As people arrived slowly, the evening started out with a few rounds of Love Letter.  The archetypal “micro game”, Love Letter is a simple filler game that we’ve played a lot in the past, but less so recently.  The idea is that players have a single card in hand and, on their turn, draw a second and choose which one to play.  There are only sixteen cards in the deck and each has a value and an action.  The action is carried out when the card is played and the player with the highest value card at the end of the game is the winner.  The game is not high on strategy, but is ideally suited to playing while doing other things (like eating pizza), so it is very light hearted and can often generate lots of silly moments with this time being no exception.  When Blue drew the second highest card, the Countess, she got carried away and chose to play the Prince she already held.

– Image by boardGOATS

Unfortunately, the special action for the Countess is that if a player has a Prince or the King as well as the Countess she must discard the Countess (thus revealing information).  Without thinking properly, she played used Prince’s action on Green who was forced to discard the Princess, putting him out of the game.  Too late Blue realised her error and she apologised profusely as Green grabbed his card back and she played her Countess instead.  When the next player, Burgundy, then draw a Guard card giving him the chance to assassinate any card he could name, everyone knew that Green’s days were numbered, though they were reckoning without Burgundy’s bad memory!  Completely unable unable to recall the card Green had been forced in error to reveal, he incorrectly named the King and Green lived on.  In the long run, nobody really benefited from the confusion though, with almost everyone taking one round, we played sudden death and it was Pine who ultimately emerged victorious.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor thatmadgirl

With everyone present it was time for the “Feature Game”, Chariot Race, which is a fairly quick-playing Yahtzee style dice game with a horse racing theme, but actually has more of a feel of King of Tokyo (that we played last time) than anything else.  Players take on the role of charioteers participating in a great race in ancient Rome with the aim being to use dice to complete two laps of the dusty arena and be the first to steer their chariot over the finish line.  On their turn, the active player rolls a number of dice dependent on their speed on the previous turn, with faster chariots rolling fewer dice.  Each face of the six-sided dice allows a different action: Gain new Favors; increase or decrease speed; change lanes, or attack opponents (either directly by hurling javelins or indirectly by dropping caltrops in their path).  If the first roll is not satisfactory, the player can re-roll any or all of the dice.  They can re-roll a second time or turn one die to their chosen face, but to do that they must cash in some of the favour of the goddess Fortuna.  Favours of Fortuna are useful for repairing chariots too, and as there is a large kamikaze element to the game, Favours prove very useful indeed.  Once the dice roll is set, the active player moves their chariot forward according to the final speed they achieved, swerving to avoid rivals, caltrops and potentially devastating piles of rocks and the first player to drag their wreck of a chariot across the line for the second time is the winner.

– Image modified from original by BGG contributor JackyTheRipper

The game is supposed to be a quick little fun racing game, but it turned out to be everything but quick. This was probably the fault of the players as much as anything else as everyone seemed to get bogged down in analysing all the options.  With seven people present and Chariot Race, playing a maximum of six, Ivory kindly offered to team up with Green who was feeling a little out of sorts, but they were in complete agreement that they should start at the front of the grid.  In contrast, Black decided to start at the back, hoping that others would see him as less of a threat and maybe take each other out leaving him an easy run in.  In practice, it turned out that the back was a particularly bad place to be as Black struggled to avoid everyone in front of him and consequently picked up a lot of damage, soon wrecking his chariot and joining the rows of spectators cheering on their heroes.  Burgundy was quick to follow when the wonky donkey pulling his chariot sped up suddenly and accidentally invented a new Roman form of skittles when he crashed into everyone else in turn.  The problem with that was that although everyone took damage, each collision caused damage to Burgundy’s chariot eventually turning it in to match-wood.

– Image modified from original by BGG contributor JackyTheRipper

Starting at the front, the Green/Ivory chariot made a very quick start and took an early lead.  Blue gave chase starting with a recklessly high speed and a “go down in a blaze of glory” attitude.  Pine was a little more circumspect, but made good ground early on.  Purple on the other hand, started towards the back of the grid, made a slow start and was obstructed by the wreckage of Black’s and Burgundy’s chariots at the start of her second lap.  Blue and Green/Ivory tried to impede each other with Blue chucking spears and Green/Ivory dropping caltrops.  As Green/Ivory approached the end of their second lap, Blue was just behind.  So as Green/Ivory crossed the line running on empty they were speared by Blue on the next turn and their wheels fell off their chariot.  Blue crossed the line with a bit to spare and was quickly followed by Pine who couldn’t quite pass Blue so chucked a spear at her to make up for it.

– Image by boardGOATS

That just left Purple.  With a lot of ground to make up, the odds were always against her and everyone joined helping her to try to cross the line or take out Pine or Blue.  Sadly it was not to be and she decided that if she couldn’t influence the race, she would go out with a bang and smashed her chariot to smithereens on a rock.  So, a game that was listed as taking less than an hour had taken over two and only a third of the chariots playing had made it to the finish line.  It didn’t matter who won though, it had been a lot of fun.

– Image modified from original by BGG contributor JackyTheRipper

With Chariot Race taking so much time though, we were limited by what else we could play.  Before long there was a debate about the options, including all out old favourites like Saboteur and 6 Nimmt!.  In the end Bohnanza won as a game we could all play without thinking, and Burgundy was reaching for the familiar yellow box from his bag.  The game is one of our old staples, is quick to learn and keeps everyone involved throughout.  Often the simplest of mechanisms are the most effective an that is the case of Bohnanza:  players cannot rearrange the cards in their hand and must play them in the order they arrive.  Thus, on their turn, the active player first plays the first card in their hand with the option of playing the second if they desire.  Once they’ve been planted, two cards are drawn which can be traded, but must be planted by someone.  This can lead to free gifts, but also players being nasty and refusing to take even the apparently most lucrative trades

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor spearjr

This time, Burgundy started strongly, as did Pine and Ivory.  Black struggled consistently to get the cards he wanted, and with so many people playing, everyone had to be quick or they would miss out.  It was a very tight game with players mostly being nice to each other though everyone was typically reluctant to give Burgundy any easy trades, he got plenty anyhow.  As everyone totaled up the scores, it was clear there wasn’t much in it.  Five of the seven players ended the game with either nine or ten coins, but it was Purple who just sneaked in front finishing with eleven to win by a nose.  And with that, it was time to go home.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: Games sometimes take a lot longer than it says on the box.