Author Archives: nannyGOAT

6th March 2018

Food had been ordered by those who intended to eat, but there seemed to be a bit of wait so we decided to play our “Feature Game”, Plague & Pestilence. This game had been chosen as it was Purple’s birthday and she had enjoyed playing it in the past. A fairly simple card game, everyone felt it wouldn’t be too difficult to play around when food arrived, added to which, there weren’t many other options available that would play six in a short time. The game is played in two phases, the first is the “Prosperity Phase” and the second is the “Plague Phase”, but both are played the same way. During their turn, the active player rolls a pair of purple six-sided dice which indicate how much their population increases by, and takes population cards accordingly. The active player then draws Prosperity cards to refill their hand and plays one, which allow players to attack others and build their own protections for later in the game.

– Image by boardGOATS

A special Death Ship card is shuffled into the Prosperity deck and when it appears, it triggers the start of the second phase, the “Plague Phase”. This is played exactly the same as the first phase, but now the dice rolls indicate how much the active player’s population decreases by. As the game progresses, the plague ravages the populations and players are eliminated; the last player standing is the winner. The game started fairly benignly as most players either built improvements or had bumper harvests. There was the odd pestilence played and a Mongol raid, however, Green upped the ante when he played the mass migration card and gained five citizens off every other player. This released the inevitable retribution when he then found himself beset with wars, famines and pestilence. With two Pied Pipers up his sleeve (metaphorically of course) he was then able to pick on Ivory, and did so twice since Ivory had twice hit Green hard with a major war, and had also caught Pine with Viking raids. Meanwhile, Burgundy tried to build defences, and but they fell to earthquakes and other attacks before he could actually make use of their benefits.

– Image by boardGOATS

The game had not seemed to be going on long when Green drew the Death Ship and the game entered the Plague Phase. A quick run round the table while everyone tried to bolster their dwindling populations and then food started to arrive. After a brief interlude, play resumed with Black and his seemingly never-ending stream of Trade Centres. Before long, a fatal blow was dealt to Burgundy when Purple started a war between him and Green. With three ties in a row, both suffered heavy losses. Although Burgundy did eventually win the war, he suffered some poor dice rolls and soon found himself to be the first without citizens. By now, Green was struggling and Black’s own mass migration had put both him and Pine on the edge as well. The inevitable backlash against Black gave Green and Pine a reprieve, but it was short lived and both toppled very quickly.

– Image by boardGOATS

It was looking like a fight between Ivory and Black as Purple’s pile of people was also looking decidedly dodgy, but then Black tried to start a war between the other two. Ivory brought out his “Negotiated Peace” card though and all was well. It was a race of attrition that Purple couldn’t win and she was the next to drop out with an empty city. In the end there was still little Ivory could do and he finally bowed out leaving Black the winner. It was then that Black revealed his hand to have several military advantages that he never used as he was the only one who had not been at war; everyone else had been wondering where those tactical advantages had disappeared to as they really needed them! With the death and destruction over, we quickly decided to split into two threes. As it was Purple’s birthday and she wanted to play Cat Lady, Pine and Black joined her.

– Image used with permission of
BGG contributor HedgeWizzard

Cat Lady is a card drafting game, similar in feel to Sushi Go!, though the drafting mechanism is very different. At the start of the game nine cards from the cat deck are laid out in a three by three array. On their turn, the active player takes all thee cards in one row or one column and then replaces the cards from the draw deck marking the row they took with a kitty meeple so the next player knows they can’t take that row. Any cat cards go in front of the owner (or should that be staff?) and these must be fed by the end of the game or they score minus two. Any food cards give cubes which can then be placed on the face-up cat cards to show they are being fed. Similar to Sushi Go!, there are also cards that score for the player with the most cards (cat “costumes”) and give players with the fewest negative points and sets that players can collect (toys). Players can also collect catnip cards which score minus two if the player only has one at the end of the game, or one or two points per cat if they have more. There are also lost cat cards, and discarding a pair allows players take a two victory point token or one of the three stray cat cards which are particularly useful because they have special powers.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor HedgeWizzard

The tricky part is making sure that the food a player gets matches the cards, because cats are fussy creatures and some like tuna, while others will only eat chicken… At the end of the game, players score points for each happy well-fed cat and for their toy collection with extras if they have the most cat costumes. Unfed cats, having the fewest costumes, and the largest surplus of food will give players negative points. The game began with Purple going for costumes and toys while Black and Pine tried to get catnip to add extra points for their fed cats. Perhaps Purple concentrated too much on the accoutrements for her pets because she ended up with so many cats that should couldn’t feed them all. In her defence, it wasn’t that she had no food, it was that her cats were fussy eaters and turned their noses up at the fresh chicken, preferring to starve. Unfortunately, this meant she lost points for having unfed cats, but also for having the largest surplus of food. In contrast, the others had well fed cats and were level in almost every department, finishing with only three points between them, and Pine just a whisker in front of Black.

– Edited from video on youtube.com

Meanwhile, on the next table, Burgundy, Green and Ivory opted for NMBR 9. Only Burgundy had played it before, but the rules are simple enough so didn’t take long to explain. The idea is that players will play a total of twenty tiles, numbered zero to nine, with each one appearing twice. One player turns over a card and calls the number and players each take one tile of that number and add it to their tableau. Tiles must be placed such that at least one edge touches a previous tile. Tiles can be placed on top of other tiles as long as there are no overhanging parts, and the tile sits squarely on more than one other tile. At the end of the game the number tiles are multiplied by the level they sit on minus one. So, a five on the third level scores ten points (5 x (3-1)). This time, Ivory and Green matched each other for several turns before making a slight different placement which then ballooned into big differences.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

Ivory and Green were quite pleased early on when they were able to place the eight on the, then highest level when Burgundy had to be content with adding it to his “ground floor”. In the end, Burgundy proved cannier than the others, however, and even managed to get a fourth level by the end of the game, while both Ivory and Green could only manage three tiers. In the final scores, it was Burgundy’s experience that showed through and his score dwarfed that of Ivory and Green, who finished with only a point between them. Chatting about the game afterwards, everyone was surprised how quick it had been and how easy it was to learn (helped by the zero setup time). So much so in fact, that even though the game was not to everyone’s taste, everyone felt it made a very handy little filler game and with a nice little bit of challenge. Having played it once though, both Ivory and Green felt they had a better understanding of the challenges and were more familiar with the tessellation possibilities and looked forward to doing better next time.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

