Author Archives: nannyGOAT

Next Meeting, 23rd January 2024

Our next meeting will be on Tuesday 23^rd January 2024. As usual, we will start playing shorter games from 7.30pm as people arrive, until 8pm when we will start something a little longer. The pub is doing food, and the table is booked from 6.30pm for those that would like to eat first.

This week, the “Feature Game” will be the Kittens module from the Kittens + Beasts expansion to The Isle of Cats (rules, review and How to Play video). The Isle of Cats is a tile laying game where players are trying to rescue cats and place them on their ship while scoring points for completing Lessons. The Kittens module (expansion overview and How to Play video) adds cute little kitties that the fastest player can rescue instead of fully grown cats, but being smaller are more flexible and two can be rescued at a time.

– Image by boardGOATS

And speaking of Cats…

Jeff was at the cinema watching the new release of Jane Austin’s “Emma”, when he noticed what looked like a cat sitting next to him.

“Are you a cat?” asked Jeff, surprised.

“Yes,” the cat replied.

“What are you doing at the cinema?” asked Jeff.

“Well,” replied the cat, “I liked the book…”

9th January 2024

Blue and Pink were just finishing their supper when Pine arrived, soon followed by Cobalt. There was a lot of discussion about the road closure to the A420 (due to an accident) and whether this would delay those coming from the west, but Jade, Plum, Sapphire and Byzantium soon arrived with their tales of countryside detours in the dark. Inevitably, that led to more stories of road closures due to accidents and flooding, and the horror-show that driving anywhere has been over the last week or so. With almost everyone present, with more proactivity than usual, the group split into three, with two tables playing the “Feature Game“, the Landmarks expansion to the 2022 Spiel de Jahres winner, Cascadia.

– Image by boardGOATS

Cascadia is one of the group’s most popular tile laying games. The mechanisms of the base game are simple enough: on their turn, players take a Habitat Tile/Animal pair from the market and add them to their territory. The Habitat Tile can be placed anywhere, but the Animal Token must be placed on a Habitat Tile which depicts that Animal. The market is then replenished back to four pairs until the Tile pile is depleted and the game ends. The Tiles and Animals are drawn and paired at random, and players have to take the prearranged pair, they cannot freely mix and match unless they have a Nature Token, which they can spend to either change all the Animals, or to take an Animal from a different pair.

– Image by boardGOATS

Nature tokens are rewards for adding animals to Keystone Habitat Tiles, which, in general, are more difficult to fill because they can only hold one animal type (other tiles can take two or three). While the mechanism is quite simple, the guts of the game is in the scoring. Players score for each of the five Animals, Bears, Elk, Foxes, Salmon and Eagles, but the clever part is that the way each of these scores depends on which card is drawn at random from each of the five Animal decks. Thus, the game plays very differently depending on the combination of Animal scoring cards drawn.

– Image by boardGOATS

In addition to animal scoring, players also score one point for each tile in their largest corridor of each of the five Terrain types, as well as earning bonuses if their largest area is the largest overall. The Landmarks expansion consists of three new modules, one which increases the the potential player count, one which adds more variety to the scoring (more Animal scoring cards) and finally, the titular Landmarks. The first of these adds a Personal Market of five Habitat Tile/Animal pairs for each player to give them something to think about (and potentially play) between turns. This can be played at lower player counts, but is essential in larger numbers as it reduces perceived downtime.

– Image by boardGOATS

The second module is simply some more scoring cards, which adds more variety, but also a little more complexity as some of these are slightly more challenging to work with. The final module, the Landmarks, changes things a little more. These can be added to a Habitat Tile when the once the area of Terrain is large enough (spreads over five tiles or more). These Landmarks also come with a choice of the available cards (drawn at random) which give bonus points at the end of the game, for example, for every Bear in the player’s Forests. Each player can only build one Landmark on each Terrain type, and because the Landmarks occupy space, players start the game with one additional Keystone Tile.

– Image by boardGOATS

Blue, Pink, Plum, Black and Lime played with all three modules, making a point of choosing scoring cards from the expansion. In contrast, although the Personal Market can be used for any player count, the four on the other table, Jade, Byzantium, Sapphire and Pine, only added the Landmarks module, choosing scoring cards solely from the base game. Jade et al. got going first and were four or five rounds in before Blue’s Crew had even started, as the latter had more rules to cover and were a little later to start as they were too busy gossiping. On the other hand, despite the fact that there were a lot of rules queries, at least they mostly got them right, in contrast, to the little rules malfunction on the other table.

