Author Archives: nannyGOAT

Next Meeting, 16th September 2025

Our next meeting will be on Tuesday 16^th September 2025. 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 now doing food again, so those that will be eating will be arriving from around 6.30pm.

This week, the “Feature Game” will be First Empires (rules, review and instructional video). This is a dice-driven, area movement and control game that we played a few weeks ago and found we really enjoyed.

– Image by boardGOATS

And speaking of empires…

Jeff was visiting the bar at the top of the Empire State Building. He was standing at the bar when a guy in a suit approached him and said, “Did you know that one of the reasons this building has such interesting design is that they made it so that when people jump out of the window, the wind stops them from falling too fast and they just float to the ground, unhurt?”

Jeff was astonished, “No way,” he said, “Prove it!”

So, the man in the suit climbed onto the window sill and jumped out the window. A few minutes later the lift arrived and out he walked.

“See! It works!” the man in the suit said. Jeff was really impressed and before anyone could stop him, he jumped onto the window sill and lept out of the window and, after what seemed like an age to him as he accellerated rapidly, landed with a jolt in an anti-suicide net.

Back in the bar, the bartender sighed, “Superman, you really can be an idiot when you’ve been drinking!”

5th August 2025 (Report)

Following on from Little Lime’s visit last time, this week we had special visits from Mister Mint (aka Vermillion), Little Mint (aka Sable), and Little Ivory (aka Tangerine). While everyone else got their collective acts together, Family Mint ordered their supper and got down to a quick couple of rounds of Panda Panda, a set collecting game with cute panda artwork. In this game, players take it in turns to discard a card onto their personal discard pile or take a card from the draw pile from someone elses discard pile; when a player discards an “A” card, everyone passes a card to the left. The winner is the first player to start their turn with a set. Sable tried to win without discarding cards, but the victor of both rounds was Mint.

– Image by boardGOATS

One of Family Mint’s current favourites is Wombat Rescue, where players are taking the role of mummy wombat trying to find their lost babies. Enticed by the animals in the game, Pine joined Vermillion, Sable, Ivory and Tangerine, to play a game that seemed to be based almost entirely on the fact that the most fundamental Euro-game piece is the wooden cube and wombats are the only known animals who’s poo is cube-shaped (due to a slow digestive tract and intestines that contract in a specific way to shape their feces over time). The theory is that because wombats have extremely poor vision but an excellent sense of smell, they use their poop cubes as “smell markers” and cube-shaped poop it is less likely to roll away or be moved.

– Image by boardGOATS

The premise of the game is that a dingo has stormed the burrow and chased away four of each player’s baby wombats or joeys. As mummy wombat, players have to eat and digest food in order to produce poop cubes, that they can use to build smell areas to navigate the board. With a network of poop cubes, they can then find their baby wombats, and bring them home. Thus, the player who best plans their smell areas and moves most efficiently will be the first to find all their joeys, and win the game. Unfortunately, with five, the game took rather longer than the suggested sixty minutes, but they had a great time, so that didn’t really matter.

– Image by boardGOATS

There was much amusement as cries of, “Stop sniffing my poo!”, “Are you going to use your smell corridor now?” and “There’s poo EVERYWHERE!” carried to the neighbouring tables along with odd words and phrases like “smell radius”, and the slightly odd request, “Can I sniff your baby please?”. The eventual winner was Vermillion and there was quite a bit of chat as players packed up. Although it had out-stayed its welcome a little, it wasn’t in the same league as that other Austrlian game, Echidna Shuffle, which on one notable occasion took hours because nobdy wanted to be the person who gifted someone the game, even though, everyone desperately wanted it to end!

– Image by boardGOATS

The main beneficiaries of the poop-laden comments were Mint, Blue and Lime on the next table. They were playing the “Feature Game“, which was Cubed. This is a very simple, sort of 3D, hexagonal/trioominoes domino game. Players started with a hand of twenty of the delightfully tactile hexagonal pieces and then take it in turns to play a piece, adding it to the central grouping. Pieces must join two edges, matching colour and slope direction: each piece has a dip in the middle and the vertices alternate high and low. Although this is simple, it is more difficult than it looks at first glance. Additionally, some of the pieces have black edges, which are blocking pieces and nothing can be added to these sides.

– Image by boardGOATS

If a player can’t place a piece, instead they draw a random tile from the face-down pool. The winner is the first player to get rid of all their pieces and they score zero. Everyone else scores for the pieces they have left, with one point for those with three different colours, two for any with two colours, three for monochrome pieces and five for any blocking pieces. Blue started, which turned out not to be the advantage initially thought as later players have more options. That wasn’t the reason Blue did horrifically badly though, that was partly due to inneptitude and partly due to luck of the tile draw. It was quickly clear that she was trying to limit losses and the battle was between Lime and Mint.

– Image by boardGOATS

Lime finished first, but Mint only had one piece left and if everyone got the same number of turns she could have placed it thus ending in a tie. The rules weren’t entirely clear on the point although arguably, the advantage of potentially getting an extra turn offsets the advantage of more play space (especially early in the game). Either way, the group decided to call it a tie and settle the matter over another game, this time adding the variant rules. These introduce the concept of “gaps”, single space “holes” in the array. Players who “bridge the gap” and create one get to place an extra piece, and players who “fill the gap” get to “gift” one tile to another player. Inevitably, however, this meant everyone saw making gaps as a challenge.

– Image by boardGOATS

Mint did, eventually manage to make a gap, but it really wasn’t easy and probably partially led to her conceding victory to Blue, who made a much better fist of the second try. That left how to score—consider it to be two separate games, or combine the scores as a campaign? Well, Lime won the first “game”, Blue won the second, but Mint had the lowest overall score (with or without the extra turn), so it was decided that it was a three way tie and everyone was a winner! That wasn’t the nly tie of the evening though. There were two more tables of games, the first playing Vivarium.

– Image by boardGOATS

This is a card collection game with fantastic art, based round a market similar to that in Meadow. In Vivarum, however, players use dominoes to create the coordinates that dictate the card they take. After seven rounds, the player that has successfully completed their objectives and collected the greatest creatures wins the game. Jade led the game with Cobalt and Sapphire joining him. Players start with two dominoes and, on their turn swap one with central pile and then either use the new pair to take a card or take two gems—these are worth a point each at the end of the game, but can also be used to alter the values of dominoes during the game.