On the other table, Cat Lady was still underway, so the Green, Ivory and Burgundy opted for another of the hits from Essen 2017, Azul. Despite the number of times we have now played this in the group, Ivory had somehow missed out. The idea of the game is that players are tile laying artists decorating a wall in the Palace of Evora with “azulejos”. On their turn, the active player can either take all the tiles of one colour from one of the factory displays (putting the rest in the central market) or take all the tiles of one colour from the market in the centre of the table. They then place the tiles in one of the five rows on their player board. The catch is that each player only has five rows, each with a set number of spaces (up to five). Players can add tiles to a row later in the round, but once a row is full, any left-overs go into the negative scoring row. Once all the tiles have been picked up, players evaluate their board, and, starting with the shortest row, one of the tiles from each full row is added to the player’s mosaic and scored.

– Image by BGG contributor JackyTheRipper

Players score just one point for a tile that is not placed adjacent to any other tile, whereas tiles added to rows or columns score the same number of points as there are tiles in the completed row (or column). The game continues with players choosing tiles from the factory displays and then adding them to rows, the catch is that as the mosaic fills up, it is harder to fill the rows as each row can only take each colour once. At the end of the game, players score bonus points for completed columns, completed rows and complete sets of five of the same colour. The game is actually much more complex to explain than to actually play and Ivory appeared to pick it up very quickly, successfully completing a column and two full coloured sets. Green, on the other hand, had managed only one column and one colour set as he had got stuck with a single blue on the bottom row for at least two turns as there weren’t enough of that colour drawn from the bag which stopped him placing the colours he really wanted to. It was Burgundy who romped home in the lead though, with two full columns and two complete colour sets and ninety-eight points, just three ahead of Ivory.

– Image used with permission of boardgamephotos

While Azul was going on, Cat Lady had finished and the group also fancied playing Azul. Unfortunately, we only had one copy between us so they settled on Sheep & Thief instead. This is another light abstract that has proven quite popular in the group. Each player has a board divided into a four by four grid, and starts with their home card and two sheep in the top left hand corner. Each round is played in two halves: first players draft cards then they play them, taking it turns to place one card per turn. It is a strange little “point salad” of a game with players trying to connect their home card to the other three corners while also trying to keep their sheep safe and trying to catch other players sheep with their fox as well as attempting to navigate their black sheep to the town in the bottom right corner of their board.

– Image by boardGOATS

With points for sheep captured, sheep retained, long rivers, connecting the home card to the other corners of the board as well as for moving their black sheep as far from home as possible, it is hard to see who has the most points and get an idea of who is in the lead and it is astonishingly hard to do well at everything. During this game, there almost seemed to be a lack of sheep and not much movement around the fields either. The black sheep only moved a space or two and the foxes mostly sat and watched. Everyone managed to connect their home card to at least one town, but it was Black who managed to collected a huge number of points when he managed to mastermind a huge river system giving him a completely unassailable lead.

– Image by boardGOATS

Meanwhile, Azul was over, but as Sheep & Thief wouldn’t be long, Green, Ivory and Burgundy settled on a quick game of Love Letter with Green’s home printed Hobbit cards. It is a while since we last played Love Letter, but nobody had forgotten how as it is simple enough: draw a second card and chose one to play then action it trying to knock everyone else out—last player standing is the winner. This time, Burgundy was caught out first as he had been forced to discard the Elvenking, leaving Green with a fifty/fifty guess at Beorn or the Great Eagle (the mutterings on placing the Elvenking suggested he wasn’t Smaug). Although he guessed right, Ivory played a Troll to compare hands and Green could not match Ivory’s eagle. In the second round, history repeated itself for Burgundy as the first card he played was an Elvenking and the Great Eagle guess proved correct. It was Green’s Troll card that forced the compare this time and took out Ivory.

– Image by boardGOATS

In the third round, Green started off by keeping himself out of harms way with Elrond, but he drew Smaug as his next card and knew that the writing would be on the wall—it’s very hard to keep that quiet for long. The inevitable happened when Ivory forced Green to reveal his card, but it didn’t do Ivory much good as Burgundy was then able to beat him on another comparison. With one golden ring apiece and Sheep & Thief being scored on the next table, it was all or nothing on the final round. Burgundy was knocked out first, but Green and Ivory took it to the final cards, a compare hands. Much to the dismay of Green who had accused Ivory of being Smaug earlier in the round, Ivory had subsequently drawn the dragon card, and with it took the game. It wasn’t all that late, but nobody really wanted to start anything else. With Green and Ivory making for home, Black, Burgundy and Pine waited on the birthday girl’s decision, but she also wanted to head off—she’d had a busy day.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: Don’t be a fussy pussy or it could be fatal!

Sad News of a Little Friend

Anyone who has been to a Monster Games event or one of the group’s New Year’s Parties over the last three years will be sad to hear of the passing of our little grey host this morning. Always very chilled out, chatty and exceptionally friendly, courteous and good natured, he will be much missed by both his guests and staff.

– Image by boardGOATS

Next Meeting – 6th March 2015

Our next meeting will be on Tuesday 6^th March, 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 Plague & Pestilence. This is a slightly older card game with a nasty cut-throat edge. We picked it because it is Purple’s birthday and it is one of her favourite games (or at least we think it is!).

– Image by boardGOATS

And speaking of the plague…

Jeff had been ill for a couple of days, so, convinced he was dying he went to the doctor. The doctor ran a whole battery of tests and then him down and said, “I’m afraid you have bubonic plague.”

Jeff was shocked, but after a moment or two, he hopefully asked, “Doctor, can you do something?”

The doctor answered, “Well, you’ll have to stay in the hospital… and we’ll put you on a special diet of flounder, pizza, and pancakes.”

Jeff thought that didn’t sound so awful, but he was curious, “How is that diet going to cure me?”

The doctor replied, “Well, it isn’t, but those are the only foods we can slide under the door!”

