Author Archives: nannyGOAT

Boardgames in the News: A UK Games Company in Trouble

Et Games is a small Hampshire games company that is in trouble largely thanks to red tape. The company started life as Pucket Enterprises in 2009 and since then have won investment through the investment TV program Dragons’ Den and have published three wooden dexterity-type games, Pucket, Bridget and Rollet. These games are made in India out of sheesham wood (Dalbergia sissoo) from managed plantations. Unfortunately, sheesham wood looks similar to some endangered rosewoods, so a recent change in the rules means Et Games now require an import permit for each shipment.

– Image from etgames.co.uk

According to Et Games’ website, delays by the Indian authorities in providing the necessary export permit for a recent shipment, meant Et Games were unable to apply for a UK permit until shortly before the goods arrived. The UK Animal Plant and Health Authority (APHA) say this was too late, so they have confiscated the whole shipping container worth £20,000 which will probably end up being destroyed. With other costs and forgone profits, this small business has effectively lost up to £40,000, putting the company in peril. In an effort to save the business, Et Games are trying to get the support of their local Member of Parliament, Damian Hinds, and persuade him to write to the relevant junior minister (Therese Coffey) to refer the matter to the Parliamentary Health Service Ombudsman. Anyone who wishes to support Et Games and help to raise the profile of their plight can sign their petition on change.org.

– Image from etgames.co.uk

Next Meeting – 22nd January 2019

Our next meeting will be on Tuesday 22^nd January, at the Horse and Jockey pub in Stanford-in-the-Vale. As usual, we will be playing shorter games from 7.30pm as people arrive, until 8pm when we will start something a little longer.

This week the “Feature Game” will be Auf Teufel komm raus, a fun, push-your luck game with a betting element. “Auf Teufel komm raus” literally translates as “On Devil come out“, but roughly means “by hook or by crook” or according to rule book, “The Devil with it” (as the title is officially translated). None of these really give any information about the game though where players are betting on how many coals they can pull out of the fire without getting caught by the Devil.

– Image by boardGOATS

And speaking of the Devil…

St. Peter and Satan were planning a football match, but there was a bit of a dispute. The Devil wanted home advantage, but St. Peter felt the brimstone would be a significant disadvantage for anyone from Heaven. In the end they agreed the match would be played on neutral turf between a select team from the heavenly host and a band of Satan’s hand picked players.

“Very well,” said the gatekeeper of Heaven. “But you realize, I hope, that we’ve got all the best players and the smartest coaches.”

“I know, and that’s all right,” Satan answered unperturbed. “We’ve got all the referees.”

8th January 2019

The evening began with everyone comparing lurgies: Blue and Burgundy were blaming Purple for theirs (contracted in Didcot last week), while Purple and Pine blamed Lilac (contracted at New Year). With food delayed we decided to play a quick game of one of our old favourites while we waited, 6 Nimmt!. Unbelievably, this fun little card game is celebrating its twenty-fifth birthday this year, yet its still just as popular as ever with our group. That said it was a little while since we last played it, and with our guest, Maroon (Mulberry’s Daughter), new to the game we had a quick rules summary first. It’s very simple, with players simultaneously choosing a card to play which are then simultaneously revealed. Starting with the lowest number played, players add their cards to one of the four rows in the central display.

– Image by boardGOATS

Each card is added to the row that ends with the highest number that is lower than the card they played. If the card should be the sixth card, then instead of adding the card to the row, the active player takes the row into their scoring pile and their card replaces the row, becoming the first card. The aim of the game is to end with the lowest score, but that is much easier said than done. With so many people involved it was guaranteed to be mayhem and there were only enough cards in the deck for one round instead of the two that we usually play. The game is all about timing. Usually there is one player who gets their timing wrong, and once it starts to go wrong, it tends to go very, very wrong. With so many people we were expecting absolute carnage, but perhaps because there were so many of us, the damage was spread out and the highest score was Red with a reasonably respectable twenty-nine.

– Image by boardGOATS

It was close at the front though with five players within six points. Unusually for 6 Nimmt!, Burgundy managed to avoid picking up piles of cards, and he finished in first place with eight nimmts, just two ahead of Black with ten. Food hadn’t quite arrived, and largely out of inertia, we decided to give it another go. Something went a bit wrong with the first deal as there weren’t enough for everyone to get the eleven cards they’d got the first time round. To begin with, Pine got the blame for misdealing, but it quickly became clear it was not his fault and some cards were missing. There was a lot of confusion for a moment, until Blue revealed that she had a stash of cards that she’d forgotten to return.

– Image by boardGOATS

This time, the game followed the more usual pattern, with Purple managing to collect a massive pile of cards some with lots of high-scoring, pretty colours, totalling a massive forty-seven points. Lots of players thought they were in with a chance of winning though, Blue and Mulberry both finished with eight, but they were beaten by Green with two. It was then that Burgundy revealed that he’d managed to avoid picking up any cards at all this time, giving him victory in the second game too. It was time to decide who would play what, in particular, who was going to play the “Feature Game”, Hare & Tortoise. Although Blue had finished eating by this time, and Burgundy was coming to the end of his enormous pile of ham, egg and chips as well, they had played the game at the recent Didcot meeting so they left everyone else to play it. After lots of discussion, they were eventually joined by Pine and had to decide what they were going to play.

– Image by boardGOATS

Hare & Tortoise was much quicker to get started though. This is a relatively old game which won the inaugural Spiel des Jahres award in 1979 and was first released in 1973, making it over forty-five years old. The game is a very clever racing game where players pay for their move with Carrots, but the further they move the more it costs. Thus, to move one space it costs one Carrot, but to move five spaces it costs fifteen and to move ten it costs fifty-five. On their turn the active player pays Carrots to move their token along the track; each space has a different effect, but will only hold one player’s token at a time. It is this that makes the game something of a knife-fight in a phone box, as players obstruct each other (often unintentionally) causing other players to move more or less than they would wish. The icing on the cake are the Lettuces though: each player starts with a bunch of Carrots and three Lettuces—players cannot finish until they have got rid of all their Lettuces and nearly all of their Carrots.

