Black, Purple, Byzantium, Plum, Blue and Pink all arrived early for food, and were soon joined by Pine, Lime and finally Ivory.  The “Feature Game“, was to be Crappy Birthday, a party game where players give each other comedy birthday presents and the recipient has to decide who gave them the best and worst gifts.  A bit like the better known game, Dixit, the idea is to be the master of non-mediocrity, with the best and worst gifts netting points for the person who gave them.  It was our birthday party, so as is now traditional, everyone shared cake (this year, meeple topped carrot cup cakes), before Plum started off the year of GOATS crappy birthdays, receiving her first gift from Byzantium.

– Image by boardGOATS

This year we discovered that Plum fancied a custom chopper, Byzantium liked the idea of visiting a radioactive swamp (so long as it wasn’t too active) and Lime would gratefully accept a gift Monster Truck weekend.  Unusually, Pine didn’t get horses and a pile of meat, and picked skiing in Alaska (finding the Alaska bit more appealing than the skiing), and Black chose a Safari as his favourite gift.  Plum picked a chick-flick marathon over a litter of puppies and Ivory opted for a catapult over several space-based options.  Finally, much to everyone’s surprise, Blue picked a garden chess set and Pink chose a set of cuddly penguins over a pet vulture (who is very friendly, but stares at you while you are sleeping).

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Less popular were singing the national anthem a the baseball, extreme bungee jumping, face piercing, a flexible trainer, and perkiness training.  The horrific baby sculpture was pretty much guaranteed to be rejected (and Lime had the opportunity for a second time), but others were more specific.  For example, Purple eschewed the drive across the Sahara because she dislikes the heat while others felt they would quite like a visit to the desert.  Similarly, Pink couldn’t imagine anything worse than mime camp, although most of the others couldn’t really see his problem.  Most people managed at least one or two loved or loathed gifts, nobody came close to matching Plum, who took a massive six points—a remarkable seventy-five percent of her potential maximum, quite a record for a worthy winner.

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With our birthday suitably marked, the question was whether to continue to play light, large-group games or to break the group up and play something slightly more serious.  Pink suggested Niagara, and although Blue, Black and Purple warned against it, Plum showed an interest and that suckered in Byzantium, Lime and Pine.  The idea of Niagara is that players are rowing their canoes along the river to collect gems and then safely row them back to shore.  Players do this by simultaneously choosing a Paddle tile to play, then taking it in turns to activate their chosen Paddle to move their canoe (or canoes), trying to avoid losing them over the cataract and turning them into match-wood.  The winner is the player who manages to get seven different coloured gems or five gems of the same colour safely to shore.

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The reason for the warnings and large amount of reticence form some of the group was after an online game some two years ago when Pink had the temerity to steal gems from everyone else and collective punishment failed to correct his appalling behaviour, winning the game in spite of it all.  This time, fore-warned and fore-armed the game started mean and got meaner, with the gem stealing starting in the very first round.  As a result, three out of the five finished the game with nothing.  Although Pink ended the game with two red gems, at least he didn’t win—that honour went to Byzantium, who by hook or by crook (mostly crook to be honest), managed to get five purple gems and ended the game.

– Image by boardGOATS

Meanwhile, on the next table, Black and Purple were introducing Blue and Ivory to Little Town.  Despite the similarity in names (and inevitable resulting confusion), this is nothing to do with Tiny Towns. In this game, players acquire resources like wood, stone, fish, and wheat from the surrounding squares by placing workers on the board. When a worker is placed, the owner acquires the resources available from all eight surrounding spaces. They can then build buildings by using these resources, and the owner (or indeed any other player), can gain the effect of the building when they place a worker next to it, although when claiming a resource from a building owned by another player, they must pay a them a coin.

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The game is deliciously tight—each player gets one action per turn, three turns per round and the game lasts just four rounds. Players collect victory points by using the powers of buildings, by constructing buildings taken from the market (which is not refilled), and by achieving goals dealt to them at the beginning of the game. After the fourth and final round, whoever has the most victory points wins.  Ivory started building an engine based on turning money into points, but then he realised the flaw in his plan:  there was no additional source of money in the game, so once he’d spent his cash, he was reliant on others paying to use his facilities, a source that rapidly diminished.  So he moved on to collecting wheat instead.

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Blue built an engine to turn fish and wheat into points.  Black also built a wheat into points engine and pinched the last wheat field that both Blue and Ivory had their eye on.  Purple on the other hand did something completely different, converting resources into other resources to satisfy her goal card.  Ultimately though, none of it really mattered as the game was really, really tight and all four players finished within three points of each other.  Black’s experience with the game told and his thirty-two points just edged him one point clear of Blue who took second and she in turn finished one point ahead of Ivory.  It had been an enjoyable game though, definitely deserving of another outing, especially as the variety in the buildings would make it play very differently every time.

– Image by boardGOATS

While the Little Town was being explored, Niagara had already finished and Lime, Plum and Byzantium rowed their respective ways home, leaving Pine and Pink to play a quick game of the new mini-version of Ticket to Ride, Berlin.  This is the latest in the “City Series”, smaller versions of the game that play more quickly, but still keep the essence of the original game.  Each game (full-sized or smaller), has some unique “hook” as well as a new map and features designed to bring a flavour of the new location.  Like all the other game, players have a choice on their turn to either take coloured cards from the market, or pay cards to place pieces on the map.

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In the Berlin version, players have both subway trains and trams to place. Tram routes are claimed in the usual way, but only one underground carriage is placed to claim a Subway or U-bahn route. When a player has one or none of their pieces left in their supply (either Tram or U-bahn carriages), each player, including that player, gets one last turn, then tickets are scored as usual.  One of the differences between this game and the other variants is the shape of the map, with it being very elongated in the east/west direction.  Pine built his routes along the north side and into the centre while Pink stretched his network along the south bank and into the centre.

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It was a very enjoyable game, and both Pink and Pine said they would definitely play this one again.  Perhaps part of the reason was that it was very close, but neither player realised how close until the final scoring.  In fact, it was so close that they double checked the score and confirmed that it was a tie with both players finishing with fifty-four points.  After a bit of chat, they had a rummage through the rules to find out what the tie breaker was, only to discover that it was the number of completed tickets, and both had finished with five.  So remarkably, it was a real tie, but while they shared victory this time, there will almost certainly be a rematch in the not too distant future.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: Everyone loves a nice birthday gift.