Author Archives: nannyGOAT

Boardgames in the News: Meeples vs Tequila Slammers

Last week, a team of boardgamers were pitted against three lovers of Latin cuisine, on the quiz show, Only Connect. Only Connect is an unusual program that takes pride in being esoteric, challenging teams of contestants make connections between apparently unconnected things. The team of Meeples included Gail Trimble who led the Corpus Christi College team to the final of University Challenge in 2009. Although Corpus Christi beat the team from Manchester by eighty-five points, they were later disqualified after an investigation revealed that one of Gail’s teammates finished studying at Corpus Christi while the series was being recorded. Now back in Oxford, Gail currently holds the position of associate professor in Classical Languages and Literature. Proving that gaming is a family affair, Gail was joined on Only Connect last week by her husband Tom West and her brother Hugh. Amongst other things, this episode featured groups of geometric shapes, lucky statues, and micro-genres on Netflix. The Meeples took an early lead, and despite failing to solve their “Wall”, progressed safely onto the next round. The episode is available to watch on iPlayer until the end of the month.

– Image from bbc.co.uk

Boardgames in the News: Arranged!

Inspired by the pressure she felt from her own family to submit to an arranged marriage, Arranged! is an unusual game designed by Nashra Balagamwala, a citizen of Pakistan who studied at the Rhode Island School of Design.

– Image from kickstarter.com

The culture of arranged marriages is still very prevalent in South-Asian societies with many girls forced into marrying someone their family chooses for them. The husband is typically chosen on the basis of his wealth and social status, or sometimes, even as a business deal. Most of these women cannot fight against the culture because they aren’t educated enough to be able to provide for themselves. Arranged! masks the darkness of this topic, and provides a light-hearted platform for people discuss these issues surrounding arranged marriages. The game involves a matchmaker (“Rishta Aunty”) who is trying to get the teenage girls married off to any and every boy she can find. Meanwhile, the girls spend their time coming up with creative ways to avoid getting hitched for like talking about having a career, gaining weight, being seen in the mall with boys, and many other things that every other society would consider normal, but are seen as disgraceful in South Asian culture. Eventually, Aunty comes across the Golden Boy, a green-eyed, light skinned, CEO of a business with a foreign passport. This is when the game dynamic switches around and it turns into a rat race to get married to the dreamy Mr. Right with the girls making their way towards Aunty by flaunting their talents.

– Image from kickstarter.com

Arranged! is currently the subject of a crowd-funding project on KickStarter which has already raised over $20,000, considerably more than the $6,000 goal. Interested parties have a little less than two days left to join the campaign, which ends on Thursday.

Next Meeting – 5th September 2017

Our next meeting will be on Tuesday, 5^th September, 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 Chariot Race, which is a fairly quick-playing Yahtzee style dice game with a horse racing element. The game is guaranteed to include lots of cut-throat nastiness that would make Judah Ben-Hur wince, but it should be all over in a fraction of the time!

– Image by boardGOATS

And talking of horses…

A horse was looking over a fence watching a game of cricket.

“Any chance of a game?” he asked Jeff who was the captain.

At first the captain was taken aback by the talking horse, but when it insisted it was keen to play Jeff thought it might be a bit of a laugh if he sent the horse out as the opening bat. The horse shaped up to the first ball and slammed it over the boundary for six. He did the same with the second and third, indeed every ball he hit for six until the over ended.

Jeff had been the horse’s partner, so when the bowler ran in from the other end and he managed his first shot for a meagre single, he called for the horse to run. The horse had other ideas though and just stood there. Frantic calls by the captain to run were ignored and in the confusion the skipper was stumped out.

“Why on earth didn’t you run?!?!” yelled Jeff in disgust.

“Listen mate,” replied the horse, “If I could run I would be at the racetrack today, not messing around with this cricket nonsense…”

22nd August 2017

It was a quiet night thanks to work and holidays, and for a long time looked like it might just be a clash of colours between just Magenta and Pink, but gradually others rolled in, just in time for the “Feature Game”, Survive: Escape from Atlantis!. This is a fairly light game, with a vicious edge that only really works if players engage fully in the “take that” elements. Basically, each player has set of meeples, each with a number on the base which equates to their value. With Blue away for work, everyone was keen to take the opportunity to play blue for a change, but Burgundy got in first. The aim of the game is for players to get their meeples safely to the mainland on the four corners of the board before the volcano erupts and kills them. To this end, the game begins with players taking it in turns to place their meeples on the hexagonal tiles that make up the central island. There are actually quite a few things to consider here. Firstly, the tiles flood in order with the coastal low-lying beach tiles sinking beneath the waves first, then the forest tiles, and finally the grey mountainous tiles. So, starting on a mountain means there is more time to make arrangements before a vindictive player can sink that hex dumping the unfortunate meeple into the drink. However, the meeple in question may have to travel some distance across the island to get to the coast, which will take time and actions, both of which are limited.

– Image by boardGOATS

The other major consideration when placing meeples are their value – each player has ten meeples and their values range from one to six. The winner is the player who gets the highest total value home, so getting a six home is far more important than getting a one to safety. For this reason, positioning the high value meeples well is critical, on the other hand, placing them first might telegraph that they are the most important meeples, putting them at risk later. Critically, once they have been placed nobody, not even their owner, can look at the number on the bottom. So remembering where the high value meeples are also vital to success, as is deciding whether to put the high value meeples together and potentially in the same boat, risking other players attacking it, but ensuring that all efforts can be focussed in one direction. In general, each hexagon can only hold one meeple, so the available choice steadily decreases during set up. The base game only plays four, but more can be accommodated with a mini expansion that adds extra pieces in two new colours. The rules state that everyone should place only eight meeples (returning a one and a three to the box), but we didn’t realise this until people had begun placing so we used the “overpopulated” variant where players place their extra pieces on hexes that are already occupied once the island is at capacity.

