Author Archives: nannyGOAT

Winter 2017 Oxford Meeples Big DoG

On Saturday, February 4^th, Oxford Meeples is again opening the doors of Wolvercote Village Hall to the general public once more and inviting people to join them for another Big Day of Gaming. As usual, the Oxford Meeples will be bringing a large number of their games, but everyone is welcome to bring their own too. The hall opens at 10 am with gaming starting from about 10.30 am and continuing ’til late. Entry is free, although donations towards rent of the hall and refreshments will be appreciated as always. Children are welcome when accompanied by an adult. Several of the GOATS are hoping to attend, but that will depend on weather and other commitments.

– Image from oxfordmeeples.org

OxCon 2017

This weekend is OxCon (distinct from OxCon, the Oxford Comic Con), a weekend of gaming held every January in The Mitre pub in the middle of Oxford. It has acquired almost mythical status since publicity hitherto has almost entirely been by word of mouth and often quite last minute. For those who are about on Friday evening there will be a meal at Pizza Express at 6.30pm and some gaming afterwards. As well as general gaming, there will also be the Settlers of Catan contest on the Saturday with a dexterity contest on the Sunday (to include games like Bandu, Rhino Hero, Riff Raff, and Rampage). Entry is £3 for students and £5 for non-students, payable at the door. Not sure how many of the GOATS will make it, that will depend on weather and family commitments, but it should be a good event.

– Image from pubsofoxford.co.uk

Boardgames in the News: Ant & Dec’s Trivial Takeaway

There has been a long history of trivia games including, including well known titles like Scene It? and Trivial Pursuit. There are a number of obvious problems with this sort of game. Firstly, it’s no fun playing when the “spod” in the corner always wins; this leads to the second problem which arises when one player decides the only way to win is to learn all the answers. Some games designers use ingenious methods to get round this problem. For example, the questions in Wits & Wagers have numerical answers that players are very unlikely to know, but can usually make an educated guess at. For example, “In dollars, how much was each extra paid to run across the beach and scream in the movie Jaws?” These questions don’t solve the problem in themselves, but in Wits & Wagers it’s not the answers that are really important, as players bet on each other’s suggestions with the pay out going to bets on the answer that most closely matches the truth, crucially, without exceeding it.

– Image used with permission of
BGG contributor domcrap

There is another way to stop the family’s “useless-fact sponge” winning every time though, and that is to add a sprinkle of wrong answers. This was approach accidentally exploited by Paul Lamond Games, maker of Ant & Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway: The Board Game. They mistakenly relocated Stonehenge in Somerset, misplaced the Moon by nearly fifteen thousand miles and killed off Albert Einstein six years early! Paul Lamond Games have agreed to provide replacement cards for all that want them, however, a better solution might be to cut losses and replace the whole game with something better like Wits & Wagers, Codenames or one of the thousands of superb modern boardgames that are now available.

Ant & Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway: The Board Game

– Image from paul-lamond.com

Next Meeting – 24th January 2017

Our next meeting will be on Tuesday 24^th January, at the Horse and Jockey pub in Stanford-in-the-Vale. As usual, we will be playing shorter games from 7.30pm as people arrive, until 8pm when we will start something a little longer.

This week the “Feature Game” will be Bohemian Villages, which is a tactical dice-rolling game that allows you to claim different types of buildings in shared villages and use the powers of those buildings.

– Image by boardGOATS

And talking of Villages…

The village elder was setting out to a meeting of the heads of local villages. He had only just started on his way (on foot, of course), when Jeff called out from behind asking him to wait. When he caught up, Jeff asked where the elder was going and whether he could accompany him on his journey. The village elder explained that he was going to the nearby town to represent their village at a meeting with other village leaders.

Jeff looked impressed and fell silent for a few minutes as they continued to walk on steadily, side by side. Then he said, thoughtfully, “That’s an awfully old coat you’re wearing. It’s worn at the elbows and, look, there’s a stain right down the front. What kind of impression will it give of our village at the regional meeting?”

The village elder was a little annoyed, but he knew that Jeff meant well so he overlooked the remarks. He merely replied in mild tones that it couldn’t be helped because he didn’t have another coat. Jeff had an idea though, “I know, why don’t I lend you my coat? It’s brand new, and you will be able to hold up your head and our village’s reputation at the meeting.”

The village elder was going to decline, but thought better of it, especially when he saw how eagerly Jeff was making his generous offer. So they stopped and exchanged coats right there on the road, and continued on their way.