– Image by boardGOATS

To get rid of a Lettuce, a player must land on one of the “Lettuce Spaces”, and then spend the next turn eating the Lettuce before they can move on again. With only four of these spaces available and players needing to land on three of them and spend two turns there on each visit, they are always in high demand, but especially with high player counts. As well as enabling players to get rid of Lettuces, these spaces also help them replenish their Carrot supply. And this is another clever trick this “simple little race game” uses that makes it special: the number of Carrots a player gets is dependent on their position in the race. This means a player who is in the lead benefits from having an unobstructed path in front of them, but they only get ten Carrots on leaving a Lettuce Space. In contrast, the player in last place in a six-player game gets sixty Carrots, and Carrots are scarce so this difference is not to be snuffled at.

– Image by boardGOATS

Lettuce Spaces are not the only opportunity to get Carrots though. A player on a “Carrot Space”, for example, will earn ten Carrots for every turn they wait on that space. Another way of getting Carrots are though the number spaces—a player who is on one of these at the start of their turn will get Carrots if the number matches their position in the race. Of course, the game would not be complete without “Hare Spaces” and “Tortoise Spaces”. The latter are the only way a player can move back along the track, and this can be invaluable when trying to get rid of Lettuces. Moving backwards also gives Carrots, with players getting ten Carrots for every space regressed. Hare Spaces are completely different, with players landing on these drawing a “Hare Card”. These are “Chance Cards”, some good, some not-so-good and some really, really bad. The aim of the game is to be the first to cross the finishing line, but even this is unconventional, with players having to have eaten all their Lettuces, consumed almost all their Carrots, and make the exact number of moves.

– Image by boardGOATS

For those who were new the game it only took a round or so to realise the subtle cleverness of it, the ability to choose one’s own position on the track is vastly tempered by the usefulness of the available squares with so many other players taking up the first few spaces. Red started the game and immediately went for a Hare card. That didn’t do a lot except tell everyone exactly how many Carrots she had, which was not difficult to work out after just one turn. Green also decided that the Hare cards were also worth a go, but his was a bad one, and he lost half his Carrots! For his second turn he decided he had not taken enough punishment and went for the next Hare as well and also got the “Show your carrots” card. As the first three had all been bad, the odds had to right themselves, so when Maroon went for the fourth Hare card it was much nicer to her. Purple, who knew the game, understood the importance of having eaten all her Lettuces and started munching on the very first available Lettuce space. Green and Red hadn’t fully understood the rules, so did not realise until they were a long way round the board; Red thought she only had to get rid of one Lettuce and Green had missed it completely.

– Image by boardGOATS

By that time Green only had three lettuce squares available and Red had only two, so was going to have to use the Tortoise spaces to move backwards. Meanwhile, Purple’s early pit stop for Lettuce put her near the back at the start of the game, but slow and steady she moved through the pack and then began to charge ahead as everyone else had to manoeuvre for that penultimate Lettuce Space. So in the early part of the game, Green and Purple were languishing at the back, but that meant they soon had Carrots a-plenty (from the multiplication factors) and were soon racing to join the pack. Mulberry found herself in a pickle with a Hare card when she had to give ten Carrots to each other player. Suddenly she had very few Carrots left and really needed to get something from the next Carrot space, but Green had his eye on it too. Green was just about to make the leap, but, much to Mulberry’s relief, found something better to do. Although she got her Carrots, they weren’t coming in very quickly at just ten a turn, until someone pointed out that she could go backwards to a Tortoise space and collect several more in one go.

– Image by boardGOATS

Eventually, luck changed for Green who had ended up with a fistful of Carrots and he joined Purple near the finishing line and the last Lettuce space. But who was going to be able to rid of their excess Carrots first and get across the line? Both Green and Purple had rather too many Carrots and were left pootling about at the front of the race, while Red and Black were languishing at the back still trying to get rid of their Lettuces. Maroon was steadily moving along, but it was Mulberry, who charged back through the pack and, without any lettuces left, hared past the Purple and Green tortoises to snatch the victory. Nobody could really be bothered playing for the minor places, but a quick check suggested that that Purple would have been next in what is still showing a worthy game, and might still be in the running for a Spiel des Jahres even now were it a new publication.

– Image by boardGOATS

Meanwhile, Pine, Burgundy and Blue had eventually decided what to play, opting for one of the 2018 Spiel des Jahres nominees, Luxor. This is a clever hand management and set collecting race game from Rüdiger Dorn, designer of a wide variety of games including The Traders of Genoa, Goa, Istanbul, Karuba and one of our all time favourites, Las Vegas. These games have very little in common with each other and Luxor is different again. In this game, players exploring the temple of Luxor collecting treasure as they go. Players start with two “Indiana-Jones-eeples” and move them round the board by playing cards from their hand. The clever part of this is that players have a hand of five cards, but like Bohnanza, must not rearrange the order.

– Image by boardGOATS

On their turn, the active player can play one of the cards at either end of their hand, i.e. the first or last card. They use this to move one of their meeples, along the twisting corridor towards the tomb at the centre of the temple. If they can, they carry out an action based on the space they land on, then replenish their hand from the draw deck, adding the card to the middle of their hand. This hand-management mechanism is one of several clever little touches that elevate this game beyond the routine. Another is the movement mechanism: players move, not from space to space but from tile to tile. Some of the tiles are in place throughout the game, but when a player claims a treasure tile, these are taken from the board into the player’s stash. This therefore provides a catch-up mechanism as the path to the tomb effectively gets shorter as the game progresses.

– Image by boardGOATS

Players can claim treasure tiles when they have enough of their “Indiana-Jones-eeples” on the tile. Each tile gives points individually, but there are three different types of treasure and players score points for sets; the larger the set, the more points they score at the end of the game. Treasures aren’t the only tiles players can land on though. There are also “Horus” tiles (which allow players to add more interesting cards to their hands or take key tokens), Osiris tiles (which move players forward) and Temple tiles (which give players a special bonus). These non-treasure tiles are never removed providing stepping stones as the treasure tiles disappear.