– Image by boardGOATS

Once all the meeples had been placed and were jostling for position, the game began in earnest. On their turn, each player does four things: play a tile from their hand; move their meeples; remove a tile (carrying out the action if appropriate or adding it face down to their hand), and finally roll the red Creature Die. Players have three movement points and can use them to move any combination of their meeples and/or boats up to a total of three land or sea spaces. There are a few rules associated with these, for example,”swimmers” can only move one space per turn because they tire easily, and once they have left the island, they cannot return. Similarly, it only costs one point to move a “dry meeple” from land to a boat in a neighbouring space, whereas a swimmer must be in the same space as the boat and then it takes a movement point for them to climb over the side. While anyone can move empty boats, only the player with the largest number of meeples can move an occupied boat.

– Image by boardGOATS

Once the active player has moved his meeples, he then removes one tile from the island, tipping any residents into the sea and then secretly looks at the underside of the tile. Each tile has different effect with some spontaneously creating whales, sharks or boats out of thin air, while others allow players to hitch a ride on a passing dolphin or cause sharks to magically vanish into the ether. There are three different types of tile, green bordered to be played immediately; red bordered to be kept for later and played at the start of a later turn; and tiles with a red cross which are also kept but are played on another player’s turn (typically in response to them moving a shark into an attacking position or similar). Finally, after the tiles have been dealt with, the active player rolls the Creature Die, and then move the creature of that type of their choice. There are three types of creature. Whales move fast (up to three spaces) and attack occupied boats, turning them into matchwood, but they leave swimmers alone. Sharks, on the other hand, move a maximum of two spaces and will happily scoff any swimmers they come across, but can only circle boats looking longingly at their occupants. Sea monsters are the slowest movers travelling only one hex at a time, but are also the most hazardous, smashing boats and then eating the contents.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor jsper

For the most part, everyone had distributed their meeples evenly over the island, but Green went for the mountain spaces first so his were a little land-locked in the early part of the game. Perhaps it was just as well for him though, as everyone started out aggressively and got more so. There were a lot of whale tiles early on, so boats didn’t last long and no mercy was shown to swimmers at all. Even being nice and trying to make allies didn’t work, so when Pink tried to be nice by moving his boat towards one of Magenta’s swimmers she didn’t repay him in kind. It’s true that Pink might have had an ulterior motive thinking it was less likely she would attack his boat it if it had one of her own meeples in it, but setting a shark on two of his swimmers was arguably uncalled for. He got his revenge though when he used a whale to sink one of her boats and parked a shark in the neighbouring hex. Meanwhile, there was a brief uneasy truce between Green, Burgundy and Ivory as they shared a boat and, with so many people with a vested interest and Pink and Magenta still at war, all three made a rapid crossing.

– Image by boardGOATS

It wasn’t long before all the beach tiles had gone and then all the forest tiles too. Then everyone was on tenter-hooks waiting for someone to turn over the volcano tile triggering the immediate end of the game. There are eight mountain hexes, so the probability started out as one in eight, then one in seven, then one in six… And then Green turned over the fourth mountain tile signalling the end for Pink’s swimmer who had nearly made it to land and Ivory’s boat which disappeared beneath the waves as it filled up with lava. That just left the scoring. Burgundy had got three of his meeples home closely followed by Ivory and Magenta who had saved two each. The number of meeples is largely irrelevant however, as it is the sum of the value of the meeples that is key, and although it looked like a close game, in the end it was much less close than everyone thought. Almost all of the high value meeples had been eaten or drowned and only Ivory had managed to save any, rescuing both his five and his six point meeples. That left him with eleven, a clear margin of victory over Burgundy who finished with a creditable seven, taking second place. It had been fun though, and Pink, who had played it most recently concluded that it was very different with lots of players as it’s a lot easier to end up getting eaten or sunk since it’s a long time between turns delaying the chance to deal with “the impending sea serpent of doom…”.

– Image by boardGOATS

Everyone hadn’t got the aggression out of their systems, so it was out with King of Tokyo for a bit more “take that” style gaming. This is another “light, but vicious” game where players are mutant monsters, gigantic robots, and strange aliens—all of whom are destroying Tokyo and whacking each other in order to become the one and only, undisputed master of the city. At the start their turn, the active player rolls six dice, each of which show six symbols each of which has a different effect. The active player gets three successive throws over which they can choose whether to keep or discard each die. The dice are used to get points, restore lives, acquire energy and attack other monsters. Lives and points are tracked using a dial and the aim of the game is to be the first to reach twenty points.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor mikehulsebus

At its core the game uses a three roll, keep or re-roll system similar to that used in Yahtzee, but there is a little more going than that. In addition to cute standee-monsters and the scoring dials, there is also a small board representing Tokyo. At the start of the game, Tokyo is empty, but the first player to roll at least one paw (attack) on the dice and choose to use it can move into Tokyo. Once Tokyo is occupied, it will not be empty again during the game. Monsters in Tokyo can only damage monsters outside the city and monsters outside Tokyo can only attach monsters inside the city. This means that a player in Tokyo is a target for all the other monsters. On the other hand, rolling an attack die while in Tokyo deals damage to everyone else increasing its value.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor msaari

Tokyo is also important because when a Monster enters Tokyo the player earns a point for doing so, furthermore, if a Monster is still in Tokyo at the start of their next turn then the player earns another two points, and will continue to earn points for every round they stay there. This is perilous, however, as they will be the subject of every attack someone makes from outside Tokyo and monsters in the city are not able to heal themselves. With five players, there is room for two monsters in Tokyo, which means there is one less outside, but that is only the case until a monster inevitably succumbs to their injuries. Once a player is in Tokyo, the only way to get them out again is to keep attacking them, until their nerve fails and they decide to leave making way for the attacking monster. By this time, of course, it may be too late and too much damage has been done for them to be able to heal sufficiently.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor Toynan

In addition to attacking and healing, the dice can also yield energy. For each lightening bolt rolled and kept, the active player gets a green energy cube, which can be used to buy power cards. These come in two main types, “Keepers”, that can be used repeatedly, or “one off” cards that are discarded when used for their benefit. They are potentially very valuable, especially if bought early in the game and can be used repeatedly. Finally, it is also possible to score points from the dice by rolling three of the same numbers. For example, rolling three “twos” will give two points, however, rolling two will score nothing which makes going for these quite a gamble. The game ends when either one player gets two twenty points or there is only one monster left standing.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor msaari