– Image by boardGOATS

The rules for the Landmarks state that players may take a Landmark when they add their fifth or tile to a Terrain, or any subsequent addition, whereas Jade, Byzantium, Sapphire and Pine played that the Landmark had to be taken when the fifth Terrain Tile is added. It was just a very little thing, but actually had quite a large knock-on effect. The problem was, if a Landmark is added to a Keystone Tile, then players don’t get the Nature token. Worse, in some cases, players were taking Landmarks when the cards weren’t in-line with their strategy, just because they had to.

– Image by boardGOATS

As the games progressed, both groups realised that taking Landmarks can really restrict a player’s options, especially towards the end of the game when things can get very tight. And forcing players to take unhelpful Landmarks just exacerbated this effect and meant some Terrains were stuck at four just to avoid some of the issues. The games both progressed quite merrily, however. Blue concentrated on a mixture of Animals and Terrain, going for Landmarks early in the proceedings. Plum, misunderstood and didn’t realise that players scored a point for each tile in their largest Terrain, so she concentrated on Animals, but did very well with her Terrain anyhow, by virtue of trying to get bonus points for having the largest areas.

– Image by boardGOATS

Pink asked a lot of questions and got a bit confused between when he could add Landmarks and when he could take tiles from his Personal Market. So, he ended up concentrating on Foxes instead, “as he was a foxy sort of fellow” (and there aren’t any Pandas in the game). Black meanwhile collected Elk, but all-round concentrated on animals rather than Terrain. Lime commented, “Birds are difficult to understand, so I’m not going to bother with them; if I score at the end of the evening, so be it…” though he probably didn’t mean it to come out quite like that! On the other table, Sapphire was collecting Elk, and Byzantium was focussing on Eagles while Pine concentrated on building his Terrain and Jade capitalised on the Landmarks.

– Image by boardGOATS

With or without the Landmarks expansion, Cascadia is a little bit of a “multi-player solitaire” game, that is to say, players can mostly quietly get on with their own thing without upsetting each others’ plans. However, with Blue, Black and Plum all having a full set of five salmon, Pink and Lime struggled to get the last few they needed. In the four-player base game, all the tiles and therefore all the animals are used and Lime hadn’t realised the expansion added more tiles, some of which had been removed and therefore, there was no guarantee that any of the lovely juicy salmon left in the bag were going to come out. And much to Lime’s chagrin, so it proved, as he was left one short of the full set at the end of the game.

– Image by boardGOATS

The five-player game, despite starting later and having the extra player, finished at much the same time as the four-player game, demonstrating how the new mechanism in the Landmarks expansion really does speed the game up. Despite the perceived, increased challenge associated with the new Landmark scoring cards, the five-player game was generally more highly scoring, with the Blue and Plum sharing victory, tied on a hundred and seven points (some fifteen more than Black in third) and tied on the tie-breaker too. The other game was much closer, with a spread of just eleven points and with Pine finishing in first place with ninety-nine, only two points ahead of Byzantium who was the runner up.

– Image by boardGOATS

All in all, both groups liked the base game and enjoyed the game with the Landmarks expansion. The group playing with all three Landmarks modules felt it was much more of a struggle, though both groups felt the Landmarks didn’t give all that many points unless you knew what you were going for and were able to really make them count. Certainly, adding lots of Landmarks made things very difficult at the end of the game causing players to reject Animal Tokens, so although the rules say add an extra Terrain Tile, there was some discussion regarding the merits of “house ruling” the addition of a second in future, to encourage people to build Landmarks.

– Image by boardGOATS

Meanwhile, on the next table, Ivory had enticed Cobalt, Purple and Teal to play his new Christmas acquisition, Lost Ruins of Arnak. It turns out that he wasn’t the only person in the group to receive this game over the holidays—Green had also been given a copy and would no doubt have been keen to play had he been able to come. The game is set on an uninhabited island where explorers have found traces of a great civilization. Players lead an expedition to explore the island, find lost artifacts, and face fearsome guardians in a quest to learn the island’s secrets.

– Image by boardGOATS

The game combines deck-building and worker placement with resource management. Players start with six cards in their deck, two Money, two Compasses and two Fear cards, and draw five to play. As in the original deck-builder, Dominion, or in the racing games, Flamme Rouge and Snow Tails, Fear cards clog up players’ decks and more are acquired as the game progresses. But also as in Dominion, there are ways to “exile” cards during the game. So, players can try to keep a tight deck with minimal cards, or try to buy lots of cards that work well together. Players then have two meeples each that can be sent to locations on the map, to either discover or use an action Location. These generally give Resources plus some additions like draw a card, or gain a Fear card etc.. Each new site also has a Creature guarding it, which, if beaten, will give points and a small one-time bonus.

