Following the test event at the Horse and Jockey and much discussion, we have decided to try meeting in person again. As the pub are not currently serving food on a Tuesday, we have decided to move to Thursdays for the time being. Therefore, our next meeting will be on THURSDAY 26th August 2021. We will start playing shorter games from 7.30pm as people arrive, until 8pm when we will start something a little longer (table is booked from 6.30pm for those who would like to eat first).
This week, the “Feature Game” will be Red Rising, which is a new card collecting game themed round the books by Pierce Brown. The books are set in a dystopian future on Mars following lowborn miner Darrow, a Red, as he infiltrates the ranks of the elite Golds.
– Image by boardGOATS
And speaking of colours…
Jeff was showing Joe his new pen. “It’s magic, see?” Jeff explained, “It can can write any colour. Red, Pink, Brown, Orange, Violet, Yellow, Blue, Gold… And even words that aren’t colours…!”
We’d had such fun at the “Post-Covid Test Event” at the Horse and Jockey and some were so disappointed to have missed it, that we decided to have another, this time “unofficial” meeting at the pub before our formal return. As we chattered away and waited for food to arrive, we told Lime what we’d played last time. He said he was sorry to have missed Sushi Go! as he really enjoyed it, and in a trice, a real, hardcopy of the game was out and cards were being shuffled and dealt. We’ve played Sushi Go! plenty of times both online and in person, but as usual, we had a very quick run-through of the rules.
– Image by boardGOATS
Players start with a hand of seven cards, and choose one to keep, passing the rest on to the player on their left. Players repeat this with the aim of the game being to end up with the set of cards that score the most points. The game is played over three rounds with the player with the highest total winning. The final round was coming to an end when pizza arrived, but we just had time to get to the end. It was close, but Blue made up for her disastrous showing earlier in the week online with a win, just a single point ahead of Pine (who had missed out completely on the previous game).
– Image by boardGOATS
Food was summarily dispatched and Ivory arrived, and after some discussion about what to play and whether to split into two groups, we all settled down together to play the dice-drafting game, Sagrada, with the 5-6 player expansion. This is another game that most of us are reasonably familiar with and we thought it would be a good game to play to help dust some more of the cobwebs off our gaming skills which had proven to be decidedly rusty at the “Test Event”. The base game is quite simple: the starting player draws dice from the bag and players take it in turns to take one and add it to their stained glass window.
– Image by boardGOATS
As well as following the restrictions given on the players’ window cards which specify colours and numbers for some spaces, players must place new dice next to already played dice while avoiding placing dice of the same colour or number in adjacent spaces. Depending on the difficulty of the player’s window card, players get a number of “cheat tokens” which are worth points at the end, or can be spent to use “Tools” to enable players to improve their move dice, change dice numbers and otherwise break the rules. This time the Tools cards drawn at random were the Eglomise Brush, the Copper Foil Burnisher and the Cork-backed Straightedge.
– Image by boardGOATS
The Eglomise Brush and the Copper Foil Burnisher allowed players to move dice ignoring any colour/number restrictions printed on their window card, while the Cork-backed Straightedge allowed players to place their chosen die in a location not adjacent to another die. The Tools are really useful as they allow players to improve their scores. These come from individual goal cards, and shared goal cards drawn at random. This time we drew one objective card rewarding dice of the same colour arranged diagonally and two that scored points for pairs of dice (ones and twos/threes and fours).
– Image by boardGOATS
The 5-6 player expansion, tweaks the rules a little. In the base game, in each round, the draft goes one way and then returns so that the first player gets to choose first and last with the last player taking two dice one after the other (similar to the initial settlement placement in The Settlers of Catan). With large numbers of players this can lead to a lot of down-time, partly because of the sheer number of decisions (which are taken sequentially), but also because there are more dice giving players a larger number of options to consider. To avoid this, players start the game with their own personal dice pool consisting of two of each colour, rolled to give random numbers. Players then take one die from the draft and one from their personal dice pool.
– Image by boardGOATS
Pink began, drawing seven dice from the bag, but we were only a few rounds in when Lime thought he might have dropped one. This queued a mad session of dice counting as well as fond recollections of the time Pine dropped a No Thanks! token between the floor boards which is probably still there. Fortunately, the dice, though small, would not fit through the gap and it turned out nothing had been dropped anyhow. Meanwhile, Blue and Burgundy discussed how to interpret the “diagonals” in the objective card as it was unclear from the rules. We decided to use the generous interpretation and score for each diagonal line, counting dice multiple times, but checking online after proved this incorrect and each diagonally adjacent die of the same colour scores just once.
– Image by boardGOATS
Lime was first to use his cheat tokens, though almost everyone else soon joined him. The exception was Pine who, despite starting with one of the most difficult Window cards, still had all six cheat tokens left at the end. Ivory pointed out that Pink’s window seemed to have a lot of high scoring green dice, making it likely that green was his personal objective and giving him a high score that would be hard to beat. And so it proved, though Ivory scored only one less for his personal, purple objective. Scores for pairs of dice were mostly similar, though Ivory, who started out with a hatful of ones managed to pair these with five twos giving him ten points.
– Image by boardGOATS
In the end, Burgundy and Pink were both close with fifty-six and fifty-eight points, but Ivory was five points clear with sixty-three. Lime had a horrifically early morning so reduced the numbers to five, and giving the mess we’d made with Bohnanzalast time, the rest of the group decided to give it another go. This is a fantastic trading game where players first plant beans from their hand, then draw two beans from the deck which can be planted or traded (and planted by the recipient) and finally harvest beans. The key point about the game is that cards in hand must not be rearranged.
