The pub was madly busy thanks to a boisterous party and a couple of large groups in the bar area, so we decided to start with a game while we waited for food.  The “Feature Game” was to be Forbidden Desert, but as most people were waiting for food, we decided to start with something we could play as a group.  6 Nimmt! was the first suggestion, but in keeping with the cooperative game theme of the Feature, we decided to start with Saboteur.  In this game, players are either Dwarves or Saboteurs, where Dwarves are collectively trying to dig a tunnel to find the Gold, while the Saboteurs are trying to stop them.

– Image by boardGOATS

On their turn players can play a tunnel card to extend the network, play an action card or discard a card and pass. Action cards come in several flavours.  There are red and green tool cards, with red broken tool cards stopping others from digging and green “fixed” tool cards that repair broken tools.  There are map cards that allow players to peek at one of the three target cards to see if it holds the gold, and rock-fall cards that enable players to remove a single card  from the tunnel network.  All the action cards can be used by Dwarves and Saboteurs alike to impede the other team.

– Image by boardGOATS

Black was the first to play and began ditching all his rubbish blocking tunnel cards while Pine started off by explaining how Burgundy was always a Saboteur and generally made Burgundy’s life a misery by besetting him with broken tools and reminding everyone how last time we played Burgundy was a Saboteur three times running.  This time, we had more players, but it wasn’t long before it became clear that Burgundy was indeed a Saboteur, along with Lime, who was playing it for the first time and was not at all secretive of his position.  Eventually, Red found the Gold on behalf of the Saboteurs, and Black was outed as the third and final Saboteur and had apparently all the cards he had been discarding had been good tunnel cards not bad ones.

– Image by boardGOATS

The rules as written state that there should be three rounds and players pass gold cards around in an effort to determine who will be the overall winner.  We don’t think the game needs a winner in this way, so we play with a “house-rule” that treats each round as a game in its own right.  This way, we can stop at two games if it is beginning to outstay its welcome, or carry on and play three or even four rounds, giving more people to join Burgundy as Saboteurs.  Everyone had really enjoyed the first round and was keen to go again, so cards were handed out and Pine once again accused Burgundy of a “Saboteury” first move.  Blue had loads of blocking cards, but after Black had spent almost all the previous round dumping cards, didn’t dare pass for fear that she would be accused of being a Saboteur.

– Image by boardGOATS

Blue asked everyone else for advice and Red suggested that the one thing she could do to convince her that she was a Good Little Dwarf was play a blocking card on Burgundy, which she obligingly did.  It didn’t work, however, and it wasn’t long before Red declared Blue a Saboteur.  In frustration Blue showed Red all the blocking cards she had and that seemed to stem the tide of accusations, at least for a few turns.  With Burgundy buried under a pile of broken tool cards, his delight was evident when Blue revealed her true colours and played a disruptive blocking card.  It was just a smidge too late though and Black brought the round to an end by finding the Gold.

– Image by boardGOATS

By this time food had been ordered, but was not looking like it was going to arrive immediately, so we decided to see if Burgundy could make it three in a row again.  Inevitably, we were only a couple of turns in, therefore, when food turned up and the tunnel network was obstructed by Purple’s enormous bowl of mushroom tagliatelle.  Pine confused everyone by indicating his position early, playing a blocking card right in the middle of the map.  Perhaps it was the difficulty of playing round a plate of pasta, or perhaps her mind was just elsewhere, but a very curious card placement quickly led to Purple being labeled as a Saboteur joining Burgundy and Pine.  Flying well under the radar, if only the real Saboteurs had had helpful cards to play then they might have won, however, it was not to be.

– Image by boardGOATS

It turned out that Blue and Black were once again the real Saboteurs (along with the more obvious Pine), but frustratingly there was nothing they could do and Red once again finished the round by finding the Gold for the Dwarf team.  By this time everyone was very hungry, so food mostly disappeared quite rapidly and while Black, Purple and Burgundy dealt with their last few mouthfuls, Blue, Lime, Pine and Mulberry took themselves off to the table by the door (ostensibly to get space to play, but partly to take advantage of the respite the cooling draught offered from the humidity), to play the “Feature Game”, Forbidden Desert.

