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.
– Image by boardGOATS
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.
– Image by boardGOATS
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.
– Image by boardGOATS
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.
– Image by boardGOATS
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.
– Image by boardGOATS
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.
– Image by boardGOATS
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.
– Image by boardGOATS
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.
– Image by boardGOATS
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.
– Image by boardGOATS
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.
– Image by boardGOATS
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.
– Image by boardGOATS
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.
– Image by boardGOATS
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”.
– Image by boardGOATS
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.
– Image by boardGOATS
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.
– Image by boardGOATS
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.
Last weekend was the fourteenth UK Games Expo after the cancellation of last year’s. Sometimes known as UKGE, or simply Expo, UK Games Expo is the foremost games event in the UK, but like so many events, fell victim to the pandemic in 2020. This year was quieter than usual, with everything more spread out and some notable absentees (most obviously Asmodee). The UK Games Expo Awards were handed out as usual, and those that went enjoyed themselves and found the “Covid Measures” sufficiently secure without being too onerous. None of the group regulars went this time, but that was largely due to other circumstances, so we are looking forward to next year.
Although restrictions are lifting, it is with a heavy heart that we’ve decided this week is too soon to return to the Horse and Jockey. Therefore, our next meeting will be on Tuesday 20th July 2021; we will gather from around 7.30pm, and start playing at 8pm.
This week, the “Feature Game” will be the Skills Mini Expansion for Cartographers. We have really enjoyed playing Cartographers several times and, with the Spiel des Jahres winners announced this week, this is the nearest we can get to playing a game to mark the occasion (it received a nomination for the Kennerspiel award last year). The Skills expansion gives players a way to spend the coins they earn, enabling them to find other ways of achieving their goals.
– Image by BGG contributor kalchio
And talking of skills…
Jeff was applying to be a policeman. To test their skills in recognizing a suspect, the interviewer showed Jeff and another candidate a picture for five seconds and then hid it.
“This is your suspect, how would you recognize him?” he asked.
The first candidate answered, “That’s easy, we’ll catch him quickly because he only has one eye.”
The Interviewer said, “Well… That’s because the picture I showed you is his profile.” He turned to the second candidate, “How would you recognize him?”
The second candidate smiled and said, “He’d be easy to catch because he only has one ear!”
The interviewer responded, “What’s the matter with you two?!?! Of course only one eye and one ear are showing because it’s a picture of his side profile. Is that the best answer you can come up with?”
Becoming frustrated at this point, he turned to Jeff, the third candidate, and asked, “How would you recognize him?” The interviewer added quickly, “Think hard before giving me a stupid answer.”
Jeff thought for a moment, and then slowly said, “The suspect wears contact lenses.”
The interviewer was somewhat taken aback, because he really didn’t know himself whether the suspect wore contacts or not. “That’s an interesting answer,” he said. “Wait here for a few minutes while I check his file and I’ll get back to you on that.”
He left the room, went to his office, checked the suspect’s file on his computer and came back with a beaming smile on his face. “Wow—it’s TRUE! The suspect does, indeed, wear contact lenses. Excellent work! How were you able to make such an astute observation?”
“That’s easy,” Jeff replied. “He can’t wear normal glasses because he only has one eye and one ear.”
After the usual pre-game chatter (this time focussed largely on the village of Standlake—north of The River, Tut!), we settled down to play the “Feature Game“. This was the new Railroad Ink Challenge: Shining Yellow Edition. We have played Railroad Ink: Deep Blue Edition several times, both with and without the mini expansions and have really enjoyed it. This new version steps it up a little with several new “Challenges” to add to the base game.
– Image by boardGOATS
The basic idea is very simple: four dice are rolled and players have to draw all four pieces of track on their player board. These must either extend a previous section of road or track, or start at one of the red entrance “arrows”. Three times during the game, players can, additionally, draw one of six special intersections with only one per turn. Players score points for the longest sections of road and track, connecting red entrance “arrows” and for filling the central nine squares, losing points for any unconnected, “hanging ends”.
– Image by boardGOATS
The “Challenge” editions of Railroad Ink add special spaces which represent villages, factories and Universities (though we referred to them as “Houses”, “Spectre Octopi” and “Fingers Pointing Up”). These give extra point scoring opportunities and a chance to get an extra “special” section. It also includes goal cards which give players even more chances to score more points. These work a bit like the scoring in Noch Mal!, where the first players to complete a “Challenge” score maximum points and others who achieve it later score less. These provide a lot of variety to the game, especially when combined with the additional mini expansions that each game comes with.
– Image by boardGOATS
The first thing we noticed was that the dice we had didn’t seem to make sense—there weren’t enough simple straight and simple bend sections. It quickly became apparent that we had the wrong dice in the box. Fortunately, we also had the Lush Green Edition, so we stole the dice from that and carried on. It quickly became apparent that somehow this was much more difficult than the original Blue Edition that we had played so many times. It wasn’t clear whether this was just an unfortunate series of dice rolls, or whether it was a function of the fact players were trying to do more things which forced them to compromise more, or even the new back-to-back corners.