– Image by boardGOATS

The Research Track is where players spend three of the resources, Tablets, Arrows and Jewels. Each player has two tokens which move up the same track giving different rewards as it ascends. Thematically, you can’t write stuff in the notebook until you find it with your magnifying glass, so the former can never overtake the latter on the track. And of course, the notebook gives cooler rewards. Players get one action each per turn, until everyone has passed and the game finishes after five rounds. At the end of the game, Points are awarded for Cards, for progress on the Research Track, for discovering Locations and for beating Creatures; the player with the most points at the end is the winner.

– Image by boardGOATS

The first round was very slow as there was only limited spaces to go and everyone had weak cards in hand. Purple, Cobalt and Teal all focused on building up resources and buying tool cards for future rounds where Ivory did something a little different and started progressing along the Research Track as well as opening up new Dig sites. The issue with this was that he picked up a Fear card, though fortunately he had already got rid of one of his initial Fear cards through the site he opened so there was no net negative effect. In the second round, things picked up and strategies started to become apparent.

– Image by boardGOATS

Cobalt continued to focus on getting Tools, especially ones that allowed him to draw extra cards (and hence allowed additional actions) and he started making headway on the Research Track and was first to unlock an Assistant. He also did a little exploring, but did not overcome the Guardian. Ivory wasn’t far behind on the Research Track and also continued to explore new areas (and this time overcome the Guardian) and make up for lost ground in getting tool cards. Teal went for a very different strategy and started to focus purely on exploring and overcoming Guardians, netting him three points for exploring and gaining the idol and five points for overcoming the Guardian. Purple, on the other hand, continued to focus mainly on building her supply of resources.

– Image by boardGOATS

The third round continued in much the same vein with everyone continuing to pick up Tools and starting to gain Artifacts. Ivory focused almost exclusively on the Research Track and was able to catch Cobalt and had picked up all the bonuses, while both unlocked their second assistant. Teal was continuing his exploring strategy to great effect, whilst Purple continued to bide her time building up resources, including a significant amount of Rubies (the most valuable resource). And so it continued into the next round too, except Cobalt began spending his Compasses on Artifacts while Ivory continued to hoard them for the last round.

– Image by boardGOATS

And it was in the final round that Ivory’s plan became apparent as, in true Ivory style, he used all his Compasses to explore a level two Dig Site. Hitherto, exploration had been limited to level one sites and Ivory was the first to explore a higher level, thinking this would be a fun thing to do. In the end, this ironically might have been the critical move that influenced the outcome of the game. The level two site gave Ivory valuable resources, helping him complete the Research Track just after Cobalt and also overcome the newly uncovered Guardian. With two idols on a level two site, this gave Ivory eleven points.

– Image by boardGOATS

Teal continued with his strategy and also explored a level two site and began moving along the Research Track too. Purple used all her carefully collected resources and make a late dash to the top of the Research Track, gaining valuable points. It should be said the whole work placement element of the game felt very tight with limited spaces at the start and then difficulty knowing whether to take the optimal route planning cards first, but potentially missing out on a valuable space to other players, or taking the sub-optimal route and placing your workers first guaranteeing the activity, but at a cost of efficiency.

– Image by boardGOATS

Everyone got blocked at some point (except perhaps Teal who was opening up new sites), and certainly towards the end of the game everyone wished they had more than two workers! Teal with his explore/overcome Guardian strategy led to him defeating a very impressive impressive six Guardians and gave him a total of sixty-eight points. In the end, however, the fact Ivory completed the Research Track and was also able to explore and overcome Guardians gave him the victory by just three points with a winning total of seventy-one. It was a very good game though, one greatly enjoyed by all involved.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: Now we know what Bears do in the Woods!

Boardgames in the News: Role-playing Climate Resilience

It was nearly ten years ago that Stuart West, a Professor of Evolutionary Biology in the Department of Zoology, Oxford, used playing board games as a teaching tool to understand evolution and published his results in the prestigious scientific journal, Nature.¹ Now, Matt Leacock‘s new game, Daybreak has been reviewed in the journal Science.²

– Image from amazon.com

Matt Leacock is best known for the cooperative game, Pandemic. However, while thirty of his forty-seven published games are cooperative (including the well popular Forbidden Games series), he has also been instrumental in the innovation of legacy games, co-designing both the Pandemic Legacy series of games and the recent Ticket to Ride Legacy: Legends of the West.

– Image from amazon.com

Daybreak is cooperative game about climate action where players controls a world power, Europe, the United States, China, and the Majority World, each of which has different energy demand and sources, emissions, resilience, and vulnerable populations. The idea is that players deploy policies and technologies to deal with the engine of global heating and to try to build resilient societies that protect people from life-threatening crises.

