One of the first to arrive was Yellow, and it was delightful to see him after such a long time.  He was especially welcome as he was bringing a copy of Paris that he’d been looking after since UK Games Expo in August 2021.  Before long though, there were eight all ready and lined up to play the “Feature Game“, Long Shot: The Dice Game, when two more arrived and a debate began to work out who would play what and where.  As Long Shot was supposed to be quite short, eventually, Plum, Pine, Purple and Lime took themselves off to play Ticket to Ride: London, with Blue, Green, Yellow, Black, Ivory and Teal sticking around to play Long Shot:  The Dice Game.

– Image by boardGOATS

Based on the party game Long Shot, Long Shot: The Dice Game is a light horse racing and betting game in a similar mould to that of Turf Horse Racing, that featured on several people’s lists of top games from 2022.  As it is relatively quick to play, the idea was that it would leave plenty of time to play some of our other old favourites and Ticket to Ride: London was thought to be a good match in terms of length.  Inevitably, that was not quite how things turned out, however.  Long Shot (Dice) is quite simple, and Blue, assisted by Green, was explaining the necessary to the runners and riders.  Ticket to Ride is well known within the group though and was therefore quicker to get started.

– Image by boardGOATS

The idea of Long Shot (Dice) is that the active player rolls two dice which dictate which horse moves and how far (one to three spaces).  Everyone (including the active player) then chooses an action from their card, carries it out and crosses it off.  The actions include:  placing bets, buying a horse, buying a riding cap, buying a riding jersey, crossing a horse off the concession chart to get a bonus action once a row or column has been completed.  In general, the action depends on the horse that has been rolled, i.e. if horse number two is rolled, players can bet on that horse, buy that horse, get a cap or jersey for that horse’s rider or cross that horse off the concession grid.  However, each player has three “wilds” which are opportunities to choose any horse.

– Image by boardGOATS

At the end of the game, players score if they own or bet on a horse that is placed and for any cap/jersey combo for the same horse.  This time, Green started and rolled the blue horse number three which moved three spaces.  As did Teal.  By the time it had moved on three out of four opportunities (and a total of nine spaces), it was starting to look like the dice were loaded and this did not appeal to everyone’s sense of fair play.  The group more or less divided into those that wanted the blue horse wearing number three to win (because they had invested in it) and those who didn’t and preferred the red number one horse.

– Image by boardGOATS

As Ticket to Ride progressed, the route planners asked how the race was going, and the gamblers, felt it would not be long, given the progress the blue number three horse had made and the lead it had built up.  After its early spurt, a few other horses managed to start to make a bit of ground and, with players starting fill out their bonus grid, players began to take bonus actions which leveled the course somewhat.  The bonuses included taking a free $7 (quite a lot of money in this game); a free $3 bet; free riding cap/jersey, but by far the most interesting were the options to move horses.

– Image by boardGOATS

Each player has the following four bonuses:  they can move one horse three spaces (once forwards and once back) and they can move two horses two spaces (also both forwards once and both backwards once).  It was as the blue number three horse approached the three-quarters mark (after which players could no longer bet on it) that players showed their allegiance, moving it forwards, or backwards.  And with six players, everyone had potentially several bites of the cherry.  Just as it seemed that one horse had an unassailable lead, one or two players would upset the apple cart and push the leader back and something else forward.  Even the the three-legged purple number eight horse looked like it might be in with a chance of placing at one point (albeit not for long).

– Image by boardGOATS

Ticket to Ride made more rapid progress.  Although Purple succeeded in completing one of her tickets (for three points), she failed to finish her other two.  That cost her ten points (effectively twenty, which is what she’d have got if she’d completed them), and she blamed Lime.  Lime had troubles of his own though as he was in a very tight battle with Pine.  Perhaps it was his comeuppance for the trouble he’d caused Purple (real or only perceived), but Pine pipped him to victory by a single point, gained when he completed one of the single carriage routes in the centre of the board in the dying moments of the game.

– Image by boardGOATS

It became a bit of a running joke that the Purple/Plum/Pine/Lime group playing with their train-set asked how things were doing when they finished, and again as they packed away, and again after they’d been to the bar, and again after they’d consumed their drinks and been to the bar again, and each time were told that it was nearly done.  Eventually, Purple, Lime and Pine resorted to playing Love Letter to kill time, winning one round each.  Although Long Shot (Dice) was great fun and everyone was quite amused by the shuffling of horses backwards and forwards, Pine had a point when he commented that when gamers play a light silly game they can play it to destruction—a bit like Echidna Shuffle, which we all adored though it outstayed its welcome when one game lasted two hours!

– Image by boardGOATS

As players ran out of bonuses, the Long Shot horses ran out of track, and eventually, the red horse number one crossed the line, followed by the blue horse number three and finally, the pink horse number four.  Unlike in Downforce for example, however, although winning the race is useful, the betting has much, much more of an influence on the final result.  For example, the two horses Ivory had bet on, numbers five and six, didn’t come in making a severe dent in his score.  In spite of this, it was quite close—Green and Yellow tied for third  with $109 while Teal took second place with $114.  Blue claimed victory though, finishing with $122.

– Image by boardGOATS

It was only when Green and Pine pointed out that Teal hadn’t scored his horse which gave him $2 per horse he had a bet on, and in his case, an extra $12.  Recalculating his final score, much to her chagrin, Teal just pipped Blue to victory.  From there it was simply a case of tidying up and working out what people wanted to play next.  Ivory had suggested Roll for the Galaxy at the start of the evening and there were lots of takers now, so he went off to set up with Teal, Green and Plum.  Although Teal had played Race for the Galaxy online, Roll for the Galaxy was new to him so the group started with a quick rundown of the rules.

