Author Archives: nannyGOAT

Next Meeting – 27th June 2017

Our next meeting will be on Tuesday, 27^th June, 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 20^th Century, a tile laying game where players build a land free of garbage and pollution – a land where the environment is as healthy as the economy. Players accumulate points each round, based on their nation’s quality of life. They also score bonus points for certain aspects of their country’s development and at the end of the game points are awarded based on their country’s income, research, and environmental quality. The player with the most points wins, having built the country with the highest standard of living.

– Image by boardGOATS

And talking of modern life…

Jeff arrived at work looking very harassed, so one of his mates asked him if he was OK.

Jeff replied, “I tell you, women drivers are a hazard to traffic. Driving to work this morning on the motorway, I looked over to my right and there was this woman in a Jaguar doing at least seventy miles per hour with her face up next to her rear view mirror putting on her mascara.”

He went on, “I looked away for a couple seconds and then the next thing I knew was she was careering all over my lane.”

Then Jeff paused a second, before concluding, “It scared me so badly that I dropped my electric razor into my coffee, and it spilled all over my mobile phone.”

13th June 2017

Purple and Black were first to arrive and were finishing off their supper when Burgundy joined them. While Burgundy waited for for his dinner to arrive, he joined Purple and Black in a quick game of Kingdomino. This is a fairly light little game that has recently been nominated for this year’s Spiel des Jahres Award. Kingdomino is a simple little tile laying game with elements borrowed from other games, in particular, Carcassonne and Dominoes. These are combined to make a well presented family game that is in with a great chance of winning the award. During the game, players taking it in turns to add to their kingdom by placing dominoes that depict different terrains types.

– Image by boardGOATS

The dominoes comprise two squares each featuring one of six different terrain types: pasture, cornfield, woodland, sea, swamp and mountain. Some tiles also depict 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 of 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 continuous region of terrain with the number of crowns on the tiles in that region and adds them up to give their score – the player with the highest score wins.

– Image by boardGOATS

There are a couple of interesting little quirks. Firstly, the dominoes are chosen by players in a very elegant way. Each domino has a number on the reverse with the higher numbers roughly correlating to the more valuable ones. At the start of the game four dominoes drawn at random are placed face up in ascending order and each player puts a coloured meeple on one of them. These dominoes are played in ascending order, so the more valuable ones are played later. At the beginning of round, another four dominoes are placed face up in number order creating a second row. When a player carries out their turn, they take the domino under their meeple and add it to their kingdom and moving their meeple to the next row, choosing which domino to place it on. In this way, players can choose a more valuable tile for the coming round but that is offset by having a later choice of tiles for the following round.

– Image by boardGOATS

There is also matter of the distribution of the tiles. Some terrains types, like cornfield, are quite common with few crowns available, however others (like mountain) are very scarce, but have most have more than one crown on them. This is quite critical because a player could build up a very large area, which fails to score because it has no crowns. Alternatively, a couple of squares of mountain (or marsh) can score relatively highly. This effect was critical in this game as both Burgundy and Purple built up large areas of cornfield, but Burgundy managed to add four of the five crowns available to his which gave him substantial score. He had very little else though, and Black had built up areas of sea and woodland and Purple had added several small terrains to her large cornfield. Largely thanks to his massive cornfield, Burgundy finished with a massive forty-two, almost twice that of Black in second place. With Kingdomino over and Burgundy and Blue’s pizzas having arrived, the group split into three, with one group playing a new game, “London Meerkats”, one group playing the pizza making card game, Mamma Mia! and the last group eating pizzas (far too serious to be a game).

– Image by boardGOATS

We first played Mamma Mia! about a month ago, and it went down so well, that Red fancied giving it another go this week prior to perhaps making a little purchase herself. The idea is that players are trying to fulfill pizza orders by first putting topping cards in the “oven” and then sneaking their order cards in on top before another player does the same and claims the toppings for their order. So, each player has a deck of personal order cards and a random hand of toppings. On their turn, each player must place at least one topping card in the oven pile (all the same type) and may follow it with an order card if they choose. The winner is the player who manages to complete the most orders.

– Image by boardGOATS

Red and Pine had played Mamma Mia! last time (with the Double Ingredients mini expansion) and introduced Magenta and Turquoise to it. Unfortunately, it is a slightly strange game and some of the rules didn’t quite make it somewhere along the line, not that it mattered though and Burgundy and Blue were thoroughly entertained by some of the snippets that drifted across the room. It seemed Pine in particular had strong opinions on what should go on a pizza, “How can you have four pineapples and one mushroom on a pizza? That’s disgusting!” On the other hand he was clearly less revolted by chili and pineapple commenting, “That’s a nice combination!” In the final round with Blue and Burgundy now spectating, Pine was clearly getting frustrated at being asked for the third time whether he had a card to add to his order, as he grunted, “No, I still don’t have one; why on earth would I want pepperoni – I’m a vegetarian!”

– Image by boardGOATS

With all the fun and a close game, the winner was almost a incidental, but once again, it was the Red, the “Pizzza Queen” who managed to complete all eight orders, one more than Magenta who finished with a highly creditable seven. With pizzas cooked and eaten it was time for the “Feature Game”, Between Two Cities with the new Capitals expansion. We’ve played Between Two Cities quite a bit, and when the expansion was available as a pre-release at the UK Games Expo at the start of the month, it was inevitable that we’d be keen to give it a go. That said, Pine (clearly still suffering from a surfeit of pineapple and pepperoni), commented, “Here’s where an expansion takes a good game and makes it a worse.” So it had a lot to live up to.

– Image by boardGOATS

Unfortunately, Turquoise had not played the base game before, however, of all games Between Two Cities is one game where a novice can get a lot of help due to its inherent nature. The game is very simple as players draft buildings tiles, keeping two tiles each round and passing the rest on. The novel part of the game is that instead of adding these tiles to one’s own city, the tiles are added to two cites, one on each side, each shared with a neighbour. The winner is the player with the “best” second city (i.e. the player with whose lowest scoring city is the strongest). This peculiarity of the scoring means players are trying to balance their two cities and ensure the buildings they require a complementary. The semi-cooperative nature meant that Red and Burgundy could help out Turquoise, and in fact, everyone could help eachother dealing with the complications of the expansion.