The game continued the aggressive theme of the evening. Magenta and Burgundy were first in Tokyo and survived the whole round picking up the bonus points. Pink then attacked and both Magenta and Burgundy fled with their tails firmly between their monstrous legs. On his next turn, Burgundy was able to hide and heal, but Magenta was not so lucky being forced to attack and go back into Tokyo. Sadly, this proved fatal and she was quickly out after accruing just seven points. At this point Green was looking very strong with a powerful hand, in particular the “Evacuation Orders” which caused everyone else to lose five points. This meant that when Pink quickly followed Magenta out of the game (finished off by Ivory) he went with no points at all. Meanwhile, Burgundy was slowly rebuilding his health and was able to keep the other remaining players at a minimum. Ivory was next, making it a battle to the death between Burgundy and Green, a battle that Burgundy eventually won after much blood was spilt. Although it was still early, all the savagery had been tiring and everyone opted for an early night.

– Image by BGG contributor Schaulustiger

Learning outcome: Being nasty can be very hard work.

Next Meeting – 22nd August 2017

Our next meeting will be on Tuesday, 22^nd August, 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 Survive: Escape from Atlantis!, which is a cut-throat game with elements of strategy, teamwork and memory. Players are trying evacuate their pieces from Atlantis as the island sinks and get as many to shore before a volcano finishes everyone off, but some pieces are more valuable than others…

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

And talking of Islands…

Jeff, Joe and Jim had got themselves stranded on island. One day, the three of them were walking along the beach and discovered a magic lamp. They knew what to do and rubbed and and rubbed, and sure enough, out popped a genie.

The genie said, “Since I can only grant three wishes, you may each have one.”

Joe was quickest off the mark and answered, “I’ve been stuck here for years. I miss my family, my girlfriend, and my life. I just want to go home.”

With a puff of smoke, Joe got his wish and was returned to his family. Jim, was really impressed and fancied a try saying, “I’ve been stuck here for years as well. I miss my family, my wife, and my life. I wish I could go home too.”

Another puff of smoke and Jim was gone too. Meanwhile, Jeff had been watching with increasing concern and when Jim vanished he looked near to tears. The genie noticed his obvious distress and asked, “Whatever’s the matter?”

Jeff replied, “I wish my mates were still here, what am I gonna do without them?!?!”

8th August 2017

With Burgundy and Blue still finishing their supper, Black, Red Purple and Pine decided to play a quick game of Coloretto. Pine and Red needed reminding of the rules, and by the time that was done Blue was ready to join them, but Burgundy was still wading through his pizza. When he commented that he was struggling because it was “really very cheesy”, Pine responded that, “You can’t order a four cheese pizza and then complain that its too cheesy!” Most people agreed it was a fair point, but it didn’t speed him up. In the end Blue and Burgundy joined forces and played together, not because it is a complicated game, quite the opposite – the game is very simple. On their turn the active player either draws a chameleon card and places it on a “truck” or takes a truck (which means they’re out for the rest of the round). The idea is that players are collecting sets of cards, but only three will yield positive points, with the rest scoring negatively. The really clever part of the game is the scoring which uses the triangular number sequence (one point for the first card, three points for two cards, six points for three cards etc.), which rewards one large set more than two or even three small ones.

– Image by BGG contributor SergioMR

Blue & Burgundy started out collecting blue, and Black orange. Purple on the other hand ended up with nearly every possible colour, which really isn’t the point! In contrast, Red managed to restrict herself to just three colours, but didn’t really manage to get enough cards in each to compete with the big hitters, Black and Pine. Black collected a full set of orange cards, but Pine had four purple cards and a joker to score highly. In the end, Black took the game, just three points ahead of Pine. With the first game over and Burgundy finally having finished his very cheesy pizza, it was time for the “Feature Game”. This necessitated splitting into two groups, and that couldn’t be done until a second game had been chosen. There was much debate, but Pine and Burgundy were keen to play Kerala. Purple was reluctant, she said because everyone had been nasty to her last time. Eventually, she was persuaded to play when Pine promised to be nice, and for the most part, everyone was very nice.

– Image by boardGOATS

Kerala is one of the games Blue and Pink picked up at Essen last year. It is a fairly simple tile-laying game where each player starts with a single tile in their own colour with two wooden elephants perched precariously on it. On their turn, the active player draws the same number of tiles from the bag as there are players and then chooses one before everyone else takes it in turns pick one. Players then simultaneously place their tiles next to a tile with an elephant on it and move the elephant onto the new tile. The tile can be placed in an empty space, or on top of a tile previously laid. Thus, over the course of the game the elephants ponderously move over their play-area while players messing with the opponent to their left by leaving them with tiles they don’t want. There are three types of tiles, Elephant tiles, Edge tiles and Action tiles. Elephant tiles score points at the end of the game with players receiving one point for each elephant visible.”Edge” tiles have one side with a different colour; if these are adjacent to the correct colour the player scores an additional five points otherwise they can be ignored. There are also two sorts of action tiles, which score no points but allows the player to move either a tile or an Elephant.

– Image by boardGOATS

Everyone was very nice and offered everyone else advice on where to place tiles. It wasn’t always helpful advice, but no-one was obviously hostile. It was only as the game came to a close that everyone realised that they had forgotten some of the most important aspects of the scoring. At the end of the game players require precisely one contiguous region of each colour (with two allowed for their own colour). Somehow in the rules recap the bit about losing five points for each missing a colour had been missed. It didn’t matter though, because everyone had all the colours so nobody was in danger of losing points even though some players picked up their last colour in the final round. In the end it was a close game, but it was burgundy’s very stripey layout that had the edge and he finished four points ahead of Purple who took second.