– Image by boardGOATS

The idea is that everyone starts with a couple of “Worlds” and some dice representing their population.  Players roll their dice with the faces dictating different actions.  In secret, players allocate their dice to the five different phases: Explore, Develop, Settle, Produce and Ship.  Players choose one phase that they want to happen then everyone simultaneously reveals their choices.  All the phases selected will happen, with dice that players have allocated to other phases returned to their cup and recycled.  The game is a combination of “engine builder” and “population builder” (similar to games like Orléans), with players needing the right combination of Worlds to provide their engine, and then building the right combination of dice to make them work effectively.

– Image by boardGOATS

With the lighting being less than perfect, some of the dice colours were a little difficult to distinguish, particularly purple and brown.  Plum came to the rescue though, with her new Christmas present:  a portable folding lamp.  The magic of the LED gave a good strong light, enough for everyone without taking up too much room on the table.  Everyone was very impressed and many rapidly came round to the idea that it was a must have gamers’ accessory!  After a faltering start for a couple of turns, Teal soon got the hang of how to select actions and where the dice should go.

– Image by boardGOATS

The first clarification needed was that players can only choose one action (though everyone’s choice will be activated), and the second was that the die used to select that action does not need to show a face that matches it. The rest of Teal’s game was one of learning:  with his mining industry, he was able to ship goods for victory points while still gaining some credits, and gained a couple of useful purple die. Unfortunately being new to the game meant he was unable to mount a serious challenge for victory points.  Plum, on the other hand, started out with a couple of red military dice and managed to obtain one more during the game along with the New Galactic Order tile which gave her a couple of extra points for those red dice.

– Image by boardGOATS

Plum also made good use of her Terraforming Robots which gave her an extra credit for each World she built and two extra if it was a brown world. She managed to get three brown Worlds.  Ivory also managed to obtain the useful purple die, but his real bonus was from the Alien research ship which gave him a white and a yellow explore action whenever it was chosen.  This meant he was able to keep his credits topped up and have plenty of new tiles on the go without the expenditure of a die. As a result he was able to concentrate on building worlds and shipping/trading.

– Image by boardGOATS

Green, meanwhile, quietly built his tableaux concentrating on blue worlds due to his Consumer Market which gave him an extra credit if at the end of the produce round he had  goods on a blue world. He also obtained a green and a yellow world. His Galactic Recycler meant he gained a credit every time he managed to complete a tile. He was the first and only player to build all twelve tiles which gave him the largest score for Worlds. Combined with his Free Trade Association he scored extra points for his three blue worlds and with the victory points he’d collected along the way he finished with forty-four points and a healthy lead, ahead of Ivory’s thirty-eight, just ahead of Plum thanks to his two yellow and two green worlds.

– Image by boardGOATS

Meanwhile, at Purple’s request, everyone else was playing Saboteur.  This is a hidden traitor game where players take it in turns to either place tunnel cards or to play action cards.  The Good Dwarves are trying to find gold, while the Evil Saboteurs are trying to obstruct them.  In the rules as written, the game is played over several rounds with gold handed out at the end of each round.  The way the gold is distributed doesn’t really necessarily reflect the player who made the biggest contribution, so we play with the “House Rule” that each round is treated as an individual game, then we can play as many “games” as we like and/or time allows.

– Image by boardGOATS

This time, the group played three games.  The first one began with lots of people suspiciously checking and double-checking where the treasure was buried by playing map cards.  Purple was accused of being an Evil Saboteur, quickly followed by Black, Lime and Blue, all of which made no sense as there could only be a maximum of two.  In the end apologies were required when Pine found the gold and Blue and Purple were revealed as the Actual Saboteurs.  The second round followed a similar pattern, only this time pretty much everyone was accused of “Saboteury behaviour”.

– Image by boardGOATS

This time there was a Solitary Saboteur, which meant poor black had a really uphill battle and had really lost before he’d begun.  Once again, Pine was the Dwarf that found the gold, with Lime setting him up.  In the final round, things went a little differently though, particularly when Pine’s dubious behaviour signaled that he might not be trying to find the gold this time.  When Blue distracted the Dwarves by causing a massive rock-fall, it was up to Lime to try and patch the tunnel.  Things had just settled when Blue played another rock-fall and Lime patched that too.  When Blue brought down a third and fourth tunnel collapse, Lime was able to patch them too.

– Image by boardGOATS

It took so much effort though, that when Pine pushed the tunnel past the gold card, although it only needed a couple of extra tunnel segments, the Dwarves couldn’t make it giving a rare victory for the Saboteurs.  As Roll for the Galaxy was still going and there was a little time left till last orders, there was just time for a quick game of 6 Nimmt!, an old favourite. Blue commented that the name was one of the infamous German joke game titles, and Yellow added that “Nimmt” was the imperative of the German verb, nehmen, to take, thus when the sixth card is played on a row, that player takes the other cards.  The player with the fewest bulls heads wins.  We’ve played it quite a bit recently with the professional variant where cards can be added to the low or high end of the rows.

– Image by boardGOATS

This time, however, as time was pressing the group decided to stick with the simple maths.  We play over two rounds with half the deck in each.  Lime had a complete nightmare in the first round, with twenty-seven “nimmts” in the first round; Pine in contrast managed a clean sheet and Black only picked up two points, so it was all to play for, for some at least.  Lime did much better in his second round giving him a total of thirty-three, only slightly more than Yellow, while Blue managed nearly that in the second round alone, top-scoring with a nice round fifty.  Black picked up just five, but there wasn’t much anyone could do to compete with Pine, who picked up just one solitary point in the second round, his only one in the whole game.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome:  Betting can be a mugs game.