By and by they saw a traveller coming toward them from the other direction. As they neared each other, Jeff greeted him eagerly and with a proud, proprietary air launched in on energetic introductions. “Good morning, sir! This is our village elder. He is going to the local town for a meeting of village elders, and the coat he’s wearing is mine!”

This embarrassed elder no end, and as soon as the traveller was out of earshot he turned on Jeff and said to him angrily, “Why did you have to mention that the coat was yours? Don’t do that again, do you hear? It is injurious to my standing as the village elder.”

Immediately contrite, Jeff readily agreed, and so they continued on their way once again. After a few more miles they saw in the distance another traveller coming slowly toward them, and the village elder looked hard at Jeff and said, “Remember, don’t tell him that the coat is yours.”

Jeff assured him that he wouldn’t make the same mistake twice, and the elder breathed a sigh of relief. As they met the traveller, Jeff again took it upon himself to introduce his illustrious companion, “Good afternoon, sir! This is our village elder. He is going to the local town for a meeting of village elders, and the coat he’s wearing is… his own.”

As soon as they were at a safe distance from the second traveller, the village elder stopped in his tracks, faced Jeff, took him by the shoulders and glared angrily into his eyes. The elder said, “Listen here, what did you mean by that remark? You drew even more attention to the coat by saying it was mine. There is no need to mention the coat at all. If we come upon another traveller, please, please, don’t say anything about the coat again! Do you understand me?”

Jeff assured the village elder that he did indeed understand and that he would never again make the mistake. He was clearly so very sorry that the elder was soon ashamed of having lost his temper. He made his peace with the poor fellow and they set on their way once again. They were nearing their destination when they saw in the distance another traveller making his way toward them. The elder gave Jeff a meaningful look, and Jeff nodded reassuringly, as if to say, “Don’t worry, I’ve got it under control.”

Soon they were close enough for Jeff to begin his introductions, a task which he took very seriously and of which he never seemed to tire. “Good afternoon, sir! This is our village elder. He is going to the local town for a meeting of village elders, but don’t ask me about the coat he is wearing, I don’t know anything about it!”

10th January 2017

A new year, a new log book, and a shortage of people thanks to sickness, work and problematic cars. Pine, Magenta and Blue were the first to arrive, so while they were waiting for food they decided to get in a quick game of No Thanks!. This used to be one of those games that got played a lot, but for some reason it fell out of favour and was replaced by games like Love Letter, 6 Nimmt! and Om Nom Nom. No Thanks! is a very simple little game where players have to make the binary decision to take a card or pay a chip and pass the problem on to the next player. At the end of the round, players add the face values of the cards together and offset this with any remaining chips to give their total – the smallest value is the winner. The really clever part is that if a player has a run of consecutive cards, then only the lowest counts. Spice is added by the removal of nine cards from the original thirty-two consecutive cards in the deck.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor ckirkman

We first introduced Pine to No Thanks! over Christmas, when he had done rather well at it, this time was a bit different, however, with Blue coming in first with twenty-five in a generally high scoring game. As food arrived, so did the other gamers, with Ivory first and, just as we were explaining the rules to him, Green rolled up as well. The second hand began with Ivory picking up cards. As it went on, he picked up more cards, and more and more. This was excellent for everyone else until it started to look like he might be able to make them into one very long run. In the end, Ivory’s massive gamble didn’t pay off and he finished with ninety points, a massive eighty more than anyone else. It was Magenta who took the round though, her enormous pile of chips offsetting all her cards leaving her with minus one.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

With food over and everyone who was expected present, we decided to move onto our “Feature Game” will be Jórvík. This is a Viking retheme of a game we have played a few times and enjoyed called The Speicherstadt. The game is card based and driven by a novel auction mechanism that somehow doesn’t really feel like an auction. The idea is there is a row of cards and players use their meeples to bid with. They take it in turns to choose which cards they would like to have the option of buying, by placing their meeples in rows below the cards they want. The cards are then “auctioned” in turn with person who who placed their meeple below a card first getting first refusal. The clever bit is that the cost of the card is the same number of coins as there are meeples below the card. When it is their turn, the active player can choose not to to buy the card, but then they must remove their meeple which makes it cheaper for the next player in line. Thus, placing first can be a good thing if you have enough money to back it up, but money is scarce, very scarce.