– Image by boardGOATS

Once everyone has taken two turns, the market is restocked and a new (two turn) round starts. There are three different types of cards: Creatures, Equipment and Contracts. Each Creature is one of four types, one of four colours and is worth points; Equipment are in four different types, earns Gems and give a special power; Conracts provide objectives that reward for different types of Equipment or Creatures. At the end of the game, players score for Creatures, unused Gems, Priority Tokens (earnt for taking certain cards each round) and Contracts. This time, it was close, though not actually a tie (that came later).

– Image by boardGOATS

Creature scores and Gems were all smilar, but the most significant differnce was in Priority Tokens. Cobalt took ten more points from these than anyone else, which more than offset his slight deficit in other departments and gaving him seventy-seven points with Jade taking second place a few points behind. After a short break, the group moved on to place Diced Veggies, a really clever little resource management game. Players take it in turns with the Cleaver, using it to slice up the central array of dice. Each die represents an ingredient and these are then assigned to the recipes players are working on.

– Image by boardGOATS

Players can’t just grab loads of veg though—they can only take a limited number of pips with each chop, and the right dice values can unlock bonus cards to boost a recipe’s score. Once a player has carefully sliced their veg from the main block (with a total value of ten or fewer) the can assign dice to Cook one of their recipes before drawing one more card (either a Hype/bonus card or a recipe). Players can carry eight veggies, two Hype cards and two Recipe cards on to their next turn, but when one player has completed six recipes, everyone gets one more turn before the scores are added up. And this was the game that ended in a tie—despite lots of variation in recipes and bonuses, Jade and Cobalt both finished with fifty points, with Sapphire just behind.

– Image by boardGOATS

The final table, led by Plum, were playing First Empires, a game where each player takes control of an ancient nation and determines its fate. On their turn, players roll dice according to how they’ve developed their empire board. The six sides of the dice correspond to the five abilities on their board. To expand to new territories or invade opponents, players unlock movement ability; to annex a territory, they have to outnumber the current occupant or have a “sword” result on the dice and chase the inhabitants elsewhere. Dice also allow players to develop their player board, using the die face that corresponds to improvement and controlling an associated territory.

– Image by boardGOATS

As the game progresses, players can also gain more dice and additional re-rolls, while also unlocking achievement cards. The game ends after a set number of rounds (dependent on player number) when players earn points based on played achievement cards, points unlocked on their personal board, and for cities under their control. After Plum had explained the rules, everyone began. With only four players, the far East wasn’t available, so Plum started in Morocco (K), Ruby in the the Far East (H), Flint began in Europe (E) and Pink in South Africa (M). Flint quickly achieved one of his early goal cards and occupied two islands

– Image by boardGOATS

Pink pressed north early on, which meant it was more difficult for Plum to invade new lands. Pink, Ruby and Plum all drew the “occupy another player’s home region” card in the first half of the game, so there was a lot of shifting about as people targeted each other’s regions picking up Cities in the process. There was a little bit of a rules interpretation error as most people restricted themselves to only re-rolling one die rather than picking a number of dice, but that was soon rectified. Flint got to the top of the dice track, but it was towards the end of the game so he wasn’t able to capitalise on it by rolling five dice.

– Image by boardGOATS

Flint picked up lots of points for his dice track, but failed to score on his re-roll track, whereas everyone else was the other way round. In fact, Plum and Pink both got their highest score from the re-roll track. Ruby top scored on explorers, but the winner was Pink who also did well on his explorers track, but picked up a lot of points for his cards and cities too. He finished with sixty-five points, nine points clear of Ruby with Plum completing the podium.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning outcome: The shape of your poo is important.

Deutscher Spiele Preis – 2025

The Deutscher Spiele Preis is awarded anually based on an open vote from German games clubs, gamers in German-speaking countries and people in the gaming industry. It recognises the “Best Children’s Game” and a top ten list of the “Best Family and Adult Games”. Although the order of the top three in each category won’t be announced until the Internationale Spieltage in Essen at the end of October, the list of winning games has been released.

– Image by BGG contributor tobsn,
adapted by boardGOATS

The top three in the general category in alphabetical order are:

Bomb Busters
Endeavor: Tiefsee (aka Endeavour: Deep Sea)
SETI: Auf der Suche nach außerirdischen Leben (aka SETI: Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence)

The remaining list of games in the top ten are:

Castle Combo
Faraway
Civolution
Blood on the Clocktower
Slay the Spire: Das Brettspiel (aka Slay the Spire: The Board Game)
Astrobienen (aka Apiary)
Dune: Imperium — Uprising

The games named in the Deutscher Spiele Preis lists often intersect with the winners and nominees of the annual Spiel des Jahres Award. This time is no exception, indeed the only game in the top five Deutscher Spiele Preis list not to have recieved a Spiel des Jahres award or a nomination likely missed out because it was considered too complex. And therein lies much of the difference between the two: the Spiel des Jahres nominees/winners are chosen by a committee with a list of strict criteria, whereas the Deutscher Spiele Preis is more like a list of the most popular games of the preceding year, with the gaming public having a strong say. As a result, the Deutscher Spiele Preis often includes heavier games.

– Image by BGG contributor spiritraw,
adapted by boardGOATS

The top three children’s games (again in alphabetical order) are, Cascadia Junior, Die kleinen Alchemisten (aka Little Alchemists), and Die Sandburgen von Burgund (aka The Sandcastles of Burgundy). The order of the top three in both categories will be announced at the press conference on Wednesday 22^nd October; congratulations to everyone on the list.

– Image from
spiel-essen.com

Next Meeting, 2nd September 2025

Our next meeting will be on Tuesday 2^nd September 2025. As usual, we will start playing shorter games from 7.30pm as people arrive, until 8pm when we will start something a little longer. Following a recent change of hands, the pub is now doing food again, so those that will be eating will be arriving from around 6.30pm.

This week, the “Feature Game” will be Parachute Panda (one review and another review). This is a light, fun little filler game with a bit of take that, cute artwork and, of course, lots of pandas…

– Image by BGG Contributor W. Eric Martin, adapted by boardGOATS

And speaking of pandas…

Jeff walked into a bar with his pet panda. It was about 5pm, but they were ready for a good night of drinking. They started slowly, watching the Magpies play on the TV, drinking beer and eating peanuts. As the night went on, they moved to mixed drinks, and then shots, necking one after another. Finally, the barman called, “Last orders,” so, Jeff went to the bar one last time.