– Image by boardGOATS

There are three components to the Capitals expansion. Firstly, each city now starts with a three-by-three starting tile with some pre-filled spaces and others that can be filled by players. This adds a tweak to the start of the round that we all agreed we liked, as well as making the game slightly longer as the cities occupied a slightly larger space. The other two modules were slightly more controversial. The new tile type, Civic buildings, might have been more popular if the icons hadn’t been so small that they were almost impossible to see in the slightly subdued lighting in the pub (which was worse than normal due to a blown bulb in exactly the wrong place). Even those who could see them well though, were playing them in a very negative way. These tiles give three points if placed near one specific type and six if next to two specific types, but one if not adjacent to either or if adjacent to a third specific type. Unfortunately, the icons were too small to distinguish for anyone over about twenty. Finally, there were district awards given to the largest districts i.e. contiguous areas of a pair of tile types. Most people ignored these, largely due to the fact they were concentrating on trying to work out what to do with the Civic buildings.

– Image by boardGOATS

One of the nicest parts of the Capitals expansion is that it includes a list of all the wooden monument meeples with their names, allowing players to identify better with their two structures. Burgundy and Turquoise filled their shared city, the “Red Pagoda”, with lots of houses, parks and shops. Since Burgundy was struggling to see the Civic buildings they completely eschewed them in favour of factories which they mostly managed to avoid placing next to any houses. On Turquoise’s other side was the “World War Monument”, shared with Magenta. This city scored less well, partly because it was competing with the “Red Pagoda” for park and factory tiles. Magenta’s second city didn’t do much better, though at least it wasn’t in competition with her first city. Sharing with Pine, the “Rialto Bridge” city combined offices with leisure and housing.

– Image by boardGOATS

Pine’s second city, the “Sydney Harbour Bridge” was shared with Red, and the profile almost exactly mirrored his first city. It scored much better though partly thanks to the addition of a few Civic buildings and a couple of extra leisure facilities. Red’s second city, “St. Basil’s Basilica” was shared with Blue and also featured several Civic buildings (as did Blue’s other city, well, someone was going to end up with them). Despite completely missing out on shops which dented its housing score, “St. Basil’s” still scored quite well due to a lot of houses and parks. The final city, the “Geekway to the West”, was shared by Blue and Burgundy and featured lots of shops, leisure buildings and houses as well as the Civic buildings, scoring well.

– Image by boardGOATS

All the scores were a little moot, however, as the District Bonus scores were still to be allocated. Only Blue had really paid attention to these at the start, and she had infected Burgundy and Red who she had been sharing cities with. It was perhaps no surprise then that the “Red Pagoda”, the “Sydney Harbour Bridge”, the “Geekway to the West” and “St. Basil’s Basilica” all picked up bonus points which put them in first, second third and fourth place respectively. That still left the winner to determine. Blue, Burgundy and Red all had an interest in two of the top four cities. Burgundy participated in the first and third placed cities giving him first place, and Red and Blue shared “St. Basil’s Basilica” in fourth so Red took second place on the tie-break.

– Image by boardGOATS

Meanwhile, the next table had been playing London Markets (or “London Meerkats” as we have taken to calling it). This game was released at Essen last year following a KickStarter fund-raiser and is a re-themed revision of Dschunke, which was originally nominated for the Spiel des Jahres in 2002. Green, Black and Purple had tried to play it at Didcot once before, but the set up and rules explanation had taken so long that they had only managed a few opening rounds before running out of time. This meant they were all keen to try it properly, especially as it seemed to have an interesting and unusual mechanic. In this, they were joined by Ivory who is always keen to try something new, especially the slightly more complex games. Although “London Meerkats” is not actually that complicated, being a little different it takes a bit of time to understand how the components fit together. At its heart, “London Meerkats” is an auction game, where players use goods to make a concealed bid for one of four options with the ultimate aim of having the most money at the end of the game.

– Image by boardGOATS

In general, there are four items available in each auction, usually three giving a monetary reward and the fourth providing a special power card. In a four player game, it is possible that each player bids for a different option and everyone moves onto the next round happy. More often than not though, more than one person bids for one of the options, in which case at least one person is going to be disappointed and not just because they didn’t win, but also because all bids, even losing bids, go to the bank. Worse, in the case of a tie, the winnings are split and rounded down, so when this is not possible, again, everyone involved comes out with nothing. If there are items than nobody bid for, these are auctioned again, but it is even more risky this time as there are the same number of participants, but fewer targets. They are also the items nobody bid for at the first attempt, so may be less desirable, leaving players with another difficult decision. The interesting part of the game is how players acquire the goods to use in the bidding in the second part of the round.

– Image by boardGOATS

The first part of each round is played on the board featuring London and five of her markets, Brixton, Borough, Portabello, Covent Garden and Petticoat Lane. Each market exclusively provides textiles, soaps, coffee, porcelain apart from the last one which provides access to one of the others. There are also three merchants who each start at one of the markets and two assistants who occupy locations on the banks of the river. Players start by taking it in turns to select a merchant or one of the assistants and activating them, turning the token over so that only one person can carry out each action per round. The merchants allow players to stack goods crates of their own colour in the market, collect goods cards (which are used for bidding) or collect money from the bank. The latter number of cards or the amount of money depends on the number of crates visible when the action is used. Since crates come in bars and are stacked, the number of crates visible changes throughout the game.

– Image by boardGOATS

The merchants carry out the activity in the market they are in, whereas players who activate the the assistants can choose which of the two markets to carryout the action in with the action dictated by the assistant’s position on its riverside path. Once everyone has carried out an action in the London Markets, players get two extra cards of their choice (or more if they have the right power cards) before the auction phase. With almost everyone having recently played it (or at least a bit of it), the group relied largely on memory, which turned out to be a bit of a mistake, as part way through the game it became apparent that people had mis-remembered the rules in a number of small ways, which did distort the game in very unhelpful manner.