– Image by boardGOATS

The cards could be contracts (that give points at the end if fulfilled), ships containing goods (that enable players to fulfill contracts), defenders (which help score points if there is an attack of the Picts), craftsmen (which enable players to sell goods for a better price), feasts (which give points the more you have), journey cards (which just give points) or, towards the end of the game, skald cards (which yield points for some other condition). The deck of cards is broken into several batches which ensures that while cards don’t come out in a fixed order, early cards are less powerful than cards that appear later in the game. The basic Jórvík game is quite light, but the new rendition includes the original Kaispeicher expansion. This provides extra cards, though more importantly, it also adds a whole new mechanism that still has the same flavour, but turned on its head.

The new expansion adds a second method for players to get cards: at the start of each round a second row of cards are displayed and, instead of using their turn to place a meeple in the auction, they can use it to reserve a card. This card (and its meeple marker) are then moved to a new row. At the end of the round, after the cards in the usual “auction” have been dealt with, the reserved cards are paid for in the order that they were reserved. The snag is that the cost depends on how many cards were reserved after it. Thus, players who reserve early have the best selection of cards to choose from, but will end up paying if they choose to buy it. This means that players often end up reserving a card, as much as anything else, to stop the other players from getting it. This led to Pine commenting that the game was a bit like window shopping with players standing hopefully next to items they had no hope being able to afford!

– Image by boardGOATS

Only two of us had played the game before (mostly in its original form as The Speicherstadt), and nobody had played with the expansion at all. Everyone tried different strategies, with Magenta trying to collect feasting cards (largely unsuccessfully) and Green beginning by trying to collect defender cards in the hope of being able to scoop up all the points for repelling the Picts. Ivory, Blue and Pine were slower to settle on a strategy, though Ivory was ominously collecting what looked like some very powerful cards. Then, Pine began collecting pink resource cubes, the valuable cloth and successfully used them to fulfill a couple of lucrative contracts. For a long time this looked like it was going to be a winning strategy, until Blue changed tack. She had started by trying to pick up contracts and fighting with everyone else for resources, but it was gradually becoming clear to her that this wasn’t working. Although Blue had fallen foul of the Picts in the first round, since then she had been trying to avoid losing points. This strategy had kept her in the running, and she decided to to actively pursue the points. In the end she finished with thirty-six points, just three ahead of Pine in second place.

– Image by boardGOATS

Despite winning, Blue wasn’t sure about the expansion. She felt it added a largely random element that players had no control over. She felt the that the fact players were reserving cards that only they could buy meant that once someone had selected a card nobody else had a chance to contest it. The only thing they could do was force the price up. Green, on the other hand, said he really liked it and thought it was really clever, though he agreed that with five players it probably wasn’t at its best. In the end, we concluded that it would likely add a lot to two and three player games, which encouraged Blue to get out her copy of The Speicherstadt with Pink to try it with Kaispeicher. Jórvík had taken longer than expected and for Ivory and Magenta it was home time.

– Image by boardGOATS

Living more locally, Green, Pine and Blue had time for a quick game and chose Lanterns: The Harvest Festival. This pretty little tile-laying game was a Christmas present chosen with the group in mind, so this seemed like a good opportunity to give it a go. The game is very simple: players have a hand of tiles and take it in turns to add one to the central “lake”. Each tile has up to four coloured sections and if the tile is placed in such a way that some of these match the tiles they are next to, the active player gets a lantern card of that colour. In addition, every turn, each player gets a card that corresponds to the colour on their side of the tile placed. At the start of their turn, players can make a devotion and trade sets of lantern cards for points tiles. There are three stacks of points tiles, with values decreasing from top to bottom. Each stack corresponds to different sets, with one each for three pairs, a set of seven different and four of a kind. There are also special platform tiles that give players favour tokens. These grease the wheels a little as pairs can be spent to allow players to swap a card for one of a different colour.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

The winner is the player with the most points once all the tiles have been played. This means that there are two competing factors, players want to make as many dedications as they can, but higher value dedications are better. Tile placement was cagey at the start, but before long Green and Blue began making dedications, quickly followed by Pine. It was Green who managed to maintain the highest frequency of dedications though Blue’s early tiles were generally slightly higher in value. Frequency was important and his later tiles were also higher value which meant Green finished ten points clear with fifty one. With bed calling, there was just time to discuss a new idea: “Monster Games” sessions. The idea is that as a group we have quite a lot of games that are too long to play on games nights, so the plan is to arrange ad hoc games afternoons in private residences, with the first one planned for 14^th January.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

Learning Outcome: Sometimes it is better to stop others than make a purchase yourself.