– Image by boardGOATS

Players strive to be the first to enter the temple chamber which will win them one of the two sarcophagi. When the second player enters the temple chamber, they win the second of the sarcophagi and trigger the end of the game with play continuing to the end of the round before scoring. There is a smorgasbord of points available with players scoring for how far their meeples have made it towards the temple, for scarabs they may have collected en route, and any left over keys or sarcophagi they have, as well as for the sets of treasure they collected. The balance of these points change dramatically with player count – with two, treasure is everything, but with more, there is increased competition.

– Image by boardGOATS

Burgundy shot out of the blocks like a hare, with Blue and Pine doing their best to try and follow. Burgundy had got a set of three necklaces before Pine had managed a single treasure and despite the fact that the game was hardly started, he was already hoping that “slow and steady” might win the race. It wasn’t long before Blue collected a few jewelled statues and Pin had a couple of fine vases, and finally the treasure hunt was on its way. Burgundy’s “Indiana-Jones-eeples” were stealing a march and making rapid progress, while Blue had managed to get one left one behind. Despite the built-in catch-up mechanisms, it seemed there was little Blue or Pine could do to arrest the inexorable march of Burgundy.

– Image by boardGOATS

Eventually, Blue sent a scout in ahead, and she was the first to enter the temple chamber, picking up the first sarcophagus. It wasn’t long before Burgundy followed though taking the second and triggering the end game. Blue and Pine tried to make as much as they could out of their last turns, but it was too little too late. Each treasure token comes with a small number of points which are supposed to be scored when the treasure is collected. Previous experience suggests players are so excited at finding treasure that they forget to collect these points, so we added a house-rule, and saved collecting these until the end of the game. Since the points are similar in value, they give a rough idea of how players stand. It was only when these were counted that Blue and Pine realised just how far behind they really were, with Burgundy taking forty-one compared with Pine’s twenty-eight and Blue’s twenty-two.

– Image by boardGOATS

From there matters only got worse. Burgundy’s “Indiana-Jones-eeples had made it further into the temple than anyone else’s and he had larger treasure sets too. His final score was a massive one hundred and eighty-three, nearly fifty more than Blue and seventy-five more than Pine. It’s all about getting the right cards Burgundy explained as the group tidied up. “Mmmm, I had the right cards, just not in the right order,” muttered Pine in response, a comment that pretty much summed up the entire game. It was much, much later however, that we realised we’d got the scoring very wrong. Players are supposed to score for the number of complete sets of three treasures, rather than for the the magnitude of each set. While this would have made a huge difference to the game of course, it probably would not have changed the overall outcome as Burgundy was in total control throughout. Nevertheless, we should give it another try soon, this time with the correct rules…

– Image by boardGOATS

With both games finishing pretty much simultaneously,the question was what to play next. Mulberry and Maroon went home to nurse their jet-lag taking Red with them, leaving six. Pine said he would stay for something short (and short didn’t include Bohnanza), but would be happy to watch if others wanted to play something longer; Green said he could also do with an early night and didn’t mind watching either. Inevitably, that created indecision and it was only when Green decided to go and Pine started a two minute countdown that Blue eventually made a decision and got out No Thanks!.

– Image by boardGOATS

No Thanks! is one of our oldest, “most favourite-est” games that we’ve sort -of rediscovered, giving it a few outings recently; as Blue shuffled she considered how clear and simple the cards were, and how well they were holding up given their age. The game is very simple too: the first player turns over the top card and chooses to either take it or pay a red chip and pass the problem on to the next person. The player with the lowest total face value of cards is the winner. There are two catches, the first is that when there is a run, only the lowest card counts, and the second is that nine cards are removed from the deck of thirty-four before the game starts.

– Image by boardGOATS

Burgundy, Purple, Pine and Blue were in the business of collecting cards hoping to build substantial runs. It was just as the game was coming to a close that Pine collected a card and a handful of chips fumbling as he did so and thought he’d dropped one. He was sat on a bench between Black and Burgundy, so rather than disturbing everyone immediately, there were only a couple of cards left so he decided to leave finding it until the end of the game. Blue and Pine fared better in their card-collecting than Burgundy and Purple, but Black had kept his head down and finished with just one run and with it the lowest score, We recounted all the chips a couple of times and there was definitely one missing, sop as Blue packed away everyone else started playing Hunt the Game Piece. It’s not often that we play this, but, we have had a couple of epic games, including one where a token ended up some thirty feet from where we were playing and the other side of a pillar. This edition, the “No Thanks! Red Chip Version”, was particularly special.

– Image by boardGOATS

After about five minutes hunting, one of the bar-staff asked, “Oh, what are you looking for?” and then added, “I love it when you play this!” and joined in. Fifteen minutes later, there was still no sign despite looking in lots of nooks and crannies, checking trouser turn-ups and shoes, and emptying all the bags in close proximity. Then Purple said, “I can see something red down here…” as she shone the light from her mobile phone between the cracks in the floor-boards. And there indeed, nestling about half an inch below the suspended floor, only visible when the light was exactly right, was the small red chip. It was exactly where Pine had been sitting and must have dropped straight through the gap between the floorboards and fallen over so it was lying flat, nestling in the fluff and totally inaccessible. So Purple won, but it was Game Over for the time being.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: Sometimes Bohnanza is quicker than that other “short” game…

Next Meeting – 8th January 2019

Our next meeting will be on Tuesday 8^th January, at the Horse and Jockey pub in Stanford-in-the-Vale. As usual, we will be playing shorter games from 7.30pm as people arrive, until 8pm when we will start something a little longer.