20th February 2018

As food was being dealt with, Red introduced a new gamer, Olive. Olive is not new to Eurogames, but was unfamiliar the “Feature Game”, Colt Express: Marshal & Prisoners. This is the second expansion to the train robbing game, Colt Express, and one nobody around the table had tried before. Pretty much everyone said, “I really like the game, but I wouldn’t mind playing something else depending what that is…” This inevitably led to a lot of debate as to who would play what, but in the end, Blue, Magenta, Pine, Black and Olive settled down to play Colt Express.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor lacxox

Colt Express is a programming game where players take it in turns to choose the cards they are going to play (sometimes in the open, sometimes in secret) and then, after all the cards have been chosen, players take it in turns to action the cards. The cards enable players to move their robbers along the train, onto the roof of their carriage, shoot or punch each other and pick up loot, the ultimate aim of the game. The thing is, by the time players come to actioning the cards they chose, they have forgotten what their plan was, and usually the game state is completely different to what they thought it would be. This ends up with lots of people taking a wild swing at empty space, or shooting someone they hadn’t intended to target. The Marshal & Prisoners expansion makes things even more complicated as one of the players is the train Marshal instead of a robber, and has different objectives during the game.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor Punkin312

Black took the role of the Marshal, who starts the game with five objective cards. Two of these are to capture other players (drawn at random), and all of them are placed face down to be revealed to the Marshal one at a time, one per round. He also got a hand of special action cards and two clips of bullets. Everyone else got the same action cards as in the base game, but additionally got a Brilliant Ideas card. This card affects how players interact with the other new component, the Prison Car. Basically, its effect depends on the character’s location: if they are not in the prison car then they repeat the previous robber’s actions, otherwise they have a choice of freeing a captured robber or rescuing a prisoner who will then work for them.

– Image used with permission of boardgamephotos

It took us a little while to remember some of the finer details and also get to grips with the changes caused by the expansion. Marshal Black quickly captured Olive, a move everyone felt was a bit harsh on her fist visit. Fortunately for her, Pine was in a chivalrous mood so instead of freeing a prisoner (and getting the associated special power), he liberated Olive from her cell, at a cost of course. Meanwhile, Magenta had started out as she clearly meant to carry on, by being violent and shooting Blue. Inevitably, she retaliated in the next round and from there bullets flew in all directions. Magenta wasn’t only busy being a brutal murdering psychopath, she was also busy collecting. Pine was slightly more gentlemanly about it, but was also making free with the available loot. Blue’s game ended when she too was caught by Marshal Black and nobody saw fit to let her out.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor Punkin312

Eventually the game came to an end, and Marshal Black was first to declare whether he had achieved his goals. To win, he had to succeed in four of the five challenges, but unfortunately for him, he’d only managed three of them. He’d managed to shoot all four people and capture Olive (which was one of his goals), but he’d failed to nab Pine and one of his other tasks was nearly impossible. This meant everyone had to reveal their stash. While locked in her prison cell, Blue had been reading the rules and discovered that the Brilliant Idea card would enable her to escape on her own, but by that time, the game was nearly over and the damage was done. Magenta, Pine and Blue had all managed to empty their clips so scored $1,000 as gunslingers. Pacifist Olive had managed to pick up the strong box and some other loot, but getting captured cost her $500. Pine finished second with an excellent $2,200, but it was a long way behind Magenta who finished well ahead with $3,150.

– Image used with permission of boardgamephotos

Meanwhile, after some discussion, everyone else settled on playing Port Royal (with the extra cards from the Expansion). This is a very simple game; on their turn the active player turns over the top card of the deck. If it is a Ship that they want, they can take it to give them income, alternatively, they can repel the Ship if they don’t want it and have sufficient cutlass cards to do so. If it is a Character card that they want and can afford, they buy it and put it in front of them. If they do not want the card they place it face up in the display in front of the draw-deck and draw another card. The active player continues in this way until they have taken a card, or a Ship is drawn that is the same colour as a ship already in the display and cannot be repelled, in which case, they go bust and play passes to the next player.

– Image by boardGOATS

The clever part of the game is that it uses the same dual use cards trick as Bohnanza, where the cards have one meaning when face up and are coins when face down. This means some cards get buried in the money piles and may never appear face up, making each game slightly different. The other clever part of the game is that if the active player buys or takes a card, then everyone else has the chance, in turn, to take or buy a card until there are none left in the row, however, it will cost them one coin, paid to the active player. In general, each Character card has a special power, but is also worth victory points at the end of the game which is triggered when someone reaches twelve points.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor msaari

It had been a little while since we last played this and we all felt a little rusty, and Ivory was entirely new to it. So, the first few rounds were a little tentative but as we got into it, Burgundy opted for his tried and trusted strategy of gaining the Admiral Character card that would give him two extra coins (taken from the draw deck) if there were at least five cards in the row when it was his turn to choose. This worked very well for him initially, so that when the option to get a second came along he took it for a potential gain of four coins when there were five cards in the row just be fore he could choose one. Whether it was just luck or that the rest of us made an extra special effort, he immediately stopped getting his five card chance after this and only rarely managed his four coins.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor Punkin312

After the first couple of rounds we were still finding our feet and everyone really needed more money so we were all trying to get some higher scoring pirate ships. Green was the first to go bust when the third he pulled out was a second green pirate. Tom was next up and he also bust and so it went on round the table for an (almost) fully busted round, with only Burgundy bucking the trend. The game was generally bereft of the Expedition Cards (which allow players to exchange some people for more points), and unusually there were only two available in the whole game. This meant that for Green, Purple and Red who were pursuing and Expedition card based strategy it was a real struggle. Despite Burgundy’s frequent large haul of coins, it was actually Purple that fell foul of the Tax Man first, and Burgundy (by way of having a solitary soldier), kept winning the extra coin for largest defense force when the taxes were due.

