shock to roll nine carrots, each with a probability of one-in-six. And so began a little game of cat & mouse, literally with everyone trying to second guess each others choices and all ending up feeling that the carrots looked too good to be true and there was bound to be a fox hanging around.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor msaari

At the second attempt, Yellow found he couldn’t resist temptation and went for the carrots only to find Purple’s fox was waiting to pounce. Then, somehow (and nobody could work out exactly how), Purple ended up with the entire haul of carrots all to herself. By this time, Green had reverted to type and scored nothing for the round, Yellow produced a creditable showing, but Purple took an amazing twenty-nine points. The final round was a much more even spread of dice and scores. Yellow was getting better and better and won the round while Green got lucky and took a few more points. Purple was not so successful this time out, but it didn’t matter, as her massive score in the second round gave her a record-breaking forty-eight, according to the scoring card, a new high score!

– Image by BGG contributor jancis

Learning Outcome: Don’t ascribe to luck what others might call skill.

Spiel des Jahres Winners – 2016

The 2016 winner of the coveted German Game of the Year or Spiel des Jahres award is Codenames. Codenames is which is a word-based deduction game played in teams. Each team has a leader who gives clues to the rest of their team who are trying to choose particular word-cards from an array. The trick is for the leader to come up with a clue that covers multiple correct answers so that the rest of the team can identify the complete set before the opposition. It’s not really a game that really suits our group as several of the regulars aren’t very keen on social deduction games, but it is very quick to play, so, although we would probably have given the award to one of the two other nominees, Imhotep (manipulating large wooden blocks) or Karuba (“boardgame Bingo“), it may well end up as the “Feature Game” next week.

– Image used with permission of boardgamephotos

At the same time the Kennerspiel des Jahres was awarded, which honours more challenging games. It was introduced in 2011 to replace the jury’s habit of intermittent special awards for games too complex for the Spiel des Jahres (notably Agricola which was awarded a special “Complex Game” prize in 2008). This year the Kennerspiel des Jahres award went to Isle of Skye: From Chieftain to King, which is one of our favourite games. This year was a bit of a “Marmite” year for us as there were a lot of games on the lists that don’t really fit our group, including the two other Kennerspiel des Jahres nominees (Pandemic Legacy and T.I.M.E Stories). The Kinderspiel des Jahres award was announced last month and went to Stone Age Junior (aka My First Stone Age), which is a simpler version of the family worker placement game Stone Age.

– Image used with permission of boardgamephotos

Boardgames in the News: What Britain Buys

The Channel 4 series “What Britain Buys” has turned its attention towards our hobby with a ten minute piece by Mary Portas. Episode two includes interviews with Ben Drummond and Dean Tempest, founders of Big Potato (which produced John Lewis‘ top selling game last year, Linkee), as well as a visit to Oxford’s own boardgame café, Thirsty Meeples. There they speak to some of the customers and “Games Sommeliers” as well as the owner, John Morgan. There are lots of shots of gaming goodness including people playing Settlers of Catan, Riff Raff, Star Wars X-Wing, Takenoko and much more besides. The program is available to watch on demand from channel4.com and the interesting bit starts 37:15 mins in.

– Image from channel4.com

Next Meeting – 12th July 2016

Our next meeting will be on Tuesday 12^th July, at the Horse and Jockey pub in Stanford-in-the-Vale. As usual, we will be playing shorter games from 7.30pm as people arrive, until 8pm when we will start something a little longer.

This week the “Feature Game” will be Puerto Rico, which is an older game, and in many ways the archetypal Euro game. The idea is that players assume the role of colonial governor on the island of Puerto Rico with the aim of amassing victory points by constructing buildings and shipping goods to Europe. This game was first demonstrated at Essen fifteen years ago in 2001 and for many years occupied a seemingly unassailable position at the top of the rankings on the BoardGameGeek website.

– Image used with permission of BGG reviewer EndersGame

And speaking of shipping…

Once upon a time there was a famous sea captain. This captain was very successful at what he did and for years he guided merchant ships all over the world. Never did stormy seas or pirates get the best of him. He was admired by his crew and fellow captains. However, there was one thing different about this captain. Every morning he went through a strange ritual. He would lock himself in his captain’s quarters and open a small safe. In the safe was an envelope with a piece of paper inside. He would stare at the paper for a minute, and then lock it back up. After, he would go about his daily duties.

For years this went on, and his crew became very curious. Was it a treasure map? Was it a letter from a long lost love? Everyone speculated about the contents of the strange envelope.