– Image by boardGOATS
There are some really clever aspects to the game, for example, because the beans become money, the distribution of beans in the deck changes as the game progresses, but players can manipulate that by choosing when they harvest. Harvesting just before the deck is shuffled means more cards of that sort become available in the next round. With slightly fewer players, this becomes increasingly significant. This time, Burgundy’s shuffling got the blame when Blue started with a handful of green beans and then turned over more.
– Image by boardGOATS
Green beans continued to fall into her lap and punctuated by a full set of garden beans, some black-eyed beans and a small number of others, she harvested significantly more than the fourteen cards available. Pine managed to gather a full set of four cocoa beans, which felt all the more special as they often not in the game because they are removed for many player counts. Pink repeatedly demonstrated how he was unable count, trying to taking four cards to refill his hand each round instead of three. A couple of rounds in, Blue, bought herself a third bean field and nearly underpaid for that too (the cost varies depending on the number of players).
– Image by boardGOATS
As the game came to an end, players tried to maximise their final scores, and then started counting. Twelve was beaten by thirteen, which in turn was beaten by fourteen and then Ivory’s score of fifteen. But Blue was still counting, and counting—the green beans and her third bean field had done their job and she finished with a massive twenty-one. With that, Ivory left leaving four players and just enough time for a quick game of Love Letter, a game that is available online, but we’ve eschewed playing as it loses all it’s fun.
– Image by boardGOATS
One of the most successful of the micro-games, there are just sixteen cards. Each player starts with one card, draws a second from the deck and then plays one. The aim of the game is to end with the highest value card, or be the last player standing when the deck is exhausted. Some cards allow players to assassinate others if they correctly guess what they are holding, or if they compare cards and have the lower value. The game is played until one wins three rounds. Burgundy and Blue took the first and second rounds, before Pink took one round and Blue took another and with it, the lead.
– Image by boardGOATS
Pine had been knocked out of every round and when Pink picked him again he protested that Blue would be a better target. His protests were in vain, however, with Pink correctly suggesting Pine was “The Princess”, he was knocked out once more. Pink’s comment, “Don’t worry, you’ll always be a princess to me,” received a disgruntled, “Eat my tiara!” in reply. When Burgundy eliminated Pink, that gave Blue the last card and she went for the jugular taking what was the final round and with it, the game.
Although the test event at the Horse and Jockey was very successful last week, we decided to continue online for another week. So, after the usually chatter (mostly centred on the subject of revenge for the drubbing some of us got from Pine in playing the Heart of Africa expansion to Ticket to Ride), we moved on to the evening’s “Feature Game“. One of the more popular games that we have played online is the “Roar and Write” type game, Welcome to Dino World. We only played it once and then in “Lite Mode”, but there had been a lot of interest in the more exciting sounding “Danger Mode”, so we decided to give it a try this week.
– Image by boardGOATS
The basics of the game is that three dice are rolled giving a number of “pips” which players can spend on up to three actions. These actions are to: build paths; build a dinosaur pen (with generators), or build a facility. The relatively novel aspect of this is that as well as choosing actions to do, players can also combine two or more dice together and use the increased value to do fewer, more powerful actions. Thus a roll of one, three, and four can be used to do three separate actions of that level, or two actions of value, four say, or a single action of level eight.
– Image by boardGOATS
Playing the game with a large number of players (and remotely to boot), instead of players having goal cards that are scored at the end of each round, we use the variant where there are communal goal cards (called “Visitor Cards”) which are scored at the end of the game. The game lasts just eight rounds, after which everyone adds up their scores for visitors, facilities, unused generators and, of course, each dinosaur pen. This “Lite” version of the game is made considerably more complex when the game is played on the “Danger” board with the addition of Threat and Security Tracks and a modification to the way generators are built.
– Image by boardGOATS
The idea of the Threat Track is that every time a dinosaur pen is added the park, the threat level increases by one for a herbivore and two for a carnivore. Once per round, players can also increase their Security Level, by crossing off boxes on the Security Track. These boxes contain points, which if unused at the end of the game, are added to the player’s score. After the building phase is the malfunction phase when a single six-sided, (d6) “Threat Die” is rolled. The value of the Threat Die is added to each player’s Threat Level minus the Security Level to give the Danger Level. If the Danger Level is six or above, disaster strikes, generators malfunction, and dinosaurs start to rampage.
– Image by boardGOATS
Although both use 4 MW generators, they work slightly differently in the Danger and Lite Modes. In Lite Mode, each generator will supply a maximum of four pens (the ones sharing a side with the generator), so a pen that requires a total of 3 MW must be adjacent to three different generators. In Danger Mode, one generator can supply a maximum of 4 MW, but it can supply more than 1 MW to an individual adjacent pen indicated by a power line drawn between the two. Thus, the amount of power a generator supplies can change during the game—it is the generators that are working closer to full capacity that are most likely to fail…
– Image by boardGOATS
If the Danger Level in a park reaches six, any generators that are working at maximum capacity fail. It is a brief power-outage, but as a result, any pens that rely on these generators are affected and one square of these pens is lost (crossed out). The problem really comes, however, when the final square in a pen is lost and and the pen fails completely, because now the dinosaurs break out and cause damage to all the neighbouring pens causing a cascade reaction. And any pen that is destroyed completely no longer scores.
– Image by boardGOATS
Thus, the game is a matter of achieving a fine line between getting the most out of a limited number of generators with the minimum amount of security while still avoiding rampaging dinosaurs. The rules explanation took longer than expected as there was quite a bit more to Danger Mode, and worse, it was a while since we last played the game in Lite Mode, so we had to revise that too. Eventually we were going, however, only for a hiatus after the first round for a rules-check.
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Burgundy was right to point out that although the rules say players can carry out the three actions in any order, each one could only be carried out once per turn, in particular building dinosaur pens and building facilities. Around half the players had already built two pens in the first round, so we decided that any player that had not done so, could build a second pen in the second round if they chose, and thereafter we would adhere to the rules “as written”.