“One more for me… and one more for my panda,” he asked. The barman set them up and Jeff and the Panda knocked them back. Suddenly, after one drink too many, the panda collapsed in a heap on the floor. Jeff left some cash on the bar, put his coat on and headed for the door.

The barman called after him, “Hey you can’t just leave that lyin’ there…”

To which Jeff replied, “Don’t be daft—that’s not a lion, it’s a panda…!”

22nd July 2025 (Report)

This being the summer, Lime brought LIttle Lime to join in the evening, but as there is a curfew for under-eighteens (due to licencing restrictions), the first game had to get off the mark quickly. Together with Pink and Plum, they quickly got going with the well known favourite and Spiel des Jahres winning game, Azul. This is known to everyone, so needed little clarification, though they group decided to use one of the alternate boards from the Crystal Mosaic expansion (the one with the cross pattern). The game is very simple with players taking tiles of one colour from a factory and putting the remains in the centre, or taking all the tiles of one colour from the central pool.

– Image by boardGOATS

In either case, players have to add them to their conveyor and if, at the end of the round the conveyor is full, one tile is slid across to be added to the mosaic and the rest disposed of. If the added tile is isolated it scores a single point, but if placed next to other tiles, then more points are scored with larger groups scoring more points. In this way, tiles grouped together keep scoring points. Thus, a player who starts well can build a lot of points, which both Little Lime and Plum managed to do. In the end, Big Lime ended the game, leaving Plum with a single point advantage—The moral of the story: Don’t end the game too early (as Big Lime commented regretfully).

– Image by boardGOATS

On something of a roll, the group moved on to one of Pink’s favourite quick fillers, For Sale. Dating from the end of the last century, this game is now nearly thirty years old, but isn’t really showing its age, despite that. The game comes in two halves: Buying Properties at Auction, then Selling Properties by Blind Bid. This game was really really close with a single point between Plum and Little Lime, but they were a a few points behind Big LIme who, as an accountant might be expected to perform well in a financial game. The winner, however, was Pink, who, despite it being one of his favourite games had never won, until now. And with that, it was time for Family Lime to head off.

– Image by boardGOATS

Meanwhile, the rest of the group were engaged in the two tables of the “Feature Game“. To mark the recent announcement of the Spiel des Jahres winners, this was Looot. Although Loot was not actually one of the winners, it, along with Faraway, had recieved a nomination for the Kennerspiel des Jahres and, as it had proved popular within the group (also like Faraway) we decided to make it the Feature. Although its nomination was in the Expert or Connoisseur category, the game is not overly complex. The game is played over a series of rounds where each player places one of their Viking workers—the game ends when everyone has run out of Vikings.

– Image by boardGOATS

On their turn each player places one of their Vikings on the central playerboard. This is is made up of hexagons: the Viking must be placed on an empty space next to another Viking (of any colour). Each hexagon gives a resource which can be used to purchase Longships, and if the Viking fulfills certain conditions, it’s owner can capture a house, Watchtower or Castle. The player with the most points at the end of the game is the winner. This time there were two tables playing the same game, with Black leading the first table comprising Purple, Byzantium, and Cobalt.

– Image by boardGOATS

This game turned into a a bit of a battle for Castles between Byzantium and Cobalt. Cobalt did rather better in the end though thanks to his Long-ship bonuses. This was because Byzantium kept revealing them and everyone else eschewed them until it came to Cobalt who snapped them up. Byzantium’s frustration was increased somewhat because Cobalt was just before him in turn order so it looked like they miight make it round to him until they didn’t… quite… In the end, Cobalt’s were worth forty-two while Byzantium’s gave him just twenty-eight, despite the fact he actually had more.

– Image by boardGOATS

It was still close between them, but fairly inevitably, Cobalt had the edge finishing with one-hundred and twenty-eight, ten more than Byzantium in second place. This was a much higher scoring game than the second table, although that was much closer. Jade led this game with Mint, Sapphire, and Blue making up the group. The strategies were very varied, with Jade going for Castles, Mint for Watchtowers, Sapphire for Gold, and Blue who was new to the game, going for a balanced strategy so she could change her tactics as required.

– Image by boardGOATS

In the end, Blue’s “points from everything” approach just had the edge giving her victory with eighty-eight points, two more than Mint who had one more than Jade with Sapphire close behind. With the games of Looot coming to an end at the same time as For Sale and with Family Lime heading off, the rest of the group split into two. The first, larger group, consisted of Jade, Sapphire, Blue, Pink, Mint, Plum and Byzantium who decided to give a simple and supposedly quick little game called Tacta an outing. This is a sort of “card placing” game where players have a hand of cards and place them on the table to cover up spots on other players’ cards. At the end of the game, the player with the most spots visibleis the winner.

– Image by boardGOATS

Unfortunately, game time is proportional to the number of players, so with the six players (Plum and Byzantium shared a hand and worked together), the game was always going to take twice as long as it would with three. Worse, this was one of those games where gamers take even longer as they want to make sure the find the best placement option and push the rules boundaries. It is a very clever little game though and a lot of fun, though perhaps playing with fewer cards or fewer players would avoid it outstaying its welcome.

– Image by boardGOATS

It was made worse by the fact that everyone helped everyone else and therefore, the victor was quite obvious from fairly early in the game Although Blue made a dash to come from zero to finish in a more respectable last place, nobody looked like they were seriously going to challenge the Byzantium-Plum team. Mint took second one point ahead of Pink who was one point ahead of Jade who was one point ahead of Sapphire. Definitely one to try again, but with fewer people next time. The supposed quick card game ended up finishing some time after the supposed longer game, Ticket to Ride: Paris that Black, Purple and Cobalt chose.

– Image by boardGOATS

One of the small, “City Editions” of the popular, Spiel des Jahres winning Ticket to Ride games, we’ve played Paris quite a bit since it was released last year. Following the same pattern as all its brethren, the game involves collecting coloured carriage cards and spending them to place metro carriage pieces on the board to connect regions of the city, while trying to also complete tickets. Each edition has its own extra little rule, and in the Paris edition, this is centred on the colours of the tricolor. When players build a red, white or blue route, they keep one of the cards, when they complete a set of three they discard the cards and claim bonus points.