This week the “Feature Game” will be Hare & Tortoise, an older game that was the first ever winner of the Spiel des Jahres award in 1979. It is a cunningly designed race where the farther a player moves, the more fuel (carrots) they have to spend. Thus, the winner will be the player who uses their carrots most efficiently, but they must also have got rid of any lettuce cards and make sure they don’t have a surfeit of carrots as they cross the finish line…

– Image by boardGOATS

And talking of the hare and the tortoise…

Jeff the hare loved running, but he also loved winning. One sunny day, he saw a tortoise peacefully minding his own business in a field, so he asked him if he fancied a race. After some discussion, they eventually agreed to race to the nearest tree. It wasn’t far, but the hare was easily there first.

“Not fair!” said the tortoise, “My legs are only little and take a while to warm up, please can we try again?”

The hare had enjoyed his win, so was happy give the tortoise another chance; this time they raced to the river. The hare was off first, and again, won by a huge margin.

“Just once more, I’m sure I can do it this time,” the tortoise pleaded.

While the hare liked winning, winning is no fun without a credible challenger, but he could see it mattered to the tortoise so he reluctantly agreed.

“Oh alright then, but this will be the last one, and then I have to go home,” said the hare.

“Well, let’s just have a race to see who gets home first then,” suggested the tortoise.

The hare agreed and they got ready to race.

“3…. 2… 1… GO!” said the hare, and paused to give the tortoise just a little head start.

The tortoise retreated into its shell.

“I win.”

Boardgames in the News: Gaming & Mental Health

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), one in four people in the world will be affected by mental or neurological disorders at some point in their lives and around half a billion people suffer from such conditions at any one time. A year ago, the WHO announced their 11th International Classification of Diseases was to include the condition “gaming disorder“. This is characterised by “increasing priority given to gaming over other activities to the extent that gaming takes precedence over other interests and daily activities, and continuation or escalation of gaming despite the occurrence of negative consequences.” Although there is no doubt that there are some boardgamers to whom this might be applied, the WHO specifically meant “digital-gaming” or “video-gaming”; in fact, anecdotally there’s lots of evidence that boardgames can help with depression.

– Image from who.int

There is more evidence, indeed research by Colin Camerer, of the California Institute of Technology, suggests that when players are doing the best that they can to “win” their brains tend to show a high degree of co-ordination between the “thinking” and the “feeling” regions. A boardgame group at a mental health recovery centre is reported to have had a positive impact on its clients, building their social and communication skills as well as their self-esteem and helping to reduce social isolation. Now, Billy Brown is taking this one step further. Billy was an agoraphobic who spent seven years in his dressing gown just sitting at his computer, only going outside for doctor’s appointments. Now he is designing a role-playing game to help young people build their social skills. So, it would seem that as every boardgamer knows, playing boardgames really is good for you.

– Image from bbc.co.uk

31st December 2018

The evening began with Pine’s arrival, and he helped Pink rearrange the furniture for PitchCar while Blue added the finishing touches to supper. PitchCar is a brilliantly simple, dexterity car racing game—players take it in turns to flick their wooden cars, and the first one to get round the track three times is the winner. Before long Burgundy, Purple and Black had arrived and pieces from the base game and five of the first six expansions were all over the place and everyone was diving in trying to make an interesting looking track. There was a problem though, the problem we always have, which is a shortage of straight sections. It was then that Blue produced another expansion from under the sofa: the “Long Straights“. These are exactly what they sound like, two, very long, plank-like, straight sections that are a pain to store and difficult to transport, so rarely get used. They have the potential to add a very fast section to the track though, so this time we used both with a tight hairpin in between them to add interest.

– Image by boardGOATS

Like last year, instead of making a circuit, we made a single long race track weaving around plates of crudites, mugs of tea, and trays of “pigs in blankets”. There was a big debate whether to use The Cross as a cross-roads or back-to-back corners. In the end, the double corners won, the track was complete and we had a push off to see who would start at the front of the grid. Black won with a magnificent flick, followed closely by Purple. Blue stalled on the grid and the only one to come off worst was Burgundy who came off the track and defaulted to the back of the grid. The race began: Black and Purple continued strongly and everyone else shuffled about in the middle order with Burgundy bringing up the rear. Then Burgundy adjusted is driving style slightly and gradually began to work his way through the field. Meanwhile the wheels dropped off for Purple who had briefly taken the lead, but suddenly seemed to lose the knack of flicking, and gradually, the rest of the pack overtook her one by one.

– Image by boardGOATS

Almost everyone had trouble going over the bridge, but particularly Blue, Pink and Purple. Eventually they made it over though and shot down the rail to the hairpin some failed to make the corner, but the long straights added a bit of speed and excitement. The tunnel ended up being a relay race with Black getting stuck under the bridge, only to be pushed out by Blue, who in turn also got stuck and was freed by Pink. Similarly, he was freed by Burgundy and Burgundy was liberated by Pine. And that order was maintained all the way to the finishing line, despite Blue needing several shots at crossing it without overshooting. Green and his lady-friend, Lilac, had been held up though were expected any second; food wasn’t quite ready either so we ran the race in reverse starting with Purple, the last player to cross the line in the first race.

– Image by boardGOATS

Inevitably, we’d only just started when Green and Lilac arrived, so they just joined in. In fact by this time, Blue had actually managed to go backwards and was further behind the line than others were in front of it. With the larger pack, this time round the race was even more eventful with Black managing to park his car in a plate of crudites just missing a bowl of salsa and Pink repeatedly bouncing off the edge of the mouth of the tunnel obstructing everyone else behind him. Bizarrely, although the tunnel caused mayhem, the bridge was much less of a problem this time though with Pine leading the way by deftly bunny-hopping over it and almost everyone else just following his example. Leading over the bridge was a huge advantage, and though Blue threatened to catch him, he maintained his position to the finish. With food ready and waiting, the track was progressively dismantled as those bringing up the rear made their way to the finish line. Although it only gets an outing two or three times a year, PitchCar is always great fun and the seventh expansion, “The Loop” which is due in the new year, looks like it will add even more madness to the game.