– Image by boardGOATS
As last time, the first couple of rounds were very slow as players tried to assimilate the Visitor cards and work out a plan to maximise the points they could get from them. This time they were:
≥3 Protoceratops pens (worth four points);
≥2 Different facilities touching orthogonally (worth four points);
≥1 Protoceratops pen, ≥1compsognathus pen, and ≥1 stegosaurus pen all within four paths of any entrance (worth six points);
≥1 T. rex pen and ≥1 brachiosaurus pen (worth six points);
≥4 Brachiosaurus pens (worth ten points);
≥2 Velociraptor pens and ≥3 herbivore pens (worth ten points).
The Facilities were the Viewing Platform and the Ranger Lookout which score points equal to the number of undamaged spaces in one neighbouring pen at the end of the game, and one point per pen visible orthogonally (respectively).
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In addition to the variety from the Visitor and Facility cards, there are also Research cards which are there to mitigate bad luck. In Lite Mode, Research is just six opportunities to adjust a die by ±1, but these are replaced by three cards, X, Y, and Z which players can use three times, twice and once respectively. This time, these were:
Calculated Risk: When building a carnivore pen, only add one to the threat track but add one damage to the pen (X);
Alternate Funding: Use one die as if it were any value (Y);
Docile Gene Editing: Do not increase the threat when building a pen this round (Z).
While minimising generators and security gives players more points at the end of the game, there is no benefit in not using their Research, so while most players kept some back in case of emergencies, others started using them from the very beginning.
– Image by boardGOATS
Although we were slow to get started and the first few rounds were also very slow, once we got going the rounds were much quicker. And then came the maths. Without Ivory to set an early (usually unbeatable) target, Pine stepped up with a score of one hundred and seven. This was soon topped by Burgundy with a hundred and twenty-seven, then by Black with a hundred and twenty-nine. However, on recount, Burgundy excitedly announced that he also had a hundred and twenty-nine, while Black sadly revised his score down to a hundred and twenty-seven. All was not lost as both players recounted again and Black’s score returned to one hundred and twenty-nine while Burgundy’s third and final count proved to be the lowest at a hundred and twenty-six, “Bah!”.
– Image by boardGOATS
At this point, Black and Burgundy gave in as Pink’s verified score was a hundred and thirty, and it was clear they were battling for the minor places. Pink, who thought he had won, however, was decidedly unimpressed when he was beaten by two points by Blue. There must have been something in the air, or maybe it was the fumes from the vast amount of Tipp-Ex that Blue had used. Pink’s check of Blue’s score initially increased her tally by six, only for him to reduce it again on a second recount, but the changes weren’t enough to give Pink victory.
– Image by boardGOATS
Pine was suffering with screen-eyes so took an early night leaving six to move onto Board Game Arena. Six is an important number as a lot more games become available, but after some discussion where people expressed the desire to play something different yet light, we chose Go Nuts for Donuts!, which Pine had said he had been playing and had found light and entertaining. It was indeed very, very simple: each donut has a number and players simultaneously choose a card to “bid” for them. The catch is that a bit like Om Nom Nom, if more than one person chooses the same donut, it cannot be shared and nobody gets it.
– Image used with permission
of boardgamephotos
The different types of donuts score points in different ways and the player with the most points after all seventy cards in the deck have been exhausted is the winner. Some just give points, others score if you have more (or less) than a certain number of one type of cards, while others allow players to take cards from the deck or discard pile. The clever part is the simple decision, however: which card to choose. It is not as simple as it first seems. Sometimes a player wants the card that gives the most points, but then other players may want that, so perhaps it is better to choose something else, even a card someone else wants simply to stop them getting it. And which one is best if there is more than one donut of the same type?
– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com
Go Nuts for Donuts! is quite a brutal game in that it is perfectly possible to end up with no cards much less cards you actually want. It is a lot of fun though, and would probably be even more fun in person when players get to see the whites of each other’s eyes and read their body-language. This time, although Purple got the most cards with eleven, it was only enough for second place. Burgundy’s six cards worked better together, and thanks largely to his fine set of four Boston Cream donuts, Burgundy’s score of eighteen just gave him victory by a single point.
– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com
The appearance, style and set-collection nature of Go Nuts for Donuts! is very reminiscent of Sushi Go!, so with Green’s departure, the rest of the group settled down for one last food-related game. We’ve played Sushi Go! quite a bit, mostly because it is very quick and simple. The archetypal card drafting game, players start with a hand of cards and pass the rest on, trying to collect sets to give them the most points at the end of the game. Played over three rounds, we played with a widdershins draft in the second round, and included the Soy Sauce mini-expansion for extra flavour.
– Image by boardGOATS
Pink took the first round largely thanks to a full set of three sashimi cards (which give ten points). Players always fight for the wasabi cards as these can give a significant points boost, multiplying the next nigiri by three, but Purple was the only one to get any and she couldn’t make the best use of it as she had to pair it with egg nigiri (only worth one point). The second round was pretty much a repeat of the first with Pink taking another sashimi trio and Blue scoring the egg nigiri with wasabi.
– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com
With Pink well ahead with thirty-six, the final round was really about limiting losses. Purple took a full six for her puddings and Pink took six points for his maki rolls, but overall, the takings in the final round were pretty similar. The rest of the group were actually quite close together with Purple (again) the best of the rest, but despite losing three points for tying for the least puddings, Pink’s final total of forty-two was unbeatable.
– Image by boardGOATS
from boardgamearena.com
Learning Outcome: If the fences of dinosaur pens lose power, things can go very wrong (though perhaps that was already well known).