– Image by boardGOATS

Black began by targeting the auctions for bonus cards, with Ivory going for the high value coffee, Green for low value cloth while Purple cornered the market in cheap lavender soap. As the first few rounds went on, Ivory continued to pursue coffee and added a bonus card strategy too, claiming several extra pounds for having crates in a multiple markets. Green continued to do well in the auctions, Purple too, but with the lower value goods. Black seemed to miss out several times. In round three, the first mistake reared its ugly head. At several intervals during the game, there is an extra mini-action, the first of which is during round three. We assumed the person who chose the first assistant would also get a bonus card on top of his action which Ivory used to great advantage. It was only after the half way mark that we realised the symbol on the board actually meant that everyone gets a bonus card that round. Unable to fix this retrospectively with only one bonus card marker left we chose to continue as before. This would mean that Purple got the chance first and only Green didn’t get the bonus.

– Image by boardGOATS

After round four, that we realised our second mistake. The two assistant actions are only supposed to be used in the two unoccupied markets, but we had played them as being available in all. Since the first player marker had made one full rotation, we felt it had been fair and playing that rule properly hereafter would not penalise anyone unduly. The game continued, Black managed to get the tie-breaker bonus card, meaning he would win any tied auctions and Ivory began to use his bonus cards to good effect. Green was switching his auction goods quite well, winning several at high and low values, while Purple often found herself taking the short straw, losing a few. By the half way money check mark, it was all very close with Green narrowly in the lead with £21 just £1 ahead of Ivory had £20 and Black and Purple just behind.

– Image by boardGOATS

In the second half of the game, Black was finally able to start making good on his tie breaker, often to the demise of Green and Purple. Ivory was also able to really start building his position as he could now take four cards before each auction and exchange two more, meaning he could acquire a set of six of any type under almost any circumstances. It was about this that the third big mistake became apparent – some of the bonus cards could be held and cashed in later rather than having to be used as an immediate cash injection. This meant players could work to get crates positioned in the appropriate market before cashing in a card, which would have helped those floundering quite a bit.

– Image by boardGOATS

By about three quarters of the way through, it was obvious who the winner would be because he was raking in the cash and everyone else barely got a look-in. Black had had a better second half, nearly doubling his score, while Green and Purple struggled, although Green fared worse of all as he barely managed a third of what he had taken in the first part of the game. It was Ivory though that finished with £56, nearly £20 clear of Black in second, a huge margin of victory in what had seemed like a close game at half-time. It was clear that the incorrect rules had a big impact on the outcome though, and as a result, and as we played it, it really meant that gaining an advantage would result in a increasing circle of benefit so maybe another try is in order, with all the correct rules.

– Image by boardGOATS

Since “London Meerkats” finished before Between Two Cities, Purple and Black fancied another go at Kingdomino, this time with four players and Ivory and Green instead of Burgundy as the opposition. There are also a couple of variants, in particular the option of adding a ten point bonus for finishing with the castle in the centre of the five-by-five grid as well as a five point bonus for players who successfully add all twelve dominos to their kingdom, so for a little variety, these were added to the final scoring. This time Black’s Kingdom started out with a lot of woodland as he struggled to get anything very much, but kept his options open and managed to work in some other regions and get them scoring. He also managed to get his Castle in the middle and complete the whole set for a full fifteen point bonus.

– Image by boardGOATS

Green started out with cornfields and meadows, soon adding woodland, swamp and water. Although he kept it tidy with the castle in the middle, he was left with a terrible final double swamp tile that he just couldn’t place. Purple was trying to play for the high value swamp and mountain tiles, but failed to maintain her five-by-five grid. She had misunderstood the rules and thought that she would score the bonus as long as the castle was surrounded by tiles. In the end her regions were generally small, but with lots of crowns. Ivory, the “London Meerkats” Meister, went for a wet kingdom and produced a massive scoring lake and a couple of other regions, got his castle in the middle and completed the grid for a full set of bonuses and his second win of the evening.

– Image by boardGOATS

With time getting on and people beginning to leave, there was just still time for another game and with Burgundy, Blue and Pine left, Splendor was always a likely target. Burgundy had had an unbeaten Tuesday night run since January 2015 – well over two years and at least eight games, during which time both Pine and Blue had made several attempts to beat him. The game is a simple one of chip collecting and engine-building with a very loose gemstone theme. Basically, on their turn, players can take gemstone poker chips, or use chips to buy a card. Some cards have points on them and all can be used like the poker chips to buy cards (but without having to return them). The cards also give players access to “Noble tiles” which also give points. The winner is the player with the most points after someone reaches fifteen points.

– Image used with permission of boardgamephotos

This time the nobles required three each of sapphire, opal and diamond; three each of sapphire, emerald and diamond; three each of sapphire, emerald and ruby; and four each of diamond and opal. Pine started, but Burgundy was quick out of the traps, collecting diamond cards as there were a lot about at the start and they featured on three of the four Noble cards. Blue followed quickly and went for sapphire cards as they were also strongly represented on the Noble tiles. Pine was a little slower, but not far behind picking up opal cards. Burgundy was first to take a Noble taking the sapphire, emerald and diamond Noble, just beating Blue to it. He was working on the sapphire, emerald and ruby Noble, but Blue had her eye on that and it with both layers having three sapphire and three emerald cards, it was all down to who would be first to get three ruby cards.