– Image by boardGOATS

Where Saboteur is a “semi-cooperative” game because it has a traitor mechanic, Forbidden Desert is a fully cooperative game.  This means everyone plays together against the game, with the same goal.  The story is that a helicopter has crash-landed in the desert, and the survivors, in our case, an Archaeologist, a Climber, an Explorer and a very well behaved, cooperative, er, camel (“Water Carrier”), must try to find the buried, missing pieces of a historic air-ship, in order to escape.  This, with minimal water, the sun beating down and the growing sand-storm, means that players have to be quick in their hunt, and smart in keeping the keeping the storm from getting out of hand.

– Image by boardGOATS

The game is played on a five by five grid made of twenty-four tiles and one gap.  The tiles all start face down and must be excavated to reveal their other side.  Some tiles will yield clues as to where the missing air ship parts are, others hide potentially useful equipment, while excavating others will yield a launch pad or the entrance to a tunnel.  Everything is useful, but all four pieces of the ship must be found together with the launch pad, before the players can escape.  On their turn players have four action points per turn which they can use freely to move, remove sand from the tile they are on (or an adjacent one), excavate a cleared tile, or pick up a piece of airship.

– Image by boardGOATS

Once all four actions have been completed cards from the storm deck are turned over and tiles are moved in the direction indicated into the eye of the storm reflecting the shifting dunes.  As they are moved, sand tiles are placed on each one, building up the dunes and burying the antiquities in sand.  There is a finite number of sand tiles and running out triggers the end of the game with the team losing.  Running out of sand is only one way to lose however.  If any player runs out of water, the whole team loses, and the storm level increasing to its maximum also spells doom.  On the other hand, if the team manage to find all the parts and the launch pad, they will be able to escape from the desert.

– Image by boardGOATS

One of the problems with cooperative games is “quarter-backing” also known as the “alpha gamer problem”, where one player takes control and tells everyone else what to do.  With Blue the only player to have played it before (though Lime had played Forbidden Island some time ago), it would have been easy for her assume the role of Colonel, but that sucks all the fun out of the game.  So there was a little discussion as to how we should approach the game (primarily trying to make the best use of our characters’ special abilities and trying to work quickly to excavate tiles) and then we started, with the storm level on “normal”.

– Image by boardGOATS

The game began badly, when two of the first tiles we excavated were tunnel tiles.  These are very useful because players can use them to shelter from the sun and thus preserve water when a Sun Beats Down card is revealed.  They also enable players to travel from one part of the board to another in a single move.  Unfortunately, the tiles were adjacent which meant they were much less helpful than usual.  Prioritising, digging in order to find parts of the airship, the team found a lot potentially useful equipment, but it seemed ages before the first clue came up, a hint to where the propeller was buried.

– Image by boardGOATS

The team soon found the second clue to the location of the propeller which turned out to be relatively conveniently located so Pine, the Climber, quickly picked it up.  It was then that Lime pointed out that the number of sand tiles available was getting critical, and something had to be done.  A couple of turns and concentrating on the sand problem and use of Mulberry’s Dune Blaster, helped, but a couple of Sun Beats Down cards in the meantime meant there was now a water shortage. so Pine and Blue (the Water Carrier), set out to rectify the situation.  Unfortunately, the first of the possible springs turned out to be a mirage.  While it didn’t lead to anyone running out of water immediately, valuable time and moves had to be used to excavate another tiles.

– Image by boardGOATS

Once a spring had been found, Blue was able to top up her water supply and share water with Pine, before taking some back to the Lime and Magenta (who by this time was hiding in a tunnel to conserve her dwindling water supply).  With everyone settling into their roles and assuming the duties associated with their special abilities, it wasn’t long before the second part of the airship had been located.  Everyone had water and the sand situation was more or less under control, but it was all taking too long.  The storm had picked up and with it, the Sun Beats Down cards were coming round at an increasing speed.