– Image by boardGOATS
Either way, it was clear that people had a lot of “hanging ends” and were desperately hoping for “good rolls” (perhaps cheese and pickle rather than egg and cress…). Most people managed to make something out of their spaghetti-like network though, and before long it was time to compare scores. Ivory was in charge of the Tusk-lets, so in his absence it was left to Pine to set the target score. When Pine reported his fifty-three, everyone knew it was a good score from Burgundy’s response of “Bugger.”
– Image by boardGOATS
Black matched Pine, and Pink thought he’d pipped them by one point with his fifty-four, but Blue had the beating of all of them finishing with fifty-seven points. The score survived Pink’s recount, in what had actually been quite a close game. It had been a reasonably quick game, so we moved on to play Take it Easy!, a tile-laying game we played back in February, but had really enjoyed. Each hexagonal tile has three pipes crossing it, in three different colours. Tiles are drawn from a stack one at a time, and each player adds them to their personal player board.
– Image by boardGOATS
The tile placement rules are simple: the tiles can be placed anywhere on the board but must be placed the right way up which fixes the directions of the nine different coloured pipes. Players score points for any pipes that contain only the one colour, and that score is the number of tiles in the pipe multiplied by the number on the pipe. Thus, the highest scores are achieved by locating the high value pipes so they go through the middle. Although there are a maximum of fifteen pipes, it is almost impossible to complete all successfully, especially as there are some tiles that are not used. So, there is an element of chance as well as hedging bets.
– Image by boardGOATS
It quickly became clear to Blue that she wasn’t going to be in the running this time, and others felt the same, knowing they had not done as well as they felt they should have done. Pink, however, once again thought he’d got it in the bag with his score of one hundred and forty-five, ten more than the hitherto next score, by Black. That was until Green reported a massive score of one-hundred and seventy-three. Everyone else, some thirty points behind struggled to believe it, but he’d simply made better use of the tiles as everyone else had been waiting for yellow (nine point) tiles to come out.
– Image by boardGOATS
With that, we decided to move onto Board Game Arena. There were lots of options, but Green was keen to share a game he had recently discovered called Hugo: Das Schlossgespenst (aka Escape from the Hidden Castle). This is a light, family roll-and-move type game, where players take on the role of guests at a party, trying to escape from “Hugo the ghost”. Hugo starts in the cellar, but quickly moves up to the gallery, chasing any guests that have not been able to escape into one of the side rooms.
– Image by BGG contributor duchamp
The catch is that even when apparently safe in a room, if another guest guest rolls exactly the right number the resident can be evicted, inevitably right into Hugo’s path. When Hugo catches someone, they go into the basement and, the deeper they go, the more “Fright Points” that player gets. The aim of the game is to finish with the fewest “Fright Points” after Hugo has been round the gallery seven times is the winner.
– Image by boardGOATS
from boardgamearena.com
Although the game seems like it is just a simple roll-and-move game, there is a little bit more to it than that. Players are in charge of more than one guest, so they have to choose which one to move on each turn. This decision will depend on where their pieces are with respect to Hugo, but also which rooms are closest, which rooms are empty and whether they can get one of their guests into one of the two “safe rooms” that give players negative “Fright Points”. In practice, this isn’t much of a decision because after a couple of rounds, Hugo is moving so quickly, escape is the only thing on the players’ minds.
– Image by boardGOATS
from boardgamearena.com
Although the game didn’t take the five minutes advertised, it didn’t take too long. There was much humour when one of Blue’s guests stuck its head up Pine’s frock, and likewise, when one of Pine’s stuck its head up Burgundy’s frock. It was very clear to everyone that Green’s prior experience was the explanation for why he very nearly won—it is a game that is all skill of course. In the event, however, Pine pipped him to the line by just one “Fright Point”. And with that strangeness over, and this possibly being the last online game session, it seemed fitting to end with the reigning Golden GOAT winner, 6 Nimmt!.
– Image by boardGOATS
Over the last year or so, we’ve played 6 Nimmt! more than anything else, way more, simply because it is fast, fun, and skirts the fine line between tactical masterpiece and unpredictable luck-fest. Players simultaneously choose cards that are placed at the end of one of four rows. The player who places the sixth card in a row, instead picks up the other five and their card becomes the first card in the row. In the Board Game Arena version of the game, players start with sixty-six “Nimmts”, losing some each time they pick up. The winner is the player with the most “Nimmts” or points when one player’s tally falls below zero.
– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com
Playing with the “Professional Variant”, cards can be added to both ends of the rows, simultaneously adding control and chaos in equal measure. This time, Burgundy was the first to pick up cards, but Green was the first to begin the race to the bottom in earnest. His personal roller-coaster ride hit maximum speed when he picked up a remarkable eighteen “Nimmts” on one turn.
– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com
For most of the game, everyone was very, very close, except for Green, but then everything went wrong for everyone and the scores plummeted. Green inevitably triggered the end of the game though, but the final scores were surprisingly close aside from him. Despite picking up fifteen points on his final card, Burgundy finished with six “Nimmts” more than Pine and Blue who tied for second place. And with that, it was time for bed.
– Image by boardGOATS
Learning Outcome: Watch out, watch out, there’s a Hugo about!
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boardGOATS 