– Image by boardGOATS

Purple started and game play was rapid. Before long, players were running out of pieces, with Blake miles ahead of the other two. But that was without the addition of scores for Tickets. Purple took got nine points for her three completed Tickets thanks to her misplaced bravery in picking up tickets at the end and not being able to complete her last one. Cobalt took sixteen points for completing all four of his Tickets, though that was with a bit of jiggery pokery (i.e. retaking his last turn) in order to complete one ticket when he realised he had actually failed to complete it. It was therefore perhaps fair that Black who only scored ten points for completing his pair of tickets just managed to keep his nose in front, taking victory by a single point.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: There is something for almost everyone in the Spiel des Jahres lists.

8th July 2025 (Report)

Things were late starting, largely due to the delayed arrival of Blue and Pink with their copy of the “Feature Game“, the the shiny new Emberleaf. It was Plum’s Special Birthday—there have already been two in the last few weeks (Jade and Pine, with Black a few months ago) and more to come in the not too distant future—so there was a bit of chat, card signing and some amazing chocolate cakes provided by Sapphire. Eventually, as time was marching on, games were assigned and Blue and Jade started to explain the rules of Emberleaf to Ivory. This is a “card dancing” and tile placement game from the same stable as The Isle of Cats, where players are trying to re-home their kin in clearings on the central Forest board.

– Image by boardGOATS

The core mechanic of the game is card placement and movement on the players’ individual Fellowship player boards. The idea is that on their turn, players carry out one of two possible mandatory actions and as many optional actions as they like. The two possible mandatory actions are Card Placement and Card Movement (or “Dancing”). There are five different types of power on the Cards and one of these is the “On Play” action. This takes effect when they are placed—players start with a two by six space to place cards and can place each card in any empty space. The other possible mandatory, Card Movement involves starting with the card in the top left corner and progressing down each column, each card is moved left one space and any “Slide” actions are carried out.

– Image by boardGOATS

When cards reach the left-most column, Sliding moves them off the player’s board (activating any “Drop Off” actions) and back into their hand (not via a discard pile like deck-building games, so there is no probability element; Cards as always available in hand or on the player’s Fellowship board). The remaining two powers include “Ongoing” and “Charge”. Ongoing powers are always active as long as the card is on the board, while Charge powers are optional actions that can only be taken a set number of times before they must be refreshed by the Card Sliding off the board. All these actions broadly come under the categories of Gathering Resources (Wood, Stone, Turnips or Honey), Walking between clearings, Attacking monsters to make dangerous areas in the forest safe, and Building in clearings.

– Image by boardGOATS

Each player has a space on their Fellowship board to place Resources, which means players have a limited number they can store. So, for example, Building requires a card to give the action (either placed or moved) and the necessary Resources to be spent, as well their Hero figure at the clearing they are building in. Each player starts with a super-cute Hero Figure representing their clan chief, located in Hawker’s Crossing—the most westerly clearing, on the edge of the Forest. From there, players can move their Hero around the board by Walking along paths which go through dangerous areas. If a player wants to travel through a dangerous area, they need to walk further or, alternatively, they can spend a turn Attacking the monsters in the Dangerous area and make it Safe (which also requires an action either by placing a Card or as part of a Card Movement).

– Image by boardGOATS

As always, Ivory was on the case, and asked the key question: Where do the points come from? In truth, Emberleaf is a bit of a “point salad” with points coming from all sorts of places. For example, players get points for Building with the number of points equal to the number of different types of building in a neighbourhood. Players also get points for making Dangerous areas Safe, as well as for collecting Trophies. There are six Trophies available during the game, and getting these is all about timing with the player who reaches the bottom of the cooperative War Banner Track taking one. Everyone gets some benefit from this, but the player who takes the Trophy gets an extra bonus. The game ends at the end of the round when the sixth is taken.

– Image by boardGOATS

Additionally, in a similar way to the tiny buildings in Tapestry, when players take one of their twenty Emberlings from their Fellowship board and re-home them, they reveal a little bonus and some of these are points (others include Resources etc.). There is another, more significant way of gaining points, however, and that is through Favour Cards. These are personal objective cards which can be very lucrative and are scored at the end of the game. Favour Cards can be acquired as part of rehoming Emberlings, but also by Promising a Favour, one of the optional actions that can be carried out as part of a player’s turn. Each clearing starts with a Favour token in each player’s colour and if their Hero is currently located in a clearing containing one the player may spend it to take a Favour card.

– Image by boardGOATS

On the surface, the game is not that complex, though building an engine requires an understanding of what the cards do and how to get the best of them. Additional Hero cards can be taken from a Card market when a Campfire icon is revealed (likely on re-homing an Emberling). There are a few little rules niggles as well. For example, the Card markets (there are two: Favour and Heros) are refreshed at the end of a player’s turn, but as well as replacing the used cards, the oldest card is also discarded meaning the order cards are drawn in has to be observed. Similarly, whenever a the bottom of the War Banner Track is reached, the Dangerous Area tiles are refreshed.

– Image by boardGOATS

Ivory, got a handle on the rules really quickly and was out of the blocks on the “B” of bang. Jade wasn’t far behind, while Blue was much, much slower as she spent much of her time with her nose in the rules checking queries rather than focusing on her game. When she finally got round to looking up, the others were distant figures on the horizon and she had a lot of catching up to do. Ivory had moved quicklywith an initial strategy of building buildings on the areas that gave honey (particularly markets occupied by a mouse for his end game scoring). This gave him additional spaces on his board and he then picked up a couple of additional Hero Cards and several Favour Cards to further drive his strategy.

– Image by boardGOATS

The Koala allowed Ivory to battle anywhere whenever he “Danced”, and that gave him a steady stream of points and resources. Jade and Blue were slow to clear the additional board actions, but Ivory found that opening up the Build Action meant he always had that available and could place a card with only “Dance Actions” at the end, giving me max benefit for that card. Everyone tried to get end game objective cards early as they give something to aim for. Ivory was by far the most effective at this however getting cards that gave points for having his mice on markets, mice in at least three different areas and building in exactly four areas, whereas Blue who was slower, found she was trying to take objectives that matched her achievements.

– Image by boardGOATS

Inevitably, Ivory was the victory by a veritable country mile finshing with one-hundred and thirty-eight, though Blue who had been practically stationary for most of the game, came through strongly in the late stages to take second. It had been a tough learning game, but everyone had liked it and it definitely deserves anothe outing. Meanwhile, Plum, the Birthday Girl, was playing one of her favourite games, Viticulture. This is also one of Pink’s favourites and is also very popular with both Byzantium and Mint who completed the foursome. There is nothing really innovative about the game—it is “just a standard worker placement game”, but it does the job really, really well, which elvates it above so many other worker placement games, and as a result, it rates highly on ranks very highly on so many lists.