– Image by boardGOATS

With PitchCar over and the track in a heap in the corner, food swiftly appeared in the guise of enchiladas with corn on the cob, nachos and some strange yellow, habanero salsa that reminded Pine of wallpaper paste. Supper was accompanied by more special crackers, little parcels, Herb Alpert and the Tujuana Brass, and finished with ice cream, and then it was on with the games; after a little debate first up was Ca$h ‘n Guns. This is push your luck game with a gangster theme played over a series of eight multi-player duels over their ill-gotten spoils. The player with the largest haul after eight rounds is the winner, as long as they are still alive of course. Each player has a character standee, a foam gun, and a clip of three bullet cards and eight blank cards.

– Image by boardGOATS

At the start of each round, everyone simultaneously chooses a whether to “load” their gun with a bullet or a blank, and on the count of three, points it at one of the other players. On a second count of three, they choose whether to remain in, or withdraw taking their shot with them. Anyone whose target is still standing reveals whether their gun was loaded with a live bullet or a blank. Anyone who received a shot takes a plaster signifying their wound and is out of the rest of the round; three wounds and they are eliminated from the game. All players remaining then take it in turns to take a loot card from the centre of the table—there are eight cards, so the number of cards each player gets depends on how many players have survived the “duel”.

– Image by boardGOATS

The game can be quite brutal, and this was no exception, indeed, Black was out in the second round and Green quickly followed. Pine pointed out that everyone on his side of the table had been injured while Blue, Pink and Burgundy were all uninjured. Purple decided to fix that and faced off with Burgundy, both ending up injured as a result. Lilac proved a dangerous adversary as she collected extra bullets from the loot and ended up with a full set going into the final rounds. Blue injured Burgundy and coped a bullet in return. After Black’s and Green’s dismissal, everyone was more circumspect and didn’t gamble as readily with their lives, so all the other players survived to the end of the game. That just left the small matter of the scores.

– Image by boardGOATS

Pine and Purple had both been collecting gems, but had finished up with the same number so neither picked up the $60,000 bonus for having the most. Blue had started out collecting artwork, but there wasn’t much available. It became clear why, when the loot for the final round was revealed: almost all of it was art. It was tough in the final round; Blue was taken out by Burgundy, which effectively removed her from the running. Pink had been doing well as the Godfather, but had taken a couple of hits in the latter stages and was also taken out of the final round. Pink finished with $110,000 and second place. The final round was attritional and there were few people left to share the swag. Most of the artwork ended up going to Pine and with it first place overall thanks to a final total of $123,000 worth of loot.

– Image by boardGOATS

There was still time till midnight, and it was a toss-up between two of our favourite light games, 6 Nimmt! and Las Vegas, in the end we went for dice over cards and played Las Vegas. This is a very simple game, but a lot of fun. The play area is made up of six casinos, each numbered one to six with a jackpot drawn at random from a deck of money cards. With eight players, each jackpot totals at least $90,000 and comprises one or more notes. On their turn, players must use all the dice of one number to bet on the casino of that number by placing them on that casino tile. Once everyone has placed all their dice the player who placed the most dice on a casino takes the highest value currency card. The player with the most money after four rounds is the winner. The snag is that before any money is handed out, any dice leading to a draw are removed. It is this rule that makes the game interesting, raising the decisions above the trivial.

– Image by boardGOATS

We usually play with a few “House Rules”: we replace one of each player’s dice with a big, “double weight” die from the Las Vegas Boulevard expansion; we include the Slot Machine, and only play three rounds. The Slot Machine is a little different to the Casinos as players place all their dice of one number on the tile, but each number can only be placed once. Unlike the Casinos, if there is a draw, then the player with the total number of pips wins, and if it’s still a tie, then the player with the highest value die wins. The game is very robust to interruptions which is just as well as we took a break at midnight for toasts to the new year and to Ivory’s new arrival (we are looking forward to his return in March). Prosecco and sparkling apple juice were accompanied by the village fireworks, an exceptional panettone and mince pies and eventually everyone made it back to the table and the game resumed.

– Image by boardGOATS

Perhaps it was the interruptions, but Black’s game went almost as badly as it had in Ca$h ‘n Guns, and he won nothing at all in the first two rounds and not much in the third. It turned out that Purple and Burgundy didn’t do any better as all three finished with just $100,000. That was better than Green however, who made a paltry $20,000. Pink started off really well, but at the start of the second round we realised he was using one more die than anyone else. After paying a $10,000 penalty, he finished with $240,000, $10,000 more than Blue. Lilac, on the other hand, took more in the first round than Blue or Pink took in the whole game and finished with $410,000.

– Image by boardGOATS

Normally $410,000 would be more than enough to guarantee a win, but Pine, who took three $70,000 notes in the final round alone finished with a massive $510,000, a personal and probably group record. With the game over, Green took Lilac home to nurse her sore throat and everyone else finished their drinks and chatted for a while, watching Pink and Pine demolish a bottle of Bavarian whisky picked up in Essen during the Spiel. Everyone who had been there commented how much they had enjoyed The Gallerist at the ninth “Monster Game” session a few days earlier. Although it had taken ages and was very complex, it wasn’t a real brain-burner and everything had been done well. The rule book was good, the board was clearly laid out, the player-aids were helpful, the pieces were great and the box was really top quality—in fact, it was almost the complete opposite of Agra, which struggled through at the previous “Monster Games” event. The second game, Reef, had also gone down well, but everyone was particularly keen to give The Gallerist another go.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: GOATS enjoy a good party just as much as the next ruminant.

Next Meeting – 31st December 2018

Following the success of last year’s New Year party, we are having another one this year be on Monday 31^st December. As it is New Year’s Eve and the pub have their own event, we will be meeting at a private house in Stanford and starting slightly earlier at 7pm with food served sometime around 8pm. Please get in touch if you would like to come along so we know how much food will be needed.

The plan is to start off early with the “Feature Game”, which, as has become traditional, will be the gorgeous, dexterity car-racing game, PitchCar. After that, we will be eating, pulling more crackers, popping party poppers, playing more games and maybe set off some fireworks at midnight, depending on how cold it is!

