Author Archives: nannyGOAT

Boardgames in the News: More Games Reporting from the BBC

In recent years, there have been a number of short articles on the BBC especially on the radio; over the Easter weekend there was more Gaming Goodness. Saturday Live is the Radio 4 Saturday morning magazine show presented by Aasmah Mir and the Rev. Richard Coles. Last Saturday, guests included the comedian Milton Jones, the fiddle player Sam Sweeney (formerly of Bellowhead) and Catherine Howell, collections manager at the V & A Museum of Childhood. This latter guest was of particular interest as Catherine Howell curated the museum’s exhibition “Game Plan: Board Games Rediscovered”. This traces the the history of boardgames from Senet to Pandemic: Legacy and beyond and comes to the end of its run on 23^rd April 2017.

– Image from samiraahmed.co.uk

Perhaps more interesting though was the Radio 4 documentary broadcast on Good Friday, called “Do Pass Go”. Part of the “Seriously…” series, the half-hour program was presented by Samira Ahmed and included interviews with designers, reviewers and gamers with a visit to Spiel 2016 at Essen. Much more than the usual five-minute clip, this is an in-depth study of the resurgence of analogue table top games in an increasingly digital world. Both this and the Saturday Live article are available on iPlayer and for those who would like to know more there is also a blog post covering the making of “Do Pass Go”.

Next Meeting – 18th April 2017

Our next meeting will be on Easter Tuesday, 18^th April, 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 Power Grid, which is a game where the aim is to supply the most cities with power when someone’s network reaches a predetermined size. Players mark pre-existing routes between cities for connection, then bid against each other to purchase the power plants that they need to power these cities. However, as power plants are purchased, newer, more efficient plants become available, so by merely purchasing, you’re potentially allowing others access to superior equipment.

– Image used with permission of boardgamephotos

And talking of electricity…

Jeff was working as an electrician rewiring a property. After a full week of work, the homeowner was delighted with end result and all the hard work Jeff had put into his house.

“You did a great job,” he said, and handed Jeff a cheque. “Also, as a special thank-you, here’s an extra £80 to take the missus out to dinner and maybe see a film. Show her a good time – I’m sure she deserves it.”

Later that evening, the doorbell rang and it was Jeff. Thinking the electrician had maybe left something behind the homeowner asked, “Is everything OK? Did you forget something?”

“No,” Jeff replied. “I’m just here to take your missus out to dinner and show her a good time, just like you asked…”

4th April 2017

As we we arrived, we were all a little thrown by the fact that we weren’t on our usual table. We coped though (just about) and, while we waited for our food, inspired by Red’s “smiley sushi” top, we felt there was only one suitable game, Sushi Go!. This is one of the simplest, “purest” card-drafting games. Card drafting is a mechanism that is the basis of a number of well-known and popular games including 7 Wonders and one of our favourites, Between Two Cities. It is also a useful mechanism for evening out the vagaries of dealing in other games. For example, a round of drafting is often added to the start of Agricola to ensure that nobody gets a particularly poor hand.

– Image used with permission of boardgamephotos

Basically, each player starts with a hand of cards, chooses one to keep and passes the rest onto their neighbour. Everyone receives a new hand of cards, and again chooses one and passes the rest on. This continues with the hands getting progressively smaller until all the cards have been chosen and there are no cards to pass on. In Sushi Go!, players are collecting sets of cards with the different sets scoring points in different ways, for example, a player who collects a pair of Tempura Prawns gets five points at the end of the game. In the first round Blue and Burgundy went for Sashimi – collecting three gives ten points; unfortunately there were only four in the round and both got two which failed to score. We were playing with the Soy Sauce expansion, and Burgundy made up for his lack of Sashimi by taking the Soy bonus, it was Pine who made a killing though taking the first round with a massive twenty-two points.

– Image used with permission of boardgamephotos

The second round was very confused pizza arriving and hands losing cards somehow. Blue won the round with seventeen, but it was a much closer affair which left Pine in the driving seat going into the last round. As they only score points at the end of the game and since the player with the fewest losing six points, everyone went for Puddings. There were a lot in the round and Red managed to collect most of them, and the end of the game six point bonus with it. It was a sizeable catch and with Pine in line for the penalty, it looked like Red might just have enough to snatch victory. In the end, Pine shared the penalty with Burgundy, however, and that was just enough to give him the game, finishing three points ahead of Red.

– Image used with permission of boardgamephotos

With food finished and our usual table now empty, we split into two groups with the first foursome moving back to our normal table to play the “Feature Game”, Viticulture. This is a worker placement game where players take on the roles of beneficiaries in rustic, pre-modern Tuscany who have inherited meager vineyards. Each player starts with a few plots of land, an old crushpad, a tiny cellar, and three workers. Using those workers and visitors, players can expand their vineyards by building structures, planting vines, and filling wine orders. At first glance, Viticulture appears very complicated with lots of possible actions, but in practice it is a much simpler game than it looks. Viticulture is broken down into years or rounds with each subdivided into seasons, each with a specific purpose. In the first round, Spring, players choose the turn order for the rest of the year. The start player picks first and can choose to go first and pick up a meager reward, or sacrifice position in the turn order for something more enticing, in the extreme case, going last and getting an extra worker.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

Then, in the turn order decided in Spring, players take it in turn to choose an action and place a worker. All the action takes place in Summer and Winter and it is up to the players how they divide their workers between the two. Each action has three spaces, but only two are in use in the four player game. The first player to take an action gets an additional bonus while the second allows the basic level action only. Each player has a large worker, their “Grande”, which they can use as a normal worker, or to carry out any action, even if both spaces are already occupied. In Summer, players can add buildings to their estate; plant vines; show tourists round (to get money); collect vine cards, or play yellow Summer Visitor cards (which generally give a special action). In contrast, in Winter, players can harvest grapes from their vines; make wine; collect wine contract cards; fulfill contracts (which is the main way to get points), or play blue Winter Visitor cards. Sandwiched between Summer and Winter, is Autumn, where players get to take an extra Visitor card. Game end is triggered when one player gets to twenty points.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

We were very slow to start as only Ivory was familiar with the game. Pine in particular felt out of his depth and moaned about how this was not his sort of game. Despite this, Pine was the first to get points on the board and he retained his lead for more than half the game thanks to the Windmill that he built at the start. This gave a him a point each time he planted vines and, since that is an essential part of the game he was collecting points from the start where everyone else was concentrating on trying to build up the framework of their vineyard. As the game progressed, everyone else’s grapes began to mature yielding points and the chase began. We were into the final quarter of the game before Blue, then Ivory and eventually Green caught Pine though. Going into the final round it was clear it was going to be close as Ivory moved ahead of Green, Blue and Pine, and triggered the end game. Blue just managed to keep up and it finished in a tie, with both Ivory and Blue on twenty-four, four points clear of Green. Money is the tie breaker followed by left over wine, and since Blue had more of both she claimed the victory.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

