It was a quiet night with everyone still recovering from Christmas.  Black and Purple arrived at the advertised 7pm, soon followed by Lime and then Pink, Blue and Pine.  After a bit of chatter about Christmas and the “To Let” sign outside the pub, the group eventually settled down to play the “Feature Game“, Zuuli.  This is a light, family friendly, card drafting game that is a bit like Sushi Go! or 7 Wonders, but with animals.  Similar to Sushi Go! or 7 Wonders, players choose a card from their hand before passing it on to the next player.

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In contrast to Sushi Go!, however, instead of using cards at the end of each turn, players save them until the end of the round and then try to make sure they have all the animals housed.  The game is played over three years (“Really?” commented Lime, “I thought you said it was a short game—I had no idea we were going to be here until 2025!”).  In the rules as written, there is scoring at the end of each of the three rounds (or years), but it was clear that everyone was struggling with the rules a little at the start, so we “House Ruled” it so for the first game, we only scored at the end of the final year.

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The idea is that each enclosure has a size, habitat type and a satisfaction multiplier while each animal has a space requirement, habitat and satisfaction.  To score, for each enclosure, players simply add together the satisfaction value of the animals and multiply the total by the value for the pen.  There is a catch, however.  As well as ensuring the animals have enough space in the right habitat, players also have to make sure that animals don’t eat each other: animals are either fierce or friendly, friendly animals can share an enclosure, but fierce animals can only live in an enclosure with their own kind.

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Additionally, some animals and some enclosures have special conditions, for example, tree frogs score double if they are in both water and jungle habitat, and the starting enclosure (the “New Plot”), only scores if it is fully occupied.  There were lots of rule clarifications:  the first concerned why you would want more land expansions which add no additional space (answer, because they add terrain type).  Then some of the animal conditions needed clarifying, and finally whether an expanded New Plot needs to be full (including the expansion). This was not helped by the fact we were including the extra cards from the mini expansion (now included in the second edition, namely hippos and red pandas).

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As a result, it was a bit of a messy first game, made worse by the fact that the Christmas spirit meant people were struggling to concentrate.  The end result was quite tight though with a single point between first and second as Pink just pipped Blue with Black not far behind.  It was no surprise, when Lime suggested giving Zuuli a second try now we all knew what we were doing.  As it turned out, this was more a case of, “now Lime knew what he was doing.”  This time, we played with the rules as written, including the scoring at the end of each year.

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By the end of the second year, it was very clear that Lime was going to be the winner, the only question was by how much.  In the end he beat Pink into second by a massive twenty points as he finished with seventy-one, though Pink felt he deserved a bonus points for failing to kill his red pandas with hypothermia (unlike Longleat who managed to kill their two cubs born to much fanfare over the summer).  Blue and Pine were not far behind Pink fighting it out for third, but this time it was all about Lime whose scores in the second and final year were well ahead of everyone else’s.

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With six, the question was then whether to play as two groups of three, or stick with a larger group of six.  As a sociable group, especially at Christmas and other festivals, we tend to go for the latter, and this time was no exception.  Whenever there are six players, Keyflower always gets a mention and Pink had put it in the bag, but it was too late to start it really.  That left either a couple of much shorter, filler-type games, or Niagara.  Mostly people have refused to play Niagara with Pink since, in a “Moment of the Year” he infamously won a game by daring to play by the rules, stealing gems from several others including Burgundy and Blue who never forgave him.

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Lime felt that with five against one it was a good opportunity for the group to get their collective revenge and Niagara duly made it to the table.  This is an older game which won the Spiel des Jahres Award nearly twenty years ago, but is still a lot of fun.  It is a sort of programming game where players simultaneously choose which Paddle tile they are going to play and then take it in turns to activate that action (mostly move their canoe).  Players begin with two canoes which they use to collect gems and attempt to return them to the starting jetty; the winner is the first player to get home four identical gems, one of each of the five varieties or any seven gems.