– Image by boardGOATS

In the past, Green had done well with Pirate and Sailor strategy, but unfortunately this time he struggled to get the fighting cards he needed. Ivory was getting a feel for the game and took two red Trader cards that would add to his coin haul whenever he took a red ship. However, these cards are not as powerful in this game as they at first appear, as it’s rare that you get to choose which colour ship you take. Since he had this double bonus, the rest of us made sure he didn’t get to use it. In the end Burgundy made his strategy work and as everyone else struggled to gain traction he sailed to victory finishing with twelve points with everyone else in a very tight game for second place. It was not clear how long Colt Express was going to go on, but as they were about half way through, a shorter five player game was in order. This was not an easy choice with the games available which were either way too long or rather too short. It ended up being Red’s favourite, Bohnanza.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor spearjr

Bohnanza is a very popular game within the group, but somehow Ivory had managed to avoid playing it. Everyone else were old hands with it though, so after a quick summary of the rules we had a discussion of the key points of the game. As far as the rules go, the key part is for everyone to suppress all natural instinct and NOT sort their hand of cards. This is something that is surprisingly difficult given the OCD nature of most gamers, but is is the crux of the game as the cards must be played in the order they are received. The only way to work round this is to trade away the cards in hand, which means they must be played straight away, but by another player. There was a short discussion on this point as the fun of the game is in the trading and if people refuse to trade it becomes tedious. That wasn’t going to happen here though. Our group are usually fairly free and easy with our trades, but that’s not to say we are push-overs. We trade, but we trade hard. Occasionally we might let someone have an exceptionally good deal, but only on the condition that they remember for next time!

– Image by boardGOATS

In many ways this was fairly typical game of Bohnanza. Green was the first to go for a third bean field (often none of us do), and that was because he wanted to plant his Garden Bean while not getting in the way of his normal game. There are only six Garden Beans in the game, but if you can get at least two, that gives you a point per bean card. Although Ivory had already planted and harvested three Garden Beans, Green felt it was worth the gamble that at least one of the others was going to turn up sometime. He was right about that. They both turned up in Burgundy’s hand and he wasn’t trading! Ivory followed shortly after planting his third bean field, largely for the same reason: he did not want to harvest an incomplete field just yet for a low yield, high scoring bean. Like Green however, ultimately, the strategy failed.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor spearjr

By this time, Colt Express had finished and since Bohnanza was going with such a swing the “train robbers” decided to join in with their own “Game of Beans” using a second copy. In many ways it was a mirror of the first game; a case of different people, same game. So, Blue picked up a third bean field quite early in the hope that it would ensure she could capitalise on some of the rare, but valuable beans she had in her hand, in particular her Garden Bean. Everyone else tried to manage without, though Olive decided to pick one up in the late stages—a controversial decision in the eyes of the spectators. Like Green and Ivory, the third bean field didn’t help them either though, in Blue’s case, largely because it spent the almost the whole game with one solitary bean in it because the rest all ended up in Pine’s coin stash. Both games were quite tight, so much so that when the first group couldn’t find someone to trade with, they tried to see if anyone on the next table could help. Red, The Bean Queen, came out on top in the first game with sixteen, with Ivory finishing in second with fifteen and each place thereafter one coin behind the one above. The winner on the second table also finished with sixteen and was a tie between Pine and Black who’d had a quiet, but obviously effective game.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: Sometimes violence pays.

Boardgames in the News: What is Asmodee’s Grand Plan?

Four years ago, Eurazeo bought a small French games company called Asmodee from the investment firm, Montefiore. Asmodee were a small company hitherto primarily known for a clever little kids game called Dobble. With the financial might of their parent company behind them, over the next few years, Asmodee proceeded to gobble up many larger, well-established companies, including Days of Wonder, Fantasy Flight Games, Z-man Games and most recently, Lookout Spiele. Those companies produced some of the best known modern games including Ticket to Ride, Carcassonne, Pandemic, Agricola and Star Wars X-Wing Miniatures Game. Not content with that, they also acquired the rights to the English language version of the Settlers of Catan (now known simply as “Catan”) and all the related Catan games as well as gobbling up a number of smaller and/or newer companies like Space Cowboys (producers of Splendor and Black Fleet) and Plaid Hat Games (producers of Dead of Winter and Mice and Mystics) and entering into a distribution agreement with many others. There are now very few games companies of any substance that are not somehow tangled in the Asmodee web.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor adamfeldner

The last major purchase was F2Z Entertainment in 2016, and since then it has been relatively quiet. With the new year comes a new wave of acquisition, however, so at the end of January Asmodee announced that they were in exclusive negotiations with Rebel. Rebel is a relatively small, Polish company responsible for games like K2 as well as Polish editions of many popular games like 7 Wonders and Codenames. Perhaps more importantly, Rebel also produces the Polish language versions of many of the Asmodee games and is the largest distributor in Poland. And Poland is a big country, smaller than France or Germany, but bigger than Italy and the UK, globally Poland is the thirty-forth largest country by population. That is a lot of Poles and they do like playing board games in Poland.

– Image used with permission
of boardgamephotos

This announcement was almost immediately followed by the bombshell that Asmodee had acquired all the residual assets from Mayfair and with it, Lookout Spiele. Although this is by far the largest deal in recent months, Asmodee have not been resting on their laurels and there has been a lot going on behind the scenes. In December last year they announced that Esdevium was to be renamed “Asmodee UK” bringing them in line with the “Asmodee North America” and “Asmodee Canada” brands. At around the same time, Eurazeo announced that French publisher Purple Brain Créations would be joining the Asmodee Group. Furthermore, they have also been streamlining their distribution network in North America. Having reduced the number of distributors they deal with to five in 2015, in June last year Asmodee North America announced an exclusive distribution deal with Alliance Game Distributors, effectively creating a monopoly of supply within the USA. This coupled with their Minimum Advertised Price policy (or MAP) gives them a stranglehold on the US market in a way that would never be allowed in Europe. Whether they are planning to take that one step further and acquire Alliance themselves still remains to be seen, but that looks like a real possibility. Finally, they have been pushing in a new direction, developing electronic versions of some of the most popular games through their studio, “Asmodee Digital“.

– Image from
escapistmagazine.com

So what is Asmodee‘s Grand Plan? Where will it all end? Well, there are still a couple of other large manufacturers out there that are not yet part of Asmodee. Looking at the companies they have already absorbed there is a clear trend: they typically have one particular feature that Asmodee are interested in. In the case of Days of Wonder, that was the Ticket to Ride series, with Z-man Games it was Pandemic and Carcassonne, and with Rebel, it was probably their distribution network that caught the eye of the executives at Asmodee. Going forward, the most obvious targets are probably Rio Grande Games, Czech Games Edition, Queen Games, Hans im Glük and maybe 2F, or Pegasus Spiele (who have just announced a partnership with Frosted Games). For example, it would be surprising if Rio Grande Games have not been approached given the popularity of games like Dominion and Race/Roll for the Galaxy. Similarly, Czech Games Edition are a small company with some very juicy morsels including Galaxy Trucker, Dungeon Lords/Petz, and the hugely successful Spiel des Jahres winner, Codenames.

