Author Archives: nannyGOAT

Essen 2013

Although Essen is a small German city in the industrial heartland on the River Ruhr, it is used by gamers to refer to the largest games fair in Europe and, arguably, the world, The Internationale Spieltage (which is held in Essen of course).  The fair runs for four days every year and everyone who is anyone goes.   As in most years, a lot of new and exciting games are released at the Fair.  This year, amongst other things, this includes an expansion for one of our favourite games, Keyflower.  The expansion is called Keyflower:  The Farmers and introduces animals to the game.  There are also expansions being released for Snowdonia and Tzolk’in:  The Mayan Calendar, both of which are excellent games and have been enjoyed by members of the group.  In addition to expansions to known games, there are (of course) lots of exciting new games, including Rockwell, Glass Road, Expedition: Northwest Passage, Amerigo and loads of others!  Those of us that are lucky enough to be going are sure to bring back some exciting new toys to play with over the next few weeks.

Essen

Next Meeting – 22nd October 2013 – WEEK CHANGE!

In order to help one of our members come more regularly, we are switching weeks. So, rather than miss two weeks, we thought we would meet on consecutive weeks instead.  Following the fire at the Jockey, our next meeting on Tuesday 22nd October will be held in a private house in Stanford.  Please get in touch if you would like to come along and need directions.  As usual, we will be playing shorter games from 7.30pm as people arrive, until 8pm when we will start something a little longer.

This week the “Feature Game” will be Tsuro, which is fast and simple game where players take turns to lay tiles to extend the paths of their own stone trying to keep it on the board longer than anyone else.  However, as the board fills up this becomes increasingly difficult as there are fewer empty spaces left, fewer tiles to choose from and another player’s tile may take your stone in a direction you’d rather not go…

Tsuro

And talking of stones…

Jeff was on a tour visiting Ireland and on the last day they arrived at the site of the famous Blarney Stone.   Now, the tour guide was a very attractive young blond and Jeff was desperate to catch her eye and had been making a bit of a nuisance of himself all week.

“Good luck will be following you all your days, if you kiss the Blarney Stone,” the guide explained. “Unfortunately, it’s being cleaned today and so no one will be able to kiss it, but perhaps you can come back tomorrow.”

“We can’t be here tomorrow,” Jeff responded, “We are going home.”

“Well now,” the young lady said, “It is said that if you kiss someone who has kissed the stone, you’ll have the same good fortune.”

Jeff really thought his luck was in now, “And I suppose you’ve kissed the stone?” he replied enthusiastically.

“No,” she answered without missing a beat, “But I’ve sat on it…”

15th October 2013

We had a change of location for the evening which meant that one of our younger members could join us for the first couple of games of the evening.  So, while we were waiting for people to arrive, we had a couple of quick “warm-up” games of Dobble.  Clearly most of us needed quite a lot of warming up as we seemed to spend a huge amount of time staring blankly at cards, leaving the door open for bit of a white-wash.

Dobble

The next game was our Feature Game, Zooloretto. This is a cute little game based on the same set collecting mechanic as the card game, Coloretto (which we’ve played a few times before).  The idea is that on their turn, players draw an animal tile from a bag and place it on a truck.  There are the same number of trucks as there are players, and each truck will hold a maximum of three tiles.  When a player sees a truck they like, instead of drawing a tile, they can take that truck and add the animals on it to their zoo.  The snag is, only one sort of animal can go in each pen (to prevent a massacre apparently) and each zoo only has three pens, but there are a lot of different animal types!  Any animals that don’t have a pen, have to go into storage in the barn.  Instead of drawing tiles and adding them to a truck, you can also pay money to expand your zoo, or to move animals about or even buy one off another player.  Players score points for full, or very nearly full pens, and negative points for each different animal type in they have in the barn at the end of the game.  So, the trick is to set up a nice full truck with animals on it that only you want an hope nobody else pinches it.  Apart from Blue who finished a long way behind the rest, the game was really quite close, second, third and fourth finished within a point and the winner was only a few points clear.