– Image used with permission of boardgamephotos

It was neck-a-neck, and it was Blue’s turn. She only needed the one ruby card and there was one in the display,but unfortunately, although Burgundy could afford it, she couldn’t. Grudgingly, she reserved the card for herself, hoping that she wouldn’t turn over another ruby card. Sadly, she did reveal a ruby card, and since Burgundy loads of cards and lots of chips, he could afford it. It was Pine’s turn first though and he could also afford the ruby card so he decided to add it to his tableau. It was with bated breath that Pine reveled the replacement card. Unfortunately for Burgundy it was not a ruby card which left the road open for Blue to take the Noble on her next turn. It wasn’t all over though, there were two Nobles still available, and Burgundy went for the next one, however, Pine had other ideas and took both in quick succession.

– Image used with permission of boardgamephotos

During the game, both Blue and Burgundy had been picking up a few point bearing cards, however, Blue also had two high scoring cards reserved and was looking to play one of these, a four point card requiring seven sapphires. Knowing Blue’s habit of spotting what other players want and reserving it to obstruct them, Burgundy reserved a four point level three card that he could play next turn. Unfortunately for him, this revealed a five point card that Blue could afford. As the last player in the round, taking the card gave her fifteen points which immediately ended the game, and with it, Burgundy’s unbeaten run, finally.

– Image used with permission of boardgamephotos

There was still time for a quick game of that “nasty card game”, 3 Sind Eine Zu Viel!. This game is very simple: there are three rows of cards (zero to thirty, thirty to sixty and sixty to ninety) and on their turn, the active player chooses a numbered card and adds it to the appropriate row. If there are five cards in the row the active player must pick up cards: if the card added is the highest card in the row, the active player takes the card with the lowest number, otherwise they take all cards higher than the card added by the active player. The cards all have a colour as well as a number, and the aim of the game is to get as close as possible to two of each colour, while three is one too many…

– Image by boardGOATS

About half way through the game, Pine asked whether the card marker was included in the five cards. This prompted a quick rules check with the inevitable discovery that we had been playing it wrong. We finished the game with our rules and although nobody managed a full set of seven cards, Blue and Pine both managed very creditable scores, with Blue five points clear. Since the game is reasonably quick and we all wanted to know what difference the rules change made, we gave the game a second go. We all felt it was different this time and maybe a little less prone to catastrophic card collections, not that that helped Burgundy. For the second game on the trot he scored just seven, while Blue and Pine scored more but were even closer this time with Blue taking the second win, by just one point.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: Games are generally better when everyone plays by the same rules, ideally the right ones…!

Next Meeting – 13th June 2017

Our next meeting will be on Tuesday, 13^th June, 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 the Capitals expansion to Between Two Cities. Between Two Cities is a semi-cooperative tile laying game that we’ve played quite a lot within the group. The Capitals expansion hasn’t been properly released yet, though it was available as a pre-release at the UK Games Expo ten days ago.

– Image by boardGOATS

And telling a Tale of Two Cities…

There was once a terrible crisis in London, the Thames had a new inhabitant – a horrible sea monster had slunk into the famed London waterway. Citizens who walked too close to the edge of the river were quietly devoured. The city was in an uproar! Who would save them from the horrible creature?

A young man came forward to answer the call. He was a poor man from an inconsequential village, but he had a heart of courage and a love for his countrymen.

He came to the banks of the Thames and called in a loud voice, “Monster! Show yourself if you dare!”

In a flash of scales and slime, the creature broke the surface of the water, his horrible jaws open to devour this arrogant young warrior. Fortuitously, the hero was quicker, and his sword neatly sliced off the monster’s head. The people poured into the streets of London to celebrate! The crisis was over.

But the story wasn’t quite…

The citizens joyously pulled the carcass out of the Thames river, carved it into sections, and took it to butcher shops all over the city, where it was seasoned and mixed and pressed into the yummiest sausage ever tasted.

Yes, it was the beast of Thames…. it was the wurst of Thames…

30th May 2017

While we were waiting for food to arrive, we decided to play a quick game of the “nasty card game we finished with last time“, 3 Sind Eine Zu Viel!. This is a nasty little variant on one of our old favourites, 6 Nimmt!. It doesn’t have the simultaneous play and there is a little more strategy or at least, there is more of the same “illusion of control”. The idea is that there are three rows of cards, zero to thirty, thirty to sixty and sixty to ninety. On their turn, the active player chooses a card and adds it to the appropriate row. If there are five cards in the row the active player must pick up cards: if the card added is the highest card in the row, the active player takes the card with the lowest number, otherwise they take all cards higher than the card added by the active player. The cards all have a colour as well as a number, and the aim of the game is to get as close as possible to two of each colour, while three is one too many…

– Image by boardGOATS

The rules state that each player starts with eight cards and a face down deck of twelve cards. After six turns, each player has two cards remaining and restores their hand to eight by taking six from the deck, which happens a total of three times. The game plays a maximum of four, so there are a number of cards left unused. We started with three players, Pink, Blue, Burgundy, but then Green & Violet turned up, so we fiddled the rules to make the game play five, by reducing the number of cards each player had in their deck, such that each player would draw six, five and four cards, rather than six each time. This worked quite well, though Pink felt that it made the game much more difficult to play. The game was quite tight in the early stages, with different players trying different strategies, but in the final accounting it turned out that Pink had more pairs than anyone else as well as both ten point bonuses giving him a sizeable winning margin of twelve, pushing Green into second place.