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The game is really made, however, by the really cool moving river, which is essential to the game play.  After each round, the river moves, with the movement equal to the movement of the slowest canoe.  In addition to moving canoes somewhere between one and six spaces (depending on the Paddle tile played), players can also adjust the speed of the river by playing a Cloud Paddle Tile.  This adds a little extra jeopardy, especially as players cannot reuse Paddles until they have used them all and when they play their cloud, their canoes don’t move and therefore risk their craft plummeting over the cataract.

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It costs two movement points to pick up a gem (or drop one off).  However, if traveling up stream and the boat finishes its movement on the same space as another loaded boat, the player can steal from other players on the same space, as long as they have space in their boat.  Native, Niagara only plays five, however, with the Spirits of Niagara expansion, it plays six, though with a few rules tweaks.  These include replacing one single canoe with a double canoe that can hold two gems which makes stealing easier and more likely.  There are also new Paddle cards, the introduction of a Whirlpool, the Bathing Beaver and the Hurried Elk.

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Most of these just make things more complex.  So Blue made the executive decision to only include an extra Paddle Tile (value seven) and replace the slowest Paddle Tile (value one) with the 1/2/3 (which allows the player to decided how many they can move, but they can only move one boat).  This seemed to maintain the simplicity of the original game while ensuring there wasn’t too much carnage.  That said, almost everyone ended up with at least one boat going over the falls, Lime lost several.  All that proved was that crime doesn’t pay, however, as he repeatedly nicked gems from poor Pine.

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Following the ill-feeling last time, Pink announced his strategy up front—to win, by whatever means was necessary within the rules, including stealing gems.  However, when fate chose him to go first, he garnered opprobrium (and a rules check) when he began by playing his seven and picked up two purple gems on his first turn.  Pine also tried stealing gems from others, but as they were immediately pinched by Lime who followed him in turn order, he commented that it felt just like pay day—there one moment and gone the next!  Blue was the first to get a gem home, though it was a colourless one, one of the easiest to claim and it wasn’t long before others followed.

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There was a bit of group-think going on, with players generally playing their higher value Paddle Tiles at the start, making the river run fast before it slowed down later when everyone played slower Paddle Tiles.  Black and Blue increased the flow of the river to its maximum, but Lime slowed it down again at the first opportunity.  We had just got through the Paddle Tiles the first time when Lime commented on his plans.  Black responded that he wasn’t going to get another as he was going to end it, and if he didn’t Pink would.  In the event, Black, Pink and Blue all achieved the winning condition with four gems of the same kind but Blue and Pink had collected a fifth so rejoiced in their shared victory.

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There was just time for one last game, of an old favourite, 6 Nimmt!.  This is one of our most played games and slightly controversially won the Golden GOAT Award in 2020 largely for keeping us sane while playing games online.  Online we played a lot of the “Professional Variant”, but this time we chose to keep it simple.  Players simultaneously choose a card from their hand and then, in ascending numerical order, the cards are added to one of the four rows.  Each card is added to the row ending with the highest number that is lower than the face value of the card played; if it is the sixth in a row, it becomes the first card instead and the player adds the other five cards to their scoring pile.  The lowest score is the winner.

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We play a variant that has two rounds and sees all (or almost all, depending on player count) of the hundred and four cards in the deck.  This time, the first round was quite attritional as everyone picked up cards.  Aside from Pink who picked up twice as many points as anyone else, it was all quite close though.  The second round was more variable however.  It was Black who top-scored this time, giving him a total of thirty-two, one more than Pink’s final score.  Most of the other scores averaged out giving totals in the high teens, however, Purple’s second round clean sheet gave her a winning score of nine.

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And with last orders called, that was it.  There was a little bit of chat about the New Year Party, but otherwise it was a sad farewell.  With more uncertainty surrounding the pub, it is a little unclear whether it will still be open for the group’s next scheduled meeting (10th January), so we will see.  With that very much in mind, we waived good night to the staff, wished them a Happy New Year and hoped to see them in January.

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Learning Outcome:  Don’t leave red panda cubs out in the cold.