It was a very quiet night:  Pine was late arriving due to another meeting; Lime had gone to bed early; Green and Lilac eschewed games in favour of the telly.  So it was just six that settled down to the “Feature Game“.  This was On Tour, a “Roll & Write” game where players are managing a band going on tour.  The idea is that players have to plan the band’s route and schedule their stops visiting as many places as possible as shown on their map.  Blue was having one of her dopey nights and made a bit of a pig’s ear of explaining the rules, but fortunately, they weren’t overly complicated and Burgundy was on the ball and filled in the gaps where necessary.

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The map is divided into six sections: a horizontal border dividing the North and South and two vertical borders separating East, West and Central giving six areas.  At the start of each round, three cards are revealed from the deck.  Each card features one of the possible stops and a region: North, South, East, West or Central.  Two d10 dice, are also rolled, each individually giving a number between zero and nine, which when combined, give two two digit numbers, i.e. five and three give 35 and 53.  These two numbers must both be written on each player’s map in two of the three regions shown on the cards.  At the end of the game, players draw a route from location to location following the marked paths, with each location visited having the same number or higher than the previous one.

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Although this is almost all there is to the game, there are a couple of little niggles.  Firstly, if a double is rolled, instead of two numbers, players draw one star in one of the regions shown on the cards.  Similarly, if all three cards reveal the same region, then players again draw one star in that region.  Finally, if a player can write a number (or star) in the state/country shown on the one of the cards, they draw a circle round it, signifying that it is worth double if it is included in the band’s tour.  Players thus score points for each location visited and an extra point for each location visited that has been circled.  The player with the most point is the winner.

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There is a little bit of setup, where the dice are rolled twice (to give four numbers) and four cards are revealed.  Everyone writes these numbers in in the same locations and circles them, which basically helps to stop everyone from placing on the low numbers on one side and all the high ones on the other.  The first rolls were 09, 90, 38 and 83, placed in Pennsylvania, Illinois, Louisiana and Minnesota respectively.  This put low and high numbers in the east, which was not a good start, but things got worse when the following dice rolls were repeatedly high/low numbers rather than mid range.

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About half way through, Pine popped in having escaped from his meeting, to see how things were going.  As he hadn’t eaten yet, he popped out again and returned later with his grub, just in time to see the last couple of rounds.  The game was full of muttering and this just seemed to increase towards the end, as people had one or two critical numbers they needed to make their tour work.  There was a big cheer from both Burgundy and Ivory when the penultimate roll gave them a 60.  This made a huge difference to them almost doubling their scores, giving Burgundy the winning score of forty-one, three ahead of Ivory on thirty-eight.

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We’d really enjoyed the first try and everyone was keen to give the European map a go too, especially Pine, who liked the idea of planning a music tour.  The starting numbers of 12, 21, 08 and 80 weren’t too bad, even though they were mostly located in the south west of Europe (Montenegro, Austria, Serbia and Estonia respectively).  These were quickly followed by lots more low numbers causing Pine to comment that his Tour was in lockdown and going no-where.  Burgundy muttered about a blockage in central Europe and added that for him Turkey was out of the question, to which Blue queried whether he’d over-indulged at Christmas…

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Eventually, Burgundy announced that he’d cleared his blockage, to which Pine answered that was possibly something that had to happen a lot on tour buses given the diet often enjoyed by  roadies.  Meanwhile, the muttering returned as people increasingly needed specific numbers to make things work and gambled on dice rolls making their tour segments connect.  Everyone seemed to get more or less what they needed and most people seemed to decide Ireland and Portugal weren’t worth visiting, dumping difficult numbers there.  Pine started in Turkey and almost ended up back there.

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Blue who last time played safe and added almost nothing to her score in the second half of the game, learned from Ivory and Burgundy and managed to stitch three sections together in the last couple of rounds.  Somehow, players appeared to have more options this time and everyone seemed to spend a lot of time trying to optimise their final routes to get the best scores possible.  This time Burgundy and Ivory again did well, but Pine just beat them to second place, with Blue producing the highest scoring tour, going from Bulgaria to Ireland via a meander through central Europe and the Baltic states.

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The game had been quite enjoyable, but had taken quite a lot longer than expected (although part of that was because we’d played it twice).  There was still time to move to Board Game Arena for a couple of games though.  Ivory took his leave, but after some discussion, everyone else settled down to a game of Saboteur, a game we are all very familiar with and have played quite a bit both in real life and, more recently, online with Board Game Arena.

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We all know the game well so it was quick to get started.  Each player has a hand of cards and takes it in turn to either play a tunnel card, or play an action card.  The aim of the game is to help the team build a tunnel to whichever of the three terminal cards holds the gold, unless you are a Saboteur of course, in which case, your aim is to hinder the efforts made by everyone else.  With just six players there are either one or two Evil Saboteurs, and the rest are Lovely Dwarves.