Zooloretto

We were all quite tired so we decided to go for just one more, familiar game and an early night, so we picked Ticket to Ride.  We’d all played this many times before so we only needed a quick clarification of the specific rules for the Europe version (Only one face up loco? – Yes; Locos can be used anywhere? – Yes!  And don’t forget about stations and tunnels…) and then we were off collecting train cards.  Black was the first person to claim a route and went for the six-card line from Palermo to Smyrna.  Unfortunately, since it was a ferry it needed two locomotive cards so Black had to think again and picked up the train card he needed instead.  Out of fairness, since we hadn’t mentioned ferries in the summary, instead of claiming the route, Green gave Black another chance (which he took).  The rest of us were less sympathetic however and over the next couple of turns, the area around Italy, Greece and the Balkans filled up rapidly and Green, struggled valiantly, but ultimately unsuccessfully to make the connections he needed and ended up resorting to using stations.

Ticket to Ride: Europe

Meanwhile, Red was trying to get from Erzurum to Købenavn and Blue was trying to get from Edinburgh to Athena via Berlin.  Blue was the first to pick up more tickets, quickly followed by Green and eventually red, however, Black kept on claiming routes and before long was well in the lead with only two trains remaining.  Everyone scrabbled to get as many points as they could from the cards they had in their hand before the final recount and scoring of tickets.  Green (who won Zooloretto) came off worst as not only had he been forced to use stations, he also struggled to complete some of his tickets and was left ruing his kindness early in the game.  Black and Blue tied for the European express bonus given for the longest continuous set of trains and the difference between them came down to tickets which gave Blue the win with 122 points (and made up for her terrible game of Zooloretto!).

Ticket to Ride: Europe

Learning Outcome:  You can lose spectacularly at one game then win at the next, or vice versa.

Next Meeting – 15th October 2013

Following the fire at the Jockey, our next meeting on Tuesday 15th October will be held in a private house in Stanford.  Please get in touch if you would like to come along and would like directions.  As usual, we will be playing shorter games from 7.30pm as people arrive, until 8pm when we will start something a little longer.

This week the “Feature Game” will be Zooloretto, which is a set collection and “zoo building” game where each player uses their cute animals to attract as many visitors as possible to their zoo.

Zooloretto

And talking of zoos…

Jeff was delivering 500 penguins to London Zoo, however, as he entered the city, his truck broke down.

After about 3 hours waiting for help, he flagged-down another truck and offered the driver £5,000 to take the penguins to the zoo for him.

The next day, Jeff was driving through London when he saw the same truck driver crossing the road with 500 penguins walking in single file behind him.

Furious, Jeff jumped out of his truck and asked, “What on earth’s going on? I gave you £5,000 to take these penguins to London Zoo!”

The truck driver replied, “I took them to the zoo, and I had enough money left over so now we’re going to the cinema…”

boardGOATS Get Thirsty!

So, we still haven’t been able to arrange our special group outing to the Oxford’s first boardgame café, the Thirsty Meeples.  However, individually, we’ve been unable to resist its lure and one by one, we have been visiting. One of the GOATS went along for during their “Week of Wonder”, and managed to snag a game of Relic Runners with its designer Matthew Dunstan.  Actually, he enjoyed it so much that he managed a sneak a second game…

Another couple of GOATS made it on Saturday evening and played Mr. Jack in New York and Carcassonne:  The Castle.  This was also a memorable event thanks to a power cut that closed all the other businesses in central Oxford, including the Cinema.  It left only the Thirsty Meeples open in the whole of Gloucester Green, thanks to its particularly effective emergency lighting.

All visitors were very impressed and resolved to visit again soon.

Thirsty Meeples

1st October 2013

As our first birthday is on October 2nd, we decided to make the evening a little bit of a celebration of the year.  The first game we played was our “Feature Game”, which this week was the most popular game that hasn’t been a “Feature Game” and that is Dobble.  So we started out with a couple of quick rounds while we waited for people to arrive.

Dobble

Next up we decided to play another relatively light and quick game, Indigo.  This is a really pretty abstract game, that is extremely easy to teach.  Basically, you have a hand of a single hexagonal tile, and on your turn you play it anywhere on the board that does not already have a tile.  If your tile has a extends the route of one of the coloured glass stones, you move that stone along the path.  The aim of the game is to navigate as many of the stones to your gates.  The clever part is that gates can be owned by one or two people depending on the number of players, so there is a nice interplay between helping yourself and teamwork.  The stones are also worth different numbers of points, so you need to balance the compromise between value and quantity.  The game was quite tight, however, Red managed to extend her unbeaten run with a draw with White.