Harshad Gothankar from Mumbai was born without arms, so he does everything with his feet—including playing Carrom. Carom is a flicking game played in south Asia that is similar to the north American/Canadian game Crokinole and more modern descendents like Flick ’em Up!, ICECOOL, Subbuteo and PitchCar (or Carabande).
– Image by Mumbai Games on facebook.com
Harshad Gothankar has always been a remarkable young man with a passion for playing the national sport of cricket and is now also a state Carrom champion. He recently became an internet phenomenon, however, when cricket superstar Sachin Tendulkar highlighted his determination in a post on his social media feed.
The difference between impossible & POSSIBLE lies in one’s determination. Here's Harshad Gothankar who chose i-m-POSSIBLE as his motto.
Although the test event at the Horse and Jockey was very successful last week, we have decided to continue online this week. Therefore, our next meeting will be on Tuesday 17th August 2021; we will gather from around 7.30pm, and start playing at 8pm.
Jeff and Joe had just finished watching Jurassic World and as they watched the credits, Joe said commented that he thought it was a fantastic film. Jeff was less impressed.
Joe enthused, “But just look at what they made those dinosaurs do!”
Jeff replied, “Yeah, it’s great—they were able to train raptors. Still, that’s not as impressive as the Flintstones convincing a bird to be their record player…”
After somediscussion, we had decided to have a “test visit” to The Jockey. As they are not doing food on Tuesdays at the moment, this was a Thursday and we decided to make it a fairly light event filled with some of our favourite games. Those that arrived early started with food and Burgundy was able to order Ham, Egg and Chips for the first time in over a year. There was a boisterous atmosphere amongst the gamers who were all clearly over the moon to be back, bolstered by the wake on the other side of the room which had been going full-swing since lunchtime.
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While we waited for food to arrive, the group revelled in the delight of face-to-face meeting discussing the meaning of the word “MILF” and whether or not there was such a thing as a “DILF”. Poor Ivory had been waiting well over a year to play the Japanese map for Ticket to Ride and it had been scheduled at least three times since and had been postponed thanks to “events”. As it was starting to become a bit of a harbinger, we decided to make the “Feature Game” the generic Ticket to Ride to ensure that the evening wasn’t jinxed again, but there was plenty of opportunity to give it an outing as two copies arrived.
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There were lots of other map choices and while we discussed the real options, lots of new variants were invented. The pick of these were perhaps the Beeching Variant (loads of the routes get ripped up halfway through the game leaving people with tickets they can’t make) and “Ticket to Row”, the “Climate Change Edition” (as the game progresses, coastal routes disappear due to erosion and flooding). Ivory was obviously keen to play the Japanese map and was joined by Green, Lilac and Burgundy. The other map ended up being the Heart of Africa and after some discussion about the best number of players for this map (which has reputation of being brutal), Burgundy moved over to join Blue, Pink and Pine.
– Image by boardGOATS
Ticket to Ride is a relatively simple game, often referred to as a “Gateway Game” because it has a reputation of drawing people into playing modern board games. The decision space on each turn is relatively small, but still meaningful and although a lot of the group like more challenging fare too, we all have a soft-spot for this one. The idea is that players are building track, by playing coloured cards that match the colour and number of the line shown on the map. So on their turn, they can draw cards, or place trains by playing cards. Points are scored for placing trains with longer the routes, giving more points.
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Things are not quite as simple as that though, because players also have tickets: if they can fulfil their tickets using routes they have claimed, they score points. If, on the other hand, they have unfulfilled tickets at the end of the game, these score negative points. Thus, instead of picking up cards or placing trains, players can also collect tickets to try to increase their score that way. The game end is triggered when one player has only two of their little plastic train pieces left. One of the things that gives Ticket to Ride its remarkable continuing appeal is the incredible variety in expansions available, each of which add interest with a different layout and slight variations to the rules.
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For example, the Japan expansion has routes reserved for Bullet Trains, which are marked by a single Bullet Train miniature. When a route is claimed, it can be used by all players to complete destination tickets. Instead of scoring points for such a route, players progress on the separate Bullet Train track with players receiving a bonus at the end of the game: whoever has contributed the most to this shared project receives the largest bonus, with the player who contributes least being penalized.
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In contrast, the Heart of Africa expansion adds new terrain cards which can be picked up instead of train cards which can be used to score extra points when placing trains. The terrain cards come in three different colour sets representing Desert/Savanna, Jungle/Forests, and Mountains/Cliffs. When a player places trains of the corresponding colours, if they have at least as many of that terrain card as every other player, they may additionally spend terrain cards to double the points value of their route. One of the consequences of the different terrain types having fixed colours is that routes of one colour tend to be clumped together.
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This means that players need lots of cards of the same colour to connect routes together. This, combined with the fact that there are no “double routes” in the centre of the map, mean the Heart of Africa expansion has a reputation of being particularly savage and unforgiving. It was also much slower to get going, indeed, the Japan expansion players were well into their game before the Africa players had really started, and they had nearly finished before the others had got halfway through. In Japan, Ivory went for the Bullet Trains to get the bonus, but also in order to help complete his tickets. Although nobody really engaged in the building of the Tokyo subway, Kyushu Island was well catered for by Lilac who built a very fine connection from Kokura to Miyazaki.
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In the dying moves of the game, Lilac effectively gave Green fifteen points and with it, the game. Things were rather different on the next table, however. Blue and Burgundy got stuck with tickets that meant they had little choice but to go through the jungly centre of Africa. With Pine having accidentally picked up a large pile of jungle terrain cards, there was no chance of either of them getting double points. Worse, as Blue struggled she could see there was one single train route that she simply had to take and Burgundy was heading straight for it.