– Image from amazon.com

The author of the article is Science‘s books and culture editor, Valerie Thompson who concludes that the trade-offs in the game reflect those seen in real life. Most importantly, however, where climate change is concerned, we only stand a chance if we work together.

¹ West, S., Nat. (2015), 528, 192; doi:10.1038/528192a.
² Thompson, V., Science. (2023), 382(6673), 890; doi:10.1126/science.adl4244.

Next Meeting, 9th January 2024

Our first meeting of the New Year will be on Tuesday 9^th January 2024. As usual, we will start playing shorter games from 7.30pm as people arrive, until 8pm when we will start something a little longer. The pub is doing food, and the table is booked from 6.30pm for those that would like to eat first.

This week, the “Feature Game” will be Cascadia: Landmarks (rules, review and How to Play video), the new expansion to one of the group’s favourite tile laying games, the 2022 Spiel de Jahres winner, Cascadia. This adds more players and additional end game scoring opportunities as well as more scoring cards and habitat tiles.

– Image by boardGOATS

Speaking of landmarks…

Jeff was on a flight over Arizona on a clear day and the pilot was providing his passengers with a running commentary about the landmarks they were passing.

“Coming up on the right, you can see the Meteor Crater, which is a major tourist attraction in northern Arizona. It was formed when a lump of nickel and iron, roughly a hundred and fifty feet in diameter and weighing three hundred thousand tons, struck the earth at about forty thousand miles an hour, scattering white-hot debris for miles in every direction. The hole measures nearly a mile across and is nearly six hundred feet deep.”

Jeff turned to the passenger next to him and excitedly exclaimed, “Wow! And it only just missed the highway too…!”

31st December 2023

First to arrive, on the dot of 7pm, were Purple and Black together with Black’s mum, Sable. So they got the dubious honour of setting up the PitchCar track for the “Feature Game”. They chose one of the standard tracks from the second Extension (number five, which includes the tunnel from the first extension), and re-christened it, “Purple’s Hatch”. They hadn’t finished setting up when Jade arrived as a scout on behalf of the party from Swindon, checking they’d got the right house. In due course, Sapphire, Plum and Byzantium found their way round the back, eventually followed by Pine making a total of ten, and leaving so many shoes by the back door that it looked like a millipede was visiting.

– Image by boardGOATS

Over picky bits (Devils-on-Horseback, Pigs-in-Blankets, crisps, crudites and dips), the group began playing PitchCar. A simple race game, starting with the player at the front, players take it in turns to flick their wooden puck-car. The first player to cross the finish line after a set number of laps (in this case, two), is the winner. If a player “offs it” or finishes wheel-side up, they go back to where they were (losing stroke and distance), however, if they knock someone else, the victim gains the distance, regardless of where they land or whether they are rolled. To decide the order on the grid, there was a flick off, which was won by Sable on her debut.

– Image by boardGOATS

Unfortunately, although Sable started really well with a super-flick to give her pole position, she was soon over-taken as her inexperience told. In fact, starting at the front of the grid seemed to be a bit of a poison chalice this time, and Purple who started second and Plum who started third were also quickly overtaken by the rest of the field. Amid the mayhem, Byzantium started fourth and somehow remained in fourth place for pretty much the whole race. Similarly, Jade started in sixth and gained a single place finishing just behind him. The battle for the lead was therefore between Pine, Black and Sapphire the latter two starting from the very back of the grid.

– Image by boardGOATS

At the half-way point, Sapphire had the lead with Black in second and Pine in third, but by the end of the second lap, Black had caught and passed Sapphire to take the chequered flag, soon followed by Sapphire and Pine. The rest of the pack eventually all crossed the line, with Purple, some way behind who suddenly started playing brilliantly after everyone else had finished, ending the game with the longest and best distance past the finish line. By then, food was pretty much ready, so everyone engaged in the close-packing problem of re-packing PitchCar into its flight cases before settling down for Moroccan themed stews served with couscous, millet, roast cauliflower, meatballs and bread.

– Image by boardGOATS

After tea there was a bit of chatter, but with an hour or so to midnight, Pink was keen to play one of his favourite party games, Ca$h ‘n Guns. This is a silly game where players are a mafia gang dividing up their ill-gotten gains by playing a variant on “Chicken“. After loading their guns with either blanks or live bullets, on a count-down from the Godfather, players simultaneously point their foam guns at each other. The Godfather then gives another countdown, after which, people can back out, avoiding any bullets, but also withdrawing their claim to the loot for the round. The remaining players reveal their bullet cards and anyone still standing after the shoot-out takes their share of the loot. The player with the most after eight rounds is the winner.