– Image by boardGOATS

With the food and the “gaming starter” over, it was time for the main course, our “Feature Game”, Terraforming Mars. Almost everyone was really keen to play, so, since we had two copies available, we decided to split into two groups and play two parallel games. This began a big debate about who would play in each group. It made sense for Green and Violet to play in the same group, but Blue wanted to play with Pink as she doesn’t see much of him. There were also gaming considerations as we wanted to make sure there were people who knew what they were doing on both tables but nobody wanted to move about too much. In the end Black swapped seats with Violet and we were ready to start, though since we were nearly all new to it, we had to go through the rules first.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor henk.rolleman

The idea is that players take the role of giant corporations, sponsored by the World Government on Earth, to initiate huge projects to raise the temperature, the oxygen level, and the ocean coverage until the environment on Mars is habitable. Players then buy project cards into their hand and later, when they have the resources needed, they can play the cards and ultimately place tiles on Mars itself. There are three different types of cards: Red cards provide actions that have an instant effect and are then discarded until the end of the game; Green cards have a one-off effect but their “tags” are retained, and Blue cards have an ongoing effect and/or an action that can be activated once per round. It is building these card combinations that is the interesting part of the game, but also the part that some players struggle most with.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

Each round (or Generation as they are called in the rules) begins with drawing four cards. In order to keep these cards, players must pay three M€, the currency used in the game. Next, players take it in turns to carry out one or two actions and continue to do so until every player has passed. At the end of the round everyone gets resources according to their Terraform Rating and production ability. Everyone starts with the same Terraform Rating which increase when players raise one of the three global parameters (temperature, oxygen level, and ocean coverage) – this forms the basis of players’ end game scores as well as their income at the end of each Generation. Each player also has their own production track for the six key resources, M€, Steel, Titanium, Plants, Energy, and Heat.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor henk.rolleman

Each resource has a primary use in addition to any uses that project cards may make of them. For example, M€ are generally used to buy cards into players’ hands and then to pay to activate them. On the other hand, Steel and Titanium can be used to activate specific types of cards in place of M€; although they can be much more efficient than the currency, their use is much more restricted. Plants can be used to provide greenery on the surface of Mars which in turn gives oxygen. Energy can be used by in conjunction with projects and all residual energy is turned into heat at the end of the round which in turn can be used to warm the planet. The guts of the game are the actions. Players take it in turns to carry out one or two actions and continue carrying out actions until every one has passed. In this way, players can ultimately have take as many actions as they like, though they will be limited by the resources they have.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

The actions are: play a card, paying any costs and carrying out any associated actions if appropriate; use the action on a Blue card played previously, or carry out a standard action. The standard actions mostly involve paying for things at a very high rate. Typically it is much more efficient to do these actions by playing cards, however, sometimes it is worth paying the inflated price because of the way the actions combine. In the introductory game, every player starts with the same amount of money and project cards, however, despite the lack of experience, both groups decided to play with the Corporation cards. These have delightfully imaginative names like, “Interplanetary Cinematics” (Green), “Inventrix” (Violet) and “Republika Tharsis” (Burgundy). These potentially give players a bit of a steer as to what project cards to buy and later, hopefully, play. With almost everyone new to the game (though several had struggled to read through the rules), it was a steep learning curve that started straight away when we had to choose which cards to pay to keep from our starting hand of ten. This is one of the big challenges of the game as keeping cards costs money and money is scarce.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor henk.rolleman

Ivory (who had played before, albeit solo) got his table going first, but fairly quickly, they discovered it was generally better to do one action at a time, unless a second relied on a first and there was a chance it might not be possible to play it if someone else got there first. This was slightly counter to the other table where players started out trying to take both actions, though they also quickly decided that since the last player can keep going at the end, sometimes it is better not to force that second action. One standard action is to claim a Milestone. Claiming these costs M€, but can be a good way to add points. Players can also pay to activate Awards which will give points to the most effective players in certain fields. On Ivory’s table, the Milestone and Award points were fairly evenly spread and it was the Terraform Rating that had the largest influence on the placings, with Ivory finishing three points ahead of Green. On the other table, the opposite was true with players’ Terraform Ratings very even and Milestones as the key battle-ground. Burgundy just pipped Blue to almost all of them so she countered funding a couple of awards and winning them. It was the cards that made the difference though, and Blue picked up a massive fourteen points leaving her seven points clear. The battle for second was more interesting though, with Burgundy and Pink finishing level. On reflection both players felt they had missed scoring points on the table with Pink certain he had forgotten to add to his Puppy Farm on at least one occasion. We let the points stand though and Money-Bags-Burgundy took second on the tie-break.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor bkunes

We all felt that the game has high potential for “Analysis Paralysis”, particularly at the beginning, in deciding which cards to keep (a problem made worse for on the first play which is why the Beginner Corporations give players ten cards drawn at random). The game could be won or lost on decisions about which cards to keep. Miscalculations like paying for that extra card that then didn’t leave enough money to play that one really important card that had been saved for can also prove critical. There were some nasty actions, too. For example, Green got caught out in his penultimate turn when two of his plant cubes were snatched which left him short of plants to terraform a tile. Thus he was unable to gain the additional Steel he needed to pay for the next card he was planning which would have given him more plants for another end of game terraforming tile, as well as extra points. Since this happened to Green just before his turn, he then spent far too long trying to work out whether he could still do it a different way and if not, then what should he do instead!

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor henk.rolleman

The game is full of such enjoyable but difficult decisions, which perhaps explains why it has been the subject of a lot of chatter online, culminating in its recent nomination for this year’s Kennerspiel des Jahres. It also explains why everyone was concentrating so hard that nobody could really remember what they had been trying to do, what had worked and why. All that said, the game is a long way from being perfect and bears a lot of the hallmarks of a crowdfunded game, with very difficult rules and variable production values (some over-produced pieces while others could be improved). In actual fact, the game was originally produced by the Swedish company, FryxGames, a small family run company primarily consisting of four brothers with the rest of their substantial family helping in designing and testing, illustrating and translating.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor henk.rolleman

Although the rules are very difficult to get to grips with and arguably could be better written, the folks at FryxGames have made some exceptional online teaching material available. One of the other not insignificant issues is the number of small cubes on the individual player boards. These mean that it is pretty much guaranteed that at some point the table will take a bump and everyone will have to try to remember where everything was. Unfortunately, these issues and the difficulty producing the game in sufficient quantities to supply the demand it would lead to, probably mean Terraforming Mars won’t actually win the Kennerspiel des Jahres. We mostly really enjoyed it though, and almost everyone was keen to give it another go. In fact only Purple wasn’t keen on playing it at the start with and playing it probably didn’t really change her mind, as it’s just not really her sort of thing.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

Learning Outcome: Difficult decisions almost inevitably lead to Analysis Paralysis, but sometimes it is worth it.