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When Blue took the critical route from under Burgundy’s nose, it started a cascading chain reaction of events where they continually messed up each other’s plans. Meanwhile, Pine sniggered from the sidelines as he built his routes round the south coast largely unopposed—even on the odd occasion that someone else managed to get in his way, it was on a double route. Pink was getting it largely his own way too, as he was going round the west and north edges of the map.
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Pine picked up handfuls of tickets most of which seemed to lie on the routes he’d already connected, and then Pink suddenly moved to end the game leaving Burgundy with no other choice but to take tickets and hope for a miracle (to no avail). As the last trains were placed, Pine had a substantial lead which only increased when he added his ticket scores and Globetrotter bonus for having the most complete tickets. Although it was all built on extreme good fortune in his starting tickets, Pine had put together a fantastic game finishing with a massive one hundred and seventy-five points, forty points ahead of Pink in second.
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As the depths of deepest darkest Africa were being slowly explored, the other three decided to take advantage of Burgundy’s preoccupation to play Splendor without him to guarantee one of them a rare victory in a game that we haven’t played for over a year. The game is very simple: on their turn, players either collect gems, or use the gems to buy cards. The cards then act as permanent gems, while the more expensive cards also give victory points as well. A player reaching fifteen points triggers the end of the game, and the player with the most points wins. Although we have played it a lot, this time was with Green’s brand new copy, with the wrapper still on.
– Image by boardGOATS
Once the cellophane had been removed and cards well shuffled, the group settled down to play. Maybe it was poor shuffling or perhaps just luck, but diamond cards (whites) were slow to come out at the start. In addition to points on cards, players can also get points for collecting Noble tiles. This time, Ivory suddenly claimed two Nobles in quick succession which, together with a high-scoring card pushed him over the line. Green was able to claim a third Noble, but it wasn’t enough and he finished one point behind Ivory in what had been a close game.
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The Explorers of Africa finished at around the same time as the gem dealers. So, as Ivory headed off to get ready for his weekend away, Pink suggested a game of our old favourite, Bohnanza. Everyone had played it a lot except Lilac, so as Blue explained the rules, Pine and Burgundy prepared and shuffled the deck. The game is a simple enough trading game, but depends on the vital rule that players must not change the order of the cards in their hand. On their turn, the active player must play the first card in their hand, and may play the second if they choose.
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Then, the player turns over the top two cards from the central deck. They can plant these in their two been fields if there is space, but fields can only hold beans of one type, and beans on the table must be planted, so most often these are traded to other players. Once the two cards on the table have been dealt with, the active player can finally trade cards from their hand, but again, all cards traded must be planted. When they are done, they draw cards to go into their hand. The aim of the game, once again is to collect sets. At any point, players can trade in their planted beans, getting coins at the rate indicated by the “Bean-o-meter”.
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And this is one of the clever parts of the game—when a player sells their beans, they take the relevant number of cards and turn them over, turning them into money. One side effect of this is that rare cards become increasingly rare, while the more common cards become increasingly common. The deck also gets progressively smaller as fewer cards are recycled making the rounds shorter as the game goes on. The game lasts three rounds, but as a result of this, the last round is usually very short indeed. There are a lot of other nuances, which Green and Blue tried to explain so Lilac wasn’t too disadvantaged.
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The others expressed their disapproval by referring to them all as “Team Trio”. However, while Lilac was getting the hang of it and everyone was doing what they could to be nice to her, Blue lost the plot and sold several fields of beans without taking her reward. It seemed to be contagious, because in the final round Burgundy’s pile of coins somehow became the draw pile. Chaos reigned and hilarity ensued as Blue, Pine, Pink and Burgundy tried to work out what had happened and variously blamed each other. Burgundy probably got most of his coins back, but there wasn’t really much doubt that the winner was Lilac with fifteen coins.
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Although it was late there was still much chatter, about how it wasn’t the same without Black, Purple and Lime, and what we were going to do going forwards. It got quite a lot later too, because as we headed out someone pointed out the clear skies and how it should be possible to see the Perseid Meteor Shower. As we stood in the car park, someone spotted a “shooting star”, but everyone else missed it. So we waited for another, and another, and another. Eventually, everyone had a crick in their neck and rather than spend the whole night there, we decided it was time to go.
Last time, we had decided to have a “test visit” to The Jockey, with the hope that we’d be back this week. Sadly, since then, the pub has been closed, so we were online for another week. Lime, Pine, Black and Purple were the first to join the meeting, quickly followed by Burgundy, then everyone else eventually joined the chatter. We had hoped to mark The Games of the XXXII Olympiad in Tokyo and our return to The Jockey by playing Ticket to Ride with the Japanese map. However, circumstances meant that this was the third unsuccessful attempt to play that game. So instead, this week, the “Feature Game” was the Ishikawa map for MetroX.
– Image by boardGOATS
MetroX is a simple little “Roll and Write” type game that seems easy at first, but is difficult to play well. The game is driven by a deck of number cards, where the simple ones dictate how many sections can be marked on a route: Players fill the boxes along the lines with “zeros”, with the number on the card dictating the number of boxes filled. In general, if the line comes to an end, or some of the boxes had already been filled (because they were part of another line for example), then any excess are lost. So the game is all about efficiency, as there is a limit to the number of cards that can be used on each line (as shown by the indicator boxes at the start of each one).
– Image by boardGOATS
There are a small number of special cards as well, which break the rules. For example, there are number cards with a circle, which allow players to skip any filled spaces and and help avoid wastage. There are also special “star” cards, which allow players to fill a box with a number equal to the number of tracks passing through the space—this number contributes to the player’s final score. There is also a “free” card which allows players to fill in a single space anywhere on the map. Cards are turned until all the indicator boxes on the map have been filled or until the six is drawn, in which case, the deck is shuffled and drawing (both of cards and routes) continues.
