With Burgundy and Blue still finishing their supper, Black, Red Purple and Pine decided to play a quick game of Coloretto.  Pine and Red needed reminding of the rules, and by the time that was done Blue was ready to join them, but Burgundy was still wading through his pizza.  When he commented that he was struggling because it was “really very cheesy”, Pine responded that, “You can’t order a four cheese pizza and then complain that its too cheesy!”  Most people agreed it was a fair point, but it didn’t speed him up.  In the end Blue and Burgundy joined forces and played together, not because it is a complicated game, quite the opposite – the game is very simple.  On their turn the active player either draws a chameleon card and places it on a “truck” or takes a truck (which means they’re out for the rest of the round). The idea is that players are collecting sets of cards, but only three will yield positive points, with the rest scoring negatively. The really clever part of the game is the scoring which uses the triangular number sequence (one point for the first card, three points for two cards, six points for three cards etc.), which rewards one large set more than two or even three small ones.

– Image by BGG contributor SergioMR

Blue & Burgundy started out collecting blue, and Black orange.  Purple on the other hand ended up with nearly every possible colour, which really isn’t the point!  In contrast, Red managed to restrict herself to just three colours, but didn’t really manage to get enough cards in each to compete with the big hitters, Black and Pine.  Black collected a full set of orange cards, but Pine had four purple cards and a joker to score highly.  In the end, Black took the game, just three points ahead of Pine.  With the first game over and Burgundy finally having finished his very cheesy pizza, it was time for the “Feature Game”.  This necessitated splitting into two groups, and that couldn’t be done until a second game had been chosen.  There was much debate, but Pine and Burgundy were keen to play Kerala.  Purple was reluctant, she said because everyone had been nasty to her last time.  Eventually, she was persuaded to play when Pine promised to be nice, and for the most part, everyone was very nice.

– Image by boardGOATS

Kerala is one of the games Blue and Pink picked up at Essen last year. It is a fairly simple tile-laying game where each player starts with a single tile in their own colour with two wooden elephants perched precariously on it.  On their turn, the active player draws the same number of tiles from the bag as there are players and then chooses one before everyone else takes it in turns pick one.  Players then simultaneously place their tiles next to a tile with an elephant on it and move the elephant onto the new tile.  The tile can be placed in an empty space, or on top of a tile previously laid.  Thus, over the course of the game the elephants ponderously move over their play-area while players messing with the opponent to their left by leaving them with tiles they don’t want.  There are three types of tiles, Elephant tiles, Edge tiles and Action tiles.  Elephant tiles score points at the end of the game with players receiving one point for each elephant visible.”Edge” tiles have one side with a different colour; if these are adjacent to the correct colour the player scores an additional five points otherwise they can be ignored.  There are also two sorts of action tiles, which score no points but allows the player to move either a tile or an Elephant.

– Image by boardGOATS

Everyone was very nice and offered everyone else advice on where to place tiles.  It wasn’t always helpful advice, but no-one was obviously hostile.  It was only as the game came to a close that everyone realised that they had forgotten some of the most important aspects of the scoring.  At the end of the game players require precisely one contiguous region of each colour (with two allowed for their own colour).  Somehow in the rules recap the bit about losing five points for each missing a colour had been missed.  It didn’t matter though, because everyone had all the colours so nobody was in danger of losing points even though some players picked up their last colour in the final round.  In the end it was a close game, but it was burgundy’s very stripey layout that had the edge and he finished four points ahead of Purple who took second.

– Image by boardGOATS

Meanwhile, Black, Purple and Blue played the “Feature Game”, Honshū.  This is a light trick-taking, map-building card game loosely set in feudal Japan – almost like an oriental mixture of Pi mal Pflaumen and something like Carcassonne or Kingdomino.  The idea is very simple:  from a hand of six numbered map cards, players take it in turns to choose one and play it.  The player who plays the highest numbered card then chooses one, then the next player and so on until every card has been taken.  The players then add the cards to their city.  Each card is divided into six districts, each of which scores in a different way at the end of the game.  For example, the for every district in their largest city, players score a point.  Similarly, any forest districts also score one point.  More interestingly, the water district is worth nothing, but water district connected to it after that is worth three points.  Perhaps the most interesting are the factories which only score if they are supplied with the appropriate resources, wooden cubes that are placed on resource producing districts.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor msaari