Meanwhile, at the other side of the room, Red, Purple, Black and Burgundy, had been playing Ulm. This is a game Purple and Black picked up from Essen last year and has had a couple of outings since. The game play in Ulm is simple enough. It is played over ten rounds, during each of which players get one turn in which they can do three actions that help them to gain points. Ultimately players are collecting cards, city coats of arms and descendants, all of which can give them points during the game or at the end. This, in combination with the position of their barge and the number of sparrow tokens owned give the end game score, and the player with highest score wins. The novel part of the game is the Cathedral – a three by three grid of action tiles. On their turn, the active player slides a new action tile, randomly drawn from the bag, from the outside into the grid sliding another tile out. That tile stays in its spot on the outside of the grid and no other player can use that row or column until the tile is removed. The three tiles left in that row or column (two old ones and the new one, just added), represent the active player’s three actions for their turn.

– Image by boardGOATS

The game play in Ulm is simple enough. It is played over ten rounds, during each of which players get one turn in which they can do three actions that help them to gain points. Ultimately players are collecting cards, city coats of arms and descendants, all of which can give them points during the game or at the end. This, in combination with the position of their barge and the number of sparrow tokens owned give the end game score, and the player with highest score wins. The cathedral area is a three by three grid of action tiles. On their turn, the active player slides a new action tile, randomly drawn from the bag, from the outside into the grid sliding another tile out. That tile stays in its spot on the outside of the grid and no other player can use that row or column until the tile is removed. The three tiles left in that row or column (two old ones and the new one, just added), represent the active player’s three actions for their turn.

– Image by boardGOATS

Thus, players get one random action (drawn from the bag) and choose the other two. There are five different actions represented by tiles in different colours. These are: clear tiles on one of the four sides of the cathedral area (making more options playable), place a Seal, buy or play a card, move the player’s barge, or take money. Points are scored during the game through Seals and Coats of Arms, and at the end of the game for any sparrows and for the position of their barge on the Danube. The largest source of points though is through cards. These can be acquired by exchanging tiles for cards or as a byproduct of buying Seals. When played, the active player can either discard the card for the card bonus which they can use during the game, or place the card in front of them, to obtain the points bonus at the end of the game. A set of three different trade cards gets a bonus of three points while three the same gives a six point bonus. Cathedral cards are the most profitable, however, with a complete set of three cathedral cards netting a massive eighteen points, but they can be correspondingly difficult to get.

– Image by boardGOATS

Red and Burgundy were new to the game so there were some blank faces during the explanation and they were totally over-awed by the two epic rules books. It wasn’t helped by the cluttered nature of the board, though everyone agreed that the Cathedral action grid movement is very clever. The downside of it though is that it regularly locks up leaving difficult choices, especially for Red who seemed to come off worst. Black commented that it was very busy with four and that meant the game was very different to the two-player experience. Purple moved furthest at first and picked up some early shields to give her a good start. Despite her difficulties with the action grid, Red also picked up quite a lot of shields and generated a huge number of sparrows gave her lots of bonuses and the lead during the game.

– Image by boardGOATS

Burgundy is well known in the group for sighing and moaning about how badly the game is going, shortly before pulling a master stroke that gives him a massive number of points and usually, an unassailable lead. This game was no exception as he produced a massive eighteen points halfway through by trading lots of goods. As he pointed out later, however, it didn’t stop him from coming last this time though. In the event, it was quite close between first and second. Black who made his fortune as an art collector and scored the most from the his River position, demonstrated the value of experience, just pushing Red into second place. Finishing first, the group enjoyed a long postmortem and chit-chat, before the goings on with Viticulture piqued their interest and they wandered over to spectate and enjoy the drama of the final round.

– Image by boardGOATS

With an early start the next day, Black, Purple, Ivory and Green then headed off, leaving Blue, Red and Pine to have yet another go at wresting Burgundy’s “Splendor Crown” from him. Splendor is a really simple engine-building game that we’ve played a lot of late. The idea is that players collect chips and use them to buy cards. These cards can, in turn, be used to buy other cards and allow players to earn Nobles and victory points. People often claim the game is trivial and highly luck dependent, but there has to be more to it otherwise Burgundy would not be as seemingly unbeatable as he is. This time, there were relatively few ruby cards available in the early part of the game, and Red took those that were available. Similarly, Blue took all the emerald cards she could as these were needed for the Nobles. Given the lack of other cards, Burgundy just built his business on onyx and diamonds instead. The paucity of other cards slowed his progress and prevented Burgundy from taking any Nobles. It didn’t stop him taking yet another game though, finishing on fifteen, four ahead of Blue with eleven.

– Image used with permission of boardgamephotos

Learning Outcome: Board layout is very important – it can make an easy game appear complex or a difficult game seem straightforward.

Next Meeting – 4th April 2017

Our next meeting will be on Tuesday 4^th April, 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 Viticulture, where players take on the roles of beneficiaries in rustic, pre-modern Tuscany who have inherited meager vineyards. Each player starts with a few plots of land, an old crushpad, a tiny cellar, and three workers. Using those workers and visitors, players can expand their vineyards by building structures, planting vines, and filling wine orders. The winner is the player with the most successful vineyard in Tuscany.

– Image used with permission of BGG reviewer EndersGame

And talking of wine…

Jeff got on a bus one morning and sat down next to a priest. He was on his way home after a night out and stank of wine, his shirt was stained, his face was all red, and he had a half-empty bottle of wine sticking out of his pocket. He opened his newspaper and slowly started reading.

A couple of minutes later, he asked the priest, “Father, what causes arthritis?”

The priest replied, “Mister, it’s caused by loose living, being with cheap, wicked women, too much alcohol, and contempt for your fellow man.”

“Well, imagine that,” the Jeff muttered in reply and returned to reading his paper.

The priest, thought about what he had said, and after a couple of moments, turned to Jeff and apologised. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be so judgmental. How long have you had arthritis?”

“I don’t have arthritis, Father,” Jeff replied, “But I just read in the paper that the Pope does.”