– Image by boardGOATS

The game played over several rounds, which are split into seasons—Players take it in turns to place workers on the Summer part of the board in the first half allowing them to plant grapes and prepare for Winter when players can harvest their grapes, make wine and fulfill contracts for points. In general, each action has a small number of active spaces, but players also have a Grande worker who can always be used to carry out an action, even when all the usual spaces have been filled. Winter and Summer are setup phases when turn-order is addressed and Visitors arrive. Visitors are cards which allow players to bend the rules slightly and/or gain points.

– Image by boardGOATS

This time, however, the group decided play with the Tuscany expansion and the Moor Visitors card deck. Tuscany replaces the main board with a larger board, but also re-structures the phases so that there are now four seasons to place workers. It additionally adds a small map where players can place star-eeples to gain a bonus and points at the end of the game for the player with the most influence in this area. Tuscany also brings in structures, which players can build to enhance their vinyard and use to gain more points. It also lenghtens the game slightly, ending when a player passes twenty-five points rather than twenty in the base-game.

– Image by boardGOATS

Everyone knew the game well, so after just a few rules clarifications the game was underway with everyone opting for the the now standard trategy of selling a field for an early influx of cash. Mint started with some really nice building cards including one which enabled her to harvest multiple fields at the same time. Plum was less enthused by hers and recycled them—as she had begun the game with the Cottage she was picking up extra Visitor cards every Autumn. She made a concious decision not to choose to “wake up” first, which meant she never went first or last in the turn order and when she chose the start bonus of “age grapes” she forgot to take advantage of it. This was clearly catching as Byzantium did something similar when he chose the same starting position.

– Image by boardGOATS

The Tuscany expansion also adds Special Workers which have their own special abilities and players can train one of their workers to have each of these. This time they were the Farmer and the Builder, with the latter from the Special Workers promo. Respecively, workers with these powers, allow the player to choose a bonus (even if they are not on a bonus space) and save two lira when building. A priority is always to get more workers early in the game, but whether to upgrade them is a difficult decision as it costs an extra lira and cash is always so tight in this game. These proved quite popular though as going second in a location with a Farmer still gave a bonus.

– Image by boardGOATS

Pink got his head down making wine early as he picked up two really nice, achievable and valuable contracts early in the game, which gave him a solid start. However, it was a very long time before anyone actually really started scoring points as everyone concentrated on building their vinyards before putting them into action. For example, Plum, needed a Trellis for her first grapes, although having a Builder reduced its cost. Eventually she also built a Penthouse which gave an extra point when making high quality wine over a value of seven and with those in place was in a position to start growing, harvesting and turning grapes into wine.

– Image by boardGOATS

At one point, Plum played a two Visitor card combo that gaver her a grape which she was immediately able to sell at tripple the normal price. Otherwise, everyone mostly focussed on turning grapes into wine and completing contracts for points, although Pink did turn cash into points as well. As is always the way with Viticulture, there was a sudden cascade of points, and with four experienced players it was a tight game with all four finishing over the twenty-five point finishing line. The winner was Pink, however, who finished with thirty one points, three more than Plum who took second (no, Pink wasn’t going to let her win, even on her birthday!), and Byzantium and Mint tied and shared the last spot on the podium.

– Image by boardGOATS

The third table, comprising Black, Purple, Pine, Sapphire and Lime, started with a game of Sagrada (with the 5-6 player expansion). This is a fairly simple game of dice-drafting, where players are placing dice to create stained glass windows. Dealt at random, each player begins with a private objective card and two double-sided Window pattern cards, choosing one side to play with and taking the number of Favor tokens marked on the chosen pattern. Three Tool cards and three public objective cards are placed in the communal central area and the first player rolls all the dice.

– Image by boardGOATS

In “serpentine order” (i.e everyone taking a turn in order then taking a turn in reverse player order), players can use any Tool card (paying one Favour token for the first use, two thereafter) and then choose one die from the pool and place it on an open space in their Window. The first die must be placed on an edge or corner space and every other must touch another die diagonally or orthogonally. Dies must match the colour or value depicted on the space if there is one and may never be orthogonally adjacent to a die of same color or value. Players may choose not to take a die on their turn, but that will leave an empty space and each one costs a point at the end of the game.

– Image by boardGOATS

The game ends after each player has had twenty turns after which players score points for each public and private objective achieved adding one point for each remaining Favour token and and deducting a penalty point for each empty space. Even though there were five, the group played by these standard rules rather than adding the optional private dice pools from the expansion. The communal goal cards gave points for placing pairs of dice with a value of three and four; sets of dice with a value of one to six and rows with no repeated numbers. As is always the case with dice games, this game is all about riding the luck of the roll, but it can play havoc with people’s plans.

– Image by boardGOATS

For example, on Pine’s first turn a roller six of the dice had a value of two, but nobody wanted them. Later in the game he rolled again, this time rolling no twos when at least two people desperately wanted them! When the game came to an end, there was just the scoring. Honours were pretty much even for the first two communal objectives. Purple managed to score once for the lucrative, one row without repeated numbers objective, while Sapphire and Black scored it twice and Pine three times. Scores for the private objectives were almost identical for Sapphire, Lime and Pine. In total that gave Pine victory, nine points ahead of Sapphire in second and sixteen ahead of Black in third.

– Image by boardGOATS

The other games were still going and looking like they were giong to take the rest of the evening, so the group looked around for another game that played five. From the other side of the room Blue suggested Bohnanza, and as Sapphire thought he’d never played it, the group decided that wasn’t a state of affairs that could continue. This is a popular game within the group as it is a lot of fun, even though a game about bean farming and trading sounds very unpromising. Played with cards, the key mechanism is that the order of players’ hands cannot be changed—they can only be manipulated by in-game play. So, on their turn, players must play the first card in their hand into one of their two “Bean Fields”, and may play a second if they can.

– Image by boardGOATS

Beans can only be added to empty fields or to fields of the same type. A field can be harvested at any point, but the aim it to maximise the yield. Once the active player has played from their hand, there is the flop: two cards are played from the deck onto the table. These must be planted before the next phase, but can be planted in the active player or by any player with their agreement. Sometimes these are gifted, sometimes they are traded, and this is how players can manipulate the cards in their hand, by trading away undesirable cards. Once the cards on the table have been disposed of, then the active player can trade any card in hand before replenishing from the deck to end their turn.