UK Games Expo 2017

Last weekend, 2^nd-4^th June, gamers once converged on Birmingham for three days of fun and games for UK Games Expo. Whereas Essen, is primarily a trade fair so is all about the business surrounding games with lots of buying and selling, Expo focusses on gamers playing games and includes Euro Games as well as lost of role playing games, miniatures games, and war games. In addition to tournaments there is lots of “open gaming” space and demonstration events for new designs. There are lots of activities specially designed for kids in the “Family Zone” as well as a trade fair with all the latest games for their parents and seminars presented by industry experts, panels and celebrity guests.

– Image by boardGOATS

This is the eleventh year of Expo and the event gets ever larger. Like last year, there were activities in both the NEC and the NEC Hilton Metropole, though this year it spread into Hall Three at the NEC as well as taking over the whole of Hall One with the food fair outside. The focus of Expo is on playing games rather than marketing, so there are generally fewer new releases available than at some of the other conventions. The trade fair is growing though and as a result there were more new games available this year than previously, including The Cousins’ War (a two player game from Surprised Stare Games); Santo Domingo (a new light card game in the style of Port Royal) and Capitals, the new expansion to one of our favourite games, Between Two Cities. There were also demonstrations and play-testing of of some exciting pre-release games including the new Splendor Expansion and the upcoming stand-alone Snowdonia variant, “A Nice Cup of Tea”.

– Image by boardGOATS

A number of GOATS went to play and make purchases with some taking time off work to go on the slightly quieter Friday, while others braved the hoards over the weekend. A fun time was had by all and it will no-doubt be a topic of conversation next week. when we will surely play some of the new acquisitions.

– Image by boardGOATS

Next Meeting – 30th May 2017

Our next meeting will be on Tuesday, 30^th May, 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 Terraforming Mars, which is card driven resource management game built round a map of the planet and its moons. Players take the role of giant corporations, sponsored by the World Government on Earth, to initiate huge projects to raise the temperature, the oxygen level, and the ocean coverage until the environment is habitable. The game was recently nominated for this year’s Kennerspiel des Jahres.

– Image by boardGOATS

And talking of outer space…

Joe was telling his cousin Jeff about his recent journey – he had just come back from the USA and was very proud of his new-found travel experience.

“Yeah,” replied Jeff, “I love to travel too. Last year I went to Turkey and next year I’m going to India.”

Not to be out-done, Joe responded, “I’m saving up for a flight on the new Virgin Galactic space flight, I’ve already put my name down for it. I want to fly to the moon!”

“Cool,” answered Jeff. Determined to go one better, he added, “I’m waiting for the flights to the sun though.”

“How does that work?” asked his cousin, “Won’t you get all burnt up from the heat and stuff?”

Jeff paused for a moment. “No,” he said thoughtfully, “We’ll just fly at night…”

16th May 2017

Since Red had been hankering after playing the “Feature Game” for a year or so, the first thing we had to do was work out who was going to play it. With Burgundy starting his pizza, and Red and Blue’s still to come, we decided to play something to keep Pine occupied while we waited to see who else was coming. We were just setting out Bokken Schieten (aka Ziegen Kriegen) when Purple and Black arrived closely followed by Green. Pine was sure Ivory wasn’t coming, so with two copies of the “Feature Game” to hand, we then began a debate about how to divide the group into two. At this point, the matter was sort of settled by Ivory’s arrival, so the four player comfortably ensconced at “the wrong table” continued setting up their “goaty game” while the others migrated back to our usual, now vacated table.

– Image by boardGOATS

Bokken Schieten (aka Ziegen Kriegen) is a simple little “push your luck” game, based on Blackjack (aka Pontoon or Vingt-et-Un), but with a moving target. Thus the idea is to collect cards up to a limit, but exceeding that limit yields a score of zero and the player is “bust”. So, players choose a card from their hand and play it face up in front of them – the person who plays the highest card takes the trick and with it all the cards played in the round a score equal to the total number of goats heads on the sides of the cards. Unfortunately, they get to lead again and worse, the player in last place gets to add a card to “Goat Island” and choose whether to contribute the larger or smaller number to the limit. Burgundy went bust first taking the first two hands, followed by Red. When Blue dumped a nice large card onto a trick Pine was winning he went out too, leaving Blue to take all the final trick. The only question was whether she had managed to stay within the limit, but finishing with twelve, and given a limit of twelve she just squeaked in to win.

– Image by boardGOATS

With that done, and the pizzas also taken care of, it was time for Keyflower, the “Feature Game”. This is one of the group’s favourite games, but has been someone neglected of late. On checking back, we found it was two years since we last played it, though we had played Keyflower’s little brother, Key to the City – London (released at Essen last year), more recently. Both games have the same general flow, using the same tile laying and auction mechanism, but with different tiles and resources used in different ways. The basic mechanism is quite simple, though the resultant game is much deeper. The game is played over four rounds or Seasons, with players taking it in turns to bid on a tile, carry out an action or pass. Once everyone has passed in succession, the round is over, and the tiles are are added to the winning players’ villages. After four rounds, the player with the most points wins.

– Image by boardGOATS

The clever part of the game is that the bidding and actions are both carried out with Keyples (which is what meeples are called in these games). So, on their turn, the active player can bid for one of the tiles. If that tile already has a bid against it, then the active player must follow suit by bidding with the same colour and with at least one additional Keyple, thus increasing the bid. Only winning bids are paid for at the end of the round, with loosing bids are returned to their owner, which is just as well because Keyples are scarce, very scarce. In fact, losing bids belong to their owner during the round too as players can move losing bids and use them elsewhere adding more Keyples if necessary. On their turn, players can also activate tiles by placing Keyples on the tile which gives a resource or an action. These resources are then placed on the tile or, in the case of skill tiles, placed behind their player screen. There are several different actions available, but one of the key things players will want to do during the game is upgrade tiles.

