The evening began with the usual friendly chit-chat.  This time, it was mostly focussed on whether or not we would be able to go back to our beloved Jockey for the next meeting (spoiler: we won’t).   But we also discussed at length why Van Diemans in the village was so called, whether it had anything to do with Tasmania or U2, and who Mr. Van Dieman was anyhow (spoiler: nobody knew the answers to any of these, but the street name is spelled differently to the “land”).  We then began to set up the “Feature Game” which was the Fortune expansion for Tiny Towns.

– Image by boardGOATS

Tiny Towns is a cute little area control, resource management and town building game with a strong spacial element.  We have played the game several times: after a couple of plays of the minimalistic base game, we have since added the alternative building cards, then the Monuments, and felt we were now ready to add the first expansion, Fortune.  The basic idea is very simple:  players place resources, one per space on their four-by-four town plan.  When they have the right combination of resources in the right arrangement, they can be replaced with a building.  This frees up some spaces, but makes one unavailable for the rest of the game which makes planning essential.  Different buildings give points in different ways, and to add variety, there are alternative buildings available for each type.

– Image by boardGOATS

In person, the game plays up to four with players taking it in turns to choose the resource that everyone must place.  Playing online, we use the “Town Hall Variant” which uses a deck of cards to give two resources while every third is a free choice.  For ease with so many, we also play a sort of “Roll and Write” variant where players print their player board and draw the buildings when they build them.  Monuments are special buildings that act as a sort of private goal with everyone having their own Monument deck to draw two cards from at the start of the game, picking one to keep.

– Image by boardGOATS

The Fortune expansion allows a little additional flexibility giving players the opportunity to acquire gold and then spend it so they can choose their own resources.  Players receive gold for building two buildings in the same round.  This requires slightly more planning and leads to a little more restriction, but the reward is flexibility later in the game, or an extra point if the gold is unspent.  Players can only hold a maximum of four gold coins at any one time though (or five if they have built a Monument that provides extra storage space).

– Image by boardGOATS

We also chose to play with the optional “Cavern” rule which is really more of a “hole in the ground” where players can throw resources.  It only holds two resources and players cannot recover these resources and use them later in the game (hence, more of a bottomless pit than a Cavern).  This time we played with both the Cavern rule and the Fortune expansion. Playing with both the Cavern and the Fortune expansion gave a lot of flexibility, perhaps too much flexibility as it took away a lot of the tension and challenge that makes the original game, though it was a lot less stressful as a result.  Playing again, we’d probably play with one or the other, but perhaps not both, as they do a similar thing.

– Image by boardGOATS

We started by drawing the cards for the buildings.  They were the Cottage (always included of course), the Farm, the Fountain, the Cathedral, the Gamblers’ Den, the Market, and the Trading Post.  The Cathedral and Gamblers’ Den were from the Fortune expansion, with most of the others being optional alternative cards from the base game.  There was some debate whether the seven points a Cathedral would give was worth the effort and how the Trading Post works.  With all the little rules niggles ironed out we started.  There were the usual complaints when people wanted one thing and got something else.

– Image by boardGOATS

The game began with a lot of stone and wood, which players were mostly able to augment with their choice in every third round.  Most people made a point of building a up a stash of coins in the early part of the game while there was space available to work with.  Players gradually drop out when they can no-longer place resources in their town.  Blue was the first to drop out and early too, having used her Trading Post to provide additional resources and her Masons’ Guild Monument to build extra buildings.

– Image by boardGOATS

Others soon started following though, and it wasn’t long before Ivory was posting his traditionally high opening score.  At his opening bid of forty-one there were lots of agonised groans, and with good cause as it turned out.  Three others were within three points of him and several others were not much further away.  Burgundy, Pink and Blue scored thirty-eight, thirty-nine and forty respectively, but despite recounts, nobody was quite able to catch Ivory.