Resources can also be used increase the value of cards when they are played allowing players to manipulate their position in the turn order.  Like Pi mal Pflaumen, this is a key part of the game as it enables players to ensure they get the card they want.  One of the biggest challenges is choosing the cards though.  When the cards are placed, players must take care to make sure that they either partially cover (or are covered by) at least one other card.  This, together with the fact that players are trying to expand their largest city and any lakes makes choosing and placing a card really difficult as there are many options to explore.  Nobody really had much of a clue as to what strategy they were trying to employ, and for the first three rounds, everyone ended up picking up the cards they’d played as these were the ones they’d thought about.  After the first three rounds, players pass their remaining three cards left and add another three; his is repeated after nine rounds when the cards are passed right.  So when at the start, when Black commented that he had lots of good cards and Red and Blue answered that they had lots of poor ones, in actual fact nobody really had much idea what good and bad cards were.  That quickly changed when Blue passed her left over cards on and Black discovered what a bad hand really looked like.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor William Hunt

Everyone found the game very strange, and a real brain-burner, dressed up in such an innocent sounding game.  There were more spells of players choosing the cards they had just played, so Red was really mifffed when Blue broke the tradition and took the one she had played and wanted for herself.  Towards the end, Black pointed out that while he had built a very compact island Red and Blue both had long thin islands.  This was the first time either of them had looked at anyone else’s island – a demonstration of how absorbed they had been in choosing cards.  After lots of turning cards round trying to decide where best to place them, it was time to add up the scores.  It didn’t really matter who won as everyone felt they were fighting to get to grips with the game, though it was Blue who’s island scored the most points, and Black and Red tied for second place.  Both games finished simultaneously and the Honshū crowd were in need of some light relief so we resorted to 6 Nimmt!.  This is a game that we have played a lot on Tuesday evenings, but seems to have been neglected of late.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor msaari

We reminded ourselves of the rules:  players simultaneously choose a card, then simultaneously reveal them before playing them in ascending order placing each on on the highest card that is lower than the card being played.  When the sixth card is added to a row, the first five are taken and the number of heads contributes to the player’s score, lowest score wins.  We tend to play a variant over two rounds with half the deck in each round and not resetting the table in between which tends to result in a cascade of points in the second round, and this time was no exception.  Purple and Blue started out well, but quickly made up for that in the second round.  Red and Mike started badly in the first half and Mike got worse in the second – they tied for highest scorers. Black started out low and although Pine did better than him in the second round, Black’s aggregate score of nine was seven points lower.  Black was the only one to stay in single figures and was therefore a worthy winner.  6 Nimmt! finished quite quickly and we were all feeling quite sociable, so despite having played it last time, we gave in to Red, the “Bean Queen”, who fluttered her eye-lashes and we agreed to play Bohnanza.  While people sorted out refreshments, we compared Bean rhymes, Pine came out with the best, borrowed from Bart Simpson,  “Beans, beans, the unusual fruit, the more you eat, the more you toot!”

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor spearjr

Bohnanza is a card game where the key element is the fact that players have a hand of cards that they must play in strict order.  On their turn, the active player must play (plant) the first bean card in their hand (the one that has been there the longest) and may plant the second if they wish.  Then they draw two cards and place them face up in the middle of the table so everyone can see, at which point the bidding starts with players offering trades for cards they like.  Once both cards have been planted (either in the active player’s fields or somewhere else), then the active player can trade cards from their hand too.  All traded cards must be planted before the active player finished their turn by drawing three cards and putting them into their hand in strict order.  And it is the strict order that is the key to the game, however difficult it is for players to refrain from rearranging their cards.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor spearjr

This time, the game proceeded with lots of trading and everyone warning everyone else who dangerous it was give Red any favourable trades.  Nevertheless, everyone seemed to be forced to give her free-bees as she was the only person who could take them. In the dying stages of the game Pine was desperate to get his paws on some of Blue’s Wax Beans and was offering all sorts of lucrative trades, but they all evolved round Blue’s now complete field of Green Beans.  When she pointed this out he grumped that it was her own fault for building up the field to capacity, ” adding “That’s hardly sustainable farming now, is it?!?!”  With the last trade done, everyone began counting their takings. During the game everyone had given Red loads and loads of cards, mostly because they were forced to.  When the Bean Queen was inevitably victorious, Black commented that it was fine as we had all contributed so much that everyone could rejoice and share in the joy of her win.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome:  Beanz meanz fun.