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This makes it hard for the Saboteur team and they have to get their act together quickly to make the most of what little time they have.  We usually play with the “House Rule” that we treat each round as an independent game, but on Board Game Arena, the game is played over three rounds (as per the rules as written).  Purple started the first round and by chance headed south where Blue soon alleged that gold was to be found.  Burgundy confirmed it, but Pink claimed Blue was fibbing and broke her trolley making life especially difficult for her as she only had tunnel cards to play.

– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com

When Black said the bottom card was not gold, that really put the cat amongst the pigeons.  Something about Burgundy’s behaviour clearly made Pine suspicious as he broke Burgundy’s pick for him and Pink then broke Black’s trolley too.  The tunnelling had somewhat stalled, but once Pine repaired Blue’s tools the digging resumed.  From there it wasn’t long before Pine reached the gold and Pink and Burgundy were revealed as treacherous Saboteurs, the first time ever for Pink.  It was at this point that everyone realised that Black had looked at the bottom card and claimed it wasn’t gold.  When questioned about it, he said it was just to add a bit of interest…

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Purple started the second round as well, and Blue again was quick to take a peek at the bottom target card—this time she claimed it was coal.  Pink said he didn’t believe her, but Blue pointed out how unreliable he was after last time.  For everyone else, the jury was still out.  Purple looked at the top card and said it was gold.  Pink confirmed that the bottom card was coal and then Pine’s repeated discarding of cards roused Purple’s suspicions and she smashed his lamp for him.  Black returned the favour, breaking Purple’s lamp.

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Meanwhile, the tunnel continued progressing slowly.  Then Pine showed his true colours and triggered a rockfall in a critical location.  The gap was quickly plugged by Pink suggesting that perhaps he wasn’t evil this time.  Burgundy broke another of Pine’s tools, but he was quickly able to repair that.  Blue didn’t have any cards that would take her to the top card that Purple claimed was gold, but could make it to the middle card, so rather than discard, confirmed it was coal.  When Black discarded yet another card, it was too much for Burgundy who called him out for the traitor he was and smashed up his trolley.  Then it was only a couple of turns before Purple made it to the gold for the lovely Dwarves.

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Pink was first to play in the final round and the tunnel made rapid progress towards the middle target card.  The dwarves were nearly half way there when Purple checked the middle card and said it was coal.  Blue immediately checked the bottom card and said it was also coal and the tunnel swiftly turned north and Pine confirmed that was where the gold was.  Purple smashed Black’s lamp—a very suspicious move, and then Pink played a tunnel card pointing away from the agreed target—he pleaded stupidity, but everyone else thought that was also a suspicious move.

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Blue was able to fix the problem caused by Pink, but a couple of turns later he confirmed his treachery when he played a rockfall and regressed the tunnel.  Fortunately, he could have played it in a worse place and Burgundy was quickly able to repair the damage.  A couple of turns later, after a brief hailstorm of broken tools, Purple also confirmed her status as an evil saboteur.  Fortunately it was too little, too late and Burgundy and Pine were able to extend the tunnel to the gold.

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It was the second time Pine had made it home, and unusually, despite the fact he had failed as as saboteur in the second round, he took overall victory.  Although time was marching on, there was still enough for a game of our favourite, the 2020 Golden GOAT, 6 Nimmt!.  The game is so simple, yet so much fun, it is the perfect end-of-the-evening game.  It sounds so unpromising:  players simultaneously choose a card, then starting with the lowest value card played they add them to one of the four rows.  If the card is the sixth card, instead they pick up the cards and add them to their scoring pile with the the card they played forming the start of a new row.

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It is as simple as that.  On Board Game Arena, players start with sixty-six points (or “nimmts”) and the player with the most points when one player falls below zero is the winner.  We usually now play with the “Professional Variant”, so cards can be added to either end of the rows which adds to the madness.  This time, Pink was the first to pick up cards while Purple continued in what feels like her New Year’s resolution, not to be the first into the red.

– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com

With Purple recusing herself from the race to the bottom, Pink, Blue and, unusually, Pine, took her place.  Eventually Blue got left behind and Pink and Pine duked it out.  Remarkably, it was Pine, who nearly always does well in 6 Nimmt!, reached the bottom first, suddenly picking up fourteen bulls’s heads, just before the end of the round bringing the game to an abrupt end.  There was some ribbing about how he was just doing to prove that he didn’t always do well—still, with a little practice before next time, he will no doubt return to his usual position.

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The winner in this game is always largely incidental, but this time Black was the one who finished with the most points, nine more than Burgundy in second.  There was a bit of chit-chat about school and Christmas before we left.  Pine explained how he was at primary school with Anthea Turner (or perhaps it was her sister Wendy).  Blue told how her mum and uncle were at school with Pam Ayres and her sister Jean, who still lives in Stanford.  When Purple explained about the time that her nephew had reached into Black’s stocking and pulled out his old nuts, we all knew it was time for bed.

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Learning Outcome:   Ohhhhh, so THAT’S where South Dakota is!