– Image by boardGOATS

Meanwhile, Black, Purple and Blue played the “Feature Game”, Honshū. This is a light trick-taking, map-building card game loosely set in feudal Japan – almost like an oriental mixture of Pi mal Pflaumen and something like Carcassonne or Kingdomino. The idea is very simple: from a hand of six numbered map cards, players take it in turns to choose one and play it. The player who plays the highest numbered card then chooses one, then the next player and so on until every card has been taken. The players then add the cards to their city. Each card is divided into six districts, each of which scores in a different way at the end of the game. For example, the for every district in their largest city, players score a point. Similarly, any forest districts also score one point. More interestingly, the water district is worth nothing, but water district connected to it after that is worth three points. Perhaps the most interesting are the factories which only score if they are supplied with the appropriate resources, wooden cubes that are placed on resource producing districts.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor msaari

Resources can also be used increase the value of cards when they are played allowing players to manipulate their position in the turn order. Like Pi mal Pflaumen, this is a key part of the game as it enables players to ensure they get the card they want. One of the biggest challenges is choosing the cards though. When the cards are placed, players must take care to make sure that they either partially cover (or are covered by) at least one other card. This, together with the fact that players are trying to expand their largest city and any lakes makes choosing and placing a card really difficult as there are many options to explore. Nobody really had much of a clue as to what strategy they were trying to employ, and for the first three rounds, everyone ended up picking up the cards they’d played as these were the ones they’d thought about. After the first three rounds, players pass their remaining three cards left and add another three; his is repeated after nine rounds when the cards are passed right. So when at the start, when Black commented that he had lots of good cards and Red and Blue answered that they had lots of poor ones, in actual fact nobody really had much idea what good and bad cards were. That quickly changed when Blue passed her left over cards on and Black discovered what a bad hand really looked like.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor William Hunt

Everyone found the game very strange, and a real brain-burner, dressed up in such an innocent sounding game. There were more spells of players choosing the cards they had just played, so Red was really mifffed when Blue broke the tradition and took the one she had played and wanted for herself. Towards the end, Black pointed out that while he had built a very compact island Red and Blue both had long thin islands. This was the first time either of them had looked at anyone else’s island – a demonstration of how absorbed they had been in choosing cards. After lots of turning cards round trying to decide where best to place them, it was time to add up the scores. It didn’t really matter who won as everyone felt they were fighting to get to grips with the game, though it was Blue who’s island scored the most points, and Black and Red tied for second place. Both games finished simultaneously and the Honshū crowd were in need of some light relief so we resorted to 6 Nimmt!. This is a game that we have played a lot on Tuesday evenings, but seems to have been neglected of late.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor msaari

We reminded ourselves of the rules: players simultaneously choose a card, then simultaneously reveal them before playing them in ascending order placing each on on the highest card that is lower than the card being played. When the sixth card is added to a row, the first five are taken and the number of heads contributes to the player’s score, lowest score wins. We tend to play a variant over two rounds with half the deck in each round and not resetting the table in between which tends to result in a cascade of points in the second round, and this time was no exception. Purple and Blue started out well, but quickly made up for that in the second round. Red and Mike started badly in the first half and Mike got worse in the second – they tied for highest scorers. Black started out low and although Pine did better than him in the second round, Black’s aggregate score of nine was seven points lower. Black was the only one to stay in single figures and was therefore a worthy winner. 6 Nimmt! finished quite quickly and we were all feeling quite sociable, so despite having played it last time, we gave in to Red, the “Bean Queen”, who fluttered her eye-lashes and we agreed to play Bohnanza. While people sorted out refreshments, we compared Bean rhymes, Pine came out with the best, borrowed from Bart Simpson, “Beans, beans, the unusual fruit, the more you eat, the more you toot!”

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor spearjr

Bohnanza is a card game where the key element is the fact that players have a hand of cards that they must play in strict order. On their turn, the active player must play (plant) the first bean card in their hand (the one that has been there the longest) and may plant the second if they wish. Then they draw two cards and place them face up in the middle of the table so everyone can see, at which point the bidding starts with players offering trades for cards they like. Once both cards have been planted (either in the active player’s fields or somewhere else), then the active player can trade cards from their hand too. All traded cards must be planted before the active player finished their turn by drawing three cards and putting them into their hand in strict order. And it is the strict order that is the key to the game, however difficult it is for players to refrain from rearranging their cards.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor spearjr

This time, the game proceeded with lots of trading and everyone warning everyone else who dangerous it was give Red any favourable trades. Nevertheless, everyone seemed to be forced to give her free-bees as she was the only person who could take them. In the dying stages of the game Pine was desperate to get his paws on some of Blue’s Wax Beans and was offering all sorts of lucrative trades, but they all evolved round Blue’s now complete field of Green Beans. When she pointed this out he grumped that it was her own fault for building up the field to capacity, ” adding “That’s hardly sustainable farming now, is it?!?!” With the last trade done, everyone began counting their takings. During the game everyone had given Red loads and loads of cards, mostly because they were forced to. When the Bean Queen was inevitably victorious, Black commented that it was fine as we had all contributed so much that everyone could rejoice and share in the joy of her win.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: Beanz meanz fun.

Next Meeting – 8th August 2017

Our next meeting will be on Tuesday, 8^th August, 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 Honshū, a light trick-taking, map-building card game loosely set in feudal Japan. Players are lords and ladies of noble houses seeking new lands and opportunities for fame and fortune. This is a clever little card game where manipulating player order is crucial to success.

– Image by boardGOATS

And talking of Japan…

In the time of the Samurai there was a powerful Emperor who needed a new head Samurai so he sent out a declaration throughout the country that he was searching for one. A year passed and only three people showed up.

The Emperor asked the first Samurai to come in and demonstrate why he should be head Samurai. The first Samurai opened a match box and out popped a little fly. With one flick of his sword, the fly dropped dead on the ground in two pieces.

The Emperor exclaimed, “That is very impressive!”

The Emperor then asked the second Samurai to come in and demonstrate his skill. The second Samurai also opened a match box and out popped a fly. The Samurai’s sword moved so fast the Emperor couldn’t see it as the fly dropped dead on the floor in four pieces.

The Emperor exclaimed, “That is really very impressive!”

The Emperor then had the third Samurai in to demonstrate why he should be the head Samurai. The third Samurai also opened a match box and out popped a fly. His flashing blade moved around the room faster and longer than the previous applicants and a gust of wind filled the room, but the fly was still alive and buzzing around.