– Image by boardGOATS

Worse, the rate of sand deposition was also increasing. and it wasn’t long before the situation was getting desperate again, and clues to the location of the missing parts of the airship were proving impossible to find.  Forced into making difficult decisions, Pine and Lime started to take risks.  To begin with they seemed to pay off, but it wasn’t long before there was a succession of bad cards, culminating in two Sun Beats Down cards, and Pine and Lime who were left out in the sun ran out of water and sadly perished.  It had been good fun though and everyone had enjoyed playing, even though the team had ultimately failed to escape.

– Image by boardGOATS

Meanwhile, the other group had been playing Villagers.  This is a new card drafting and tableau building game that first got an outing a few weeks ago and was so successful that Lime immediately bought himself a copy. The idea is that players take it in turns to take villager cards from the “road”, then add them to their village tableau.  Different villager cards have different advantages; some give money at the end of the game, while others enable players to draw more cards from the road per round or place more cards in their village per round.  The clever part of the game is the interplay between the cards caused by the conditions required before they can be played.

– Image by boardGOATS

For example, a Blacksmith cannot be added to a village unless there is a Miner already present.  The cards are then played in a tree structure such that the Blacksmith is placed over the Miner card, superseding any icons depicted on it.  Many villager cards, especially the more valuable ones, also require a payment of two gold to another specific villager.  The money then sits on that villager card until a scoring round.  Ideally, the payment would be made to a villagers in the player’s own village, so that the money ultimately remains theirs, but if the active player does not have the necessary villager and someone else does then the money is paid to the opponent.

– Image by boardGOATS

Like a lot of card games, there is a lot of luck in the game and there is a knack to surfing it.  Although many of the the group have played it before, Black had missed out, and he struggled waiting for a Grazier to become available.  In general, everyone went for a range of different types of villagers, everyone except Burgundy who went mad for Mining, because it “seemed like a good idea at the time”.  He started with a Seeker and then when he added an Ore Muler his income increased spectacularly and he looked like he was going to romp away with it.  Red and Black eventually managed to play Monks which helped to grease the wheels for them, but it was too late. Burgundy had the edge over Red in almost every department beating her into second place by twenty gold.

– Image by boardGOATS

Villagers and Forbidden Desert finished at about the same time, and as time was getting on, Mulberry took Red home, and Pine and Lime didn’t want a late night so went their separate ways too.  That just left Blue, Burgundy, Black and Purple; Purple fancied a game of Bosk, and, as there wasn’t time to debate it, everyone else went along with her suggestion without debate.  This is a really pretty game, and although Black and Purple have played it quite a bit since they picked it up at the UK Games Expo, Blue and Burgundy were new to it.

– Image by boardGOATS

The game is played in two parts:  first players place their trees in the forest on a grid, then each tree sheds its leaves and players try to control where the leaves fall to give them the most leaves in each of the areas of the forest.  The first phase is really just an hors d’oeuvre; the second phase is the guts of the game.  At the end of the first phase, players score for having the majority in each row or column.  Purple was at the back, so went first in the second phase, and more importantly, the direction the wind goes in.  This is important because if the wind is in the wrong direction, any player with trees of the same number wedged up against the same edge  will find their options severely restricted.

– Image by boardGOATS

An awful lot of time was spent by all staring at the board, but this is no hardship as it really is a very picturesque game.  Blue and Burgundy were feeling their way, but it was always advantage to Black with his greater experience.  In the end, it was surprisingly close, though that was possibly due to Blue confused by the “S-shaped” score board, screwing up the scoring.  The margin of victory was still significant though as Black finished with thirty-five points while Blue and Burgundy tussled for second place with thirty-one and thirty respectively.  It was then that the group realised the half hour game had taken twice that and everyone quickly left before they out-stayed their welcome and the landlord threw them out.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome:  Working together is fun, though it helps to know who is on  your side.