– Image by boardGOATS

The game ends after three passes threough the deck, but while the first pass seems to take forever, the last always goes like lightening because many of the cards are now in players’ score piles. Further the balance of the cards changes as the game progresses, with rare cards disappearing as they are turned into “Thaler” and get stuck in players’ stash. Players can spend some of their riches on a Third Bean Field, but this is only really productive if carried out early in the game. This was a strategy adopted by Pine this time—unusually for him.

– Image by boardGOATS

It paid off almost imediately as Pine collected two of the super-rare cocoa beans, and soon added a third. Black commented that he’d get the fourth, and Pine couldn’t hide his delighted laugh when he immediatly picked it up! The winner was Lime though who finished three points clear with twenty, leaving Pine to take second and Black to make up the podium. The question was, however, had Sapphire enjoyed it? Sadly, the answer was a resounding “no”. Worse, it turned out that he had played it before, and had disliked it so much that he’d blocked out the experience. Such a shame, but some games are not for everyone…

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning outcome: You don’t have to know how you win, you just have to score more points.

Next Meeting, 19th August 2025

Our next meeting will be on Tuesday 19^th August 2025. As usual, we will start playing shorter games from 7.30pm as people arrive, until 8pm when we will start something a little longer. Following a recent change of hands, the pub is now doing “basket meals”, so those that will be eating will be arriving from around 6.30pm.

This week, the “Feature Game” will be Critter Kitchen (rules, review and tutorial video). This is a worker placement and programming game where players take on the role of restaurateurs competing in food challenges, and planning an epic meal to impress a celebrity food critic.

– Image from facebook.com, adapted by boardGOATS

And speaking of restaurants…

Jeff and Joe were having a chat over a pint, when out of the blue, Jeff suddenly said, “I really love meatballs, in fact, I love them so much that I’m planning to open a Swedish restaurant.”

Joe, was a little taken aback, but after a moment or two considering, replied, “I like them too, but it’s a bit of a stretch to open a restaurant to get them. In any case, where are you going to find a Swedish chef?”

“Oh,” replied Jeff, “My chef won’t actually be Swedish—do you think anyone will notice I’m using an artificial Swedener on my food?”

24th June 2025 (Report)

The evening began quietly and for a while Blue, Purple and Black wondered whether they were going to be the only ones and had got the wrong week, but before long, people trickled in. The hot weather seemed to have sapped a lot of the enthusiasm from everyone, but eventually, two groups began playing Port Royal. This is a fairly simple “Push-your-Luck” game where players are merchants in the Caribbean. It has an interesting history as it was originally released by the Österreichisches Spiele Museum, the Austrian Games Museum as Händler der Karibik (Traders of the Caribbean).

– Image by boardGOATS

When it won the Austrian Game Designers Competition, the game was taken up by the publisher Pegasus Spiel in 2014, who added a few cards and tweaked the rules including adding a few cards so it works with five players. The artwork didn’t change significantly though, that happened much more recently, in 2022, when Pegasus brought out a Big Box edition which included both the Contracts and Campaign expansions, the Gambler promo and the lighter “expandalone” Unterwegs game. This time both the 2014 version and the Big Box edition got an outing, with Jade leading Lime, Ivory and Mint with the new edition, while Plum set up the older game in a much smaller box with Sapphire, Black and Flint.

– Image by boardGOATS

The basic game is quite simple: players draw cards, as many cards as they like until they choose to stop and take cards, or go bust by drawing a second Ship card of one colour. There are four different types of cards, but most are Ships or Characters. Ships come in different five colours and are worth Doubloons (like San Juan and Bohnanza, these are just cards that are stored face down to show the Coin on the reverse), whereas Characters generally give some sort of on-going power, are worth Points, and are paid for with Doubloons. Some of the Character cards (Pirates and Sailors) provide Cutlasses, which enable players to repel Ship cards that they don’t like, thus extending the number of opportunities to draw cards without going bust.

– Image by boardGOATS

In addition to Ships and Characters, there are also two other types of cards in the deck: Expedition and Tax cards. Expedition cards, once drawn are placed in the centre to become communal objectives that give points, but once achieved by one player they are gone. In general, these involve collecting symbols shown on some of the cheaper Character cards. There are two Tax cards in the deck, and when one is drawn anybody with twelve or more Doubloons has to discard half their cash. Additionally, depending on which card, either the player with the fewest Points gains or the player with the most Cutlasses gains one Doubloon.

– Image by boardGOATS

So, players draw and reveal cards until they go bust or decide to stop and take cards. The player can stop whenever they like, then take one card if there are three or fewer Ships in the Harbor display, take two cards if four ships are present, and three cards if five ships (one of each of the five colours) are present. Thematically, players either rob Ships (collecting the number of Doubloons depicted, then discarding the card) or hire Characters, paying from their stash. The game ends when one player has at least twelve Points, and the round is completed before scoring—the player with the most points is the winner.

– Image by boardGOATS

The Ein Auftrag geht noch expansion (aka Just One More Contract…) adds solo and cooperative modes, but aside from these it doesn’t change the game significantly, just adding a handful of cards and an alternative mechanism to gain Doubloons and score points. The new game element is “Contracts”, which provide additional ways to score victory points and get coins by meeting the listed conditions. At the start of the game, each player gets three tokens and four Contracts are revealed. If a player meets the requirements of a Contract at any time (including not on someone else’s turn) they can place one of their cubes on the leftmost spot on the contract taking the financial benefit.

– Image by boardGOATS

This reward decreases each time the Contract is subsequently completed. When the player completes their second contract they additionally receive one point taking a Contract card from the unused stack and keeping it face down to display the Point shown on the reverse. On completing their third Contract, players receive the financial reward and two additional Points. Plum led one group, comprising Sapphire, Black and Flint. The contracts they draw out were New Colony, Comedian, Cheap Staff, and Gamester. New Colony and Comedian required a a specific pair of Character cards (Settler/Gunner and Priest/Jester respectively), while Cheap Staff needed four Characters with a cost of three or less.