21st March 2017

As usual, we started with a debate about who would play what. Green picked out a load of games he fancied, including The Voyages of Marco Polo which he had only played the once before and fancied playing again. Blue commented that it was the sort of game that Ivory would probably enjoy and with Black having spent quite a bit of time playing it online, he joined the others to make a trio. The Voyages of Marco Polo, won the Deutscher Spiele Preis in 2015 and was designed by the same pairing that put together Tzolk’in: The Mayan Calendar, another game we have enjoyed recently and is a game we should play more often. The game is played over five rounds with players recreating Marco Polo’s journey to China via Jerusalem and Mesopotamia and over the “Silk Road”. Each player has a different character and special power in the game. Each round, the players roll their five personal dice and can perform use them to perform one action each per turn. The actions include: gathering resources, gathering camels, earning money, buying purchase orders and travelling. The game ends with players receiving victory points for arriving in Beijing, fulfilling the most purchase orders, and having visited the cities on secret city cards that each player gets at the start of the game.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor henk.rolleman

Last time he played, Green had been very successful with Kubilai Khan. This time, after dice rolling to see who started, Green got to go first, but although he had the opportunity to take Kubilai Khan again, he decided to go for a different challenge. So this time Green went for Matteo Polo giving him the white dice and the extra contract every round. Ivory was next and went for Mercator ex Tabriz, a potentially powerful character which would give him an extra resource every time anyone else got one from the favour track or resource selection track. Black, having played often online, opted for Kubilai Khan and starting from Beijing with the immediate ten point bonus, but no other advantage. The fourth character that was rejected by all, was Wilhelm von Rubruk who allowed the player to place houses on cities they passed through without the need to stop (Black commented afterwards that this was a a very difficult character to be successful with). Next, each player received four destination cards from which to choose two. With many groans of dismay everyone quickly discarded one card they felt was all but impossible to complete and then had to choose the worst of the remaining cards for the second discard. No one felt very happy with their selections, but the cards dictated the strategies.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor jsper

For Green the strategy was simple, get as many contracts completed as possible and not worry too much about travelling. However, some of the contracts provided extra free movement on completion, so with minimal travelling some of the cities could be completed. For much of the game Green and Ivory laboured under the false understanding that only one contract could be completed per round. This meant that after he had secured the resources he needed for his one contract, Green was left with some “spare” actions, which he decided to use for travelling and money collection. It was only at the end of the penultimate round that Black corrected their misunderstanding and that although only one contract could be completed per turn, several could be done per round! It was all a little too late for Green though. The extra free contract he got in the last round was a doozy, giving him another new contract when completed, but only yielding three points. Unfortunately the new contract released was also low value at only two points (although it was then easy to complete).

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor henk.rolleman

Meanwhile, Black quietly got on with his game, regularly choosing the six camel resource and buying black dice to travel slowly from Beijing, down the board, and releasing the three action city. He used this to good effect gaining lots of purple resource bundles for contracts. It was while activating one of these city actions he revealed that the number on the die used indicated the number of times it could used. Cries of foul play came from Green and Ivory. Green had used a four spot on the “coins for houses” action before and Ivory would have used his six die on it this round instead of the five coin action space. Black scurried to the rules and discovered that for this “coins for houses” action, it was the number of houses which could be claimed for by the die. In other words, he could use a die of two to claim only two houses even if he had three. A player would need a three spot die to claim for all. So in the end, nothing changed for Ivory and Green, though it was something to try to remember for next time.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor henk.rolleman

Ivory decided that money was important and regularly placed his die in the purse and the “five coin” action. He was able to do because he was gaining so many resources from Black and Green’s actions, thanks to his special character. This kept his contracts ticking over and he managed to travel around the board and complete all but one of his cities and get to Beijing. This left him with with a dilemma in the final round: he needed a high value die and used his spare camels to provide a black, but only rolled a one. Green gave him another camel (thanks to his resource collection). So Ivory placed in the favour track for two more and bought another black die, this time rolled a three… In the end he decided to just take coins to try to get an extra point.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

It was moot in the end. Green managed seven contracts in all, one more than Ivory and two more than Black, so Green got the seven point bonus after all. With twenty-nine coins at the end he was one short of an extra bonus point, though it wouldn’t have been enough. Black had made a mistake in his travelling and not got the cities he meant to – he failed to get one of his cards and only built two houses. Despite this, his ten point bonus for Beijing and several high value contracts gave him second place. Ivory had had a great game though, picking up six contracts, taking second place in Beijing, completing one city card and taking a full 10 points from four cities in total. It was more than enough to give him a three point lead and win the game. Ivory decided that Blue was right, he had really enjoyed The Voyages of Marco Polo.

– Image used with permission of
BGG contributor bovbossi

On the neighbouring table, Blue, Burgundy, Purple and Pine had started off with the “Feature Game”, Habitats, This is a very light tile laying game, which comes with small ceramic animals instead of the more usual wooden player pieces. There are a lot of tile laying games available, but there are a couple of things that make this one a little different. Firstly, tiles selection: there is an array of tiles and on their turn, players move their ceramic animal one step forward, left or right and take the tile it would have landed on and add it to their park. Players can add their tile almost anywhere they want, so long as it borders at least one other tile. The second unusual aspect of the game is the scoring: tiles feature an animal and a terrain, but to score they most be surrounded by a set number of other given terrain tiles. The game is played over four rounds with bonuses after the first three and final scoring at the end of the game. Pine, with his orange Camel started out very strongly making him a bit of a target, however, although there is plenty of interaction, it is quite difficult to interfere with their plans a lot. Burgundy started a little slower, but soon got his “extremely correct little Zebra” picking up tiles he wanted (as Pine said, “All zebras have a Hitler mustache and pink ears, don’t they?”).

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

Purple and her Penguin got a little trapped in the early stages, but got herself out of the mess quite quickly. The bonuses were for the most different landscape tiles in the first round, different numbers of areas in the second and for a small compact park in the third. They didn’t really seem to add much to the scores though, and with hindsight, some players might have done better ignore them completely as it is possible they were more of hindrance than a help since the most anyone got was five points (Pine and his orange Camel). That said, the final scores were quite tight, with Blue and her yellow Leopard finishing just five points ahead of Pine who took a solid second. On reflection, the difference was Blue’s effective use of Diagonal Tower tiles which allowed her to double score a lot of her animals. Interestingly, the most recent edition of Spielbox had had a review of Habitats and they had been decidedly unimpressed. While we agreed that it was quite a light game and certainly wasn’t long, the over-riding view was positive and Burgundy, summed it up when he commented, “Quite liked that”.