The Emperor, obviously disappointed, asked, “After all of that, why is the fly not dead?”

The third Samurai bowed deeply and smiled, “If you look closely, you’ll see that the fly has been circumcised!”

25th July 2017

The evening began with Burgundy and Blue playing a non-Extreme version of The Game: Extreme. The Game was one of our more popular games, but seems to have been somewhat neglected of late. It is one of those simple games that we really enjoy as a group, and is unusual because it is a cooperative game, which we generally avoid. The game consists of a deck of cards numbered two to ninety-nine, which are shuffled and everyone is dealt a hand (seven in the two player game). On their turn, the active player must play at least two cards onto the four piles following a handful of simple rules. Two of the piles start at one and every card there after have a higher number than the card on top; the other two start at 100 and the cards that follow must have a lower number. The aim of the game is for all the cards to end up on the four piles, so timing is everything – play a card that is too low and someone could get shut out and be unable to play one of their cards. This makes communication important: players can say anything they like, but must not give specific number information about the cards they hold. There is one “get out of gaol” rule, sometimes known as “The Backwards Rule”, where players can play a card on the wrong deck, but only if the card is exactly ten different to the top card.

– Image by boardGOATS

The Game: Extreme is just like the The Game, except that some of the cards have extra icons on them which limit the number of options available and consequently make being successful even more difficult. Although we have played the full version, we have found that the basic game is usually quite challenging enough for us, so we chose to stick to the original game this time and ignored the extra symbols. Blue and Burgundy had just started when Pine turned up so he grabbed six cards (the number of cards in hand for three players) and joined in. It was just as well that it was only the base game, because after Blue had an excellent start, everyone else thereafter had very middling cards, that is to say, they were all in the thirty to seventy region. Then things got worse, because having been forced to move to the middle, everyone drew single digit cards and cards numbered in the nineties. Everyone blamed Burgundy because he shuffled, but he had some of the worst timed cards of all. Remarkably, the draw deck was eventually exhausted and there was a moment’s respite as layers only had to play the one card. It wasn’t long before it was all over though, with Blue stuck with a large number of unplayable cards. In the end there were eleven cards left unplayed – a lot worse than our best (we have beaten it in the past), but not so bad considering our truly dismal start.

– Image by boardGOATS

With everyone who had been expected arrived, we moved on to the “Feature Game”, which, following it’s entirely predictable Spiel des Jahres win last week, was Kingdomino. The game consists of dominoes featuring two terrain “tiles” with some tiles also depicting one or more crowns. When the dominoes are placed, one end must either connect to another domino matching at least one of its terrain types or connect to their 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. We’ve played this a lot since Expo, and found it very enjoyable, so everyone was happy to give it another go. With a total of seven people we split into two groups, the first was a group of three consisting of Black, Purple and Green.

– Image by boardGOATS

With only three playing a dozen dominoes were removed and it was not until the end of the game that it became apparent that over half were pasture tiles. As a result, it was unsurprising that Green managed to corner the market in pastures with four squares and two crowns leaving Black and Purple with only one tile and no crowns. In contrast, Purple ended up with all the swampland (with two squares and three crowns), while Black and Green only managed only a couple of tiles and no crowns. Black’s wheat, woodland and water provided good solid scoring, while Green added two woodland areas and a small strip of water to his. In a very close game with just four points between first and third, it was Purple’s extensive wheat field that made up the bulk of her winning score of forty-nine. On the next table, with four players, none of the dominoes were removed, but that didn’t stop fate getting involved. In this game, all the high numbered (and therefore valuable) dominoes came out at the start, making it very obvious who wanted what later in the game. In the first game everyone had managed a perfect five-by-five grid with the castle in the middle so they all picked up the bonus points. In the second game, Burgundy failed on both counts so started fifteen points adrift. Despite this, he still finished with a very creditable fifty points and was only beaten by two points by Blue in what was also a very close game.

– Image by boardGOATS

Both games finished more or less together and there was just time for a little chit-chat before we moved onto the next game. Inevitably, people were interested in how Keyper had gone, when the group had been fortunate enough to participate in a play-testing session with the designer. As a group, we love Keyflower and were keen to see how this one plays out. Although the game is quite deep, it isn’t actually as complex as it seemed at first and the novel game boards that change throughout the seasons were described as “Genius” by Black while they simply fascinated Blue, reminding her of a Moomin toy she had picked up in Helsinki airport ten years before. Pink on the other hand was captivated by the individual art on the MeepleSource Character Meeples in the deluxe edition. The general consensus seemed to be that everyone was looking forward to playing it again on its release, which will probably be in a couple of months time.

– Image from kickstarter.com

With drinks refilled there was the inevitable debate as to who was going to play what and eventually, Pine joined Black, Purple and Green for a game of Jamaica. This was the group’s first ever “Feature Game” and as such is an old favourite; quick to learn and fun to play, but oh so difficult to do well in. Pine was new to it, so a run-down of the rules was in order. Essentially a race game, the board depicts the island of Jamaica surrounded by a water race track where each space is a Port, a Pirates’ Lair, or “Deep Sea”. For the most part, there is just one route, but there are a couple places where players can choose to cut a corner to get ahead, but there are always consequences. Each player has a ship, a player board representing their ship’s hold a starting amount of food and gold together with a deck of action cards from which they draw three. At the start of each round, the Captain rolls the two dice and places them in the middle of the board – one on a “morning” spot and the other on the “evening” spot. Each player then chooses one of their three action cards and places it face down in front of them. Staring with the Captain, players then take it in turns to carry-out the two actions on their card, applying the number on the morning die to one of them and the number on the evening die to the other.

