Having spent the last few meetings playing online using Tabletop Simulator shared through Microsoft Teams, this time we decided to do something a little different.  One of the group’s most popular games is 6 Nimmt!, which also plays lots of people.  It has unavoidable hidden information, but is available through the online platform, Board Game Arena.

– Image by boardGOATS

On our first online game night, a small group had had a difficult time playing Port Royal on Yucata.  Some of the group had also played rather challenging games of Snowdonia and San Juan, and, as a result, had moved to Board Game Arena for three more recent, epic games of Keyflower.  The graphics and playing environment on Board Game Arena are more up to date than those for Yucata, but like most other platforms, the servers have been struggling at peak  times with the load caused by the recent influx of new online gamers.  The folks at Board Game Arena have done a lot of work on that in the last couple of weeks though, and the performance has improved significantly as a result.  So much so, that we felt reasonably confident it would be stable enough to be the focus of games night.

– Image by boardgamearena on twitter.com

So, this week, the “Feature Game” was to be 6 Nimmt! played on Board Game Arena.  This is a game that everyone knows well, though there are a couple of minor tweaks to the rules.  The idea is that everyone starts with a hand of cards, ten on Board Game Arena (we usually play with the hand size that is dependent on the number of players).  Simultaneously, everyone chooses a card, and then, starting with the lowest numbered card, these are added to the four rows in the display.  Each card is added to the row that ends with the card with the highest number that is lower than the card played.

– Image by boardGOATS

Placing the sixth card in the row causes the active player to take all the cards in the row, replacing them with their played card.  The clever part is that the score is the not the face value of the cards, but the number of “bull’s heads” shown on the cards.  The aim of the game is to finish with the lowest score.  When the group usually play, we split the deck into two halves and play just two rounds.  On Board Game Arena, however, everyone starts with sixty-six points and the game end is triggered when someone’s score falls to zero.

– Image by boardGOATS

From 7pm, players began logging onto Board Game Arena and joined the MS Teams meeting.  Lime was one of the first and his chat with Blue and Pink was interrupted by a phone call from one of Blue’s relatives trying to source a set of drain rods.  Blue and Pink were quite convinced they didn’t have any, but that didn’t stop Pink having to spend the next hour hunting for some without success (so Lime kindly offered to lend his if required).  While Pink rummaged in the garage, everyone else joined the meeting and chatted.  Mulberry unfortunately wasn’t able to join us, but she was replaced by Ivory on his first online meeting.  It was great to “see” him again after so long, and good to hear that Mrs. Ivory, Little Ivory and Littler Ivory were all doing well and might be interested in OKIDO.

– Image by boardGOATS

Eventually, Pink finished ferreting and returned to the chair kept warm by his panda and everyone settled down to play.  The Board Game Arena implementation worked nicely and everyone was able to chat in the background using MS Teams, but also through the game’s “chat” channel.  There was the usual moaning about the quality of cards and comments about how badly things were going:  it was almost like playing together in the pub, though not quite.

– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com

Green and Purple managed to avoid picking up any cards for the first round or two, but it wasn’t long before their natural collecting mania began.  The disease spread and soon Pine, Ivory and Black were picking up lots of cards too.  It wasn’t long before Lime triggered the end of the game, and Burgundy managed to avoid picking up anything in the final round to win, ten points clear of the rest of the field.

– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com

There is a lot of luck in the game, especially with so many players, but everyone was happy to play again and it is very easy to engage in a re-match, or so we all thought.  It wasn’t until the second game had started that we realised we’d “lost” Lime somewhere along the way.  He seemed to be playing a game, but then it dawned on him, that he’d somehow got himself involved in somebody else’s game by mistake.  He was very embarrassed and was keen to extricate himself, but Blue worked out where he’d gone and shared the link.  So, to the complete mystification of the four French gamers involved, the Brits all joined their game as excitable spectators.