– Image by BGG contributor styren

The Voyages of Marco Polo was still underway on the next table, so the group decided there was time for something else. Pink had wanted to play Cottage Garden at the last Didcot Games Club meeting, but the number of players had been all wrong, so he had played it with Blue over the weekend. Since it was fresh in her memory, there was a good chance of getting the rules right. In any case, like Habitats, it is a fairly light tile-laying game, basically the boardgame equivalent of Tetris. Cottage Garden is similar to the earlier, two-player game, Patchwork, but with a slightly different front-end and scoring mechanism. The idea is that at on their turn, the active player chooses a tile from the appropriate row of the square “market garden”, and add it to one of their two flower beds. If they have completed one or both of their flower beds by the end of their turn, then they are scored.

– Image used with permission of boardgamephotos

Scoring is a little unusual: each flower bed (and some flower tiles) feature plant pots and cloches these are scored separately using players personal score tracks. Each track ends at twenty and each player has three cubes they can use for scoring. Placing tiles is facilitated by pussy-cats; each player starts with two sleeping moggy tiles which they can place at any point on their turn to fill up odd spaces and keep the game moving. The “market garden” is really quite interesting, though with four it can feel a little random. The gardener moves round the board so that players choose tiles from successive rows, the idea being that players try to take a tile and plan what they might get next time. This planning is quite difficult with four though as there is a high chance that a player’s next tile will have to be taken from a row diagonal or orthogonal to their previous one which means it is highly likely that someone will have taken what they want. So, for the most part, the game is quite simple, with a lot of depth. However, the final round is a little more tricky and jars a bit.

– Image used with permission of boardgamephotos

To ensure that anyone who has just started new flower beds doesn’t have a large advantage (due to the number of extra moves they would otherwise get), any beds with two flower tiles or fewer is discarded, and from the start of the final round players painfully lose two points per turn until they finish their final bed. Again, Pine made the early running picking up two bonus beehive points for being the first player to get one of his markers to twenty points. Blue wasn’t far behind though and just pipped Purple and Burgundy to the other beehive bonus. One of the really nice things about this game is its rendition and we all had a good time playing with the little wheelbarrow. Although Purple had played Patchwork quite a bit, spacial awareness is not really her thing and she and Burgundy struggled a little. Blue on the other hand, works a lot with symmetry and with the extra experience she soon began to catch Pine and by the end of the game had pushed him into second place.

– Image used with permission of boardgamephotos

The most recent edition of Spielbox had also included a review Cottage Garden which had received similar treatment to Habitats. Although we enjoyed the latter more, weconcluded that Cottage Garden wasn’t a bad game, but the penultimate round dragged a little and the final round felt a bit odd. There’s also no development of the game over it’s duration, i.e. each player is just trying to fill as many beds as possible doing the same thing over and over again, which can make it feel a little repetitive. That said, Blue felt she had enjoyed it more as a two-player game over the weekend as there is more scope for planning, so it is possible that four is too many players. Indeed, nearly 70% of voters on Boardgamegeek are of the opinion that the game is best with three, and that could be a fair conclusion.

– Image used with permission of boardgamephotos

With The Voyages of Marco Polo coming to an end as well and lots of people quite tired, there was just time for Blue to have another go at beating Burgundy at Splendor. This has become and almost fortnightly grudge match, with Burgundy proving to be almost impregnable. This simple set collecting, engine builder is often derided as boring and trivial, yet it is the simplicity coupled with the subtitles that seem to make it so compelling. As is so often the way, Blue started off OK, but this time very quickly fell behind. Burgundy quickly picked up a noble, and although Blue took one as well, and had plans for picking up points, the writing was on the wall long before Burgundy took the third noble and announced he had fifteen points. Blue will have to bring her A-game if she is ever to beat her “Splendid Nemesis”.

– Image used with permission of boardgamephotos

Learning outcome: Spielbox isn’t always right.

Next Meeting – 21st March 2017

Our next meeting will be on Tuesday 21^st March, at the Horse and Jockey pub in Stanford-in-the-Vale. As usual, we will be playing shorter games from 7.30pm as people arrive, until 8pm when we will start something a little longer.

This week the “Feature Game” will be Habitats, a tile laying game in which players build a big wildlife park without cages or fences. Animals need their natural habitats: grassland, bush, rocks or lakes. Points are awarded at the end of the game based on whether an animal’s requirements are satisfied; the player with the most points is the winner.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

And talking of wildlife parks…

Starting his new job at a wildlife park, Jeff asked the Head keeper what he should do for his first task.

“Go and clean out the aquarium” he was told.

Arriving at the aquarium, he discovered that all the fish were dead. He rushed back to the head keeper and asked what he should do.

“Throw them to the lions,” said the head keeper, “The lions will eat anything”.

So, Jeff returned to the aquarium, picked up all the dead fish and threw them into the lion’s cage. That done, he was instructed to go and clean out the ape house. When he got there, he was shocked to discover two of the chimpanzees dead in the cage, so he rushed back for instructions.

“Don’t worry,” said the head keeper, “Just throw them to the lions, the lions will eat anything.”

So Jeff returned to the ape house and threw the dead animals into the lions cage. Next he was told to go along and help clean up the insect house. Busy cleaning out one off the exotic hives, Jeff noticed that in one hive all the bees had died.

“I know what to do,” he thought to himself, “I’ll throw them all to the lions, as the lions will eat anything.” So Jeff he swept up all the dead bees and threw them into the lion cage.

The next day, the zoo obtained a new lioness. The lioness was walking around the new cage for the first time, and started asking the other lions what to expect.

“Hows the accommodation?” she asked.

“Fine,” came the reply from one lion.

“And whats the food like?” she asked.

“Not bad,” answered another lion, “Yesterday, we had fish, chimps and mushy bees…”

7th March 2017

This week we had a very late start, largely thanks to Blue falling asleep, Green debating whether he was coming alone or not, and a wine tasting evening at The Jockey which resulted in an unexpectedly long queue for food. Then there was the inevitably long discussion about what to play. Eventually, we split into two with the first group playing the “Feature Game”, Citrus. This is a fairly simple tile laying game with a surprising amount of depth. The game is played on a fifteen by ten board, sprinkled with a small number of rocks spaces, a similar number of special landscape tiles, four Fincas and ten Finca sites with three of them prepared for building. On their turn, the active player has two options, build or harvest. If they decide to build, they take tiles from the market, paying for them with Pesetas and adding them to the board either expanding an existing area occupied by one of the active player’s workers or beginning a new area. If a new area is established, the active player claims it for their own by placing a worker on it. Instead of building, the active player may harvest one or more of their areas, which awards them with points and income.