Next Meeting – 10th January 2017

Our next meeting will be on Tuesday 10^th January, at the Horse and Jockey pub in Stanford-in-the-Vale. As usual, we will be playing shorter games from 7.30pm as people arrive, until 8pm when we will start something a little longer.

This week the “Feature Game” will be Jórvík, in which players assume the roles of Viking jarls. They gather prestige points by trading goods, holding big feasts, funding pillages, commissioning craftsmen and hiring soldiers to defend the city against recurring invasions. The game is a re-theme of The Speicherstadt and its expansion, Kaispeicher.

– Image by boardGOATS

And talking of Vikings…

A famous Viking explorer returned home from a voyage and found his name missing from the town register. His wife insisted on complaining to the local civic official, Jeff, who apologized profusely saying, “I must have taken Leif off my census…”

31st December 2016

As is now traditional, we started our New Year’s Eve Party with the gorgeous, dexterity car-racing game, PitchCar, our “Feature Game”. Everyone had played it before except Pine, and, as one of the first to arrive, he got the job of building the track. Never having played it before, the track ended up as a single winding path rather than a circuit, but that didn’t matter, especially as there was a really short space after the chequered flag and we instigated a rule that players had to stop before they ran off the end or they would lose flick and distance in the usual way. The track itself was really quite complex, including the bridge from the first extension, the cross roads from the fifth extension, and the new narrow bend and jump features from the latest extension.

– Image by boardGOATS

Rather than the usual “flying lap” to see who starts, each player had a single flick with the longest going first. Black went the furthest so started in pole position, but promptly caused a log-jam due to the narrow curve at the start that created a bit of a bottle-neck. Once everyone else had got stuck, he took the opportunity on his second turn to make his get away and he did it very effectively quickly building up a commanding lead. Things were a bit tighter in the middle of the field, but it wasn’t long before everyone had spread out a bit and it became a battle between pairs of players for individual places rather than for the race as a whole. The arrival snacks in the form of crisps with dip and that 1970s stable cheese and pineapple on sticks, failed to distract Black who continued to lead the way, and finished well ahead of the rest despite taking a couple of shots at the finish to make sure he didn’t over-shoot. He was followed by Green and Pink who had tussled for position briefly before settling into a steady pattern they maintained to the end.

– Image by BGG contributor visard

With the race over, everyone passed the pieces to Blue who packed them in the case before they crammed themselves round the table for supper of red lentil lasagne, accompanied by salad, home-made bread (onion & cheese and tomato & chorizo), pigs in blankets and devils on horse-back. Once everyone had eaten their fill, we decided to play a second large group game and since Pink had been keen to play it again all Christmas, we went for Ca$h ‘n Guns. This is a simple party game that always goes with a bang. The idea is that each player has a small deck of cards with three bullets and five blanks. After choosing a card, players simultaneously point foam guns at each other. On the count of three players have the opportunity to withdraw, before any “bullet” cards for guns pointing at people are revealed. Anyone still “in” and not shot, then gets a share of the loot. The player with the highest value loot at the end of the game wins.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

This is where the game gets just a little tactical: there are several different types of loot. There is cash – always good; jewelry – valuable, and the player with the most gets a $60,000 bonus, and paintings – the first isn’t worth much but the average value increases if the player acquires more. Players can also choose to take the Godfather role (i.e. first player to choose if they are still “in”), medipacks (useful if you have picked up a bullet wound) and extra bullet cards. There are lots of other options, but although we had extra guns and characters to choose from, with so many people, we decided to stick to the purest form of the game, not even using the character cards (which give special powers).

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

There is something about pointing foam guns at each other that is just intrinsically funny and it brings out all sorts of peculiar traits. The first was that from the start, everyone took the opportunity to have a go at Green which mean that he was knocked out by the end of the third round. Purple started collecting Jewels while Pine, Magenta and Pink began working on their fine-art collections. In the end, the battle for second place was very close with Blue taking it with $91,000, just ahead of Magenta. Pink, however, was miles out in front with more than double the takings of anyone else, finishing with a total of $201,000. Once Pink had finished counting his huge pile, we extricated everyone from the space they were wedged in, moved the table back and got out the second, folding table to give players a little more space. Purple was keen to play Ulm, a game she and Black had played at Essen and liked so much they had brought a copy back with them.