One sad day the captain died at sea. After laying the captain’s body to rest, the first mate led the entire crew into the captains’ quarters. He opened the safe, got the envelope, opened it and turned pale. After a moment, he showed the paper to the others. On it were just four words:

Port Left
Starboard Right

28th June 2016

Blue and Red arrived first, so once they had ordered food, they settled down to a quick game of Mijnlieff (pronounced “Mine-Leaf”). This is basically Noughts and Crosses or Tic-Tac-Toe with a bit of added strategy and some beautiful wooden pieces. We’ve played it a couple of times before on a Tuesday, but as it is an independently produced game (by Hopwood Games), it is difficult to get hold of and Blue had taken the chance to pick up a copy at Expo. The aim of the game is to form lines of three or four, but the different types of pieces force your opponent to control where you can play. For example, when a Greek cross (or “+” symbol) is played, the next player must place their piece on an empty square in an orthogonal line from the piece just played. Similarly, playing a saltire (or “×” symbol) forces the next player to place their piece in a diagonal line from the piece just played.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor thepackrat

Unfortunately, Blue forgot to mention that if there was nowhere a player could go, they were forced to pass giving their opponent a free move, so when this arose, Red cried “foul” and Blue offered to concede the game. It didn’t really matter much anyhow as Burgundy had arrived and so had food, so everyone’s attention was drawn elsewhere. As other people arrived, we moved on to the inevitable post-Brexit referendum discussion: the group consists of several continental European Union gamers (Denmark, Poland and Ireland), so we have a natural pro-Europe stance. Consequently, the group as a whole has been pretty horrified at occurrences of the last week, and its long term consequences (not least of which is the increase in the cost of games!). Before we depressed ourselves too much, however, we decided to play something to take our mind off it. Since we were unsure of who was coming and with Pine wanting an early night, we decided to begin with something short, and with two possible games it seemed appropriate to have a quick referendum on the subject… Saboteur went the way of the “Remain” campaign and lost by a tiny margin as we decided to turn the evening on its head and begin with 6 Nimmt! a game which we often finish and one that is guaranteed to cheer us all up.

– Image by boardGOATS

The game lived up its usual standard of chaotic fun, with Burgundy, Black, Pine and Green vying to collect as many high cards as possible. After our usual two rounds, Purple finished with eight, but Blue took it with just six nimmts, all garnered in the first round. With the fun over, it was on to the serious game and Pine left as he was “cream-crackered”. The rest of us split into two groups for our “Feature Game”, Concordia, a strategic game of economic development in Roman times. The game takes at least half an hour per person and with set-up and teaching, it was always going to take most of the rest of the evening. Played on a beautiful map, Concordia is a game of resource production and exploration. Notable cities which are connected via land and shipping routes, each produce one resource (indicated by tokens placed on the map allowing for variable set-up). Each player begins with a hand of Character cards and six colonists and a handful of resources. Everyone begins the game with the same set of cards; on their turn, the active player chooses a card to play, and then carries out the associated action.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor Space Trucker

These cards allow players to move colonists and build settlements, trigger production for all settlements in a given region, introduce more colonists etc., however one of the cards enables players to buy extra cards from the market (a face up display). The cards are played into a personal discard pile where they remain until the player plays their Tribune card to get all their cards back. Each player also has a warehouse of a fixed size which will hold a maximum of only twelve items, which at the start of the game includes four of their six colonists (two ships and two “Elvis-meeples”). So, managing resources and finances is one of the key parts of the game and it is essential that players have the right resources when they need them as there isn’t space to store excess. Another “pinch-point” is the cards; players can only play each card once before picking them all up. They also get income when they play their Tribune card to recover their cards, but as it is dependent on the number of cards they pick up, it is in the player’s interest to play as many cards as possible before collecting them all again – this also needs planning.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor Space Trucker

The most difficult part of the game is the scoring, however, which is tied up in the Character cards. In addition to a name and an action, each card is dedicated to a Roman God. Each God rewards the card’s owner with victory points at the end of the game. For example, Mars delivers points for colonists placed on the board. Each Character dedicated to Mars gives two points per colonist, so a player with all six colonists on the board at the end of the game and five Characters devoted to Mars will score thirty points. Thus, since the cards are effectively multipliers, in general, the strategy is to try to excel in one area rather than try to do a little bit of everything, but that is something that is definitely easier said than done.

– Image by boardGOATS

With two copies of the game available and everyone keen to play it, we decided to split into two groups, both playing Concordia and both adding the Salsa expansion. This is “Salsa” as in “Salt” rather than the Spanish “Sauce” or the Latin dance, so in addition to the standard resources of brick, wheat, tools, wine and cloth, we also had salt. Salt is “wild”, so can be used as anything and adds some peculiarities to the scoring, but otherwise doesn’t make a huge difference to the game. Both groups also chose to use the new Hispania board which includes the Iberia peninsula as well as the North Africa and Italian coast. The biggest change to the base game, however, was the introduction of the Forum and associated Forum tiles. These tiles come in two flavours, blue, which are perpetual, and green, which offer an instant, one-off reward. Each player can choose one from a starting hand of two at the beginning of the game, but otherwise, these are taken when players play the Tribune card. Since players have a larger choice of available cards if they are picking up more cards, and these Forum tiles can be quite powerful, this is another driver towards efficient use of Character cards.