– Image by boardGOATS
Points come from the “star” bonuses, but also from line completion bonuses. These are scored similar to the rows and columns in Noch Mal! or the bonuses in Welcome To…, where the first player to complete a line scores a higher amount than those who complete it later in the game. This is off-set with a negative score for the number of unfilled boxes at the end of the game. This time we were playing with the Ishikawa promo map, which is remarkably simple, however, the fact there are very few indicator boxes not only makes it a very short game but also leaves very little room for manoeuvre. With only eleven rounds (plus any free cards) we were all worried that if we didn’t get a six we might struggle to complete lines. That concern turned out to be baseless, however, with every line being completed by someone during the game.
– Image by boardGOATS
Green’s mind was clearly elsewhere as he missed a number and spent a couple of minutes trying to work out what he’d done and then asked for clarifications on the negative scoring. For reasons that weren’t entirely clear, everyone struggled to calculate their scores, with a long delay before scores came in, and with a large number of corrections. Ivory led the scores with nineteen points. After a brief spell in second behind Pink and Purple, a couple of recounts later it was confirmed as a four-way tie between Ivory, Pink, Burgundy and Purple all with nineteen. So, following the example of the high jumpers, Mutaz Essa Barshim and Gianmarco Tamberi, they agreed to share the Gold Medal.
– Video from youtube.com
The Japanese are very fond of their railways, so as the Ishikawa map was so quick to play, we decided to follow it with another train game, the new Railroad Ink Challenge, which we first played a month ago. This is another relatively simple “Roll and Write” game, where players have to draw the road/rail depicted when four dice are rolled. All four must be drawn and they must connect to an “entrance” or something already drawn on the player’s map. There are also special cross-roads which can be used a maximum of once per round and only three can be used in the whole game. Each game lasts for just seven rounds, so again efficiency is vital.
– Image by boardGOATS
The Challenge edition adds extra features on the maps which in effect give players bonuses when they fill those spaces, and also adds a set of three “goal” cards that give players more points when they complete them. These work in the same way as the line bonuses in MetroX, except that there are three sets of points available: one for the first player(s) to complete them, one for the second set of players to complete them and one for everyone else. Last time, we played the Shining Yellow edition, but this time, although we used the yellow boards, we used challenge cards from the Lush Green edition, randomly drawing cards A, B and E.
– Image by boardGOATS
Goal A gave points for players filling five of the nine central spaces; B gave players points for completing three of the “village” spaces and E gave points for completing all nine of the central area. Ivory’s printer refused to play ball, so he gave up and took an early night. We were all sorry to see him go of course, but it did give everyone else a chance to win. The first round included one of the especially awkward back-to-back curves, but it turned out to be the only one, though. This time there were a lot of T-junctions and fly-overs, with very few straight segments and simple corners. As a result, people started using their “specials” quite early rather than saving them to the end.
– Image by boardGOATS
As is often the case, there were a lot of reports of huge numbers of “hanging ends” meaning that players were variously taking chances and keeping options open, but hoping upon hope for helpful dice rolls. As the game progressed, people started claiming the Goals, with B going first. Some players had decided to use different colours for road, rail and stations, which ultimately seemed to slow them down as they not only had to choose what to do but also make sure they used the right colour. That just gave more thinking time to everyone else though, so nobody really minded.
– Image by boardGOATS
Without expansions, the game only takes seven rounds, so it wasn’t long before people were starting to worry that they were running out of time. Burgundy said he could really have done with one more round and there were several others who felt the same, but the rules are the rules, so Burgundy posted his score, setting an initial target of fifty-one. When Green gave his score of seventy-seven, however, he was so far ahead of Burgundy that photographic evidence was requested by everyone else. While his score was being verified as correct, Blue and and Pink were confirmed as the winners of silver and bronze respectively.
– Image by boardGOATS
Time was marching on, so we moved onto Board Game Arena for something light and easy, and sensing that this might be the last chance online, we opted for our go-to game, 6 Nimmt!, with the Professional Variant. In this simple game, players simultaneously choose a card and, once revealed, starting with the lowest card, they are added to one of the four rows—the one ending in the highest number that is lower than the number on the card. The player who adds the sixth card to any row, instead takes the five cards and the number of bulls heads on the cards make part of their score.
– Image by boardGOATS
Face-to-face, these are summed and the lowest scores wins, however, on Board Game Arena, everyone starts with sixty-six points and the scores are subtracted from their running total. Thus, the game ends when someone falls below zero and the winner has the most points at the end of the game. In the Professional Variant, players can add cards to the either end of the row, with cards going at the start of a row if they are lower, than the first card in the row and the difference is smaller than it would be if they were to go elsewhere. This really adds a new dimension to the game, but there is serious mathematical upkeep giving us reservations about playing it with real cards, face-to-face.
– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com
This time, Blue picked up first and enthusiastically started the race for the bottom. It looked like she was a certainty to end the game very quickly until she had competition from Burgundy. Everyone else had picked up some cards and Burgundy was the last person to maintain his starting total of sixty-six nimmts, when he suddenly shipped a landslide of points going from the lead to vying for last with Blue in just a handful of turns. Both Blue and Burgundy managed to steady the ship, albeit briefly, before Blue grabbed enough points to end the game.
– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com
Everyone else was actually quite close, and once again we had a tie for the Gold Medal, this time between Purple and Pine (who always does well in this game); both finishing with thirty-eight, just two ahead of Black. From there, Green wished everyone else a good night leaving just six. With lower numbers the options abound, but everyone was in the mood for something that didn’t require too much thought, and someone suggested giving L.L.A.M.A. (aka L.A.M.A) a go. Although it was still in beta testing and we’d not played it online before, we felt there was “no cause for alarm-a”, as we’d played it before (albeit a long time ago) and found it to be a very easy game
– Image by boardGOATS
Nominated for the Spiel des Jahres two years ago, L.A.M.A. has a reputation of being a bit of an “UNO killer”, that is to say, it is a similar game to UNO, but perceived to be better. L.A.M.A. is an abbreviation for “Lege alle Minuspunkte ab”, which roughly translates as “get rid of your negative points”, and indeed this is what players do, in a similar way to UNO. Players start with a hand of cards and, on their turn can, add a single card face up to the pile in the middle as long as it has the same face value, or the same plus one. The cards are numbered one to six, with the Llama card simultaneously being above six and below one providing a bridge between the high and low numbers.
– Image by boardGOATS
Alternatively, players can pick up a card or pass. When players pass, their score is the total of the face values of their cards, but if they have multiple cards of the same face value, they only count once. So if a player has five cards with a value of two, they would score two points, however, just one card with a higher face value would score more and Llama cards score ten points. The round ends when either everyone passes, or when someone gets rid of all their cards and everyone takes chips equal to their scores. Players who succeed in checking out get the bonus of being able to return one chip, which is important because the game ends when someone reaches forty points and the winner is the player with the fewest points.
– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com
Burgundy spent a lot of time moaning about being given poor options by Purple who was sitting on his right. Based on the effect this had, he might have had a point as he was rapidly picking up chips and was the one to make it to forty and trigger the end of the game. Further, Purple was doing really well, finishing with just nine, twenty-five fewer than anyone else except Black, who just pipped her to victory with only six. With everyone keen to play another game, but nobody enthusiastic about making a decision on what to play, and medals only awarded once for each “event”, a second round meant the Gold was still up for grabs.
– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com
This time, Blue joined the moaning when Pine did the same to her as Purple had done to Burgundy, changing the number when she didn’t want and not changing it when she did. Burgundy did better this time finishing in joint second with Black with twenty-eight points. The winner of the second round finishing with just a single chip was Purple. This made her the L.A.M.A. champion taking the final Gold medal of the evening.
– Image by boardGOATS
Learning outcome: As with the Olympics, everyone who takes part in playing games is a winner.
A few years ago, TMGcontroversially raised over $150,000 selling shares online, but it seems these funds have now run out. According to an email sent out by TMG to stock holders discussed on a recent Dice Tower News, their “book value is in the negative” which they describe as “virtual bankruptcy”. As a result, in an attempt to save the company they are laying off staff and have called a halt to game development for the next “two to three years”. The most recent KickStarter campaign is also being abandoned with backers receiving a refunds. In the immediate future, the company will be focusing on selling its existing stock hoping that they will “eventually being able to start up again”.
-Video by the Dice Tower
Indications that TMG have been struggling have been there for a while, with allegations they delayed payment to some of their designers and most recently when they failed to renew the publishing rights to their highest rated game, Orléans. The question is, why has this happened? Of course, the global pandemic will have played its part, as will the recent sudden increase in shipping costs. However, these are probably only another nail in the coffin. The underlying cause is almost certainly the increased pressure caused by a market saturated with high quality games and a lot of noise generated by a conveyor-belt of crowd-funded products. Sadly, it looks like TMG simply ran out of road, and money.
With the Jockey closed last week, we have decided to postpone our planned to return to the Horse and Jockey. Therefore, our next meeting will be on Tuesday 3rd August 2021; we will gather from around 7.30pm, and start playing at 8pm.
Jeff had been out shopping and bought some new condoms. When he got home, his wife noticed the brand. “Olympic condoms? What makes them so special?” she asked.
“They come in three colours,” Jeff replied. “Gold, silver and bronze.”
“What colour are you going to wear tonight?” his wife asked.
“Gold, of course,” answered Jeff.
“Really?” his wife responded. “Why don’t you wear silver? It would be nice if you came second for a change…”
Since last time, there had been quite a bit of debate about returning to the Horse and Jockey, but there was a little hesitancy and with the extremely hot weather, staying at home this week turned out to be the right choice all round. As the decision had been just a little bit last-minute, we chose to keep the “Feature Game” simple and opted for the Skills Mini Expansion for Cartographers. We have played Cartographers several times and everyone has really enjoyed it. With the Spiel des Jahres winners announced this week, this was also the nearest we could get to playing a game to mark the occasion (it received a nomination for the Kennerspiel award last year).
– Image by boardGOATS
Cartographers is a “Roll and Write” type of game, but one with more of a “gamery” feel than most. It is based on Tetris, with shapes revealed on the flip of a card in a similar way to other games we’ve played this year like Second Chance and Patchwork Doodle. However, the thing that makes Cartographers more “gamery” than these is the addition of terrain and players usually have to make a choice, either of the shape or the terrain. The terrains are tied in with goal cards, four of which are revealed at the start of the game. Two goals are then scored at the end of each of the four seasons, in a similar way to another game we like, Isle of Skye.
– Image by boardGOATS
There are lots of other little aspects of the game that make it interesting—the presence of Ruins and Ambush Cards in the deck, for example, deliver a curved ball, just when players feel they are in control. Players can also build their income by surrounding mountain ranges and choosing to play certain shapes; this gives more points at the end of each round. The Skills expansion gives players a way to offset this income for special actions which potentially give players other ways of achieving their goals, further adding to the decision space.
– Image by boardGOATS
One of the most impressive things about Cartographers is the amount of variety that is built into the game, which means every play feels different and the game stays remarkably fresh. So, there are two different player maps and four of each type of goal card. This variety is carried through to the Skills expansion; there are eight cards of which three are chosen at random. This time we chose the B side of the map (with empty “wasteland” spaces marked) and drew the Greenbough, Mages Valley, Wildholds and Borderlands goal cards together with the Search, Negotiate and Concentrate skills cards. These skills cost anything from free (like Search) to three (like Concentrate), and each can be played multiple times per game although only one can be played each Season.