– Image used with permission of boardgamephotos

There are a number of clever features which make the game interesting. Firstly, each player has a maximum of five workers who live in their hacienda until they have been placed. Income received from harvesting depends how many workers are in their hacienda after they complete their harvest. For example, if a player has no workers in their hacienda, and on their turn harvests one plantation, they receive two Pesetas. If they chose to harvest another plantation on their next turn, this would then give them a second worker in their hacienda giving them an extra four Pesetas – a total of six Pesetas over the two turn. Alternatively, they could have harvested both plantations in the first turn, but this would only yield a total of four Pesetas. Each player has a limited maximum amount of twelve Pesetas, followed using a money track on the bottom of their hacienda player board.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor Toynan

One of the most novel parts of the game is the market. At the start of the game, twelve tiles are placed on an asymmetric grid consisting of rows of two, three and four tiles. On their turn the active player chooses a row and and takes the tiles paying one Peseta for each one. If, after take plantations from the market, there are three or fewer plantations remaining there, the active player must immediately build a new Finca before restocking the market. They draw the top Finca tile from the stack, choose one of the three building site tiles on the game board, replacing the tile with the new Finca. This building site tile is removed from the game and a new one drawn from the stack, and placed on the matching space on the game board ensuring that there are always three building sites. Since the Finca tile is placed on a building site of the active payer’s choice before they place their plantation tiles, timing a purchase to take this opportunity is a key part of the strategy of the game.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

There are also a small number of tile placement rules: new plantations can be created by placing the tile orthogonal to a Finca, on a road, or tiles can be added to the active player’s preexisting plantations. Each plantation started next to a Finca must be of a different colour. Tiles cannot be placed over rock spaces, nor can they be placed so they force a merger with another players plantation of the same colour. Merging with a vacant plantation is not allowed if it is larger than the one belonging to the active player. When a Finca is completely surrounded (all 8 spaces around it are occupied), it is scored and the Finca tile is flipped over. Each Finca depicts two scores: the number of tiles from all plantations adjacent to the Finca are counted and the player who owns most gets the higher score with the second placed player getting the lower number. Players can also place tiles on spaces occupied by landscape tiles taking the tile which can give special actions or extra points.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor William Hunt

Importantly, all players involved retain their plantations and their workers remain on the board. This means that large plantations that spread to several Finca’s can be highly effective scoring multiple times and when their reach has been exhausted, the they can be harvested yielding large amounts of points. Thus, one of the cleverest parts of the game is the aspect of timing: understanding when a plantation has exceeded its usefulness and is ready for harvest, making sure that all large plantations are harvested before the end of the game is key., and our game was no exception. It was very cagey at the start with everyone playing for position, but nobody keen to start finishing off Fincas as it was guaranteed to give someone else points. Eventually, players were forced to complete Fincas as they needed to be able to get cash and to do that, they had to harvest. Pine took a substantial lead and soon Blue and then Purple left Burgundy far behind with nothing.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

Eventually Burgundy got off the mark, but it became something of a running joke how Burgundy was at the back and we were all waiting for some incredible move. In the end it didn’t really happen like that, but he did gradually bring himself back into contention. Blue was convinced Pine had it as he had a very large lime plantation that gave him a lot of points as covered a lot of ground connecting several Fincas together, and would give even more when he harvested it. Everyone made lots of mistakes, taking workers off when they shouldn’t have etc., but some were more costly than others. The game ends when the last plantation tile is bought and placed, so the end of the game, like the beginning was quite cagey with everyone trying to maximise the number of points they could get, and make sure they could harvest as many of their remaining plantations as possible. In the end it was a very close game, but Pine had not picked up any “Wild Horse” tokens, which proved costly with Blue pushing him into second place in the final scoring. It was the tussle for third that was tightest though, with Purple just managing to fend off Burgundy.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

Meanwhile, on the next table, Black had joined Green and Ivory in a game of Fresco. This is a game where players are master painters working to restore a fresco in a Renaissance church. Each round begins with players deciding what time they would like to wake up for the day. The earlier they wake up, the earlier they are in turn order, and the better options they get. However, if they waking up early too often, the apprentices become unhappy and stop working as efficiently. Players then decide their actions for the turn, deploying their apprentice work force to the various tasks: buying paint, mixing paint, working on the fresco, raising money to buy paint by painting portraits, and even going to to the opera to increase the apprentices’ happiness and inspire them. Points are scored mostly by painting the fresco, which requires specific combinations of paints. For this reason, players must purchase and mix their paints carefully and beat the other players to the store to buy the pigments and fresco segments they would like to paint.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor jsper

Green was keen to play with the third and final expansion module (that comes with the base game), and Ivory and Black were happy to give it a go. This expansion uses the additional paint splodges on the back of the completed paint tiles of the fresco. If a player gets thee identical splodges (or any three random colours, or indeed even no colours), he can “exchange” them for a Bishops Favour bonus tile. This reduced his income, but does give an additional paint cube as well as bonus points. Although Green went first (after a random selection from the bag), he chose to get up later, with both Black and Ivory getting up earlier. Therefore Ivory got first pick in the first round. He hadn’t played it before, but quickly realised that a key aspect of the game is getting the good paint from the market before anyone else can take them. He combined this strategy with regular trips to the theatre (to make up for his early rising) and portrait painting (to fund his market purchases).

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor ckirkman

Unfortunately this strategy left Ivory with fewer apprentices to mix paints and paint the fresco, so he spent most of the game behind Black and Green on the score track. This meant he regularly had first dibs on the alarm clock and could have changed strategy whenever he chose. He eschewed the Bishops favours for most of the game, favouring the income over the bonus points and “free” paint. Green used his late rising to grab whatever he could from the market cheaply and paint whatever he could of the fresco, using his spare cash to move the bishop to more favourable locations. The tiles he accumulated he was able to gain income from , meaning he was never short of cash to buy what he could. The regular painting in the church meant he gained tiles early on and was able to be the first to exchange them for the Bishops Favour, and he maintained a modest lead through most of the game. Towards the end of the game, Green was able to grab that early morning slot, buy the expensive quality paints he really needed and paint three high value tiles in one turn. This brought about the last round, but he had few resources left to do much in it.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor Toynan