Indigo

We couldn’t wait any longer and, decided it was time for Cake!  After a quick rendition of “Happy Birthday to Us”, we attacked the really rather excellent chocolate cake and Meeple Biscuits (kindly provided by Tessa Edwards).  Then it was time for the next game…

Cake!

…And that was Stimmt So!  This is a game that we’ve been on the brink of playing many times, but with the same basic mechanism as Alhambra, we’ve always ended up playing that instead.  Basically, on their turn, players can do one of two things:  buy shares, or collect money.  Shares can only be bought in the correct currency, however, and if players pay for them with exactly the right amount of money they get another turn otherwise they don’t get any change.  There are two scoring opportunities during the game, and one at the end, and players score for having the most shares in each market.  Blue was too busy shuffling to pay much attention to the rules, so started out just buying everything she could.  Meanwhile, Red and Green tried to carve out a strong position in the most lucrative companies.  At the first scoring round, Green lost out to Red and Blue (who had by now realised what she was supposed to be doing) held her own with a large number of holdings in the less valuable stocks.  By the second scoring Green was still struggling and the situation only got worse in the final round.  Points are given for the lowest value companies first where Blue had the majority and she romped ahead with Green picking up some of the second place points.  As the more lucrative shares were counted Red galloped round the board, but somehow Blue just maintained her lead.

Stimmt So!

The final game of the evening was an old favourite that we’ve played a few times before:   Die Speicherstadt.  This is a really fun auction game, that somehow doesn’t really feel like an auction game.  A number of cards are placed on the board and players have three meeples to bid with.  They take it in turns to choose which cards they would like to buy, by placing their meeples in rows above the cards they want.  The person who who placed their meeple above a card first gets the first refusal, however, it costs the same number of coins as there are meeples above the card.  Thus, placing first can be a good thing if you have enough money to back it up, but money is very scarce.  The cards could be contracts (that give points at the end if fulfilled), ships containing goods (that enable players to fulfil contracts), firemen (which help score points if there is a fire in the warehouse), merchants (which can sell goods for a better price), or buildings (which give points or occasionally money by some other means).  Blue made a pretty poor fist of it right from the word go paying far too much for the warehouse despite the fact that she had picked up a load of merchant cards in the first round.  White was very late getting contracts, but lost out in a scrap with Purple for firemen cards.  Purple ran out the clear winner with four fulfilled contracts to add to his fire points giving a total of 39 points – almost falling off the end of the scoring track!  White and Blue tied for second, but some way behind.

The Speicherstadt

We ended the evening with a little chat about the Spiel at Essen which some of us are thinking of going to this year, oh, and of course, some more of the really rather tasty cake!

Learning Outcome:  There is only one thing as bad as not going for firemen, and that’s going for firemen and losing.

Next Meeting – 1st October 2013

Following the fire at the Jockey, our next meeting on Tuesday 1st October will be held in a private house in Stanford.  Please get in touch if you would like to come along and would like directions.  As usual, we will be playing shorter games from 7.30pm as people arrive, until 8pm when we will start something a little longer.

As it is our birthday, we have decided to make the “Feature Game” the most popular game that hasn’t been featured to date and that is Dobble (which is basically “Snap”, but brilliant as a filler when you are waiting for people to arrive).

Dobble

And talking of birthdays…

It was Jeff’s girlfriend’s birthday and he had no idea what to give her.

He spent ages trying to come up with a good present, but in the end in desperation he asked her.

Now Jeff likes girls with expensive tastes, so when asked, she replied, “Oh I don’t know, just give me something with diamonds.”

Unfortunately, Jeff bought her a pack of playing cards…

Week of Wonder at Thirsty Meeples

The shiny new Oxford Games Cafe, Thirsty Meeples, which opened over the Summer, is holding a “Week of Wonder”.  To mark the imminent release of Relic Runners from Days of Wonder, Thirsty Meeples will be showcasing previous releases from Days of Wonder, with a different game each day.  Then, over the weekend, visitors to the café will have the first opportunity to play Days of Wonder’s new game, Relic Runners, ahead of its worldwide launch.

Relic Runners

The English designer, Matthew Dunstan, will be at Thirsty Meeples on Saturday and Sunday to introduce people to his game and teach them how to play. On Sunday morning Matthew will also be giving a talk on Relic Runners, the design process and working with Days of Wonder, plus there will be more promotions and giveaways, including a limited number of signed copies of Relic Runners.