– Image by boardGOATS

Pink started off as the Godfather, but soon lost that advantage and discovered that although people don’t gang up on the Mafia Leader, it’s shocking how they turn on you once you are no longer in power. Black began building his art collection, until people spotted that was what he was trying to do, and then targeted him as well. He was the first to be knocked out, taking his third and final hit in the penultimate round, round seven. Sapphire soon followed and was taken out in the final round—it later became apparent that was not something he was going to forget quickly! Purple and Pink amassed substantial totals, enough to give them second and third respectively.

– Image by boardGOATS

It was Pine, however, who won by a bit of a landslide, though. He was helped along by the Gem Dealer bonus of $60,000, however, which made the majority of the difference between him and Purple, though he would have just pipped her to mafia-stardom without it. By this time, it was just ten minutes to midnight, so Pink went to find the champagne (generously supplied by Jade), while everyone else packed away the foam firearms. The GOATS countdown to midnight was slightly off compared to Jools Holland (who was on iPlayer and therefore lagging behind somewhat) and everyone toasted the new year and remembered those who were not able to be with us (in particular Green, Lilac, Lime and Burgundy). Plum marked new year by fighting her way into the chocolate piñata with a ladle.

– Image by boardGOATS

Blue and Plum stood outside on the step watching for fireworks, but although they heard some, there was a disappointing lack spectacle. At the time, they thought they had just missed them, but it later turned out that this was at least in part due to anonymous, slightly threatening letters, from someone worried about their pooch. Eventually, Plum and Blue gave up and came in from the cold and everyone played a mad and quite random game of 6 Nimmt! together as the first game of 2024. In this game, everyone simultaneously chooses and then reveals a card from their hand. In order from lowest to highest, these cards are then added to the four rows in the centre of the table.

– Image by boardGOATS

Each card is added to the row that ends in the highest value card that is still lower than the card played. The addition of this card makes the row longer—if it is the sixth card added, the owner takes the first five into their scoring pile. Each card has a number of Bulls Heads (or “Nimmts”) on it, and the aim of the game is to be the player with the fewest. Normally we play two rounds, but with so many players, we played one round with everyone starting with ten cards. This turned out to be a strange combination of very random and slightly predictable as players could count cards, and it would probably have been better to start with hands of nine instead.

– Image by boardGOATS

Jade and Purple competed for the highest score, but both lost out when the wooden spoon went to Black. Blue and Pink did well only picking up five Nimmts apiece, while Pine did slightly better with four. The clear winner was Plume, however, who somehow managed to avoid picking up any Nimmts at all, and on her first try too. As the evening wound up, there was a lot of gentle chatter, nibbling of chocolate and sweets, and finishing off drinks, before everyone eventually headed off to their beds having given 2024 a very warm welcome.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: GOATS can party like it’s 1999 every year.

Next Meeting, 31st December 2023

Following the success of the previous New Year parties, we are having another one this year on Tuesday 31^st December. As it is New Year’s Eve we will be meeting at a private house in Stanford and starting at 7pm with food later.

The plan is to start off early with the “Feature Game”, which, as has become traditional, will be the gorgeous, dexterity car-racing game, PitchCar. After that, we will be eating, playing more games and watching the village fireworks at midnight as we can’t be bothered to set off our own!

– Image by boardGOATS

And talking of cars…

It was a Sunday afternoon, and like many fathers before him, Jeff was washing the car with his son. After a moment, his son asked, “Do you think we could use a sponge instead?”

Golden GOAT Award Winners – 2023

The boardGOATS love a good party, so once again, they met just before Christmas for their annual Un-Christmas Dinner and to decide the winners of the GOAT Awards. After food, crackers and writing GOAT Christmas Cards, the group voted for two awards: the Golden GOAT for our favourite game played during the year and the “GOAT Poo” award for our least favourite. Everyone had the usual three points to hand out for the Golden GOAT Award (plus a bonus if wearing Festive Attire), though a maximum of two points could be given to any individual game. Everyone could also nominate up to two individual games for the GOAT Poo Prize.

– Image by boardGOATS

This year, there were a handful of games that received the unofficial “Marmite Award”, that is to say they received nominations for both the Golden GOAT and the GOAT Poo prizes. These included Challengers!, Kites and SCOUT. For the GOAT Poo Prize itself, this year there were no outstanding candidates, with a tie between 2019 winner 7 Wonders and Dice Hospital, with two votes each. Nominations for “Moment of the Year included the game of Challengers!, which was likened to “Speed Dating”, and the massacre in Survive: Escape from Atlantis!, but the winner was the three way tie in the epic game of Tapestry with the Fantasies & Futures expansion.