Black played a canny game of “piggy in the middle” most of the time, and was able to get a good turn over in paint, mixing and fresco painting. He kept pace with Green on the Bishops Favours, gaining the valuable three purple one for ten points and free purple every round (purple being the hardest colour to get as normally it can only be mixed from red and blue). In the final round, Ivory went first, choosing to mix for some final alter painting. This left two tiles in the church (either side of the bishop), which left them available to Black along with a three big colour alter job which pushed him ahead of Green. Green, going last, had little paint and only managed a big alter painting, but it wasn’t enough and he was still four points behind Black. Converting the remaining money into points, Ivory added a massive ten points to his tally, but with twelve and thirteen coins respectively, Black and Green were equal, picking up an additional six points each giving Black a well deserved victory. In the final game analysis we decided we enjoyed the Bishops Favour and Black felt it was better than the extra colours expansion. Green still felt the portrait cards were best, but combining both could make for a very interesting game, one for next time perhaps.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor jsper

With both Fresco and Citrus finishing at much the same time, Ivory and Green went home leaving everyone else to shuffle chairs and decide what to play next. There wasn’t a huge amount of time and nobody was terribly keen to play anything too “thinky”, so it wasn’t long before Las Vegas came out. This is a strange game which has masses of downtime, yet seems to get played every time it is brought. Part of this is probably because it falls into that category of being a game nobody minds playing although, few would say it was a game they actively want to play. In truth, it is almost more of an activity than a game really, but we find it quite relaxing towards the end of the evening. The game itself is a very simple betting game. Players begin their turn by rolling 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.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor ckirkman

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. The really clever bit 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 and the Slot Machine mini-expansion from the 2015 Brettspiel Advent Calendar. The large dice are double weight and count as two in the final reckoning. The Slot Machine acts 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 play the game unusually slowly, we generally stop after just three rounds rather than the four recommended in the rules. This time, the game was tight between first and second, but Purple just pipped Pine to the post, winning by $10,000.

– Image by boardGOATS

We were almost out of time, but there was perhaps time for something quick. Since Pine had expressed dismay at missing the “Feature Game” last time, we decided to give Bokken Schieten (aka Ziegen Kriegen or Cliff Hanger) a quick go, as “it really does only take ten minutes to play”. It turned out that Black and Purple had also missed out last time, but that didn’t slow things down too much as it is not a complex game. The idea is that 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. The player who plays the lowest card plays draws a Goat Island card and places the goat-meeple on one end, choosing which end will become start Goat Island. The game continues with players playing cards and winning tricks, and the player who plays the lowest numbered card adding to Goat Island, choosing whether to add a large or small amount to the total. At the end of the game players count the number of goat heads on their cards and the winner is the player with the highest total that does not exceed the sum of the numbers on Goat Island.

– Image by boardGOATS

There were lots of appreciative remarks about the fabulous “goaty” artwork, which features “zen-goat”; “artist-goat”, and even a “bored-goat” (or should it be a “boardGOAT”?). We started out a little tentatively, but the game as taken by Black who managed to successfully exactly hit the Goat Island target. Since it really had taken less than fifteen minutes (ten to play and five to explain), since everyone now understood how to play, we decided to give it another go. As in the first round, Burgundy continued to apply his “winning” 6 Nimmt! strategy, picking up a massive forty-two goat heads. With a limit of just eleven, however, it was Blue who took the game, with just one head more than Pine. Much hilarity ensued when Pine, trying to work out how to pronounce Bokken Schieten idly mused wither “kk” in Dutch was actually pronounced like “tt” in English… On a bit of a roll, with the cards out, we ended up playing a third round. This one went to Purple, giving her a second victory which made her evening, especially given how thrilled she had been at beating Burgundy in Citrus.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: A game may take ten minutes, but only if it is played just once…

Next Meeting – 7th March 2017

Our next meeting will be on Tuesday 7^th March, at the Horse and Jockey pub in Stanford-in-the-Vale. As usual, we will be playing shorter games from 7.30pm as people arrive, until 8pm when we will start something a little longer.

This week the “Feature Game” will be Citrus, a tile laying game where players are building citrus plantations. In order to build, however, it’s essential to harvest plantations from time to time as this is the only way to bring in new income, but when is the timing right? And most importantly, which plantation should be harvested, thus taking it out of the race for the important points during the scoring?

– Image used with permission of boardgamephotos

And talking of citrus fruit…

Jeff had been suffering from a cold, so went to the market trying to buy some oranges. He asked at the first stall he came to, but the stall-holder apologised and explained he had no citrus fruit today. So, Jeff continued round the market asking everywhere for oranges, but to no avail. Eventually he came back to the first stall and thought he’d try his luck again, but again, the the stall-holder apologised and explained he had no citrus fruit today.

By this time, Jeff was desperate and begged the stall-holder, who was beginning to get exasperated. In the end, he said to Jeff, “Answer a three questions and I will get you your oranges from the back.”

Jeff agreed and the man started asking his questions, “First, spell ‘cat’ for me, as in catastrophe.”

Jeff thought for a moment and then replied, “C A T”.

“Very good,” the stall-holder said, “Now spell ‘dog’, as in dogmatic.”

Jeff didn’t hesitate this time, “D O G,” he responded.

Finally, the stall-holder asked, “Now spell, ‘flip’, as in oranges.”

Jeff paused a moment, puzzled. “But there is no ‘flip’ in oranges,” he answered eventually. The stall-holder replied, “That’s exactly what I’ve been trying to tell you – No Flippin’ Oranges!”

21st February 2017

We started the evening setting up the card games, The Golden Sails and 3 Sind Eine Zu Viel!, but as more players arrived and time was getting on, we abandoned them in favour of the “Feature Game”, Bokken Schieten (aka Ziegen Kriegen or Cliff Hanger). This is a game that that arguably should be come the group’s signature game as it is very simple little trick taking card game all about goats. As the rules were explained, Grey (on one of his rare, but much valued appearances), commented that it was like Blackjack (aka Pontoon or Vingt-et-Un) – i.e. play to a limit, but exceed that limit and you are bust. The idea is that 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. The player who plays the lowest card plays draws a Goat Island card. These have two ends with different numbers on them, so the first “loser” takes a card and places the goat-meeple on one end, choosing which end will become part of Goat Island.

– Image by boardGOATS

The game continues with players playing cards and winning tricks, and the player who plays the lowest numbered card adding to Goat Island, choosing whether to add a large or small amount to the total. At the end of the game, the total of the four cards that make up the island define the limit and players who exceed that value are out. The catch is that players are not summing the face value of the cards (which go from one to fifty), instead, a little like 6 Nimmt!, they are counting goats head symbols which have little relation to the face value of the cards. We played the game twice through, since we made a bit of a mess of it the first time. After a long discussion about whether completed tricks should be placed face down or not, Red who led first misunderstood and thought the cards were played face down, so that screwed up her first turn and lumbered her with a pile of cards she didn’t want.