– Image by boardGOATS

The Gamester Contract was a bit different as it was based on Ships, and could be claimed by the active player as soon as there were four of different coloured Ships in the Harbour at the same time. Early in the game, Plum and Flint claimed a Gunner, while Flint added and a Clerk from the expansion and Black took an Admiral. The Gunner and the Admiral provide benefits if conditions are met just before they take a card, respectively giving money if there are multiple ships available or two extra coins if there are more than five cards in the Harbour display. The Clerk gives the owner the option to take a second card if they take a ship of the right colour from the Harbour.

– Image by boardGOATS

Sapphire took a slightly different approach. He collected Traders, getting one of each colour which meant that whenever he took a ship, whatever the colour, he always got an extra coin and together with his Vice Admiral (who gave an extra coin coin if there were three or four cards in the Harbour on his turn) meant he always had plenty of cash. Plum was the first to complete an expedition, the Gamester, but everyone completed one, although Black managed a second. Black, Plum, and Flint also completed an expedition giving more points, but the winner was Flint who finished with thirteen points while Plum and Black tied for second.

– Image by boardGOATS

Elsewhere, there was a second game of Port Royal underway with Lime, Ivory and Mint, led by Jade. This group were playing with the 2022 Big Box editionwith the new artwork that includes both expansions. However, as they were playing with people who were new to the game, they chose to stick to the base game and spent a lot of time at the star sorting out cards. Once they got going a lot of hilarity ensued, particularly when Lime, who desperately needed some cash turned over twenty cards in succession without a single ship! The victor was Mint, however, with Jade and Ivory tying for second.

– Image by boardGOATS

They had enjoyed it so much and with time left, the decided to “do a Lime” and give it another go. This time, the winners were tied with Ivory and Mint both finishing with twelve just ahead of Lime in third. With the winners tied, there was more interest in what the tie-breaker was. Both also had the same amount of money and the rules state that in such cases victory is shared. However, according to the rules there is a end of game variant which requires the winner to have an Expedition card. As Ivory had completed an Expedition and Mint had not that was assumed to be the tie breaker leaving Ivory the victor.

– Image by boardGOATS

Meanwhile, Blue and Purple introduced Ruby to Little Town, another popular game within the group, but this time, one with much less luck. It is a fairly simple little worker placement and tile laying game based on a central board. The idea is that players have five workers and on their turn players can place them on the terrain area and activate the space, or in the build area and place a building on the board paying the costs and placing an ownership marker on it. When activating a space, players also activate the eight surrounding spaces. Some of these will be spaces printed on the board which allow players to collect resources (Wood, Stone or Fish), while others might be buildings tiles placed, by themselves or one of the other players.

– Image by boardGOATS

Players musty pay to use other players’ buildings, only one coin, but coins can be difficult to acquire. Players get points during the game by activating some buildings, lose points if they are unable to feed their workers. They also start with three personal objective cards which are scored as and when they are achieved. At the end of the game, after four rounds (just twenty actions per player), the player with the most points is the winner. The first draw of tiles included three from the Goodie Building promo set, but as the rules for these had gone walk-about, two were thrown back and re-drawn. Blue explained the rules, and then Purple started unfortunately, this meant that Ruby going last had fewer good placement options, and worse, was the only player to go last twice during the game.

– Image by boardGOATS

Both Blue and Purple offered what help and advice they could they could and all three players were pretty much dead level for the first couple of rounds. Cash is often hard to come by in this game, but this time with the Gold Mine present, which was built early by Purple, there was enough to grease the wheels and keep the game moving. In addition to the Goldmine, other buildings included the Fishmonger which Ruby built and enabled players to sell fish, getting money. Blue began by building a little fish engine with a Pier and a Sushi Bar (from the Goodie Buildings) placed near a Lake, then Purple widdled on her bonfire a little, by turning one of the neighbouring spaces into a Wheat Field. Even so, with just two turns she could gain Fish and turn them into a total of six points, picking up a bit of Wood and some Wheat (at a cost of one coin) on the way.

– Image by boardGOATS

It had been back and forth between Blue and Ruby until Blue nabbed the Statue from under Ruby’s nose giving her a straight ten points. That forced Ruby to switch tack and build the Church which allows players to convert Cash into points. Although there wasn’t really time to activate it more than once, it was also worth eight points in its own right. All three players managed to complete their Objectives, even Purple who had some tough ones. Before the game, Purple had made a comment, that nobody would need the Sixty Point Token, but as the end of the final round approached it looked like both Blue and Ruby might actually manage it. In the end, it was close, but Blue just managed it finishing with sixty-four, while Ruby didn’t quite make it in second place.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning outcome: Popular games are popular for a reason.

10th June 2025 (Report)

The evening started with a lot of chat about the new and used games people had picked up at UK Games Expo a few days ago, with everyone very keen to play their new acquisitions. The “Feature Game” was to be one of these, a a shiny new pre-release copy of Sierra, flown in specially for the fair by a chap from Hachette Boardgames UK called Flavien Loisier who was recognisable by his memorable, playable, MicroMacro suit. Sierra is card game about traveling the Andes that received a UK preview at UK Games Expo, and is a very unusual game. There are several different ways to play the game including cooperatively and competitively, but this time the group went with working in pairs, playing with the person opposite.

– Image by boardGOATS

The pairs were Jade & Sapphire, Blue & Ivory, Black & Byzantium, and Purple & Plum. The idea is that in their pairs players place cards from their shared hand to create a landscape and earn points for satisfying their objectives. The catch is that while the Landscape cards are shared, all but one of the objectives are not. In each round, the player with the Landscape cards draws two and plays two, while the other player draws two Objective cards and keeps one for themselves. At the end of the round, the player with the Landscape cards passes them onto the next couple and the player who drew the Objective cards receives two Landscape cards—thus, the roles are swapped over for the next round.

– Image by boardGOATS

The Landscape cards come in four different colours and can be placed at either end so that the colours match, or they can start a new row. The tops of the cards makes them look like mountain ranges, the cards form an interesting tableau. As well as the colour, each card also has one of six symbols: Mammals, Birds, Houses, Ruins, Rivers and Wind—these are used for scoring. After eight rounds each player will have four Objective cards and each pair’s shared Landscape will contain sixteen Landscape cards. The game play was very different with so many players and playing in pairs. The cards and the Landscapes the formed were beautiful. Everyone who was new to the game started feeling their way somewhat, but eight rounds doesn’t last long and it was all over really very quickly.