– Image by boardGOATS

Ultimately they may or may not add some or all of these to the Greater Asmodee Empire, but it is clear that at some point, eventually, there will be nothing left worth taking over and growth of the company will plateau, so what happens then? And this is the crux of the matter. Some have speculated that the aim is to add Hasbro to Asmodee’s ever growing dominion, but Hasbro has a market value of $11.9 billion—Asmodee are mere minnows in comparison. On the other hand, the parent company, Eurazeo are worth approximately $5.7 billion, which at least puts them in the same ball park, although even they are small by comparison. According to the “Vision” page on the Eurazeo website:

The purpose of Eurazeo is to identify, accelerate and enhance the transformation potential of the companies in which it invests, even long after its exit. An active and committed shareholder, Eurazeo assists its holdings in the long term – 5 to 7 years – with control over exit timing. An extensive role enabling it to combine business development and corporate social responsibility.

So, it would seem that Eurazeo is not looking to hold onto Asmodee for the long haul, instead they will be looking to maximise Asmodee’s growth and then make their exit, probably in the next two to five years. So the big question is, how are Eurazeo going to make their “controlled exit”? With this in mind it seems unlikely that acquiring Hasbro is on the agenda, but making Asmodee attractive to Hasbro just might be…

– Image from stickpng.com

Boardgames in the News: Playing Pig in Forbus, Tennessee

Pig (aka Spoons) is a simple little card game that uses a form of card drafting where players repeatedly pass a single card to the left and pick up a card from the right. The game is fun and can be quite manic until the point that a player has four of a kind, when they put their finger on their nose (or grab a spoon from the centre of the table). Everyone else copies and the last person to notice and put their finger on their nose (or get a spoon) is the loser, or “Pig”. In Forbus, Tennessee, the game Pig is very different however, and taken much more seriously. The Forbus Pig game is a partnership trick taking game, similar to Bridge, but is only played in the local area. The “18th Annual World Pig Tournament” was won last weekend by Larry Padgett.

Larry Padgett winning the "18th Annual World Pig Tournament".

– Image from facebook.com

The interesting part of the Forbus Pig game is the bidding and card values. Dealer is chosen by blind draw, and deals nine cards to each player. The players then bid to name the “trump” suit. Each player has only one bid per hand and must raise the current bid or pass. The bids represent the number of points a player thinks their partnership can make in the hand, and the starting bid must be at least seven. Once the bidding has been concluded, the trump suit is named by the winner. Players then discard all their non-trump (or “trash”) cards or a minimum of three cards, to ensure that everyone has six cards or fewer. This hand is then “topped up” by the dealer to ensure that everyone has a hand of six cards. Anyone discarding trumps must declare it and in general only the one trump (the deuce) is discarded and the Three will then score instead.

– Image from innontheprom.co.uk

When play starts, the highest bidder leads. Players forced to follow suit if they lead with a trump, but unlike Whist/Bridge do not have to follow if the lead is a trash (non-trump) card. In each hand, the trump with the highest rank wins. And this is where the game is clever: the card ranks and card scores are not the same. So, while the Ace is the highest ranking card, the Five (or “Pig”) is the highest scoring card, so a player can win a trick with a non-scoring card like the King and take the points provided by other, lower ranking cards. In another idiosyncrasy, the Jack and Five (or “Pig”)of the suite in the same colour as the trump, the “Off Jack” or “Off Pig” suit also score. The winner of the trick takes the cards and places them face down before providing the next lead. Non-trumps, or trash cards are deemed to have no rank, so if nobody plays a trump, the trick is won by the person who led. Once all six tricks in the hand have been played, the scores are calculated.

Rank ↓	Score	Rank ↓	Score
Ace	1	Eight	0
King	0	Seven	0
Queen	0	Six	0
Jack (Main)	1	Five (Main Pig)	5
Jack (Off)	1	Five (Off Pig)	5
Joker	1	Four	0
Ten	1	Three	0
Nine	0	Two	1

In general, both teams score, so if one team scores ten and the other score six, both scores are added to the teams’ running totals. The catch is that the team who won the bidding must exceed the amount they bid. In other words, a team who bid and won with ten, must score ten or more, if they fail, their bid is subtracted from their running total. The maximum number of points available is sixteen, but players who are confident can score “doubles” by bidding, for example, “double sixteen”. In this case, if they achieve sixteen, they will score thirty-two. Only bids of fourteen, fifteen and sixteen can be doubled and they are high risk, because of course players who fail to make their winning bids will lose that number of points and “double sixteen” is thirty-two. This is a a lot of points to lose in a game which ends ends when one team finishes a hand with more than fifty-two points, or less than minus fifty-two with the team with the most winning.

– Image from aberryhousecarehome.co.uk

There are actually a lot of games like Pig that have a strong local tradition, but are not widely known, indeed the “official rules” for Forbus Pig are not easy to come by, even in these days of the internet. Aside from the recent “18th Annual World Pig Tournament”, this particular game has been reported in the national media thanks to its influence on the local economy of the little town of Forbus in Tennessee. Everyone in Forbus plays Pig, but its epicentre is the General Store. There’s no money involved in Pig, but despite that, it is strangely compelling to watch and draws a sizeable crowd, making the Store the centre of the small community.

– Image from facebook.com

Next Meeting – 20th February 2018

Our next meeting will be on Tuesday, 20^th February, 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 Marshal & Prisoners, the second expansion to the gorgeous train robbing game, Colt Express. The expansion adds extra characters and a prison wagon complete with prisoners and a marshal to guard them. Players who succeed in freeing prisoners can use their special powers as well as their own in the race to be the richest bandit in the West!

– Image used with permission of boardgamephotos

And speaking of prisoners…

Jeff had been caught dealing drugs and was serving his sentence in the Scrubs. One day, his father, an elderly farmer, came to visit, with some bad news. His father explained the farm was in difficulty.

“Son, the ground is frozen and is much too hard for me to dig myself at my age. I can’t afford extra men or to hire machines though. I don’t think we will be able to plant crops this year, which will means we will go bankrupt and lose the farm.”

Later, Jeff went back to his cell and wrote a short letter to his father.