– Image by boardGOATS

This led to Grey’s comment that the game was poorly designed as once a player is bust their game is over. In fact though, the game is so short that effective player elimination doesn’t matter that much and in any case, players who are out can still try to take as many others with them as possible. After the first hand (taken by Grey), we gave it another try. By this time, Blue had managed to find out who leads after the first trick so instead of passing the honour round the table, we played correctly and the winner led. The second game went to Red, and was definitely more fun as we began to see what the aim of the game was and how to screw up other people. We were just beginning to get the hang of it, but felt we should move on to something else now everyone had arrived. It was genuinely very quick though, so we’ll probably play it again and it might be worth trying some of the variants too.

– Image by boardGOATS

With such a short “Feature Game” and everyone being far too polite, we spent a lot of time deciding what to play next. Orleans, Terraforming Mars, Viticulture and Agricola were all on the table, but nobody wanted to commit in case something better came along, or perhaps because they genuinely didn’t really mind and were happy to fill in once those who did mind had made a choice. Eventually, Magenta said she would like to play Isle of Skye and several said they’d be happy to play that if others wanted to play something else. Ivory on the other hand said he was quite happy to play Agricola (which had been brought with him in mind, then Green walked in, making things slightly more complicated as with nine players one game would have to be a five-player which might make it long. In the end Red got fed up with people being indecisive and started to direct people: first she made a three player game of Agricola, then she found two to join Magenta playing Isle of Skye which left Blue, Burgundy and Red to find something else to play, which ended up being Imhotep.

– Image by boardGOATS

Imhotep is a very simple game that we’ve played a few times since is was nominated for the Spiel des Jahres last year. On their turn, the active player chooses one of four actions: procure new stones; load stones on a boat; sail a boat to a monument; or play an action card. Players can only store a maximum of five stones and when they procure stones they can collect a maximum of three. Stones are loaded onto ships one at a time, but which of the five possible destinations the boats end up at and the order they are unloaded in is vital, so timing and planning is everything. What makes it particularly tricky is that the best plans in the world can be crushed by opponents with one small action: when they take a boat to the “wrong place” or “at the wrong time”. There are four ships and five building locations, so one doesn’t get visited and the round ends when all four boats have sailed.

– Image by boardGOATS

The building locations are double sided so the game can be played with the less complex Side A, the slightly more confusing Side B, or a mixture of the two. Red had struggled last time she had tried Imhotep since she ended up playing with two people who had tried it before and wanted to play with Side B without fully appreciating how much more complexity it adds. This time, therefore, we stuck to the simpler Side A, but instead added the Stonemason’s Wager Mini Expansion to give it just a little extra interest. This little promotional item allows players a one-off, extra option: the chance to bet on which monument will have the most stones in it at the end of the game. Otherwise the game is unchanged and there are six rounds in total, as usual, with points scored in different ways for the different buildings; the player with the most points at the end is declared the best builder in Egypt.

Imhotep: The Stonemason's Wager Mini Expansion

– Image by boardGOATS

This time, Blue and Burgundy started out visiting the Market picking up statues, but with both in the same market it was always going to be a struggle. Meanwhile, Red stole an essentially insurmountable lead in the Obelisks. Blue took a green card that would yield a point for every three stones in the Burial Chamber at the end of the game, so she tried to encourage boats to go there. Unfortunately, because she also nearly picked up a significant score on the Burial Chamber, but Burgundy was first forced to obstruct her plans and then Red and Burgundy started sending boats to the Temple instead. In general, it was quite a cagey game with everyone concentrating on not letting anyone take too many points rather than trying to make a killing themselves. Going into the final scoring, it was all quite close. Red took the points for the Stonemason’s Wager, and Burgundy took points for statues, but Blue had a lot of bonus points from a range of sources, giving her first place, ten points ahead of Burgundy in second.

– Image by boardGOATS

Imhotep finished, but next game was not far behind, so Blue, Red and Burgundy played a couple of quick hands of Love Letter while they waited. With its quick play, this micro-game is one of our go to fillers. The idea is that each player has a single card in hand, and on their turn they draw a second and choose one of the two to play. Each card has an action and a number, one to eight. Players use the actions to try to deduce information about which cards others are holding and, in turn use that to eliminate them. The winner is either the last player standing or the player with the highest ranking card at the end of the game. In the first round, Blue was caught holding the Princess leaving Burgundy to take the round. The second played out to the final card. With just two possible cards left and the Princess still hiding, Red took a chance and played the Prince, forcing Blue to discard her hand. This meant she had to pick up the set-aside card, which was, of course, the Princess, making it a two-way tie.

– Image by boardGOATS

On the next table, Magenta, Purple and Grey had been playing a game of Isle of Skye: From Chieftain to King. This won the Kennerspiel des Jahres last year, and has proven to be quite popular with our group. The game is a sort of upgraded tile laying game with a lot in common with Carcassonne, but with the added feature of an auction at the start of each round and scoring at the end of each round. The scoring is one of the interesting parts of this game as the four scoring criteria change from game to game and, and each one scores three times during the course of the game. Choosing how to prioritise these to drive a strategy is one of the keys to playing well. This time, with points available throughout for completed areas (lakes and mountains), this was a clear target, however, identifying a strategy and making it work are two different things.

– Image by boardGOATS

For example, Purple was unlucky that she was unable to get any tiles with cows on roads until the final round, which meant she struggled to build a score early in the game. Although this meant she picked up the bonus money for being at the back, she still struggled to get the tiles she wanted. Similarly, Grey was unlucky in that he placed a tile that later became an real obstacle making it difficult for him to place tiles later and get points. It was Magenta though who had been able to build an early lead, and kept it throughout picking up points every round. A couple of lucky tile draws gave her good tiles that both Grey and Purple wanted making it a sellers market, and leaving Magenta with lots of cash to spend towards the end of the game. Going into the final scoring, Magenta had a sizeable lead, but Grey had a large pile of cash which yielded a tidy eight points and very nearly gave him the game. Magenta managed to fend him off though with the one point she took for her remaining seven coins, making the difference between first place and second.