– Image used with permission of
BGG contributor Punkin312

The actions vary from sailing (forwards or backwards) to taking food, gunpowder or doubloons, and in each case the number of spaces or the amount of resource depends on the morning and evening dice. When sailing the player must move their ship the exactly amount and then carry-out the action according to the space they land on: in Deep Sea, they must discard food; at a Port, they must discard gold; at a Pirate’s Lair they get to take any treasure that may be there (and they aren’t all good). More seriously, if there is another ship on the space, there is a battle which is resolved with dice and gunpowder. The game ends when one player makes it all the way round the island and back to Port Royal and players score points for how far they got, the number of treasures they stole and the amount gold they collected. Random role meant he was the starting captain, but he was happy to go first. The flotilla started slowly, but Pine and Purple soon found a little wind to get started, while Green and Black remained in port for a while longer. Inevitably, Pine and Purple were soon fighting it out with Purple winning the first melee.

– Image by BGG contributor verminose

Purple also managed to steal the first treasure, which everyone quickly realised was a stinky one when she beat Black in battle and passed it along. Black kept his ship smelling sweet by fighting and beating Pine soon after and passing it on again… From then on, even though Pine had managed to gain more bonus cards, no-one dared take one as booty, just in case! By this time, Purple was full-sail ahead and also gained the “roll again in battle” card, Black found the luxury of an extra card in hand, and Green remained lingering far behind the others. This soon changed within a couple of rounds, when a quick reverse for Green resulted in the plus-two cannon card and double high scoring forward brought him back into the fray. With his eye on the treasure in the Pirate’s Lair as he sailed past, he knew he didn’t have enough to pay the harbour tax at the Port and would therefore be “forced” to go back a space to the Pirates’ Lair. First he had to deal with Purple who was ominously lurking at the entrance to the harbour. He bravely took her on and won, taking some gold as his prize, but then realised his mistake – now he could pay the tax and would not have to reverse to the unclaimed treasure!

– Image by BGG contributor verminose

Purple and Pine continued their tit-for-tat squabbling and Purple’s boat got heavier while Pine’s got lighter. Black tactfully mostly avoided too many fights, leaving his hold almost empty for much of the middle of the game. Green, on the other hand, took on Purple once again, and lost and with it went his plus-two cannon. Purple was beginning to look invincible with both fighting bonuses and a hold full of cannons to boot, but she did not do much fighting after that, since everyone else tried their hardest to avoid her! Pine then came within a whisker of landing in Port Royal, which was just six spaces away, so everyone knew the end was nigh and every round was about maximising points. A six was rolled and everyone thought that would be it, but Pine decided to stay put and claim some more gold, then promptly lost some to Purple who joined him in Port. With a three and a six rolled the end was triggered when Green just struggled across the line, gaining seven points, but losing five gold in duty at the Port. Black stayed put and just piled in more gold while Purple and Pine both raced across the line. It was close at the front, but Pine romped home with just enough bonuses to pip Purple by two points.

– Image used with permission of
BGG contributor The_Blue_Meeple

Meanwhile, on the neighbouring table, Burgundy and Blue were introducing Ivory to Orléans. This is one of Burgundy’s favourite games and he was almost purring as he was setting up while Blue explained the rules. The idea is that each player has a bag and, at the start of the round they draw workers from it. Players then place their workers on it their market which has a maximum of eight spaces, before moving as many as they want onto their personal player board which dictate the actions they can carry out. Once everyone has placed their pieces, players take it in turns to carry out their actions. There are a variety actions, but a lot of them involve taking another worker that is added to the bag along with any workers that have been used. Thus, the game is mechanically very simple: draw workers from a bag, plan which actions to do and then do them with points awarded at the end of the game. This simplicity belies the depth of the game and the complexity that comes as a result of combining the different actions though.

– Image by BGG contributor styren

In addition to taking a worker, the most actions come with a bonus; some of these help players manage their game, while others give players scoring opportunities. For example, going to the Castle will give a player an extra “Knight”, but will also enable them to take an extra worker out of the bag on subsequent turns and so on. Each of the Character actions has an associated track on the communal player board and the players move one step along these tracks each time they carry out an action receiving a bonus as they go; in general, the bonuses increase the further along the track players are. Probably the biggest source of points, however, comes from a combination of traveling around France building Trading Stations, collecting “Citizens” and traveling along the development track. This scores heavily because the total awarded is equal to the product of the number of Status Markers achieved along the development track, and the sum of the Trading Stations and Citizens. This is not the only way to score points though, something that was very evident in this game when it came to scoring.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor jsper

The game started slowly, with everyone trying to fill their bag with useful characters. Blue began by going to University which gave her a good start along the development track, though of course this meant nothing without Citizens and/or Trading Stations to act as a multiplier. It also gave her a lot of grey Scholars, which she mostly put to good use in the Cloister to get yellow Monks, and before long her bag was a veritable monastery! This meant she was forced to neglect other areas though. Meanwhile, Burgundy had started by looking at the map of France and the lay out of resources and had noticed that there was a lot of wool and cloth on the eastern border, so he began moving and collecting resources with a vague plan to add a Tailor’s Shop or Wool Merchant to add more, though things didn’t work out quite like that when Ivory got in on the act and his blue Sailors decided to hide in his bag.

– Image by boardGOATS

Ivory had begun by building the basics, starting with his Castle which gave him lots of red Knights and allowed him to draw more people out of his bag, then moving on to brown Craftsmen adding automation and then blue Sailors that provided lots of money. This meant his development track was sorely neglected and he looked like he was going to be in trouble as places at the University ran out. He had a plan for that though, and added the Observatory to his board which allowed him to move large distances along the Development track, something he used to great effect. As the game drew to a close, event tiles continued to be drawn in pairs with the same event occurring in consecutive rounds – something Burgundy got the blame for again. The fates got their revenge however, and Burgundy’s shy Sailors continued to hamper his plans while Blue headed down the west coast of France to build her final score. In the final rounds there was a flurry of building and sending people to the Town Hall to pick up those few extra citizens. The final score was close, very close, with everyone scoring in different areas: Burgundy and Ivory had large piles of cash, while Blue was cash poor and made the majority of her points through the development track and Trading Stations. Similarly, Ivory scored highly for his cloth, while Burgundy scored for his wool and Blue had the most cheese. There were only eleven points between first and third, but Blue finished just ahead of Ivory in second place.