– Image by boardGOATS

It had been a very good game and everyone had really enjoyed it, but time was marching on.  So once Lime and Ivory had taken their leave, the rest of the group moved on to Board Game Arena and after some debate, decided to play Saboteur.  This is a hidden traitor game that we have played quite a bit. The idea is that there are two teams: Lovely Loyal Dwarves and Nasty Evil Saboteurs.  The Dwarves are playing cards trying to find gold, while the Saboteurs are trying to stop them by pushing the tunnel in the wrong direction and breaking their tools.

– Image by boardGOATS

There is a bit of a flaw in the game, however.  In order to keep a level of ambiguity, the number of Saboteurs/Dwarves is always slightly vague.  In real life, this is done by drawing cards from a deck containing one more card than the number of players.  The problem is though, the swing of two players from the Saboteurs to the Dwarves means it goes from extremely difficult for the Saboteurs to nigh-on impossible.  This is particularly the case with the smaller numbers of players, six or seven, say.

– Image by boardGOATS

For this reason, we decided to see if we could include something from the Saboteur 2 expansion, to level things up.  Not wanting to introduce too much change too suddenly, we only included the “Selfish Dwarf”.  This basically gives one of the Dwarves a slightly different goal—while he is also digging for the treasure, he only wins the round if he is the one to actually find it.  At the start of the first round, it was immediately obvious that Green was a Saboteur—he is a natural Saboteur and we always assume he is anyhow, with or without evidence.  This time he was definitely a Saboteur, though and it quickly became apparent that Black was also a Saboteur.

– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com

It became apparent that something was amiss when Pink and Pine appeared to join them with even Purple behaving a little suspiciously.  Blue in particular was very confused as although nobody else knew it yet, she knew she was a saboteur (she checked several times just to be certain!), but there were already more Saboteurs than was possible given the number of players.  In the end, Pine decided to trust Blue and that put the final nail in the Dwarves attempts to find the wealth.  The Dwarves got nowhere close at all just heading endlessly south, which gave a rare victory for the Saboteurs, who turned out to be Pink, Green and Blue.

– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com

This was only the second win for the Saboteurs since we’ve been playing online, with the previous occasion being very recent, the last time we played the game, in fact.  The Saboteurs were very pleased with themselves and their efforts, and the Selfish Dwarf, who turned out to be Burgundy, had just got nowhere too.  The second round the Dwarves made much better progress from the start.  There was a little debate about where the gold was, but once they had concluded it was at the bottom they made a bit of a beeline towards it.  Somehow, things weren’t quite that simple though.

– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com

The Dwarves had a lot of misfortune with the cards they had and just as it looked like they might make it, they didn’t have the cards.  And then Pine put the boot in and that was that—two wins out of two for the Saboteurs who, this time, were Pine, Pink and Purple.  The game is played over three rounds with the winning team getting gold at the end of each round.  So with one round to go everyone felt sure that the Dwarves would be able to make up for it in the final round.

– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com

Once again, it became apparent early on that Pink was a Saboteur, third time in three rounds.  Despite his protestations (he always protests, Saboteur or not), Green was behaving very suspiciously and disappeared under a hail of broken tools as the Dwarves tried to limit the damage he could cause.  The real question was whether there was another Saboteur or not, and if there was, who was it?  Suspicion fell on Black thanks to the number of cards he was discarding and how generally unhelpful he was being, but nobody was quite certain.

– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com

In the end, the Dwarves simply ran out of cards—although they knew where they were going they didn’t quite make it giving the Evil saboteurs a completely unprecedented three wins from three with Pink winning all three rounds.  The question is, what caused it?  Well, it certainly was significant that in all three cases, the Dwarves were playing with the maximum quota.  It is possible that the Selfish Dwarf contributed slightly too, but Pink who seemed to be the architect of their success, afterwards said he felt that the Saboteurs did well because in each case he started his evil deeds early in the round instead of waiting.  It will be interesting to see if that works next time we Saboteur.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome:  Saboteurs really CAN win!