Author Archives: nannyGOAT

11th December 2012

This week, freezing fog, work and family commitments conspired to reduce our numbers to four, none of whom were there much before 8pm. So we kicked off straight away with the “Feature Game”, Alhambra, which is a tile laying game where players are architects, competing to build the greatest palace.

With two new players, the realisation came slowly that leading in the early stages is not necessarily significant and a lot can change in the final scoring. In the end, the game was really tight between three players with a surprising, small lead for the winner (who had no idea how it happened).

For some reason, Alhambra which should take less than an hour took nearly two, so we only managed the one other game, which was Thurn and Taxis.

This is a game that is often describes as “being a bit like Ticket to Ride“, however, in reality it’s nothing like it and probably has more in common with games like Elfenroads or Elfenland. This game was probably best characterised by frustration with people waiting patiently for cards they wanted only to see them shuffled away just as they turned up. This game was also quite close, but it was clear that acquiring high value tokens was the key which meant that having played the game before was a significant advantage.

Learning Outcome: Patience is a virtue, but having multiple strategies is more often rewarded…

Next Meeting – 11th December 2012

The next meeting is on Tuesday 11^th December playing shorter games from 7.30pm as people arrive, until 8pm when we will start something a little longer.

The “Feature Game” will be Alhambra, where players are architects, seeing who can build the greatest palace.

And talking of architects…

A man is flying in a hot air balloon and realizes he is lost. He reduces height and spots a man down below.

He lowers the balloon further and shouts down, “Excuse me, can you help me? I promised my friend I would meet him half an hour ago, but I don’t know where I am.”

The man below replies, “You’re in a hot air balloon, hovering 30 feet above this field between 40 & 41 degrees latitude and 120 and 124 degrees West longitude.”

“You must be an Architect,” says the balloonist.

“I am,” responds the man, “How did you know?”

“Well,” says the balloonist, “Everything you have told me is technically correct, but it’s of absolutely no use to me and I still don’t know where I am.”

The man retorts, “You must be a contractor.”

“Well yes,” replies the balloonist, “But how did you know?”

“Well”, says the man, “You don’t know where you are or where you’re going. You’ve made a promise that you can’t keep, but now you expect me to solve your problem. You’re in the same position as you were before we met, but now it’s my fault.”

27th Movember 2012

This week, some of the group turned up early to sample the food the pub offers (which was really rather good), and two people managed to squeeze in a very quick “learning game” of Mr. Jack Pocket before it arrived. Mr. Jack is an asymmetric two player game, that is to say, the protagonists have different goals. One plays “Mr. Jack” who is trying to escape, the other plays “The Investigator” who is trying to deduce who Mr. Jack is masquerading as. This version was the travel version, but is still just as much a brain burner as its big brother despite the diminutive size of the box.

Just as the diners finished, the others arrived giving us a total of five people who had braved the flood water. After a quick game sale, we started the “Feature Game”, Eketorp. This is a game where players attempt to gather resources to build their Viking stronghold on the Swedish island of Öland. In this game players try to second guess which resources the others don’t choose, with a battle and a potential extended stay in the hospital as the reward for failure.

Next, after some discussion we decided to play Citadels. Citadels is a role selection and city building game. Each round, players choose a role to aid them building their city, and each is called in turn to perform their turn. The first of these is the Assassin, then the Thief, then Magician, then the King etc. You have to be particularly careful of the first three, as (for example) the thief seemed to think royalty was a good target.

The last game was a very quick game called Dobble (aka “Spot It”), so we had several goes. There are lots of different ways to play this, but basically it is Snap, except that each card has more than one symbol. The idea is to call a correct match more often and faster than everyone else. Apparently every card has exactly one matching symbol, though a number of disbelievers amongst us felt the need to check…

Learning Outcome: Beware the magician who steals all your cards (though perhaps you deserve it if you set the example).

boardGOATS are now on Twitter and FaceBook

boardGOATS now has a FaceBook page and Twitter feed (@boardGOATS). Hopefully all updates to the website will now appear there too…

27th Movember 2012

Next meeting is on Tuesday 27^th November playing shorter games from 7.30pm as people arrive, until 8pm when we will start something a little longer.

The “Feature Game” will be Eketorp, where players build Viking strongholds upon the Swedish island of Öland.

And talking of Vikings…

A famous Viking explorer returned home from a voyage and found his name missing from the town register. His wife insisted on complaining to the local civic official who apologized profusely saying, “I must have taken Leif off my census.”

13th Movember 2012

This week there were only four of us so we took the oportunity to play something a little heavier. So, we started out as soon as everyone had arrived at 8pm. The game was very new, only released in the last couple of months, and called Snowdonia.

In this game, players are struggling to build a railway up Mount Snowdon fighting the mist, rain and navvies that keep running back to the pub. It was clearly quite a big advantage to have played the game before as the two players who were familiar with it ended up in a very tight race for first and second. However, the game is so finely balanced that one or two errors early on by the others probably had quite a large impact on the two front runners. Definitely a game to give another go sometime after it has had time to sink in.

We only had time for one other game, and that was the “Feature Game”, Bohnanza. This is a card trading and set collecting game where players are bean farmers. Most of us had played this before, but it is such a nice light game that keeps everyone involved throughout that it was a great way to end the evening. The final score had everyone within five points and the winner decided on a tie-break.