– Image by boardGOATS

On the next table, Jamaica had come to an end, so with Burgundy tied up in the battle for France, Pine, Black and Purple fancied their chances at Splendor. The game is very simple: players collect chips to buy gem cards which can, in turn, be used in lieu of chips. More expensive cards are also worth points and the game end is triggered when one player reaches fifteen points (and the round is completed to give everyone the same number of turns). Points are also awarded for “nobles” which go to the first player to get a specific combination of gem cards and the player with the most points at the end is the winner. This time, although it started as a tight game, Black quickly got his nose in front and there he stayed. Pine picked up a noble, but that was matched by Black and the writing was on the wall long before Black triggered the end of the game, finishing with a total of sixteen points, five more than Pine in second.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor henk.rolleman

With Orléans over, Ivory headed home leaving just enough time and people for one last quick game, another old favourite, Bohnanza. The original bean trading game, the clever part of the game is that players cannot rearrange the cards in their hand and must play them in the order they arrive. Thus, on their turn, the active player first plays the first card in their hand with the option of playing the second if they desire. Once they’ve been planted, two cards are drawn which can be traded, but must be planted by someone. The game is very free flowing with lots of table talk, which perhaps explains why it took a lot longer than planned. Burgundy once again got the blame when cards grouped together, that didn’t stop Blue from getting in a tangle with Garden and Cocoa Beans, harvesting them only to draw one straight away. Despite this, was a close game and finished in a three-way tie for first place, with Pine just one point behind in second. Unusually, Burgundy trailed a long way behind, capping a hard fought evening that went unrewarded. As he commented on the way out of the door though, while it had been an unsuccessful evening, it had still been enjoyable.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: Losing can be fun, but don’t let Burgundy shuffle.

Next Meeting – 25th July 2017

Our next meeting will be on Tuesday, 25^th July, 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 Kingdomino, a light tile-laying game borrowing aspects from Carcassonne and Dominoes with an interesting auction mechanic. Although we’ve played it a lot recently, everyone seems to like Kingdomino and this week we have chosen to celebrate its recent award of the coveted German Game of the Year or Spiel des Jahres.

– Image by boardGOATS

And talking of winning…

Jeff was catching a long-distance train and found himself sitting next to a pretty blond American girl. Jeff asked the young lady if she would like to play a game and explained how it works.

“I ask you a question,” he explained, “And if you don’t know the answer you pay me, then we switch.”

The blond replied, “That’s not fair, I never even finished high school!”

“That’s OK,” replied the Jeff. “If you don’t know the answer you pay me only £50, but if I don’t know the answer, I will pay you £250.”

The American girl eventually agreed and Jeff asked the first question, “What’s the distance from the earth to the moon?”

The blonde didn’t say a word and handed over £50 and then it was her turn. She asked Jeff, “What goes up a hill with three legs and comes down with four?”

Jeff looked puzzled. He took out his smart phone and searched everywhere he could. Frustrated, he phoned some friends and co-workers, all to no avail. The train was due to arrive and Jeff had spent well over an hour of searching for the answer, but finally he gave up and handed the fair American £250. The girl didn’t say anything and eventually Jeff’s curiosity got the better of him so he asked, “Well, what IS the answer?”

The blonde American didn’t answer, instead just handed over £50.

11th July 2017

It was another quiet night, with Ivory attending a course, Red recovering from partying too hard, Green and Violet learning about rocks ‘n’ stuff, and Pine delayed by work (swearing blind that his absence had nothing at all to do with how much he had hated 20^th Century last time). We had enough people though, with Turquoise putting in an appearance for the last time before travelling over-seas to visit family for the summer. While Blue, Burgundy, Turquoise and Magenta waited for pizza, they decided to get in a quick game of one our current favourites, the Spiel des Jahres nominated Kingdomino.

– Image by boardGOATS

Kingdomino first really hit the group radar after UK Games Expo when both Black and Purple, and Blue and Pink came back with copies. Both couples enjoyed playing it when they got home and immediately introduced it to the rest of the group who have also taken quite a shine to it. Despite this, neither Turquoise nor Magenta had managed to play Kingdomino, so Blue quickly explained the rules. The game consists of dominoes featuring two terrain “tiles” with some tiles also depicting one or more crowns. When the dominoes are placed, one end must either connect to another domino matching at least one of its terrain types or connect to their 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

It’s not a difficult game, but it is one where players can get themselves in trouble if they don’t play the early stages well. So everyone helped out Turquoise, especially Burgundy. In truth though, she didn’t really need it, instead, it was Blue who struggled with a complete inability to get any tiles with crowns on them. Burgundy had mixed results with a mixed kingdom and Magenta made good use of what she got building a massive lake which with a few smaller features gave her a total of seventy-four, enough for second place. With Burgundy taking Turquoise under his wing, the rest of us should have seen the writing on the wall, especially given how large the writing was! Her massive, high scoring woodland gave Turquoise eighty-five points and clear victory. Black, who had arrived with Purple in the closing stages commented that he could see how forests were potentially a game-breaking strategy, but that just meant we all now know what he will be trying to do next time we play.

– Image by boardGOATS

With what was likely to be our full quota of players we then moved onto our “Feature Game”, Santo Domingo. This is a light card game of tactics and bluffing with a pirate theme set in the world of one of our more popular games, Port Royal. The game is a re-implementation of the slightly older game, Visby, which was only given a limited release. The idea is that in each round player one character card from their hand which are activated in character order and then are placed on a personal discard pile. The characters are designed to maximise player interaction, with their result dependent on cards that other players have chosen, similar to games like Citadels and Witch’s Brew.

– Image by boardGOATS

Thus, the first card is the Captain who can take a victory point (from a track on a central game board) up to a maximum of twice. If more than one player has chosen to play the Captain, then players take it in turns. The second character is the Admiral: he can also take one victory point, but this time up to five times, giving him a maximum of five points, but this is only possible if there are enough points available. Since points added to the track at the start of each round, players want to try to play their Admiral card in a different round to everyone else so that they can ensure they get the maximum number of points. Alternatively, it could be looked at from the other perspective with players wanting to play their Captain at the same time as everyone else plays their Admiral so that they minimise the income other players can get.