– Image by boardGOATS

And finally, there was the Golden GOAT Award for the best game played in the year. Previous winners including Wingspan and 6 Nimmt! were ruled out, but there were plenty of options remaining. Earth, Fantastic Factories, SCOUT and Zoo Break all received three votes, but the clear winner was Tapestry. Over the years, we’ve played this quite a bit, but it is a game that doesn’t suit a significant number of the group. This year, however, with a slight shift in those eligible to vote, heavier games were in with a better chance and Tapestry was the beneficiary. We will have to make sure it gets another outing in the new year.

– Image by boardGOATS

19th December 2023

It was party time so everyone was arrived early for the Un-Christmas Dinner—everyone that is, but Blue and Pink who eventually arrived armed with piles of Christmas crackers, party poppers, tree decorations, Christmas cards, raffle prizes, GOAT Award ballot papers, mince pies and festive cake. Opening the crackers was a necessity before food arrived to avoid the bits landing in people’s supper, so when food arrived, it nestled amongst all sorts of gaming detritus. As the staff at The Jockey served pizzas, pies, baguettes, cheese with crudités, burgers and chips, gamers called out the awful GOATy jokes from the crackers.

– Image by boardGOATS

During the interval between main courses and dessert, GOAT Award voting forms and Christmas cards were handed out and people began thinking about the games we’ve played over the year. Ivory collected Christmas Cards and Green collated the ballots before he announced the winners. The GOAT Poo prize, for the worst game of the year went Dice Hospital when 7 Wonders was relegated as a previous winner. The Golden GOAT went to Tapestry, while the epic three-way tie in Tapestry won “Moment of the Year”. With the formalities and food finally complete, there was just the raffle, a copy of Carcassonne: Winter Edition and the Ukraine Map, which were won by Sapphire, then everyone abandoned the carnage (and Purple who helped clean up), to play something festive.

– Image by boardGOATS

There was a bit of the usual indecisiveness, but eventually Blue, Ivory, Pink, Green and Pine settled down to play the “Feature Game” which was Jokkmokk: The Winter Market while Black, Cobalt, Jade, Sapphire and Lime set up Snow Tails. Jokkmokk is a very simple game that makes use of the time-track mechanism seen in Tokaido and Namiji (played last time)—that is to say, it is an extended game of leap-frog where the player at the back jumps into an empty space of their choice and then carries out the action associated with it. Like those games, the compromise is between moving to a preferred space which may be further forward and will ultimately will give fewer turns. It is much simpler than both Tokaido and Namiji, however.

– Image by boardGOATS

Jokkmokk is a card-driven set collecting game and is made more interesting by a large number of mini-decks, five or six of which are combined for each game. For the first game, the group chose to use the “First Game” selection of decks (Dalecarlian Horse, Antique, Hot Dog, Patchwork, Present). Blue went for the Patchwork cards while everyone else fought over kettles (Antiques) and Hot Dogs). Blue’s strategy nearly paid off giving her ninety-nine points and second place, but Ivory was more efficient than everyone else with his mixture of Horses, Hot Dogs and Kettles, which gave him a hundred and one points and victory. The game was bright and breezy and, although simple, really didn’t outstay its welcome, so the group decided to “do a Lime” and play it again.

– Image by boardGOATS

This time, this time the group played with the “Gift of Giving” selection of decks (Donation, Bell, Sparkler, Snowflake, Mystery Box, Presents). Pink went for Sparklers, knowing he would lose half his points if he had the most, but hoping to have so many that it wouldn’t matter. Green started collecting Bells, as did Blue and Ivory, going for different colours. Lots of Gifts were given and a good time was had visiting the fair. Pink’s ninety points were just three more than Ivory’s total, but Blue’s hundred and seven points gave her victory at the second attempt. Meanwhile, on the next table, the others had finally started playing Snow Tails, spectated by Purple, who had finished helping clear the table after dinner.

– Image by boardGOATS

Snow Tails is a very popular game in the group, but somehow, one that is a little tricky to get to grips with. The games is a card-driven sled-race with the winner the first to navigate the course. Unfortunately, the course they chose was the one depicted in the main rules, which isn’t really intended to be a course design as it is quite long and features a Chasm right at the start, a couple of hairpins and some Saplings as well. Each player starts with their own personal deck of cards, with five in hand. On their turn, players can play up to three cards as they can so long as they are all the same value: one for each sled dog, and one on the break.

– Image by boardGOATS

The speed, the number of spaces the sled moves forward, is the total for the dogs minus the value for the Break. Sleds will additionally drift sideways the difference between the dog speeds, and if the sled is balanced (i.e. the dogs are pulling equally), the player gets a bonus speed equal to the players position in the race. Each time a sled exceeds the Speed Limit on a corner, hits the side of the track or a Sapling, the player takes a Dent card—a useless card that just blocks the player’s hand making things difficult. The more Dent cards a player has, the more difficult the game gets, as Black soon demonstrated. The first game of Jokkmokk had already finished and the sleds were only just off the Start line and through the first Chasm.