– Image by boardGOATS
We quickly realised that the expensive skills like Concentrate are only likely to be played in the final round, as the cost is in “income” and that income is generated at the end of every round. So, playing Concentrate at the start of the game will ultimately cost a player twelve points, while playing it in the final round will cost three just three points. For this reason, the free Search skill was always likely to be used by almost everyone in almost every season (and so it proved). Of course, the higher tariff reflects the increased power though: Search allows players to increase the size of the shape they are drawing by a single square; Negotiate (which costs one) allows players to draw a two-by-two shape, and Concentrate allows players to draw the shape a second time.
– Image by boardGOATS
As well as the skills which we had not played with before, several of the goal cards were new to us as well, including Greenbough (which rewards gives players one point per row and column with at least one Forest square in it) and Mages Valley (which gave points for each space next to a Mountain—two points for each Lake and one point for each Arable). We’d played with the Wildholds goal before though (which gives six points for each Village of six or more spaces) and, although Borderlands was new to us (which give points for each completed row or column), we’d played The Broken Road goal which is similar (giving points for completed diagonals).
– Image by boardGOATS
The game began much as usual, and Pink, who was watering the tomatoes in the “mini-market-garden”, commented that he could hear Burgundy muttering, sighing and generally sounding stressed from outside. Although we had played with “Wastelands” before, we had all focussed on how the fact some of the spaces were already full would help. We had all forgotten how much the Wastelands obstruct plans and generally make life considerably more difficult. Blue made a bit of using the ruins spaces to give her more flexibility later, but had forgotten that it would reduce the number of spaces she would be able to fill later in the game.
– Image by boardGOATS
It was clear after the first round that Ivory was going to be tough to beat, a feeling that was cemented after the second round. Unusually, Burgundy was the first to post a score, with a total of one hundred and forty-one. Although this was high enough to earn him second though, when Ivory’s score came through he was a massive twenty-five points ahead. Once again, it had been a very enjoyable game, and as we tidied up there was a little bit of chit-chat about the skills and what they added to the game. Since they are not compulsory, the consensus was that we should add them every time, though it was clear that they had been widely used because of the presence of the free Search skill, which everyone had used, and some in every round.
– Image by boardGOATS
With Cartographers over, we had a bit of a discussion about moving back to our much loved and greatly missed, Horse and Jockey. We’d conducted some anonymous surveys over the preceding week to try to gauge opinion trying to ensure that nobody felt under pressure to do anything they weren’t comfortable with. Some of the group had been back on occasional Thursdays, playing old favourites like The Settlers of Catan, Wingspan, and Roll for the Galaxy and new games like Red Rising, Mercado de Lisboa, Ticket to Ride: Amsterdam, Tapestry (with the Plans and Ploys expansion), Ginkgopolis, Everdell, and Draftosaurus (aka “Sushi Go with Dinosaurs”). Others, however, had not been to the pub for nearly eighteen months. After some discussion, we decided that we’d schedule a trial visit in ten days time, so that those who had not been out could see how they felt without committing, and those that went could report back to those that were feeling a little more reticent.
– Image by boardGOATS
After that, we moved onto Board Game Arena. It was a quiet night without both Pine and Lime, and once Green and Ivory had left as well, we were down to five which gave us a lot of options. Coloretto was one, but in the end we chose Niagara, a game we’ve all played quite a bit, but never online, and we were keen to see the new Board Game Arena implementation and whether losing the tactile moving river would leave the game lacking. A strong element of the game is the element of simultaneous play, however, and this was a large part of the appeal this time. Players simultaneously choose a Paddle Tile which dictates how far their canoe will move in the round. Then, in turn order, players move their canoe up or down the river, paying two movement points to pick up a gem from the bank (or drop one off).
– Image by BGG contributor El_Comandante
adapted by boardGOATS
The winner is the player to get four gems of the same colour, five gems of different colours, or any seven gems safely home and into the shallows. On the face of it, this is relatively simple, but the really clever part of the game is the movement of the river. In general, the river moves at the speed of the slowest boat—if the lowest numbered Paddle Tile is a two, then the river moves two spaces and all the boats move with it. However, one of the Paddle Tiles is a weather tile which enables players to increase or decrease the rate to make life harder or easier. Since everyone has to play all their Paddle Tiles before they can recycle them, the timing of their weather tile is critical: players who leave it to the end run the risk of the river running fast and losing boats over the cascade because they can’t do anything about it.
– Image by boardGOATS
from boardgamearena.com
And it wasn’t long before that’s exactly what happened, when both Blue and Black got their timing wrong and lost boats over the falls, so had to pay hard earned gems to get new ones. Then, to add insult to injury, Pink sneakily crept up on Blue and stole another gem from her. Players can only steal if they land on the same space as another boat while travelling upstream, and even then it is a choice. There was much ill feeling especially from Blue, but she wasn’t the only one. And with that, the gloves came off and everyone tried to redress the balance and ensure that such bad behaviour would not go unpunished.
– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com
Pink was abreast of that though and had a plan. Knowing his bad behaviour would make him a target he collected gems in one boat letting others take them while he stole the gems he wanted and got them to shore quickly. Much to everyone’s disgust, he soon had five different gems and there was nothing anyone could do to stop him getting them home. Burgundy actually had more gems giving him a nominally higher score, but his set of six did not include five different colours and Blue’s set of five included three nuggets of amber. The victims of Pink’s grand larceny were unimpressed with his terrible behaviour, and as it was getting late, we decided to call it a night.
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boardGOATS 