– Image by boardGOATS

The third card is the Governor. This card is different to the first two as it gives players goods (rather than points) for every other player who played either a Captain or an Admiral card. So, for the Governor, players are trying to maximise their return by reading everyone else’s minds and saving their Governor for the round when everyone else is playing the Captain and the Admiral. The fourth, fifth and sixth characters (Frigate, Galleon and Customs) are roughly analogous to the first three characters, except the Frigate and Galleon yield goods (instead of points) and the Customs card gives points (instead of goods). Goods are very useful as they can be turned into victory points using the Trader (the seventh character card). Timing is key here too though as the potential return increases for every round that nobody uses the Trader; the return also depends on the number of people to play the card though, so even if everyone waits and then plays the Trader at the same time, players may get less than if they had played a round earlier.

– Image by boardGOATS

The final card is the Beggar which allows players to pick up their discard pile so that they can re-use them in the following rounds. Even this character has a timing element as player playing the Beggar are rewarded with extra goods for every Trader played in the same round and for minimising the number of cards they have left when they play it. At the end of each round, players check to see if anyone has passed thirty points and if so, that triggers the end of the game where any residual goods are converted to points at the minimum rate and the player left with the most points is the winner. Santo Domingo is one of those games that takes a little while to get the hang of, so the game started slowly with everyone feeling their way. Blue and Magenta had played before and led the way, but Black and Burgundy were quick to follow. It was a tight game with players taking it in turns to take the lead. It is a quick little game and it wasn’t a long game though before Black triggered the end of the game by reaching thirty points. Magenta just had the edge though and pipped him to the post finishing with thirty-three points, one more than Black.

– Image by boardGOATS

There was still plenty of time before Magenta and Turquoise had to leave, so we decided to give Las Vegas a go. This was another one that was new to Turquoise, but we’ve played it a lot as a group and all enjoy it as there is plenty of time to relax and offer unhelpful advice to everyone else between brief bouts of activity. The game itself is a very simple betting game. Players begin their turn by rolling all their dice and then assign some of them to one of six casinos (one for each dice face) each of which has a jackpot drawn at random from a deck of money. Players must place all the dice displaying one number to bet on the casino of that number, and when done, play passes to the next player. Once everyone has placed all their dice the player who placed the most dice on a casino takes the highest value currency card, with the person in second place taking the next and so on.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

The really clever part of this game is that before any money is handed out, any “draws” are removed. This leads to a lot of barracking when dice are played as opponents try to encourage the active player to choose their favoured option. As usual, we included the Big Dice from the Boulevard expansion which are double weight and count as two dice in the final reckoning. We also included the Slot Machine mini-expansion from the 2015 Brettspiel Advent Calendar which acts a bit like a seventh casino, except that it can hold dice of any number, but dice of each number can only be added once (though a player must add all the dice they have of that number). Since we tend to play the game unusually slowly which can make it out-stay it’s welcome, we also house-rule the game to just three rounds rather than the four given in the rules.

– Image by boardGOATS

The first round had all the large value cards with every casino having jackpot of $90,000 or $100,000. This really put the pressure on early as with six casinos (and the the Slot Machine) and six players, everyone was under pressure to win at least one to stay in the game. Inevitably, someone didn’t and that someone was Magenta. Someone else was obviously the beneficiary, and that was Turquoise. There were plenty of slightly smaller amounts available as well, so things wouldn’t have been so bad if Magenta had picked up some of these. Sadly she didn’t though and got her revenge by knocking over a glass of water and drowning the lot. Reactions were quick and the game is hardy, so a quick mop and dry followed by a firm press and everything was fine.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

The second and third rounds were much more evenly spread out, but the jackpots were also smaller, which made playing catch up more difficult. Much hilarity ensued when Magenta kept rolling “lucky” sixes, but couldn’t do much with them. Despite such “good luck” without the fourth round, Magenta felt she was pretty much out of the game, but everyone else was in with a good chance. There is a reason why winnings are kept secret though and as everyone counted out their totals, it was clear it was really close, with everyone within a few thousand dollars of each other.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor ckirkman

It was only when Turquoise gave her winnings though that everyone else realised they were actually competing for second place, some four hundred thousand dollars behind her. It was just before Magenta and Turquoise headed off that Blue touted for interest in a weekend gaming session. Together with Pink, she had been asked to play-test a new game, Keyper, and was looking for one or two more to make up the numbers. Magenta and Turquoise were unavailable, but Black and Purple were keen to give it a go. So, with that matter of business out of the way, Magenta and Turquoise left and everyone else settled down to one last game, Lanterns: The Harvest Festival.

– Image used with permission of boardgamephotos

Lanterns is a straight-forward, light tile laying game, where players are decorating the palace lake with floating lanterns and competing to become the most honored artisan when the festival begins. Each tile is divided into four quarters, each of which has a colour, red, orange, blue, green, purple, black and white. On their turn, players choose a tile from their hand of three and add it to the central palace lake. Every player then receives a lantern card corresponding to the color on the side of the tile facing them, with the active player receiving bonus cards for any edges where the colours of the new tile match those of the lake. At the start of their next turn, players can gain honour tiles by dedicating sets of lantern cards, three pairs, four of a kind or seven different colours. Each tile is worth honour points and the player with the most points at the end of the game wins.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

This was another close game, made difficult by the lack of orange cards in the early part of the game. Ordinarily, players can use favour tokens to make up a deficit like this. Favours are rewards for placing special tiles that feature a “platform”, and pairs can be spent to enable players to exchange one coloured card for another. It takes a while to collect favour tokens, however, so it is difficult to obtain and use pairs early in the game. Spotting how the lack of orange cards was making life difficult for people, Blue began hoarding blue lantern cards, quickly followed by Purple who hoarded purple lantern cards. It was another close game, though, with everyone finishing within five points of the winner. In fact, Black and Blue finished level with around fifty honour points, but Blue took first place with the tie-breaker thanks to her two left-over favours.

– Image used with permission of boardgamephotos

Learning Outcome: Light games are best when they are as close as possible.