– Image by boardGOATS

Lime claimed the “Big Paws” token for the player with the most “Analysis Paralysis”, though to be fair, everyone suffered a bit. Jade commented that he’d been planning to play it with his nieces, but was now rethinking the idea. As a result, the group shortened the track (to give them a chance to finish before midnight), and from there, the game went a bit more smoothly. Jade was first to cross the Finish line, chased by Cobalt and then Sapphire in what had been a quite epic game. And with that, the party was over for another year, though people lingered and chatted for quite a while before everyone left the pub staff to lock up.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: Always plan your Christmas shopping early.

Next Meeting, 19th December 2023

Our next meeting will be Tuesday 19^th December 2023 at the Horse and Jockey pub in Stanford-in-the-Vale.

As this is our last meeting before Christmas
we will be meeting early from 7pm for food and Christmas festivities.

This week, the “Feature Game” will be Jokkmokk: The Winter Market (review & play through video, rules), followed by a range of Christmas and winter themed games like Santa’s Workshop, Christmas Tree, Snow Tails, Carcassonne: Winter Edition, Gingerbread House and Ticket to Ride: Nordic Countries. Jokkmokk is a city in the north of Sweden that holds an annual folk festival and winter market, the latter of which is the subject of the game.

– Image by boardGOATS

Speaking of Christmas shopping…

Before buying Christmas gifts for his niece, Jeff asked her what she would like.

The little girl was really into Disney princesses, but her favourite was Elsa, so she answered that she would love “anything Frozen”.

Jeff was delighted as it was the easiest Christmas shopping he’d ever done and he bought her a bag of peas and some oven chips.

12th December 2023

Blue and Pink were just finishing their supper when Plum and Byzantium arrived, soon followed by Pine, Black and Purple, Teal, Ivory, and finally Lime. With ten then, the first question was whether to play two games with five each, or three games with fewer. And then it was who would play the “Feature Game“, Namiji, and who would play something else. The decision was pretty much made when Ivory said he’d brought Roll for the Galaxy and lots of people looked interested. Roll for the Galaxy is somehow a game a lot of people struggle with, so who played what almost sorted itself out, with the outstanding question being whether there would be a third game.

– Image by boardGOATS

In the end, it was easier to play two games than try to come up with a third, so Ivory took Plum, Teal, and Byzantium to the other side of the room to recap the rules for Roll for the Galaxy, while Blue taught the others Namiji. Although this was new to everyone, it is extremely to the group favourite, Tokaido. Both games are based on a time-track, that is to say, players are traveling along a path playing a kind of “leap-frog” where the player at the back jumps forward into an empty space and then carries out the action associated with it. The player can move forward as far as they like, but the desire to jump into a chosen space is tensioned against the fact that the further forward a player moves, the longer it will likely be until their next turn.

– Image by boardGOATS

Both Namiji and Tokaido have with elements of set collecting, indeed the different actions are very, very similar between the two games, and although players are Japanese fishermen, sailing south of the Japanese archipelago in Namiji, the rubric says they are just “a few miles away from the famous Tokaido road” and that games are barely that far apart. The “Stations” in Namiji are: Angling, Net Casting, the Crustacean Trap, the Whirlpool, the Sacred Rock, the three Panoramas and the Dock. The last four are roughly analogous to the Temple, the Hot Springs, the Panoramas and the Inn in Tokaido. The Angling, Net Casting and Crustacean Trap stations are a little bit different.

– Image by boardGOATS

Like the Village and the Encounters, these have set-collecting elements, but fish caught when Angling or Casting are laid out in the player’s boat with points scored for rows where the colours or types are the same. The Crustacean Trap is a push-your-luck draw from a bag where players score a point for each Crustacean drawn (up to a maximum of five), but if two crabs are drawn in the same haul, the whole lot are lost. The biggest difference between the two games is that there is no money, which has the effect of knocking some of the slightly rougher corners off. For example, the Inn is much harsher in Tokaido than the Dock in Namiji.

– Image by boardGOATS

Because Food cards have to bought at the Inn and these have different costs and duplicates cannot be bought, sometimes players have to go without which costs them six points. This is enough to effectively put a player out of the running. In contrast, in Namiji, they are a bit of a non-event. There are two types of card drawn at the Dock: Food and Upgrades. As in Tokaido, Food gives points—fewer than in Tokaido, and variable without the cost or the limit of one type per player. Upgrades grant players permanent abilities for the rest of the game (triggered when landing on their corresponding Station. The game ends when everyone returns to port—as in Tokaido, there are bonus points for lots of things, and that includes being early back at port (with decreasing numbers of points as players arrive later).