Learning Outcome: Sometimes, Snowdonia can be very sunny (but only in board games!).

30th October 2012

This week we had two new people, who arrived early, so we started the evening off with a quick four-player game of No Thanks! This is a very, very simple push-your-luck game with just a hint of strategy and probably one of the best games going for its size. The idea is that you turn over the first card in the stack and either take it or pay a chip. If you take it, you turn over the next card, if you pay, the decision passes to the next player; the person with the lowest number of points when the cards run out wins. The strategy comes because for runs of two or more cards, only the lowest counts, but unfortunately, someone removed nine cards from the deck at random… Just as we were finishing the first round, another player arrived, so as it is such a quick game we gave it another go.

Since it was gone 8pm, we decided to play the “Feature Game” which was The Great Balloon Race. This is a light hearted, relatively quick race game with quite a lot of luck, and (as it turns out) a lot of vendettas against certain colours with orange and blue being the most victimised. One of the really nice things about this game was the way that people at the back who felt they had no chance, were able to catch up and indeed win.

Next, there was some debate about what to play next and in the end we decided to play a fairly light card game, Boomtown. In this game, players are mining moguls who bid to win the first choice of the cards on offer. Winning the bidding has two consequences: you get first pick from the cards available, but you have to pay the other players what you bid. The game was won by an landslide and it turns out that winning the bid is not always best as it can be expensive as well as favouring the player to your left. Or was it right? Actually, it was probably both…

With five games something of a record, we managed to squeeze in a game of Snow Tails. This is a very pretty game of dog-sled racing, but the choice of game was possibly a mistake given the time, compounded by the fact that we used a more complex track than was wise, and we were playing with the full five players (three of whom were new to it). Basic numeracy proved to be something of a challenge and the “Big Paws” token changed hands several times as the dents in the sleds increased and the saplings took a beating. However, most people were in the lead at some point and in the final run for the line, everyone was within one turn or so of finishing the race.

Learning Outcome: Basic skills such as being able to add up and tell your left from your right can be really useful when mining, flying balloons, and especially driving dog-sleds!

Essen 2012

Essen is a small city in the industrial heartland on the River Ruhr. One of the less well known German cities, people are often surprised that it features in so many games.

The reason for this is a sort of in-joke: Essen is the home of the largest games fair in Europe and, arguably, the world, The Internationale Spieltage. Known by gamers simply as “Essen”, it runs for four days in October every year (18^th-21^st October 2012) and everyone who is anyone goes.

As well as all the major (and most of the minor) publishers, game designers and game illustrators, there are also thousands of people from all over the world who simply like playing board games. In 2012, there are nearly 750 exhibitors who will be selling and demonstrating their latest offerings to the nearly 147,000 visitors.

This year no-one from boardGOATS will be going, however, you can get a flavour of the event and an idea of some of the latest games by watching the live feed from the BoardGameGeek booth.

Here are some more games that feature Essen, can you recognise the games they are from?

16th October 2012

The first three people to arrive started off with a quick game of Incan Gold. This is a relatively short “push your luck” type game where players have to balance chance against increasingly high stakes and out-manoeuvre the other miners to end with the most gem stones in their tent.

Just as we finished playing, two more people walked through the door, so as it was 8 o’clock, we started the night’s “Feature Game”. This was Finstere Flure (aka Fearsome Floors), which is a silly, yet clever game that seemed to repeatedly catch us out. Everyone has a number of tokens each of which moves by a different amount with players trying to get from one side of the board to the other and escape from Fürst Fieso (The Monster). The clever part is that the monster is attracted to the nearest player and changes direction whenever his path takes him closer to someone else. This makes predicting his movement very difficult and led to much hilarity as the monster repeatedly caught and ate people (especially when they were very close to winning).

The final game of the night was Niagara and was quite tightly fought. This is a very unusual game where the central strip of the board is made of perspex disks that move, representing the river Niagara, moving at the end of every round. Players have two little boats that they use to travel up and down the river to collect gems, but beware – anything too close to the Falls risks a watery end.

Learning Outcome: Hard won gems can be just as easily lost when water, landslide, spiders or worst of all, thieving gamers are about!

2nd October 2012

The first meeting of boardGOATS was held on Tuesday 2^nd October. We kicked off at 8pm with a four player game of Jamaica (the evening’s “Feature Game“). Jamaica is a beautiful game where everyone gets to play at being pirates. So, there was plenty of raiding, pillaging, and general skull-duggery in what was a hard fought game, that ended up with a winning margin of 24 to 13.

– Image by BGG contributor ennio_lombardi

Next we played a closely contested, boat-based 6-player game called Abandon Ship. This is an unusual looking game where the aim is to prevent your rats from drowning as the S.S. Nvrsnks sinks. In our case three of the rats failed to make it.

– Image by BGG contributor binraix

The final game of the night continued the watery theme with Kai Piranja (also known as Somethin’ Fishy). This is a quick playing, light hearted, “press your luck” game, which (it turned out) some of us were good at and others very, very bad at indeed.

– Image by BGG contributor Carrotteer

Learning Outcome: Just because you can throw a ten or an explosion dice repeatedly at will, doesn’t mean you will be able to avoid your row of fish being eaten by sharks!