Following the very sad passing of Mike Parker (known on this site as Burgundy), we decided to dedicate this meeting to his memory.  We decided to forgo the usual “Feature Game” and replace it with “Burgundy’s Favourites”, including games as diverse as Concordia, Orléans, Wingspan, Killer Bunnies and the Quest for the Magic Carrot and Dominion. Burgundy had supper at the pub before every games night. Because he always had the same thing, he was known as “Ham, Egg & Chips Man” by the staff at The Jockey.  So we decided to gathering early to reminisce and celebrate his gaming life, and share his favourite supper.

– Image by boardGOATS

Burgundy’s cousins joined us for dinner and we took it in turns to chat and learn things we didn’t know about him. We also had a couple of special guests from elsewhere in the county who fancied joining us to do a bit of gaming in Burgundy’s memory. Chatting to people who knew him in slightly different spheres, one of the first things we found out was that, a creature of habit, Burgundy was known known for having Lasagne when he went to Gweeples, setting up his game while he waited for his molten supper to cool to a point where he could eat it.  There was lots of chatter over dinner and Lime joined us online, but technology difficulties meant he hopped in and out and then, after several rounds of the Hokey-Cokey, eventually gave up.

– Image by Daniel Monticelli

Black also briefly joined us from Malta—he’d been to a Greek restaurant for dinner, but we all agreed our Ham, Egg & Chips was better.  After a toast to Burgundy, who will never be forgotten, people eventually settled down to play games.  First up was Ivory, Pink, Lilac and Teal who chose Ticket to Ride with the UK map.  Ticket to Ride was one of Burgundy’s favourite games and is popular with the whole group so everyone knows the basics of how to play:  on their turn, the active player can choose two coloured cards from the market to add to their hand, place trains paying with cards, or draw tickets which give extra points at the end of the game if completed.

– Image by boardGOATS

Every expansion set comes with a slight rules twist.  In the case of the UK map, this is the addition of technologies and concessions.  At the start of the game, players can build only one and two train routes and only in England.  By spending wild cards, players can buy technologies which enable them to build routes consisting of three trains or more, build ferries, and build train routes in Scotland, Wales and Ireland. Players can also buy bonus cards that allow them to score extra points for taking certain actions during play.  As usual, the game ends when one player only has two of their plastic trains left and the winner is the player with the most points.

– Image by boardGOATS

Pink (playing with his special pink trains for the first time) started off with a “Home Nations” strategy, eschewing the chance to visit France.  Lilac, on the other hand, explored the Dawlish coast and the area around Dundalk.  Teal took the East Coast Mainline north, and explored Scotland as far north as Wick and Ivory took the West Coast  Mainline and continued up to Stornaway.  The game was really tight, with Lilac, Pink and Ivory all completing nine tickets, and that seemed to be the strategy with Pink the eventual winner thanks to being slightly luckier than the others, finishing just three points ahead of Lilac.

– Image by boardGOATS

Meanwhile, on the next table, Green, and Magenta were joined by visitors from Oxford and Gweeples, Sage and Jade in a game of Splendor.  Splendor is a simple game, but one at which  Burgundy was a true expert, and at one point went unbeaten for two years.  The idea is that players use poker chips to buy cards which can, in turn be used to buy more cards of a higher value which eventually give points.  When a player reaches fifteen points, that triggers the end of the game and the player with the most points wins.  Game-play is very simple: on their turn players can take three different coloured chips, take two chips of the same colour, buy a card from the display, or reserve a card taking a gold token (which is wild) at the same time.

– Image by boardGOATS

As is usual, the game started slowly with Magenta eventually opening the scoring. The others followed with low scoring cards, but Magenta remained one step ahead until everyone else started claiming the higher scoring cards and eventually Nobles.  Green pulled ahead and looked like he might pull off a true Burgundy style victory, but Sage was closing in.  Sage obstructed Green with a tactical reservation, but that just put off the inevitable for another turn. When Green reached fifteen points, the game ended immediately as he was the last player in the round.

– Image by boardGOATS

Sage was a close second with the early leader, Magenta, in third. There wasn’t a high score, a resounding win, as there no doubt would have been had Burgundy had been playing, so victory did not feel fully deserved in his absence.  Blue and Purple had been chatting to the family, who were enjoying talking and, after a long day, were reluctant to play anything.  So, when they left to get an early night, Blue and Purple played a quick filler game of NMBR 9 while they waited for something else to finish.  Burgundy played NMBR 9 a lot over the years and, like everything else he was always very good competition, winning more than he lost.

– Image by boardGOATS

The game has almost zero set up time, and doesn’t take long to play or put away either.  There are twenty cards (zero to nine), which have matching tokens.  Each round, one card is revealed and players take a matching tile and add it to their tableau.  A player’s tableau consists of layers of tiles.  When placing tiles, they must be placed alongside other tiles, or on top.  If placing on top of other tiles, they must overlap more than one, be placed adjacent to others, and next to at least one other on the same layer.  Neither Blue or Purple were focused entirely on the game which Blue edged, as they were too busy gossiping and watching what was happening on the next table.