– Image by boardGOATS

Tiles are double-sided: when a tile is first added to a village, it has a corresponding action, but upgrading and turning it over will make it more useful. For example, the Workshop tile gives either one coal, one wood or one stone, but when upgraded gives one of each. Tiles can typically be activated three times each Season, but players must follow colour suit and the cost increases by one each time; tiles can hold a maximum of six Keyples. One of the more unusual things about Keyflower is that players can activate the tiles in other peoples’ Villages. This is interesting because the first player to activate a tile dictates the colour for the rest of the round, so if an opponent activates a tile with “the wrong colour” it can make life very difficult for the Village owner. On the other hand, since all Keyples working in the Villages return home and go behind the owners’ screens at the end of the Season, activating a tile in someone else’s Village is effectively giving them valuable Keyples. Perhaps one of the most interesting thing about the game is that strategies almost never turn out quite the way people plan. Other players can innocently make a tile too expensive or even completely unattainable by starting bidding with “the wrong colour”.

– Image by boardGOATS

Also, although the tiles are well balanced, depending on player count, some tiles are not introduced into the game which can make it difficult to get that resource that was essential to a that particular strategy. This means that players tend to do best by keeping their options open for as long as possible and then trying to bring it all together at the end. At the start of the game, each player is given some tiles for the final round, Winter and each player can choose which of these they want to make available to the highest bidder. They can choose as many as they like to introduce, though they must include at least one. This decision doesn’t have to be made until the start of the final round, so although they don’t direct players’ strategy exactly, they can give people a bit of a general steer. The first group of players were Green, Black, Purple and Ivory. Green, Black, and Purple have played Keyflower quite a bit over the years, and although Ivory was new to the game, he had played Key to the City – London, which has a lot of similarities. This made the group quite experienced, but that is certainly no guarantee of success in Keyflower. And how many points make success, was something Ivory asked before they started and received the reply from the other side of the room, “Over a hundred!”, to which, everybody laughed.

– Image by boardGOATS

Spring is the Season for resources, and Purple led the way by picking up the Key Mine, Key Wood and Keystone Quarry tiles providing coal, wood and stone. Although a strong start, sometimes it is easy to get carried away with bidding which can result in a shortage of Keyples for later rounds. On the other hand, if the tiles are particularly useful, they can prove a valuable source of Keyples when other players are tempted to activate them. Unfortunately for Purple, Ivory picked up the Workshop and quickly upgraded it making it a much more enticing tile. Purple’s cause was not helped by Green who was being particularly parsimonious with his Keyples as he had the Craftsmans’ Guild as one of his Winter tiles and was hoping to make it pay at the end of the game. Useful actions can be a double-edged sword however, as Black found out to his cost when everyone kept activating his tiles before he got the chance, and generally with colours that he did not have.

– Image by boardGOATS

Going into the final round, everyone’s plans were on a knife edge. Black’s plans fell apart when, after picking up the Stone Yard (which rewards players for getting stone), in a fit of enthusiasm he upgraded his mason tile. This meant that instead of turning skills tiles into stone, he could now turn them into gold, which is very nice, but was worth about half the number of points to him as well as being a lot more interesting to everyone else. As Winter progressed, the bidding got more determined and everybody had to fight their corner, but especially Green and Ivory. Ivory took the boat tile Green was after, but failed to stop Green winning the Craftsmans’ Guild. Ivory had been quietly collecting skills tiles and squirrelling them away behind his screen, and it was clear why when the Scribes tile appeared at the start of Winter. Green made his move early, putting in a large bid to try to stop him from getting it, but when Ivory countered, Green couldn’t afford to increase the bid further. In fact, it wouldn’t have helped if he’d been able to continue, because Ivory had a number of Keyples in reserve, just in case. And it was those reserve Keyples that clinched it, with Ivory winning with seventy-six points, twenty-one points ahead of Green in second.

– Image by boardGOATS

On the other table, things went a little differently. While Blue and Burgundy had played Keyflower a lot and it was one of their favourite games, Pine had only played Key to the City – London, and Red was completely new to the game, though she had been hankering after giving it a go for a ages. In this game, Pine started off very strongly and then proceeded to build a very nicely balanced little village coveted by both Blue and Burgundy. With both the Miner and the Gold Mine tiles as well as as the Smelter, Pine had access to coal and lots valuable gold and the others felt he only needed a couple of nice Winter tiles to top it off for a really high score. Burgundy picked up the Keystone Quarry giving him plenty of stone once he had upgraded it. As it was, Burgundy’s Workshop was in high demand for those who needed timber for upgrading their home tiles, but the almost complete lack of wood in any Village, became apparent when the Timberyard and Sawmill tiles both appeared in autumn and nobody had any wood to do anything with them. Burgundy’s problems were exacerbated by the shortage of tiles that would give points for stone.

– Image by boardGOATS

Having bid for a lot of tiles in the opening round, and won none Blue was left trying to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear and cobble together a score from the Apprentice Hall and the flotilla of boats she ended up with at the end of Spring. As she was completely new to the game, Red found herself a little overwhelmed by the amount the game gives players to think about. While the mechanics are fairly straightforward, there are a lot of considerations to take into account when bidding and, unlike the arguably slightly simpler Key to the City – London, getting resources to the right location can be challenging. Red started off with the Peddler tile in spring, which enabled her to swap yellow Keyples for special green Keyples. This gave her an early start going for the Key Market Winter tile that she had in her hand (which rewards players for the number of green Keyples they have at the end of the game) with the added bonus that she would be in a strong position to bid with green Keyples if she needed to.