– Image by BGG contributor visard

And talking of cars…

A policeman sees an elderly woman driving incredibly slowly on the motorway, so he pulls along side and notices her knitting in the driver’s seat. She remains focused on the road and keeps knitting and driving.

He beeps his horn to get her attention, but she is oblivious and carries on.

Getting more frustrated, the policeman turns his siren on and, as she finally notices him, he signals for her to wind the window down.

After a time she finds the button and down goes the window.

Incensed, the cop yells, “PULL OVER!”

“Oh, no sweetie,” she replies. “It’s a scarf, see?”

27th December 2018 – boardGOATS do the Quiz

As we meet at The Jockey every week, for the last two years, we’ve decided to enter a team for their Quiz Night between Christmas and New Year. Blue, Black, Purple and Pink rolled up at 7pm to give them time to play some games before food at the advertised 8pm. They’d just started a game of くだものフレンズ aka Fruit Friends, a little card drafting and set collecting game when Pine joined them. It’s a quick little game so, Pine perused the menu while the others finished playing. Fruit Friends was an Essen Special, picked up by Black and Purple on the last day of the fair this year. We played it a few weeks ago and it went down really well, so we were keen to give it another outing. Pink and Blue had missed out on that occasion, but it’s not a complicated game as it is essentially it is Sushi Go! with a twist in the card drafting stage which is based on the “I divide, you choose” mechanism.

– Image by boardGOATS

It was a really tight game with a two-way tie for second place between Blue and Pink. Maybe it was Black’s additional experience, or perhaps he played better or was simply luckier, but he took victory by just two points with his total of sixty. With that game concluded, but people needing time to consider their food options, we opted for a quick five-player game that everyone knows, No Thanks!. Despite having played it before, Purple wanted a reminder of the rules: take the card, or pay a chip to pass the problem on—the person with lowest face-value total is the winner. The catches (which are what make the game clever of course), are that for runs, only the lowest card counts, but nine out of the thirty-three cards are removed from the deck at random adding a sense of jeopardy.

– Image by boardGOATS

Perhaps Purple didn’t get the rules, or maybe it was a combination of bad luck and perhaps over-reached herself, or even an extreme gamble that didn’t pay off, but holding both the thirty and the thirty-five was always going to be a difficult gap to bridge. Adding cards in the twenties made it even worse and despite holding almost half the chips at the end of the game she managed what was possibly an epic top-score of eighty-six—quite some distance from Blue’s winning score of sixteen. Black who finished second with twenty points commented, “Second place is a good place to be.” By this time food had been ordered and the question was whether there would be time to play again. Of course, as soon as we began, inevitably food arrived, so the rest of the game was played between bites of pizza, tagliatelle and avocado salad.

– Image by boardGOATS

This second game was much, much closer. Purple got it right this time with what might otherwise have been a winning score of seven and was just pipped by Blue with six. It wasn’t to be for either of them though, as Black managed the extremely rare feat of finishing with a negative score. It’s not the first time we’ve seen it, but last time was a while ago, nearly two years ago in fact, when Magenta also finished with minus one. With the game over, people focused on finishing off their food and then there was just time for a trip to the bar before the Quiz started. We managed a satisfactory eight in the first round and full-house in the second; the picture round started well too (“We all adora Kia Ora”), but petered out towards the end. We got all three of the anagrams (including “Frosty the Snowman” and “Puppet on a String”) and got the Who-am-I? on the third try (William Webb-Ellis) which put us in a strong position, but sadly it was not strong enough to make up for the round where we failed to get more right than wrong, and we ended up with a creditable total of fifty-seven points. That gave us second place (“a good place to be, but not as good as first”), six points behind the winners, the team At the Bar.

– Image by boardGOATS

After a bit of chit chat about “Monster Games” and New Year, there was still time for one more game and, since Pink had dodged Bohnanaza at the Christmas party, it was only right that he should have the chance to play it once more in 2018. We’ve played this game loads, but although he clearly enjoys himself at the time, Pink always claims to dislike it. This is odd as he owns more copies than anyone else including English, Spanish, German, and Dutch language copies as well as a special limited edition with “fan” artwork. With everyone so familiar with the rules, it should have been quick to start except that the version Pink had with him was the Spanish edition. The basic rules weren’t a problem, but the set up varies with player count and Blue’s linguistic skills were sorely tested as a result. The game was very close with a four way tie for second place (certainly not a bad place to be). Ironically, first place, by just one point, went to Pink, so he won’t be able to argue that he’s rubbish at Bohnanza any more.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: Second is a good place to be, but first place is better.

Golden GOAT Award Winners – 2018

The inaugural Golden GOAT award was announced at the boardGOATS annual “Un-Christmas Dinner”. There was also an award acknowledging the worst game of the year, known as the “GOAT Poo” award. The rules were quite simple, only games played at a GOATS games night in 2018 (i.e. appearing in the log book) could be nominated, and everyone got just one vote in each category. It was clear from the audience response that many of nominees were very popular choices, including Yokohama and Keyflower: The Farmers. A couple of games managed the feat of appearing in both lists winning the unofficial “GOAT Marmite-factor” Award, namely Endeavor and Yardmaster. The winner of the “GOAT Poo” award was Queendomino, with one third of the group nominating it (remarkable since only four people had actually played it). There was also a special award for “possibly the best and worst moments of the year” which went to Purple and Green’s inability to play Rock-Paper-Scissors (during Walk the Plank! a few weeks back), and Burgundy appearing as the perennial Saboteur at the end of November. The deserving winner of the “Golden GOAT 2018”, however, was Altiplano which turned out to be a very popular choice.

– Image by boardGOATS

11th December 2018

Since this was the last meeting before Christmas, we did what we did last year and arranged to eat a little earlier so we could all share an “Un-Christmas Dinner” together, complete with festive crackers and party poppers. Plans were nearly derailed by gridlock in Oxford that delayed Blue (and by extension the crackers, party poppers, cards and the “Feature Game”), and motorway traffic that slowed Pink in his long trip from the frozen north. Between their arrival and food appearing, there was just time to play a little game of “Secret Christmas Cards” – the idea being that everyone got a suitably festive goaty card and a name, and write the card to that person signing it on behalf of the group. Once we’d got over the lack of pens, the “game” seemed to go very well, though a lot of people didn’t open their card, saving the excitement for later. Green arrived and his announcement that his divorce had come through was greeted with a round of applause.