– Image by boardGOATS

Burgundy, Blue and Red got going first. Burgundy chose the Claudius Pompeius Forum tile (which gave him an extra opportunity to sell whenever he was playing the Prefect card); Blue chose Gaius Mercellus (who yielded an extra sestertii for every item she sold), and Red kept Titus Valerius (who enabled her to exchange any other commodity for salt when she played her Tribune card). Burgundy went first and moved one of his colonists inland north-east settling in a brick producing city. The close proximity of the two nearest brick sources meant that this made it very difficult for anyone else to get into brick production. Consequently, when Blue went next, she headed north-east into Gallia, where there was wine and cloth to be had, and eventually brick, though that would take a few turns. This left Red to head towards the sun in the south of Spain.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor henk.rolleman

Blue started out with lots of cash, but no idea what to do with it, on the other hand, Burgundy knew exactly what he wanted to do but couldn’t find the money to do it. Red and Blue were relatively unfamiliar with the game so opted for the scatter-gun approach, while Burgundy was picking up as many cards as he could. Before long Red and Blue got away from the congestion of the Iberian peninsula, with Red taking over North Africa and Blue spreading to Corsica and Sardinia and across to the Amalfi Coast. This race to place settlements eventually dried up when Red found more fun activating Africa to pick up lots of goods. Since one of the end game triggers is a player running out of “houses”, Blue had to decide whether to end the game early by placing her last few “houses” or whether to try to push forward on other frontiers. Something told her that she was too far behind in collecting cards, so she decided to take a break from building and try to maximise points elsewhere, starting by buying as many cards as she could and then getting all her colonists onto the board.

– Image by boardGOATS

With only a couple of cards left in the market, Blue placed her final houses and triggered the end of the game. As suggested in the rules, we went through each of the Gods in turn, though with Burgundy’s enormous pile of cards, it all looked like it was going to be more a measure of how much he was going to win by. As we added together the totals, every time Blue picked up points, Burgundy took more and Red languished at the back. Before long, Burgundy had what appeared to be an insurmountable lead. When Mercurius was scored Blue’s large number of settlements began to tell, and with a lot of Character cards devoted to Mars and all six colonists on the board, Blue finally took the lead. With only Minerva to go, Blue looked to have taken it, then we all realised how many Specialist cards Red had. With all her high scoring Specialist cards and a lot of settlements in high value production cities (inc. lots of Salt which counted for each of them) it looked like she would take it the lead. In that final scoring phase Red picked up a massive thirty-nine points, but sadly it wasn’t quite enough, and with Blue taking the extra seven points for placing all her settlements, she was the clear winner, though there was just four points between second and third place.

– Image by boardGOATS

Meanwhile, on the next table, set-up and rules explanation took a little longer, but they were soon under way too. Coincidentally, two of the Forum tiles chosen were the same – Claudius Pompeius (chosen by Burgundy and Green which gave them an extra opportunity to sell goods) and Gaius Mercellus (chosen by Purple and Blue and which gave an extra sestertii for every item sold). Black, on the other hand, took Appius Arcadius which gave him the ability to move three spaces instead of two – potentially very powerful, especially in the early part of the game. Purple began followed by Black, leaving Green with a much more restricted choice, but gradually all three began their expansion across the board producing and trading as they went.

– Image by boardGOATS

In contrast to the game on the next table, the players used their Forum tile powers only rarely. Green made good use of his bonus tile several times early in the game, but he used it much less later on, when having the goods was more important than having the money. Purple used her bonus only a small number of times and Black did not use his bonus tile until almost the very end of the game, but then he used it to good effect to jump two spaces and build in a city that Green had his eye on. The game was probably about two thirds through when Green moved his ship and, unintentionally he claims, blocked Purple. And there he left it until the end of the game as his card collection action enabled him to buy a new ship which was much better placed to move efficiently to the other side of the board.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor henk.rolleman

Green took every opportunity to encourage his “Elvis-meeples” to leave the warehouse, but while Purple occasionally added colonists to the board, black persisted with only his starting two throughout the entire game. Eventually, Green ended the game by buying the remaining character cards. While Purple found she could do nothing in her final turn to increase her score, Black pulled a master stroke and used a special card to buy all four of his remaining colonists in one go, thus increasing each of his Mars scoring cards by eight, and since he had three of them this gave him a massive twenty-four points more from just one turn. It wasn’t enough though; the scores were all close, but Green finished twenty-four points ahead of Black largely thanks to the fact that he’d managed to get a settlement in each region and had plenty of scoring cards to go with it.

– Image by boardGOATS

While Black, Purple and Green put everything away, Burgundy, Blue and Red began the inevitable discussion of the game. We all enjoyed the game, but Concordia is probably one of Burgundy’s all-time favourites, as a result he has played it quite a bit. There is no question that this familiarity helped when choosing which character cards to buy and when,. This is unquestionably an advantage as it is clear that the only real strategy in the game is to try to match the Character cards to the cities and perhaps specialise in one direction. That said, there are many ways that this can be done and in practice, it is really quite difficult to it do well. Although for Blue theme is not the most important factor in a game, she feels it should be there to help players remember the rules. In Concordia, however, Blue felt that the scoring was a little arbitrary making the game feel just a little bit abstract. Red also enjoyed the game, but felt that the game was slow to get started and with such a beautiful map, it seemed a shame that it took so long before really exploring it. On the whole though, we were all in agreement that it was a very good game that needed playing several times, and we were all very willing to give it another go soon.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: Sometimes experience pays, sometimes less so.