– 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 one of the actions is drawn randomly from the bag, though sparrow tokens acquired during the game enable players to exchange their random tile with one currently on the loading docks. This is an area on the board where five actions tiles are constantly displayed and where players can get get extra tiles, or exchange tiles. 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 their barge, or take money. Every time the active player carries out a Seal action, they place one of their Seals in a city quarter and immediately obtain a specific privilege as a bonus. These privileges vary from quarter to quarter. The river Danube divides the city and the game board north and south. If a player wants to carry out the Seal action, they can choose either the southern northern city quarter, adjacent to where their barge is. The river is navigable only in one direction and a river space can’t contain more than one barge, so other players’ barges are jumped over. This means players can move a surprisingly long way for just one step, if it is timed right.

– Image by boardGOATS

Cards can be acquired by exchanging tiles for cards or as a byproduct of buying seals at the Town Hall or Goose Tower quarter. 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. Points are scored during the game through cards, Seals and Coats of Arms, but also at the end of the game for any sparrows and for the position of their barge on the Danube. Perhaps the largest number of points are available for cards with three points per card, but it is the bonus points that are really key. 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 eighteen points, but they can also be difficult to get.

– Image by boardGOATS

Carrying out a Seal action in the Oath House quarter gives players a Descendant who provides a special ability. Purple was the only one not to get a Descendant with Black taking the Merchant (allowing him to exchange one of his action tiles for one from the docks) and Pine getting the Councilman (giving him more control over the cards he bought). Violet on the other hand took the City Guard who yielded two points for manipulating the action tiles in the cathedral area such that at least one new line of three in one color is formed in the inner grid of the Cathedral area. This sound potentially very lucrative, but is actually quite hard to get to work, especially without compromising other scoring opportunities. To some degree the Descendants dictated the strategies used. Black tried to build sets of cards but was unlucky and they just didn’t fall for him. Purple tried to capitalise on the shields and Violet went for Seals. It was Pine who was the most successful however, very effectively coupling his Councilman with a card strategy with ultimately gave him eight more points than Purple in second place.

– Image by boardGOATS

The down side of the random draw component is that the action grid changes constantly with players sliding new action tiles in and sliding old ones out, which makes planning very difficult. This might explain why Black thought the game shouldn’t take too long, but was still going when midnight struck. Cue Blue on the next table opening a bottle of fizz and covering the herself and the floor with it. After watching other villagers setting off fireworks, Ulm continued, as did Tzolk’in on the other table. They had begun by reminding themselves of the rules. One of our longer, more complicated games, but one we’ve played a few times, Tzolk’in is a worker placement game built round a sumptuous system of gears. The idea is that there is a central wheel dictating time, and five others providing actions. On their turn, players can place workers on the action wheels and at the end of the round, the central wheel turns, moving all the workers round one step making a new action available. In general, the longer a worker is on a wheel, the better the actions available to the player. The really key part of the game, however, is the worker placement and removal: on their turn, players can either take workers and carry out the associated actions, or place workers, but never both.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor bkunes

There is a cost associated with placing workers: the first worker is free, but after that, the cost rises considerably the more workers a player places. Workers can be placed on any of the four wheels, but must be placed in the lowest available space. Placing on the “zero” space of any wheel is free, but if this is occupied, players can place in the next space. Since placing in higher spaces yields better rewards or saves time, for every extra space here is an additional fee, which is paid in the currency of the game, corn. The five wheels, each named after ancient ruined Mayan cities, all provide different actions. Palenque provides corn and wood while the mountain city of Yaxchilan provides corn, wood, stone, gold and crystal skulls. Uxmal, an ancient commercial centre, provides opportunities for players to hire additional workers , interchange corn and resources, as well as enabling them to carry out certain other actions, like build, and pay with corn (when normally specific resources would be required).

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor kilroy_locke

Tikal, the ancient centre of architectural and technological development, provides players with opportunities to build monuments and buildings. It also enables players to enhance the abilities of their workers using technology tracks. There are four technology tracks, each one giving a bonus when players carry out certain actions. For example, the Agriculture Technology provides extra corn or wood when a worker carries out an action that provides these items. To move along a technology track, players typically have to carry out the appropriate action on the Tikal wheel and pay resource cubes (wood, stone or gold). The benefits are cumulative, so further along the track a player is, the more advantage they have, but the more it costs to get there.