– Image from horseandjockey.org

Once the cards, pizza, “half a side of pig with egg and chips”, burgers and ice-cream had been dealt with, it was time for crackers. We had been just about to pull them when food arrived, and knowing what was in them, Blue suggested they’d be better left till the end of the meal as people might not want cracker contents as a topping to their pizza! It was just as well, because when everyone finally grabbed a couple of cracker ends and pulled, there was an explosion of dice, mini-meeples, wooden resources, tiny metal bells, bad jokes, party hats and festive confetti that went everywhere. The table went from mostly ordered to complete devastation at a stroke, to which party popper detritus was quickly added. It was immediately followed by everyone trying to work out where the bits from their cracker had ended up and as some people ferreted under the table, others began to read the jokes (which turned out to be quite repetitive). While the table was being cleared, subject of the “Golden GOAT” award came up. This had first been mentioned a few weeks back by Ivory who had suggested we should have a game that we’d played during the year that deserved an award (presumably he was completely unaware that “Golden Goat” is also a strain of marijuana).

– Image by boardGOATS

Pine suggested that there should also be an award acknowledging the worst game of the year, which eventually became the “GOAT Poo” award. Unfortunately there wasn’t really a plan for how to go about doing this. In the end, Ivory and Green tore up some slips of paper and passed them round with the book so everyone could “vote”. The rules were quite simple, only games played at a GOATS games night in 2018 (i.e. appear in the log book) could be nominated and everyone got just one vote. There was real concern that we were just going to end up with a list of different titles and two nine-way ties, but surprisingly, that did not happen. As the votes were read out, it became clear from the appreciative noises round the table that many of the picks were very popular choices, including Yokohama and Keyflower: The Farmers. A couple of games managed the feat of appearing in both lists winning the unofficial “GOAT Marmite-factor” Award, namely Endeavor and Yardmaster. The winner of the “2018 Golden GOAT” however was Altiplano; Queendomino took the “GOAT Poo” award with a third of the group nominating it (remarkable since only four of the people present had actually played it).

– Image by boardGOATS

There was also a special award for “possibly the best and worst moments of the year” which went to Purple and Green’s inability to play Rock-Paper-Scissors (during Walk the Plank! a few weeks back) and Burgundy, the perennial Saboteur name last time. Eventually, the table was cleared and the inaugural “Golden GOAT” awards had been announced, so people’s thoughts turned to playing games. This year Ticket to Ride: Nordic Countries was a hot choice and with two copies, two games were quickly underway. This is a variant of the very popular train game, but with a nice tight map designed specifically for two or three players and featuring a snowy festive theme. The game play is almost exactly the same as the other versions, with players taking it turns to either draw carriage cards, or spend sets of carriage cards in appropriate colours to place plastic trains on the map. There are a couple of things that really make the Ticket to Ride games work: firstly, the longer the route, the more points it gets. This often makes the longer routes very enticing, but this has to be set against the desirability of tickets (the second thing).

– Image by boardGOATS

At the start of the game everyone chooses from a handful of ticket cards each depicting two cities and a value: players who manage to join routes together to connect the two cities get the depicted number of points at the end of the game. The catch is that any tickets that players keep that are not completed successfully score negatively, and the swing can be quite devastating. Ticket to Ride is a game everyone knows well and although we don’t play it often it is always enjoyable (perhaps because we don’t play it too frequently). The familiarity means that everyone always fancies their chances at it though, which tends to make for very competitive games and the group really benefits from the variation that the different maps and versions offer. On the first table, the game started out in much the same way as all Ticket to Ride games. Ivory placed trains first, but Mulberry and Green followed soon after. It wasn’t long before Ivory was drawing more ticket cards (instead of taking carriage cards or placing trains) and Green soon followed with Mulberry taking a little longer.

– Image by boardGOATS

As is usual, the colour cards that players wanted, just seemed to refuse to come up and everyone’s individual hand of cards grew even as the board filled with more tickets taken at regular intervals. In the early stages the trio were fairly well matched. Green was starting to pull ahead and then for some reason abruptly stopped and his hand of cards grew and grew. He had said that he was going for it and it would either pay off or he would lose abysmally. Mulberry and Ivory had nearly twice as many points as Green when he finally laid a train: the nine-carriage route giving him twenty-seven points and propelling him into the lead by more than his previous deficit. Everyone still had lots of trains left though, so the game was far from over. Eventually, Mulberry brought the game to a sudden halt when she placed her last three trains, catching the others by surprise.

– Image by boardGOATS

With their last turn they scrabbled for the longest route they could manage. Since Green still had a handful of cards he was able to take a six-carriage route for a healthy fifteen points, however, that meant he had to abandon his twenty-four point ticket as he still needed two, very small routes to complete it. The group decided to forgo recounting the points for placing trains and decided to assume they had kept on top of the scores during play. Green was ahead in points for train placement by quite a margin, but Ivory and Mulberry had completed more tickets and Green was crippled by the forty-eight point swing caused by his incomplete ticket. Mulberry took bonus for the the most completed tickets (by only one) and ended just one point behind Ivory. With the score at the top so close they decided they had to double check all the scores and after a complete recount, there was a reversal and Mulberry edged Ivory out by one solitary point.

– Image by boardGOATS

On the next table the story was a little different, with Pink, the “Prophet of Doom” goading Pine offering him advice to give in before he’d even started as he was in for a torrid time playing against Blue and Burgundy. Pine didn’t see it like that however, and as he likes the game, he really fancied his chances. Fortune favours the brave, and he was out of the blocks like a greyhound with a fifteen point placement in just his second turn. From then on, it was fast and furious with players fighting to secure the routes they needed to complete their tickets. Blue and Pine kept fairly level and began to pull away from Burgundy, but neither of them dared to get complacent as he usually has a master-plan that he’s waiting for the perfect moment to enact.