Dear Dad,

Please be aware that a very good friend of mine will be visiting soon. There is a large quantity of stuff he is collecting. It is well hidden on the farm, but he will know exactly what to do.

Lots of Love,
Jeff.

Some weeks later Jeff’s father went to visit again.

“Well, son, your friend never showed up, but before I even got your letter the police came round, searched the whole house and dug up all the land around. They didn’t find anything though…”

Jeff smiled, “Happy planting, Dad.”

6th February 2018

With seven of us and the “Feature Game”, Ave Caesar, only playing six, we started the evening with a small problem. The general consensus was that the game is more fun with more people, so splitting into two small groups didn’t feel right. Blue offered to sit out as she was still eating, as did Burgundy and almost everyone else as well, but in the end, Purple and Black teamed up so we could all play together. An older family game dating from 1989, Ave Caesar is also a fairly simple game. The idea is that each player has a deck of movement cards, a chariot, and a coin, and the aim of the game is to be the first player to cross the line after completing three laps of the track. On the way round each player must pay tribute to Caesar on the way by pulling up in front of the Emperor in his dedicated pit lane, chucking their Denarius into the game box and crying “Hail Caesar!”.

– Image by boardGOATS

There are some nasty, unforgiving little features about this game. For example, the track is generally a maximum of two lanes wide. Worse, players can only use each of their cards once and don’t have lot of spare moves, so the outside lane should be used sparingly otherwise they may run out of moves before they complete their final lap. Even worse than that, each player starts with a hand of three cards and plays one, then refreshes their hand. The snag is that players cannot jump or move through occupied spaces and must use every space on the card they play, in other words, they cannot play a five for example if there are only three spaces they can move. These “nasty features” can make the game very frustrating, but are also the clever part as they provide the challenge.

– Image by boardGOATS

There have been several editions of the game, but the original Ravensburger is widely believed to be the best because it has slightly longer tracks which makes for a tighter game as players have fewer moves to spare. It is well understood that the newer version that we were playing with could be improved by removing a five card from each player’s deck. So we started sorting and counting cards, and finding a five to remove from each deck. With this done, all those eating had also finished and Burgundy started with a modest two. Blue was second and, with two sixes in hand felt that it was a good idea to get rid of one of them nice and early. The problem with sixes is that you can’t play them when you are in the lead, but they can be quite difficult to play from the back as there has to be enough space in front to play them.

– Image by boardGOATS

Burgundy’s two proved to be a mistake as everyone else promptly overtook him and left him stuck at the back for most of the rest of the lap. In fact, he was so stuck, that he ended up missing three turns on the first lap alone. In contrast, Blue had broken away from the pack and was looking at lapping Burgundy, but this had its own problems as she needed to get rid of her sixes, which she couldn’t do while in the lead. Blue went to hail Caesar on her first lap to give people a chance to catch up. After a bit of moaning that he hated Bank-holiday traffic, Pine finally managed to break away from the log-jam and take the lead giving Blue a chance to ditch a six, and everyone else a chance to make some progress too. Everyone else that is, except Burgundy who was doing an excellent job of bringing up the rear.

– Image by boardGOATS

During the second lap, Pine just managed to nip in and pay his dues to Caesar, while Green followed and then reduced his chariot speed to a crawl and “Hailed” three times successfully causing a queue behind. It was the third lap where things started to get interesting though with everyone jockeying for position to try to make sure that they didn’t have to waste moves. Blue had a bigger problem though, she was miles in front, but still had to draw her final six from the deck and then play it. She tried hanging back, reluctant to give away the size of her problem, but that card stayed in the pack. Finally, as she drew her last card, she found her final six, but it was too late and Team Black and Purple cantered past and pipped her to the finish. Green trotted in taking third place and leading the rest of the pack home. Ironically, had she not suggested removing the fives at the start of the game, Blue would have won easily, but that would have been boring.

– Image by boardGOATS

It hadn’t been Ivory’s sort of game, so to placate him we offered him Yokohama, a game he’s been angling to play since before Christmas, but there wasn’t quite enough time for that, so he went for Sagrada instead and was joined by Pine and Blue. This is a very pretty little game with many features in common with one of our current favourites, Azul. It has simple rules, but lots of complexity and is essentially an abstract with a very thin theme, but for some reason that doesn’t seem to matter. In Sagrada, players build a stained glass window by building up a grid of dice on their player board. Each board has some restrictions on which colour or shade (value) of die can be placed there and players take it in turns to take dice from a pool and add them to their window. Depending on the difficulty of the starting grid, players start with a small number of favour tokens which act as “get out of jail free” options and allow them to use special tools to rearrange some of the dice, either during “drafting”, or sometimes those already in their window.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

Points are awarded for fulfilling certain criteria, depicted on cards drawn at random at the start of the game. Although completing the window can be challenging in its own right if the dice don’t roll well, it is the objective cards that are the key to the game. Each player has their own private objective which scores for the number of pips displayed on dice of a given colour in that player’s window. There are also three public objectives which everyone can use to score points; in this case we were scoring for coloured dice diagonally adjacent; complete sets of one to six and pairs of five and six. The game starts with each player choosing a window from two double-sided cards dealt at random. The hard ones come with a lot of favour tokens; this time almost all the options available seemed to be the difficult ones, which made Blue especially wary given the dogs’ breakfast she made of the game at New Year playing a challenging window.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

Everyone seemed to go for different strategies this time. Blue went for the public “diagonals” goal, making a pretty Battenburg pattern, but only managed to get one five, so struggled with the other objectives. In contrast, Ivory did well getting pairs of five and six, but only got one three, so couldn’t score so well for the sets. Pine completely ignored the diagonals and really concentrated on his private goal and getting complete sets of one to six. It was a really tight game and Blue and Ivory were to rue those dice they’d failed to get as Pine finished with forty-three points, just two ahead of Ivory and three clear of Blue. Despite finishing second, Ivory was much happier with this game than Ave Caesar and was up for giving something else a go. Pine was keen to play Animals on Board again, and it is a nice enough little game and not long so Ivory was happy to give it a go too. The idea is that players are collecting animals to go in their cardboard ark. Each set of animals in the game is numbered from one to five and a selection are drawn at random and placed face up in the centre of the table.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