– Image by boardGOATS

The game of Splendor and NMBR 9 finished pretty much at the same time, and the group joined up for a game of 6 Nimmt!.  6 Nimmt! is another game that Burgundy really enjoyed playing with the group and indeed, played a lot.  This was especially true online over the last couple of years, where he played forty-three times with us, winning over one in four of the games.  Jade had only played online, so the group introduced him, and indeed Sage as well, to the variant we usually play.  We play the game in two halves, dealing half the deck out for the first round and then the other half for the second round.

– Image by boardGOATS

Everyone was familiar with the basic game play:  simultaneously choose a card which is added in turn, starting with the lowest, to one of the four rows in the play area.  Each card is added to the row that ends with the highest card that is lower than the card played.  If it is the sixth card, the player “wins” all five cards in the row, and their card becomes the new first card.  In contrast to the online version on Board Game Arena, where players start with sixty-six points and count-down to zero, players start at zero and the player who “wins” the most points is the loser.

– Image by boardGOATS

This time, Green “won” the first round, top-scoring with twenty, while Sage managed to keep a clean sheet.  As Burgundy was always the exemplar though, performance in the first round is often no indication of how the second round will go, which is one of the reasons why we love this variant.  So it was all to play for, especially for everyone who’s first score was in single figures.  This time it was not to be, however, and although Sage picked up thirteen “nimmts” in the second round, everyone else’s total was more.  It was close at the other end and with lots of pretty coloured cards, Purple and Jade high-scored with twenty-nine.

– Image by boardGOATS

Ticket to Ride was still going and with six players, and time marching on, there was only really one option, the option Burgundy would have chosen: Bohnanza.  Jade had never played it before, so, after a quick rules summary, as is often customary in this group, he went last so he could see how things work and get a feel for the game.  In this game, although we generally play “friendly”, it is particularly important as it is a trading game and it is important to be able to get a feel for the value of any advice offered.

– Image by boardGOATS

As Purple pointed out, the most important thing about Bohnanza is not to sort your cards because players play cards from the front of their hand and add cards to the back forming a sort of conveyor-belt.  On their turn, the active player plants the first bean card in their hand into one of their two bean fields, and may plant the second if they choose.  Two cards are then revealed and these can be planted by the active player or traded.  This leads to another key rule: what is on the table must stay on the table so anything traded must be planted.

– Image by boardGOATS

Fields can be harvested at any point, with some of the cards being turned over and stored as coins.  However, beans can only go in empty fields or share fields with beans of the same type.  Players only have two fields (or three if they buy a third), so if players are unable to trade a card away, they may have to harvest fields before they are ready.  In this sense, we generally play “friendly” and rather than forcing players to plant something they don’t want, we have a culture of giving cards away.  This extends to players taking cards in free trades from someone’s hand to further their game too.  As a result, the game sometimes the player who is best able to make the most of these freebies is the winner.

– Image by boardGOATS

Unusually, and to the accompaniment of a lot of sucking of teeth from everyone else round the table, Sage ponied up his two coins for a third bean field—the only one to do so, and especially risky in the second round.  He wanted to plant a couple of Red Beans though, so at worst it was probably revenue neutral and certainly worth the risk.  Blue benefited from a lot of Coffee bean donations while Purple, Green, Jade and Magenta all planted the highly lucrative, but quite scarce, Black-eyed Beans.  The first round took an age, but in contrast, the last was really short, so short, Sage sadly commented that although he had the perfect hand, he wasn’t going to be able to play it. 

– Image by boardGOATS

It was a close game though, and an extra turn or two could have made all the difference.  As it was, Blue was the eventual victor with sixteen “Bohnentaler”, three more than Jade.  Time was pressing and that was the last game for that group, but in the meantime, on the next table, Ticket to Ride had finished and the quartet had moved onto what was arguably the game of the night, Splendor.  This time, the game started with a shortage of blue, sapphires, then green emeralds became hard to get.  It was nice to note that everyone played according to Burgundy’s maxim, “Always take a free one.”

– Image by boardGOATS

In the end, Pink ended the game, and although Ivory managed to score in his final turn, he wasn’t able to catch up.  As the games came to an end and everyone chatted, the mood was sombre, perhaps with half a mind to the following day.  In spite of that, it has been a good evening making new friends, and playing games.  All evening Burgundy was never far from our thoughts, but that was particularly true during the two games of Splendor.  And he always will be whenever we play Splendor from now on.

– Image by Pushpendra Rishi

Learning outcome:  Mike, Burgundy, was THE GOAT, and we all miss him.