– Image by boardGOATS

Everyone boisterously cheered on our British Representative, to the blissful ignorance of the French and huge embarrassment of poor Lime.  Meanwhile, Black worked out how to abandon the incomplete game and Blue started a new one which everyone joined while still following Lime’s progress against the French.  Lime played really well and was in the lead for much of the game, but sadly, one of the French finished strongly and just beat him.  Still, we all felt he’d done an excellent job keeping the British end up, and he finished a very creditable second (especially since he was somehow also playing the group’s game and working!).

– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com

After all that excitement, our game was something of an anticlimax.  Nobody was really paying much attention for the first part as they were distracted by Lime’s stellar performance.  But when everyone focussed on the game again, Pine, Blue, Ivory and Green were fighting it out to at the top while Pink was doing his best to end the game nice and quickly.  There were the usual smutty comments (Green: “Ivory’s got a big one there…!”) and other banter (Pine: “I had the lead for all of two seconds…!”), but eventually, Pink put everyone out of their misery, somehow leaving Blue just ahead of Pine.

– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com

Nobody was desperate for an early night, so everyone chose the rematch option again, and this time, everyone ended up in the same game.  It started quite close, but Black soon found the cards irresistible and quickly amassed an unassailable pile of brightly coloured cards.  At the other end, Pink went from “zero” to “hero”, going from last place to first place, with Pine and Lime tying for second place.  Nobody seemed keen to play another round and the evening degenerated into chatter.  Pink shared how to customise backgrounds on MS Teams including a selection he had downloaded from the BBC, with one from Blake’s 7 and another from Multi-coloured Swap Shop.

– Image from youtube.com

This led to a discussion as to which was better: Swap Shop or ITV‘s offering, TISWAS.  From there, Pine shared some of his album collection with a quick blast of The Goodies’ Funky Gibbon and everyone started sharing weird things on YouTube including sheep playing on roundabouts; a fluffy sheep with no facial features, and the world’s biggest dogs. Pine offered Pink a copy of the soundtrack to The Sound of Music on orange vinyl, a generous offer that was politely declined.

– Image by boardGOATS

With Lime, Ivory and Green gone, and everyone else clearly not ready for bed yet, but running out of chat, someone suggested another quick game.  Once Blue’s maths had been corrected several times (ruling out all the five-player games), the group started a game of For Sale.  This is a simple auction game of two halves.  First, there is the property sale, where players take it in turn to bid for a building or pass and take the least valuable available.  Then, players choose which properties to sell when the “buyers” reveal their offers (cheques).

– Image by boardGOATS

The clever part of this game is that the property cards are numbered (one to thirty), so they have a relative value with those numbered close to thirty more valuable than those around one.  Everyone starts with $14,000 and bids are in $1,000 increments, but anyone passing takes the lowest value property available, but takes a rebate equal to half the value of the bid (rounded down).  This adds an interesting level of decision making towards the end of each bidding round.  In the second phase, cheques are revealed with values between zero (void) and $15,000.  The player with the highest value of cheques and any left over money once all properties have been bought and sold, is the winner.

– Image by boardGOATS

Board Game Arena have a very nice implementation of For Sale, faithfully reproducing the original, quirky card art.  There were a lot of controversially high bids, not least from Burgundy who paid $9,000 for the space station, the highest value property.  It worked though, as Burgundy just pipped Pine to win by a mere $1,000, in what was a very tight game.  It is a game where valuing property is key, both for buying and selling, and as it plays quickly, the group decided to give it a second try.

– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com

This time, aside from Pink propping up the table again, everyone who had done well, did badly, and everyone who had done badly did well.  So, Blue, Black and Pink were at the top this time, with Blue pushing Black into second place by $5,000.  With that, Pine left the others to decide what long and drawn-out game they were going to play over the next fortnight, and everyone else eventually settled on Tokaido and set up the table to start the next day.

– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com

Learning Outcome:  6 Nimmt! est imprévisible dans toutes les langues.