– Image by boardGOATS

Although the rules were simple and the game was mostly known, the debate started when Blue had barely left the table. The discussion centred on whether the player chosen to be first should go at the front of the track (and thus actually “go” last) or whether they should take the first turn (and therefore actually start at the back). Black opined that the that the turn order (randomly picked) was the order players should be placed on the track, while Pine felt the person picked should be the one start. In the end, after studying the rules (which failed to answer the question), the group went with Pine’s view, and finally started sailing.

– Image by boardGOATS

Pink was the first to complete the first Panorama (the Squid), soon followed by Lime who out-competed Purple and Pine to complete the lucrative Whale Panorama taking the bonus points for it too. Black concentrated on setting his paper hats sailing into the Whirlpool to jettison negative points and top-scored for his catch (though there aren’t any bonus points for that). Pine concentrated on collecting Cards and then was the first to get back to port. Ultimately, Namiji is a game that rewards players for concentrating on one thing, and in this case that was Lime, who’s twenty-five points for his Panoramas made all the difference giving him clear victory ahead of Pine in second and Black and Pink jointly in third.

– Image by boardGOATS

Meanwhile, on the other side of the room, Ivory had just about finished explaining the rules for Roll for the Galaxy when Blue arrived. In principle, the rules are quite simple, but playing the game well is much more difficult. The game is based on the card game, Race for the Galaxy. In both games, there are five phases, and players choose one each to activate. This is important, because with more players more phases are likely to happen. That is to say, while it is possible that everyone chooses the same phase which is the only one to happen, it is much more likely that two, three or four will be picked giving people more things to do in each round.

– Image by boardGOATS

In Roll for the Galaxy, at the start of the round, players simultaneously “shaky-shaky” their dice in their Cup and roll in secret. Then, behind their screen they secretly assign them to the different phases. Most are assigned according to the face that was rolled, but any one can be used to decide which phase the player wants to happen. Additionally, any one die can be used to “Dictate” the behaviour of one other die. Once everyone has assigned their dice, everyone reveals their choices and the phases for the round are finalised. Each player then gets to carry-out the actions indicated by their dice, returning unused dice to their Cup.

– Image by boardGOATS

There are five phases in each round: Explore, Develop, Settle, Produce and Consume. Explore allows players to choose tiles that they build in either the Develop or Settle phases, while Produce places goods on Production Worlds that can be turned into points or Credits in the Consume phase. Used dice (those consumed or used to build) are then placed in a player’s Citizenry and only return to their Cup on payment of one Credit per die. Thus, the game is very smooth with dice being assigned simultaneously, then moving to either of the player’s stacks of tiles to be used to pay for building, or onto one of their Production Worlds where it stay until it is Consumed.

– Image by boardGOATS

Since what players can do depends on the roll of the dice, at first glance, it seems like the decisions are made by chance. However, that just makes the decisions more key, if nuanced. Which Worlds to build, which phase to choose, whether to Dictate to reassign a die, whether to consume to give points or cash, and overall, which strategy to choose. And although the roll of the dice plays a big part, there are lots of dice and plenty of rolls, so the luck averages out, though players have to surf their luck. The game ends at the end of the round when a player builds their twelfth World, or when the pile of Victory points runs dry, and in this sense, although the game is about rolling dice, it is still a race, a race to build an engine, score points and finish the game.

– Image by boardGOATS

The game began with the rattle of the simultaneous “shaky-shaky” as dice rattled in everyone’s Cups. At the start of the game everyone wanted to Explore and build, but what depended on strategy. Blue started with a military strategy dictated by her first Development which gave points for red dice at the end. Ivory also planned his game around his Developments and their bonus points, but built his engine based on reduced costs to build and to Dictate. Teal and Sapphire chose to follow a conventional “Produce-Consume” victory point strategy, while Plum tried a bit of everything.

– Image by boardGOATS

Roll for the Galaxy is a little bit “multi-player solitaire”, with everyone concentrating on their own engine and deciding what they want to do. However, the winner has to take advantage of the fine margins and that means watching what other players are doing and anticipating and then taking advantage of their choice of phase when they can. This time, the end was triggered by Ivory, who accelerated quickly out of the traps thanks to his early choice of Development Worlds, and ultimately finished with thirty-six points for his buildings and ten bonus points giving him a runaway victory. A very creditable second place went to Byzantium, the only player who had never played either Roll or Race for the Galaxy before, with Blue completing the podium.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: Sometimes when you win you have a Whale of a time!