People started to arrive online from about 7pm with Mulberry briefly joining the party to say that she was going to have to work and sadly couldn’t join in the game.  It wasn’t long before everyone was once again sharing their stuffed toys, including Burgundy who’s new friend “Bunny” was watching over him from on high.  While Blue and Burgundy set up the game, Lime proudly showed off his new haircut that Mrs. Lime had done for him, only for someone to comment that it made him look like a bit like Tin Tin…

– Image by Burgundy

The “Feature Game” was to be Tsuro, a very simple game of tile laying.  The idea is that on their turn, the active player placed a tile in the space next to their stone and moves their stone along the path.  The last player left on the board is the winner.  The game plays lots of people, so was thought to be ideally suited to these online game sessions, but unfortunately, has hidden information in that each player has a secret hand of tiles that they play from.  In order to accommodate this playing online (using Tabletop Simulator to visualise, shared through Microsoft Teams), we simply displayed two tiles and on their turn each player picked one.

– Image by boardGOATS

This reduces the amount of planning possible, making the game less strategic, more tactical and, potentially, more random.  So to compensate a little and make it fairer, when any tiles with four-fold symmetry were drawn, they were put to one side as an extra option, a third tile, available until someone picked it.  As there were a lot of players, we also decided to use the slightly larger board from Tsuro of the Seas, and modify the pieces to suit our purposes.  Aside from this, the rules were the same as the original:  players can rotate the pieces (or ask someone to do it for them), but they must place them in the space next to their piece.

– Image by boardGOATS

Once a tile has been placed on the board, all stones must be moved along any paths extended, and any that collide or go off the board will be eliminated.  Burgundy started in the bottom left corner followed by Black, Purple and Lime, who was joined in the early stages by Little Lime who was keen to help.  Pine with his special friend, Beige assisting, followed by Pink, Blue and Green with Lilac and his “pet” sloth in support.  Everyone was fairly well spaced out around the edge of the board, so the game began quite slowly.  That was OK though as everyone had to get a feel for the graphics and what they were doing.

– Image by boardGOATS from Tabletop Simulator on Steam

As the game progressed, people started to get entangled with each other.  The first to come a cropper was Black with Pink not too far behind.  Burgundy and Blue got stuck and went off together followed by Green who ran out options and then ran out of road.  When Lime was eventually forced off the board by a lack of space, there were just two left.  As Purple had to move into the space around Pine (playing on behalf of Beige), giving him the opportunity to push her off the board and claim the first victory for his little Gremlin.

– Image by boardGOATS from Tabletop Simulator on Steam

That had gone quite well and hadn’t taken very long, so as setting up has some overhead, we decided it would be quickest to just play it again.  Blue and Burgundy re-stacked all the tiles and everyone chose their start positions.  For some reason, this time Green ended up surrounded by lots of empty space while everyone else was bunched together.  Green quickly put up a barrier and then went off to play with Lilac to play together alone in the corner, leaving everyone else to fight for space.

– Image by boardGOATS from Tabletop Simulator on Steam

Pine commented that Blue hadn’t moved far, but when she commented that she’d just been round in a circle, Pine objected inciting Pink to call him a “Boardgame Pedant”.  Pine took this mantle with pride and said he might add it to his CV as it already said he was a “Bird-watching Pedant”.  Blue queried this with “Bird-watching Pheasant?” and Pink upped the ante with “Bird-watching Peasant?”  Pine concurred, “Yeah, that too…”

– Image by boardGOATS from Tabletop Simulator on Steam

As the game plodded on, Pink was the first to go off, soon followed by Lime and Black.  Then there was a bit of a hiatus though as players got tangled up.  Pine was the first who kindly eschewed the opportunity to expel Blue from the game (or maybe he had no choice); and then Blue returned the favour (also with no other option).  Somehow, the paths kept getting entwined bring everyone to the same place, while Pine played with himself in the top corner, ominously.

– Image by boardGOATS

It was during this second game that the technology started to struggle a little and Teams kept freezing as the load on the network began to exceed the capacity of the village carrier pigeon.  The game just about kept moving though, with Pink, bored having been the first to leave the game, started intimidating Blue with his large Panda.  Blue and Pine were next off, thanks to Purple, who had to choose who was going to stay in the game with her.  In the end, her choice of Burgundy proved to be unfortunate as he ruthlessly dispatched her on his next turn.  It didn’t make much difference though, and Green with lots of space and no competition was the winner.  Although his second tile had been crucial to his success, it was really the unintentional assistance from Pine when he played a convenient blocking tile in E5 that clinched it.

– Image by boardGOATS from Tabletop Simulator on Steam

With that over, there was a little bit of chit chat about other game options that would work online:  Finstere Flure was an option on the Simulator, but 6 Nimmt! on Board Game Arena was discussed, as was Take it Easy! with pieces delivered by Blue and Pink.  That didn’t last long though as the evening degenerated into comparing soft toys again (“Is that Kingston Bagpuss?!?!”) accompanied by renditions of songs by The Eagles.  As Green, Lilac and Pine melted away, Blue, Pink, Purple, Black and Burgundy played a few turns to get to the end of Spring in their Keyflower rematch.  But that’s another story…

– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com

Learning Outcome:  With all this “working from home”, the Stanford Carrier Pigeon needs a good feed.