– Image by boardGOATS

The scoring turned out to be a little quirky and in the end took almost as long as the game. Each player then scores one point for each River and Wind cards in their shared Landscape and scores for their shared Objective. Players then count the number of points they have earned for their individual objectives. The player with the highest total wins, however, the partner of the player with the largest total receives a bonus of five points If, with this bonus, the partner has more points than anyone else, then the pair win as a team. This time, Blue and Ivory scored the most for their shared Landscape. Individually though, it was a tie between Plum and Ivory as Plum scored much more for her personal Objectives (as indeed did Purple).

– Image by boardGOATS

Because the individual winner was tied, there were no “team bonuses” awarded, which left the scoring feeling a little unsatisfying somehow and nobody fancied playing again straight away. Instead, the group split into two groups with Ivory, Sapphire, Jade and Blue deciding to squeeze in a quick game of Ticket to Ride with the Japan map. This had an outing fairly recently (when Pink hilariously took a fifty point hit when Purple played a single train claiming the route from Hiroshima to Okayama and blocked all his Tickets), but all the people involved in that game were elsewhere.

Ticket to Ride Map Collection: Volume 7 – Japan & Italy

– Image by boardGOATS

The Japan map is played exactly the same way as all the other versions of Ticket to Ride (i.e. take cards from the market or spend them to place trains in order to fulfill Tickets), but on a map of Japan and with the addition of the Shinkansen or “Bullet Train”. Once a player has completed a section of Bullet Train, any player can use it to complete Tickets, but the player who completed that section moves along the Bullet Train Track. At the end of the game, the player who progressed the furthest, who contributed the most to this shared project receives the largest bonus, with the player who contributed least being penalised.

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This time, everyone went for the Bullet Train early, so much so that there was quite a battle and by the time Sapphire realised what was going on, it was too late and he was left with the penalty. That forced him to switch tack however, which might actually have done him a favour as he left Blue and Ivory to fight for the biggest, twenty-point bonus. It was all really tight, but Sapphire was some way out in front as the Shinkansen points were evaluated. And despite picking up a five point penalty, there he stayed to claim victory—Ivory who finished in third, pipped Blue on the Bullet Track, leaving her runner up with an eight point deficit (instead of a two point lead).

– Image by boardGOATS

The other half of the Sierra group had moved on to play another game picked up at UK Games Expo, Tegula. This is a very beautiful game played with beech wood hexagonal tiles with artwork based on Roman mosaics. The idea is that players have to match the edges in order to place them. Players can use actions to swap tiles, give tiles or play extra tiles and the first player to run out is the winner. This time that was Black, with Purple the best of the rest (i.e. the player with the fewest tiles left, and Plum and Byzantium tied for third.

– Image by boardGOATS

Meanwhile, Mint had also brought her new acquisition from the UK Games Expo, Intarsia, and taught it to Pink and Pine. Although this had a most uninspiring box cover and the uninteresting theme of polishing wooden floors, the game itself is really pretty and fun to play. Like Tegula, it is also made out of wood, the game is played over three rounds with eacvh round comprising three phases. First, each player takes the ten Material Cards depicted on their Starting Hand Card from the general supply. Players then take it in turns placing wooden elements onto their Flood Boards by paying the necessary Material Cards and taking new ones where possible and claiming and scoring Tool Tiles when their requirements are complete.

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Finally, players score points based on the number of connectors they’ve placed and choose a new Starting Hand Card to begin the next round. At the end of the game, players calculate their scores for the number of intarsias they’ve built and add them to their running total and the winner is the player with the most points. The game was very tight… for second place! In the end Pine pipped Pink’s ninety by a single point, but Mint took victory by a bit of a landslide with a hundred and eight, as she had four intarsias, compared with three and two for the others. It had been a very enjoyable, lovely tactile game though and that hadn’t out-stayed its welcome.

– Image by boardGOATS

With the floor duly polished, the trio moved on to introduce Mint to the weird and wonderful game that is Botswana. This is a sort of stocks and shares game played with cards and plastic animals. Players start with a hand of cards and, on their turn, choose one to play taking a plastic animal of their choice from the central supply to add to their holding. At the end of the game, each player scores for each animal with points equal to the total number of animals of the type they hold, multiplied by the face value of the last card of that type that was played. Thus a player with five elephants might be scoring twenty-five points until another player replaces the “Five of Elephants” with a zero and crashes their value.

– Image by boardGOATS

This game went down to the wire, but Pine just got his nose in front, with twenty points for his lions and fifteen for his rhinos giving him a total of thirty-five, on point more than Mint, while Pink finished a few points behind that. There was just time for another very quick game and the game they chose was Ticket to Ride: Berlin—one of the city versions of Ticket to Ride. These are much quicker to play, but still follow the same collect cards and spend them to place pieces in order to complete Tickets pattern. However, in Berlin, players have two different kinds of train car to place—trams and U-bahn trains. On the board, there are specific single-space routes that can only be filled using an U-bahn train.

– Image by boardGOATS

The number of coloured cards required to complete the U-bahn is indicated on the game board (up to three), but similar to the Bullet Train in Japan, players only ever place one piece on than U-bahn route. Players only have a total of five U-bahn carriages to work with and their placement is critical, which makes Berlin one of the more interesting of the city games. Once again, this was a close game with everyone using all their pieces. Pink was the victor however, beating Pine into second by two points, but that meant that all three of them had won a game, so everyone went home basking in the warm glow of success.

– Image from facebook.com
adapted by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: You can get some great games from UK Games Expo.

Next Meeting, 5th August 2025

Our next meeting will be on Tuesday 5^th August 2025. As usual, we will start playing shorter games from 7.30pm as people arrive, until 8pm when we will start something a little longer. Following a recent change of hands, the pub has now started doing “basket meals”, so those that will be eating will be arriving from around 6.30pm.

This week, the “Feature Game” will be Cubed (rules, review and how-to-play video). This is a very simple, sort of 3D, hexagonal/trioominoes domino game which plays relatively quickly and, at least in theory, with a lot of players.

– Image from cubedthegame.com, adapted by boardGOATS

And speaking of Dominoes…

Jeff had been having a drink in Faringdon after work. As he left the Old Crown in the Market place, a sign caught his eye and he went into the shop to find out more.

“Your sign outside says three strippers for £4.99,” said Jeff. “Are we talking topless or fully nude here please?”

“Sir,” replied the guy behind the counter, “This is Domino’s Pizza—they’re chicken strippers.”

“Ahhh…” Jeff responded. “OK, now the pricing makes sense… How long is each dance please?”