On their turn the active player either divides one of the groups in the middle into two parts (and takes a box of fruit for their pains) or takes the animals from one of the groups, paying for them with boxes of fruit at a rate of one per animal. At the end of the game (triggered when one player picks up their tenth animal) Noah claims any pairs of animals and the remaining animals are scored: singletons score their face value and sets of three or more score five per animal. It was quite tight, Ivory collected four rhinos and Pine managed three hippos. Blue brought the game to a sudden and unexpected end when she unexpectedly found herself with a large set she could take profitably, leaving her with two sets of three, foxes and zebras, and with it, the she took the game.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

Meanwhile, on the neighbouring table, Black, Pink, Burgundy and Green were playing the classic, Settlers of Catan (now known simply as “Catan”). Despite being over twenty years old now, it still holds up as a good family game in a way that some other games of the same vintage do not. The game is played on an iconic variable tile game board on which players build settlements and cities on the nodes and roads along the edges. One of the things that makes the game so popular is the lack of down time: a turn consists of rolling dice, trading and then buying and/or building. Each hexagon on the board is numbered and rolling the dice gives resources to every player with a settlement on the hexagon on the number rolled. Since each node is on the corner of three hexagons, players frequently get resources during other players’ turns. Everyone is potentially involved in the trading of course, so the only part of anyone’s turn that is not shared is the buying and building phase, but this is usually quite short.

– Image by boardGOATS

This time, the random layout of tiles gave an even spread, but the number tokens placed on them had an unusual symmetry: both eights were on the mountains (giving stone), both threes were on the fields (giving wheat) and both nines were on the clay beds (giving brick). Green started and inevitably chose the choice spot with that would give him wool, wood and clay, much to Burgundy’s chagrin. Black was last to place and decided to connect his two roads and settlements, so by the time it Green got his second turn, he had very little option and ended up with a port location which would yield only two cards to everyone rather than three. The dice seemed to be rolling according to the predicted distribution with the red numbers (six & eight) coming up often. This gave Burgundy a lot of stone and wood, but due to his lack of brick he quickly converted a settlement to a city which only increased his supply of stone.

– Image by boardGOATS

Unfortunately for him, all these extra resources counted against him as the other number to come up regularly was seven, so meaning the robber was moved and everyone had to reduce the number of resource cards they were holding to seven. Burgundy often was higher due to his regular double productions, but to make it worse he frequently seemed to because of his own demise since he was the one who kept rolling the sevens—three times in succession at one point! With that kind of luck he really began to wonder if he should just pack it in right then and go play something else. While Burgundy was struggling with his own security though, Purple and Green were steadily building their kingdoms. Purple gained another settlement and converted one of her others into a city. Green had spread out from his choice spot to build another settlement on the port side of the value eight mountains and in the other direction to another port with more clay, giving him the longest road, and with it two bonus points, for the moment at least.

– Image by boardGOATS

Black seemed to be languishing, unable to get traction and the cards he needed for expansion. Catan requires investment for growth, but he had barely two coins to rub together to invest with at all. Once Green had built on the mountain-side the eight rolls seemed to dry up and he struggled to get enough stone or wheat to convert his settlements to cities. Purple’s hidden development card made everyone think she had an extra hidden point, and possibly the lead. Certainly the early rolls went in her favour and it was beginning to look like this could be her game. Green’s long road brought him into the running, and the power of Burgundy’s cities meant he wasn’t far behind. The production Burgundy’s cities provided meant he was able to go after longest road and take it from Green, thus starting a little road building war between the two.

– Image by boardGOATS

With nowhere else on the board worth building on, Burgundy decided on an alternative strategy and started trading for development cards. He managed to place two knights and was about to take the Largest Army, until everyone else reminded him he three army cards for that. It only delayed the inevitable though, as one round later he played a third knight card, claimed the Largest Army and two points with it. He easily built two more roads and with it retook the Longest Road card for a second time simultaneously revealing he had a one point development card in his hand. This meant he went from five points on the board to a total of ten points in one turn and with it finished the game. Purple and Black revealed they also had a one point development card to give them both six points and joint second place.

– Image by boardGOATS

Both tables finished at about the same time and, as Ivory headed home, Burgundy commented that he’d like to give NMBR 9 a go. Everyone else chimed in that they’d be happy to join him , but Pine and Purple got there first and with no set up time got started quickly. The game is very simple: one player turns over a card and calls the number and players each take one tile of that number and add it to their tableau. All the tiles are roughly number-shaped and each player will play a total of twenty tiles, numbered zero to nine, with each one appearing twice. Tiles must be placed such that at least one edge touches a previous tile. Tiles can be placed on top of other tiles as long as there are no overhanging parts, and the tile sits squarely on more than one other tile. At the end of the game the number tiles are multiplied by the level they sit on minus one. So, a five on the third level scores ten points (5 x (3-1)).

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

Unlike a lot of games, it is very difficult to tell who is winning, as the largest scores come late in the game when adding tiles to the higher layers. However, the lower layers must be able to accommodate the later tiles as and when they come out, otherwise a player can’t take advantage of the opportunities they may offer. This time Burgundy “got lucky” and was able to squeeze a seven, an eight and a nine onto his third level giving him a massive forty-eight points for them alone and a bit of a land-slide victory. We’ve played this game a few times now as a group and all the previous games have been quite close. Other Bingo-type game like Take it Easy!, Das Labyrinth des Pharao or Karuba, have been relatively unpopular with the group as they feel like multiplayer solitaire, but somehow, in our group, everyone gets involved helping everyone else out, which makes this game much more enjoyable.

– Image used with permission of boardgamephotos

The other three chatted for a few minutes before deciding to play a quick game of Kingdomino as it is a game we know well and can play quickly and without committing too much thought. It consists of dominoes featuring two terrain “tiles” with some tiles also depicting one or more crowns. Players are building their kingdoms by placing dominoes where one end must either connect to another domino matching at least one of its terrain types or to the starting tile (which can be considered to be “wild”). All dominoes must fit in a five-by-five space and if one or more dominoes cannot be placed according to these rules, then they are discarded. At the end of the game, each player multiplies the number of tiles in each contiguous region of terrain with the number of crowns on the tiles in that region and adds them up together with any bonuses to give their score.