– Image used with permission of boardgamephotos

The final wheel, named after the mythical tollan Chichen Itza (known to us as chicken pizza), is a temple where players are supposed to leave crystal skulls (first obtained by visiting Yaxchilan), in return for which players get points and climb steps in the temples. There are three temples, and the higher up the temple players are at the more points they get at the end of the ages. The other main source of points at the end of the game are Monuments and Buildings. At the start of the game a handful of Monument tiles and Buildings tiles are revealed. Monuments are generally very expensive and typically provide points directly, or conditional on some other factor (e.g. the number of workers a player has) at the end of the game. Monuments are not replaced when someone takes and builds them, though a new set is put out at the end of the first age (i.e. half way through the game). Buildings, on the other hand, provide an advantage for use during the game or indirect points, are replaced once someone has taken the tile and are generally single use. Although Farms are a type of building, they are multi-use and provide corn every food day, which can be invaluable.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor kilroy_locke

Food days occur at the end of every age and again at the half-way point. They can be crippling as players have to feed all their workers two corn each. For this reason, a large part of the the first half-age is often spent acquiring corn to make sure nobody starves: starving workers equals lost points. In addition to food days, at the beginning of each round, every player must have three corn, if they don’t, they anger the gods which means they have to drop a step on one of the temples. For this reason, and so that we don’t have to remember to check, we usually just put three corn to one side at the start of the game and then forget about it until the end. In any case, corn is usually in high demand. At the end of each round we place a “corn on the cog” to be taken when someone takes the start player. This is an extra chance to get corn, and one that is usually a bit of a last resort, which means players are always tempted to wait as long as possible before they decide to take it, inevitably leaving someone disappointed.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor bkunes

Unfortunately, we made a mess of the rules. Firstly, we forgot to change the Monuments at the start of the second age, only remembering at about half way through. This was unfortunate and may have inconvenienced Burgundy, but wasn’t the real game-breaker. We had all played the game before, so it really shouldn’t have happened, but when we were setting up the game, Blue placed the skulls around the wheel in the action spaces. At the time she wondered why there were so few crystal skulls in the general supply, but with so many other things going on she didn’t question it further. This meant that instead of getting a skull from Yaxchilan and then taking it to Chichen Itza, players just went to Chichen Itza and got skulls. At some point Pink asked what the skulls were for, but at the end of the game any left overs are worth three points so that was what we said. It was only after we had run out of skulls and Green asked whether there was any point in Pink placing his workers on the Chichen Itza and whether the spaces could be re-used that we realised our error.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor jsper

This rules error undoubtedly skewed the game giving the early adopters of the Chichen Itza wheel early success. Pink and Burgundy were the first to go for this strategy and Blue quickly realised how effective it was and joined them. Everyone had the opportunity to capitalise on the rules error, however, Green eschewed the chance and focused on climbing up the temples, but suffered as a result. Blue managed to pick up a monument that rewarded wood tiles taken from Palenque and netted her thirty-two points for that alone at the end of the game. Despite being awash with corn throughout the game she hadn’t been able to make the most of it. Blue finished five points behind Pink and Burgundy (in spite of having almost no corn throughout) who tied for first place with eighty points.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor aleacarv

Learning Outcome: Even when you think you know the game, check the rules when things don’t seem right.

Boardgames in the News: Another Year, Another Take-Over

For many, Asmodée is the boardgame equivalent of the Borg, so it should be no surprise that the New Year brings yet another Asmodée take-over story. This time the targets are the German publisher and distributor Heidelberger Spieleverlag, the French/Spanish company Edge Entertainment, and the Spanish distributor Millennium. Heidelberger are the German production partner for many companies that are better known in the UK including Fantasy Flight Games, Czech Games Edition, Iello, Indie Boards & Cards and Ferti; they specialise in fantasy, science fiction and horror Games as well as being the distributor for Alea Spiele in Germany. Edge performs a similar function within the French and Spanish games markets while Millennium is primarily a distributor, but has also produced French versions Citadels and Sutter’s Mill. The connection between them is that they were all foreign language partners for Fantasy Flight Games who were bought by Asmodée two and a half years ago. So, these acquisitions give Asmodée complete control of brands like Star Wars: X-Wing Miniatures Game, Android: Netrunner, Cosmic Encounter and Arkham Horror.

– Image from asmodee.de

The list of Asmodée’s “partners” is extensive, so the question is, who will be next?