– Image by boardGOATS

With the games on the first two tables complete, Red, Magenta and Grey went home leaving Purple, Blue and Burgundy to play yet another in the long running campaign to beat Burgundy at Splendor. This simple set collecting, engine builder has proved to be quite intractable. Blue and Pine in particular have had several attempts to get the better of Burgundy, but so far he has just had the edge. Sadly this this game was no exception, though the game was very, very tight. There was a shortage of Opals cards available, despite the presence of lots of cards needing them. Emeralds were also quite scarce at the start, but Burgundy managed to build a substantial collection of Diamonds to keep the threat alive. Blue thought she had finally got Burgundy trapped but in the final round Purple took a card and the replacement was a sapphire that Burgundy could take and gave him eighteen points, one more than Blue (who was last in the turn order). Yet another very, very close game – we’ll get him in the end…

– Image used with permission of boardgamephotos

Meanwhile, all evening, Ivory, Black and Green had been engaged in an game of Agricola. This had started out with an extensive effort to disentangle the cards for the base game from the myriad of expansions Blue had somehow crammed into the box. Once this was sorted though, and the game was set up, a rules explanation was necessary as Ivory hadn’t played it before. The archetypal worker placement game, players star out with a farming couple and a shack and during the game try to build up their farmstead, livestock and family, the winner being the player with the most successful farm. Actions available include things like upgrading the farmhouse, ploughing and sowing fields, enclosing areas, taking livestock, and, of course, procreating. One of the clever parts of the game is that each round, an additional action become available, but the order of these is not known in advance. The stress is provided by harvests that occur at intervals during the game and require players to have enough food to feed their family, or resort to begging (which yields negative points at the end of the game).

– Image by boardGOATS

This time, instead of playing the family game, we played the full version which includes occupation and improvement cards. The challenge with this game is to use the cards effectively, but not to get carried away and try to force the strategy to use cards to its detriment. Green started with occupations and used them to quickly fenced a large padock for sheep (building one gave him three extras). He then ploughed and got three fields up and running before going back to enclosing pasture for cattle. Despite only having two family members, he struggled to have enough food until he eventually managed to nab a cartload of clay and used it to build a an oven, which proved invaluable at keeping hunger at bay. Towards the end, he finally managed to develop his family and added a pig for a total of twenty-nine.

– Image by boardGOATS

Black played a quiet game, also didn’t grow his family and farm developed only slowly too. As he often does, Black instead concentrated on home-making and upgraded his house to clay and then stone in quick succession. Somehow he didn’t struggle at harvest time as much as Green, probably because he went into building ovens which provided his food. This was at the expense of his farm, which remained stubbornly small, right until the end. The unused spaces cost him though, as did his lack of pigs, and he finished with a fine house, but only one child and a score of twenty-three points.

– Image by boardGOATS

Ivory went for a different strategy, starting by going for lots of food, and support for getting food later. In particular he made good use of his Mushroom Picker. Building his food engine so early enabled him to grow his family early in the game giving him extra actions. These he used to quietly collect lots of resources, which enabled him to build a large field for sheep. He then enclosed second pasture and just swiped a field full for boar before Green got them. He only ploughed late (perhaps it was the snowy landscape that delayed him), but his early food strategy really paid off. All his extra cards were valuable too and added ten points to his score, giving him a total of forty-one points and victory by a sizeable margin, despite Green’s inadvertent cheating!

– Image by boardGOATS

Just as Agricola came to an end, Splendor finished too. So, after helping to shoe-horn the miriad of little pieces back into the boxes, Ivory and Green headed off leaving Black to join the others. The ever dwindling numbers were boosted with the arrival of Pine, who had been two-timing us with the WI – he said they had the lowest average age of any WI he’d ever come across, so maybe that was the appeal. The remaining five gamers felt there was time for one more game, as long as we could keep it to about forty-five minutes. We are not the quickest at playing, or choosing and time was beginning to get tight, so we opted for Bohnanza as it played quicker than other suggestions and it wouldn’t need any rules reminders (like 11 Nimmt! and Port Royal). The game is one of our old staples, is quick to learn and keeps everyone involved throughout. The key to 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. This can lead to free gifts, but also players being nasty and refusing to take even the apparently most lucrative trades.

– Image by boardGOATS

This time, Pine was making up for lost time, and the well-known good nature of the WI hadn’t rubbed off. He accused Burgundy of just about everything he could think of, in an effort to persuade everyone else not to trade with him. Black had one of his worst games for a long time with all the wrong cards coming up at the wrong time giving him nothing to work with. Otherwise it was a very tight game. In the dying turns, despite Black’s protestations, Purple and Pine both gave Blue exceptionally favourable trades (possibly in an effort to square things from earlier, but more likely to ensure that Burgundy didn’t win – again). Much to Pine’s surprise, that left him in joint first place with Blue, one coin ahead of Burgundy (possibly the most important factor to him). Feeling she had been gifted a joint win by Pine’s generosity at the end, Blue offered to concede to Pine, but on checking the rules he won anyhow on the tie-breaker, as the player with the most cards in hand at the end.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor spearjr

Learning Outcome: Cheating doesn’t pay.

Boardgames in the News: KickStarting a Boardgame Café with Radio 4

Over the last few years, boardgaming has become increasingly acceptable amongst the general public and one consequence of this has been the continuing rise of the boardgame café. Boardgame cafés have come a long way since Thirsty Meeples opened in Oxford just three and a half years ago. In fact, one online map has the number in the UK now totalling over forty. There have been several articles commenting on their spread too, including an interesting recent article on Radio 4‘s consumer affairs programme, You & Yours covering crowd funding, boardgames and modern café culture.

Some of the boardgameing reports in the media have been quite poor, but this is one of the better articles. The reporter, Bob Walker visits the two boardgame cafés in Nottingham, Ludorati and The Dice Cup, interviewing both staff and customers who are clearly having a good time playing a range of games including Munchkin Zombies and while Risk as well as the inevitable Monopoly get a mention. More interesting is an interview with Peter Blenkharn from Inside the Box , a small company who are producing Sub Terra which has just raised £368,256 via KickStarter. There are a number of other interesting statistics quoted, for example, it is apparently estimated that the board and card game market in US is worth $1.2 billion. Bob Walker also talks to Matt Jarvis, editor of Tabletop Gaming Magazine, which was originally quarterly, but is now bimonthly due to increasing popularity. Matt cites a recent Tabletop Gaming Magazine report which claims that tabletop games made over $100 million last year on KickStarter, more than four times what computer games achieved in the same period. Much of this was raised by miniature games so the recent reprint of Kingdom Death: Monster alone raised over $12 million – the sort of figure that producers of Euro, or family games, would never dare to dream of – even the infamous Exploding Kittens only raised $8.7 million. Nevertheless, it is clear boardgaming continues to go from strength to strength.

– Image from a2milk.co.uk