– Image by boardGOATS

The game was really tight with each player capitalising and building on different terrain types: Black took forests, Green took pasture and Blue took sea. There were three points between first and third, but it was Black who finished at the front, just one point ahead of Blue. With three players, some tiles are removed from the game at random. Like last time, almost all the tiles removed were the high-scoring mountain and marshland tiles, but at least this time nobody’s game plan depended on them. It did encourage some discussion, though with Black commenting that he didn’t like the game with three because of this uncontrolled randomness, and Blue commenting that perhaps the tiles that are taken out should be turned face up and displayed so that players can at least see what won’t be available. Maybe a variant for another time.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: Some games stand the test of time, others not so much.

Boardgames in the News: The Consequences of Losing Catan—The Demise of Mayfair

The dramatic growth of Asmodee has been the subject of much comment over the last few years, but more recently it appeared to have slowed a little. It would seem that perhaps the consequences are now beginning to kick in though. Nearly two years ago, Asmodee acquired the rights to the English Language edition of the Catan series of games from Mayfair Games. At the time there was some speculation as to the effect this would have on Mayfair as the Catan range had dominated their catalogue and provided a high proportion of their revenue. The loss of such a large part of their portfolio inevitably led to major restructuring particularly as the then CEO of Mayfair, Pete Fenlon, left to become the CEO of the new Asmodee owned “Catan Studio” taking a bunch of other people with him.

– Image by boardGOATS

Thus, Mayfair not only lost the Catan franchise, but also their entire development team and graphics department. Essentially, they were left with Alex Yeager as lead developer, head of acquisitions, and marketing manager and a catalogue of about a hundred games including some of the popular 18xx series, Martin Wallace’s Steam, Caverna: The Cave Farmers, Lords of Vegas and Nuns on the Run. Mayfair also had a controlling influence in the German company, Lookout Games which they had acquired back in 2013, and this partnership had produced games like Isle of Skye: From Chieftain to King, Costa Rica and Patchwork. The Mayfair strategy was primarily to focus on the partnership with Lookout while continuing to support their existing catalogue, and then, once that was stable, further develop the Mayfair-exclusive products.

– Image from twitter.com

Questions were first asked when Mayfair didn’t exhibit at PAX West or PAX Unplugged, despite featuring in the exhibitor list, though they did present as usual at BGG.CON. At the beginning of November, however, Alex Yeager announced that he had left Mayfair, and this, together with the earlier departure of Julie Yeager and Chuck Rice indicated that the chairs were being shifted on the deck of the Titanic, and there were rumours that Mayfair was in trouble. Mayfair had not independently produced a new title since the loss of the Catan franchise, but they still had their controlling stake in Lookout Games and producing the English language version of the popular Lookout range of games seemed like the basis for a strong partnership.

– Image from lookout-spiele.de

Lookout Spiele was a highly successful German company responsible for developing games like Agricola, and more recently Bärenpark and Grand Austria Hotel. At Spiel in October, Mayfair and Lookout shared an extremely popular booth, and it seemed so successful that there were rumours that another merger was on the cards. Sadly however, this was not the case, and on Friday it was announced that Mayfair had sold its three remaining assets (their games inventory, the IP, and their 74% stake in Lookout GmbH) and was closing their doors after thirty-six years. Simultaneously, Asmodee acquired the remaining 26% of Lookout from the original owner, Hanno Girk and on Friday announced their take-over of Lookout. With that, one of the most productive and popular of the German board game companies joined the likes of Days of Wonder, Fantasy Flight Games, Space Cowboys, Z-man Games, Pearl Games, Ystari, Plaid Hat Games and of course Catan as yet another “Studio” in the great Asmodee Empire.

– Image from lookout-spiele.de

Boardgames in the News: Radio 2 and Online

Over the last few years there has been a lot of anecdotal evidence that modern boardgames are becoming less of a niche activity, with a large number of reports in local and national media. Last month alone, there was a prime-time article on BBC Radio 2‘s flagship Breakfast Show, where Chris Evans interviewed Dicky Duerden, Head of Games at the Chance & Counters Games Cafe in Bristol. The interview took place shortly before 9am (2hrs 13 mins into the show) and discussed classic games like Connect Four and Kerplunk as well as their most popular games, Scrabble and Jenga.

– Image from bbc.co.uk

The interview included a couple of nice little anecdotes, for example, Dicky Duerden explained that Battleship began life as a French game called “L’Attack” and was renamed twice, changing to “Salvo”, then “Broadside” before finally becoming “Battleship”. He was also asked whether they have problems with players having temper tantrums and whether people lose pieces or walk off with them. Apparently, Chance & Counters has heavy unflippable tables with shelves to store the games and cup-holders to help prevent spillage. So, the most damage they’ve had to a game was when someone stole all the marbles from Hungry Hungy Hippos—presumably the thief couldn’t stand the noise!

– Image from medium.com

Modern boardgames have also featured in print and other media channels. For example, the literary and cultural commentary magazine, The Atlantic, recently reported how U.S. sales of boardgames grew by twenty-eight percent between spring 2016 and spring 2017. They put this increase down to the rise in popularity of card games like Cards Against Humanity, Secret Hitler, and Exploding Kittens as well as what they initially refer to as “hobby” boardgames. Although the article is written from a US perspective, it includes a nice commentary from Phil Eklund, head of Sierra Madre Games and designer of Pax Porfiriana, Greenland and Bios: Megafauna amongst others. The interview with Phil Eklund is excellent and well worth a read; it includes discussion of Essen and Spiel des Jahres as well as discussion of a wide range of games including Power Grid, Biblios and El Grande rather than just the usual Settlers of Catan and Ticket to Ride.

– Image by BGG contributor Schaulustiger

Every report about the growth of modern boardgames hides something less cheerful: the number of stores that have closed in recent time. As demand for modern games increases, so does their availability at places like Amazon, and that increases the pressure on an already squeezed niche. In the last year or so, several excellent and well established stores have closed including Shire Games and Northumbria Games. With prices continuing to rise—a new big-box game is rarely below £50 these days—and the growth of crowd-funding, more and more gamers are looking for discounts where they can. The boardGOATS are lucky to have three excellent outlets locally, Eclectic Games (in Reading), Thirsty Meeples and The Gameskeeper (both in Oxford). Perhaps the Chris Evans interview will encourage more people to pay them a visit.

– Adapted from Image by Petras Gagilas (flickr.com)