29th December 2016 – boardGOATS do the Quiz

Our local is the The Horse and Jockey pub in Stanford-in-the-Vale, and we meet there every fortnight on a Tuesday. Every Thursday, they also hold a pub quiz, so as it was Christmas, we decided to get a special GOATS team together. Blue, Pink, Pine, Violet and Violet’s mum were all up for it, so we booked a table for 8pm to have dinner first. Unfortunately, Blue had over-indulged on turkey at lunch so had fallen asleep in the afternoon. Although Pink had woken her, he failed to do so very effectively, so they were a bit late and by the time they arrived, there was a bit of a queue for food. Not to worry though, we were nearly finished by the time the quiz started and were quite able to answer the first few questions and eat at the same time.

– Image by boardGOATS

The quiz typically consists of five rounds of ten general knowledge questions, a picture round, a “Who am I” round, and two anagrams. The “Who am I” round consists of five clues with players giving answers after each clue and teams scoring progressively less as the clues progress. This and the anagrams (which score three points each) can be quite critical and often sort the sheep from the goats. Only Pine and Blue had been before, and both had been part of teams that had not really troubled the scorers, so we were more than a little pleased when we got four points for the “Who am I” (Claire Balding, who apparently went to the same school as Miranda Hart) and, mostly thanks to Pine, the full six points for both anagrams! Correctly identifying Kim Jong Un (obscured by a Santa hat, beard and glasses) as well as most of the others in the picture round meant that we finished strongly. With a grand total of fifty-four points, we took first place, three points clear of “Something Simple” who finished second. After a quick chat with a nice couple from Faringdon who had been marking our answers and had played Karuba and Ticket to Ride with their family over the holidays, we took care of the complicated matter of the bill (taking into account our winnings) and Violet and her mum went home.

– Image by boardGOATS

Since Pine had his drink to finish and Blue and Pink had taken the precaution of bringing along a couple of small games, we decided to do what gamers do best and play games. First up was No Thanks!. This is a great little “push your luck” game where a card is turned over and players have to take the card or pay a mini poker chip to pass the problem on to the next player. At the end of the round, players add the face values of the cards together and offset this with any remaining points to give their total – the smallest value is the winner. The really clever part is that if a player has a run of consecutive cards, then only the lowest counts. Spice is added by the removal of nine cards from the original thirty-two consecutive cards in the deck. Blue did appallingly badly throughout, and while Pine won both the first two rounds, Pink won the final one by such a large margin that his aggregate total was the lowest overall, making him the winner.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

After that we played a few quick rounds of Love Letter. This simple game played with just sixteen cards is almost the ubiquitous filler game. Starting with one card, on their turn players draw a second and choose one to play. Each card has a number and an action and the player left with the highest card at the end is the winner. Pink tried to insist that Blue was always the Baron, only to get caught out as the Baron himself. Blue started the next round as the Princess, so swapped cards with Pink and promptly caught him on the next turn. In contrast, Pine managed to go nearly an entire round as the Princess only to be caught just before the end. It was close and it all came down the the last game, but in a move that would have drawn allegations of match-fixing in football, Pink drew his second card face up by mistake, and then chose not to play it. Pine gleefully assassinated Pink’s Baron once again, only to succumb himself a couple of rounds later leaving Blue to finish with three wins (to Pink’s two) and claimed victory.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning outcome: Gamers can be good at quizzes too.

28th December 2016

Being a Wednesday, and with lots of people away for Christmas, we weren’t sure how many to expect. In the event we had a reasonable turn out, and enough for a six player game of Chicago Express (aka Wabash Cannonball), the evening’s “Feature Game“. This is a fairly simple game, with just three possible actions per turn, but the consequences can be far-reaching. At the start of the game there are four rail companies B&O (blue), Pennsylvania Railroad (red), C&O (yellow) and New York Central (Green), trying to build routes from the east coat to Chicago. Unlike most train games, players don’t play the part of the railroads, instead they are investors, speculating in order to accumulate as much cash as possible. To that end, on their turn players can auction a share of one of the companies, extend a network of a company they hold shares in or “improve” one of the hexes that a rail-line goes through.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor kilroy_locke