– Image by boardGOATS

Despite having a fair idea what people had, somehow the Winter tiles were still a bit of a surprise and the scrap began as players tried to make they didn’t lose out. With the other game finishing first, the others came over to spectate and see how their game had compared. Burgundy got his Craftmans’ Guild tile and, tried to stop Blue picking up both the Key Guild and the Scholar, but with both in the game, it was odds on that Blue would get one. In the end she managed to take both and having a huge pile of skill tiles to go with them gave her a healthy number of points. Pine took the Keythedral and decided to fight for his choice of end game boat tile, taking the Keyflower tile giving him points for his transport abilities. As everyone was a little short on Keyples except Blue (largely thanks to having not spent any on bidding during the game) was also able to pick up the Village Hall (and score points for the large number of Red Keyples she had amassed) as well as picking up sixteen points for her sizeable river. These gave her a total just shy of that magic hundred, and thirty-seven points ahead of Pine who’s lovely little village gave him an excellent second place.

– Image by boardGOATS

With the other group not staying to watch the packing away, Pine, Burgundy, Blue and Red felt they needed something quite quick and fun to lighten the mood before bed, indeed a bit 6 Nimmt!-a-like. With that in mind, we went for 3 Sind Eine Zu Viel!, which has a similar run building and picking up cards element as 6 Nimmt!, but a little more strategy, or at least, an illusion of more strategy. The idea is that on their turn they play one card from their hand and add it to one of three rows, in its correct numerical order. If it is the fifth card added to the row (in any position) they have to pick up cards and add them to their collection. The cards they pick up depend on where the card was added however: if the new card is the last in the row, the player picks up the first card in that sequence, otherwise they take all cards higher in number. The cards come in seven different colours; at the end of the game one card of a colour will score one point while two cards will score five, but three will score minus three. Thus, players are ideally trying to collect two of each colour, but three is one too many…

– Image by boardGOATS

The first player to have at least one of each colour face up collects an intermediate bonus, which diminishes for players who achieve this feat later in the game. Players with six or seven different colours at the end of the game receive five or ten bonus points respectively. Each player starts with a hand of eight cards and a face down deck of twelve cards. When they have played their hand down to the last two cards, they can draw back up to eight. This introduces just a little bit of stress during the game, and prepares players for the inevitable stress at the end. And stress there was a plenty. Blue had played the game a few times with Pink and found it interesting, however, with four it has added spice, especially towards the end. Blue picked up the first intermediate swiftly followed by Pine and then Red.

– Image by boardGOATS

Burgundy is well known for his muttering, but this time he had Pine for company. In fact, Pine soon surpassed Burgundy, muttering about how nasty the game was. When it came to the end-game scoring it was clear that he had something to mutter about finishing with almost as many negative points as positive ones and he was only saved from the ignominy of a negative score by the intermediate bonus he had collected. Perhaps she was too tired to moan or maybe she didn’t feel the need, but Red quietly just got on with the game and, with perfect timing, took the full ten point bonus at the end of the round. With Burgundy doing the same, it was close at the tome, but Burgundy just sneaked in ahead of Red, finishing five points clear with forty-seven points.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: It may be Nasty, but “The Nasty Game” is Good Fun!

Spiel des Jahres Nominations 2017

Today, the Spiel des Jahres Award nominations were announced. There are three awards, a children’s game award (Kinderspiel des Jahres) and the two that interest us more, the “Advanced” or “Expert” Kennerspiel des Jahres and the main award, the Spiel des Jahres (which is often interpreted as the “Family Game” award). This year there are three nominees in each category:

Kinderspiel des Jahres
Captain Silver by Wolfgang Dirscherl & Manfred Reindl
Ice Cool by Brian Gomez
Der Mysteriöse Wald (aka The Mysterious Forest) by Carlo A. Rossi
Kennerspiel des Jahres
EXIT: Das Spiel Inka Brand & Markus Brand
Räuber der Nordsee (aka Raiders of the North Sea) by Shem Phillips
Terraforming Mars by Jacob Fryxelius
Spiel des Jahres
Kingdomino by Bruno Cathala
Magic Maze by Kasper Lapp
Wettlauf nach El Dorado by Reiner Knizia

We’ve discussed the possible nominations a couple of times within the group, but nobody really had much idea this year. Part of this is because we’ve not really engaged with many of these, though Kingdomino did come up and we are planning to play Terraforming Mars on 30^th May, so we will be able to make our minds up about that one then. Fabled Fruit, Captain Sonar, Great Western Trail and The Grizzled also came up in our discussions and these were recommended by the Jury. The winner of the Kinderspiel des Jahres will be announced in Hamburg on 19^th June, with the Spiel and Kennerspiel des Jahres a month later in Berlin on 17^th July.

– Image from spieldesjahres.de

Boardgames in the News: So, it’s OK to Play

There have been a number of recent articles on games and playing, in a range of BBC Radio 4 programmes including You & Yours, Mark Watson’s Inner Child, Saturday Live and “Do Pass Go”. Today, there was another half hour documentary called “The Human at Play”, which set out to answer the question of why it’s becoming more acceptable for adults to play. Starting at the London Toy Fair, Farrah Jarral then visited the Bristol game cafe Chance and Counters and spoke to play advocates, activists and academics as well as representatives of the UK games distributor Esdevium (now part of the Greater Asmodée). They get a little bogged down on the definition of “play”, but there are a number of interesting points come out of the discussion. Among these the fact that boardgaming is currently growing at a rate of 20-40% year on year – a mind-blowing statistic, but one that most Euro-gamers will have seen anecdotal evidence of. They also conclude that not only is it OK for adults to play, it is also very valuable and may even be “essential to the future survival of our species”.

– Image from bbc.co.uk

“The Human at Play” is currently available on the BBC iPlayer.

Goats in the News: Turning Goats into Water

In the Sindh deserts of Pakistan, the water situation is desperate: some women walk for four hours to collect water for their family. Fariel Salahuddin has an answer to the problem though, GOATS! There are a lot of goats in the desert, every family has a goat or three, but money is scarce. So, villagers club together, each providing a goat or whatever they can spare and Fariel and her friends sell them for during Eid when the price is high. The money is used to pay for solar water pumps to provide water for drinking, bathing and cooking. Perhaps the biggest impact though, is on society: families are happier and the villagers are socialising more.

– Image from bbc.co.uk