– Image by boardGOATS

Pine drew more ticket cards and Blue followed, keeping pace every step of the way while Burgundy kept drawing carriage cards. Eventually Blue drew ahead in the “taking tickets” race, but it was one set of tickets too far for her as she drew three moderate to high scoring cards that were all unplayable. Fearing she’d pushed her luck one step too far, she kept the lowest scoring card (i.e. the one with the fewest negative points) and pondered her options. Pine took tickets and it was clear he had hit a similar problem though at least two of his were playable, if difficult. In the end, he took a twenty-one point ticket that needed a little work, giving Blue an interesting choice. In addition to the unplayable ticket, she had one low-ish scoring ticket left that she only needed one card to complete. She’d been waiting for that single yellow carriage for a while though and persisting could allow Pine time to complete his new ticket.

– Image by boardGOATS

Although she didn’t know the value or difficulty of Pine’s final ticket Blue felt sure it was high scoring and that he would need a few turns to complete it. With a large set of pink cards and not many trains left, it gave her a chance; by placing a largely arbitrary route she triggered the end of the game. Burgundy squeaked, although it had looked for all the world like he was trying for the long route, in fact he was really hunting for a locomotive (wild) card or a single orange carriage to complete his route into Narvik (though he came very close to getting nine cards necessary for the long route by accident). The irony was that Blue had picked up loads of locomotive cards in her hunt for the single yellow, but hadn’t wanted them and had been unable to find yellow cards because Burgundy had them all! In his penultimate turn, Burgundy had finally drawn his last orange card enabling him to finish his final, long ticket on his very last go. Pine on the other hand was less fortunate and fell short, taking a swing of forty-two points which more than off-set Blue’s incomplete tickets.

– Image by boardGOATS

The group recounted the train points and found a few extra points for Blue, but it was still very close and all down to the tickets. Blue had mostly low-scoring cards; where Pine had one fewer, they were more valuable. In the end, Blue finished twenty-three points ahead of Pine, but she had managed to complete one extra ticket which had given her the ten point bonus – had it gone to Pine there would have been a twenty point swing and the second group might have had a recount too. Both Ticket to Ride games finished at much the same time and while the third game was finishing off, the two groups compared notes. It was then that the first group realised they had not played quite correctly, as there is a rules change in this version that means locomotive cards can only be used as wilds on tunnel and ferry routes, not on ordinary routes. This explained why Green had managed to succeed at his long route when Burgundy had failed. While playing correctly would have changed the game, there was no accusation of cheating as Ivory and Mulberry who had been playing that game had played by the same rules.

– Image by boardGOATS

Meanwhile, while the two ends of the table were playing with their train-sets, the trio in the middle were decorating their Christmas Tree. This game is a cute little card drafting game that originated in Hungary. The game takes place over three rounds during which Christmas decoration cards are drafted. After each card is chosen, the player puts it anywhere they like on their tree. After seven cards, the round ends and the trees are evaluated. Decorations include gingerbread men, glass ornaments in different shapes, wrapped sweets and, of course, festive lights. The gingerbread men have different markings on their hands and feet and the more that match the adjacent decorations, the more points they score. Some glass ornaments and all the sweets score points directly; lights only score if both halves match.

– Image by boardGOATS

The decorations only score at the end of the game though; objective cards are evaluated at the end of each round. At the start of the game each player receives four objective cards and at the start of each round everyone chooses one; these are shuffled and before the round begins. The trees are therefore evaluated at the end of each round according to these objectives. and then decorations score at the end. One of the things about this scoring mechanism is that it’s often not obvious who is in the lead during the game as there are so many points awarded at the end. This game was no exception, and was ultimately very close as a result. It is one of those games that benefits from experience, and Black and Purple’s who had both played before took first and second, in that order.

– Image by boardGOATS

There was time for something else. Inevitably, we threatened Pink with Bohnanza (he has possibly the smallest amount of love for the game per copy owned), but it’s lack of festiveness, meant it was a hollow threat. We still had the “Feature Game” to play anyhow, which was Giftmas at Dungeon Abbey. This is a mad game by a local gamer and member of the Didcot Games Club, Rob Harper set in a world that is a sort of cross between Downton Abbey and the Adams Family. The artwork is suitably gruesome, though it was very clear from the start who the Countess D’Ungeon was a caricature of! Played over several short rounds, each player takes the role of one of the various eccentric and unpleasant family members grasping for whatever feels like the best present. To this end, players begin with a character card and a couple of gift cards, all face down on the table in front of them. On their turn, the active player may either swap one of their face-down cards with one elsewhere on the table, or turn a card face-up, possibly activating a special action on the gift cards.

– Image by boardGOATS

The round ends when all a player’s cards are face up at the start of their turn or a bomb is revealed, at which point everyone scores points if they have collected the gifts wanted by their characters. With six people playing nobody had a clue what was going on and mayhem reigned. Ivory and Pine jointly took the first round giving them a point each, but after that, the gloves were off. Purple took one round and Pine and Ivory took another each, so it was all down to the last round. Green had spent most of the game trying to furnish Little Eugenia with two bombs, so when Blue realised he had the cards he needed to win the round, she made it her business to try to obstruct his plans. Needless to say he spent the round getting his cards back. With Blue and Green playing silly beggars in the corner, everyone else fought it out, but there was nothing everyone else could do to stop Ivory taking the point he needed to win.

– Image by boardGOATS

There was still time to play something else, but nobody was really in the mood so, instead, Blue and Ivory drooled over the fabulous pink dinosaurs from Ivory’s new arrival, Dinosaur Island. Blue had nearly KickStarted the second edition, but had withdrawn when she’d heard Ivory was already committed to the project. Needless to say, Ivory had brought his copy to show it off at the earliest opportunity, including plastic goats as well as dinosaurs. And of course it will undoubtedly be a “Feature Game” sometime in the new year.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: Christmas Crackers can make an awful lot of mess.