At the end of each round, there is a dividend where owners of shares get a pay-out. The game is played over a maximum of eight rounds and the player with the most money at the end of the game wins. There are a couple of clever parts of the game. Firstly, there are the three action wheels. Each time a player takes an action, the associated dial is moved on one step. Each dial has a maximum number of steps per round and once this limit has been reached, that action is unavailable for the rest of the round. Once two action dials have reached their maximum, the the round is over and dividends are handed out. The dividend depends on the length of the railroad, where it goes, any upgrades along the route and the number of shares held. The second clever aspect of the game is the economic merry-go-round. When players buy shares, the money is paid to the company and it is this money that is then used to build rail routes. Money is gradually fed into the game via the dividend which is taken from the bank. Since the winning condition is solely based on money at the end of the game, there is a strong incentive to minimise the amount paid for shares. However, this can be a false economy as it can leave the company that short of funds for development.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor da pyrate

So, the balance is hard to strike, and as the game progresses, demand increases for the companies with the largest dividends. In general, there are eight rounds, but if three companies run out of trains or three companies run out of shares, then the game ends early, so players have to watch what they spend to make sure they don’t get caught out. Only money counts at the end of the game, shares are worthless, so players can’t afford to overspend. Chicago Express was a Christmas gift for Pink, and only Blue and Pink had played it before, and then only with two players. They explained what had happened and, as the game starts with an initial share auction they offered as much of their (albeit limited) experience as they could to help players value the shares, but the suspicion was that the game would play very differently with six.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor kilroy_locke

Blue took the first share in the Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR, red), Burgundy placed a stake in the B&O (blue), Pine invested in C&O (yellow), and Purple took the last initial offering, snapping up the New York Central share (green). That left Black and Pink with nothing at the beginning, but with their starting funds untouched. Because funds are replenished (at least in part) by the dividend at the end of the round, it is very important for players who lose out in the initial auction to ensure they get a stake before the end of the round or they risk having to fight a rear-guard action for the whole game. To this end, Pink started out on a concerted campaign to auction off shares. By the end of the first round, Pink had joined Pine in the yellow C&O and Black had gone into partnership with Blue in the PRR. Blue on the other hand had bankrupted herself by dividing her loyalties and joined Burgundy investing in the B&O.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor Mouseketeer

After the first round, everyone could see how things we playing out and it about then that another share in the New York Central was put up for auction. The dividend had been one of the highest; hitherto, Purple had held the only share and she was very keen to keep it that way. As the price crept up, players gradually dropped out of the bidding, eventually leaving just Burgundy and Purple. Burgundy pushed her to the limit, but thanks to her slightly higher dividend in the first round, Purple was able to hang on to her monopoly.

– Image used with permission of boardgamephotos

As the game progressed, more shares were auctioned and railroads gradually progressed westward, though the routes they took varied considerably. Black and Blue took the PRR by the most direct route as did Burgundy (with little help from Blue, his silent partner), while Green went to the north. In contrast, Pink and Pine took the C&O along the south coast, where there were lots of cities making it increasingly valuable and consequently, a target for takeover. There were lots of shares available though, which simply had the effect of diluting the holding and eroding its value. Nevertheless, Pine and Pink managed to hang on to the majority between them, so all their efforts weren’t totally wasted. Meanwhile, Purple managed to fight off another unwanted takeover bid, with Blue forcing up the bids this time.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor Toynan

It was about this time, at the start of the fifth round that train stocks and share certificates began to run out, and suddenly everyone realised that the game could be close to the end. Purely by chance, Blue hadn’t spent any money in the previous round having been repeatedly outbid, which meant she had more than anyone else. However, as she only had two shares she had one of the smaller shares of the dividend due, so she needed the game to end before the start of the next round. With this in mind, she began aggressively selling C&O shares, which not only brought the game to an abrupt end, but also led to a dilution of their value as others could see the writing on the wall. The tactic worked though, and after the last dividend had been handed out, everyone added up their profits and the game finished with Blue out in front with forty-two dollars, eleven dollars clear of Purple in second place.

– Image by BGG contributor damnpixel

As the dust settled, players considered what had happened with the benefit of hindsight. It was clear that although the game is unquestionably very clever, not everyone appreciated the combination of simplicity and difficulty. In truth, it really isn’t a “train game”, more an economics game with a train theme, which could be responsible for making it less popular than, say, Ticket to Ride. It can also be quite unforgiving, especially for players who fail to get shares in the early part of the game. Since only four shares are auctioned before the game starts properly, the higher player counts pretty much guarantee that someone will have to fight to stay in the game. On the other hand, if they are lucky, they may be able to get potentially valuable shares relatively cheaply by capitalising on the fact that others might have overpaid to ensure they don’t get left out. All in all, it definitely left some players with mixed feelings.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor da pyrate

With the post-mortem out of the way, we started a game of Las Vegas. We’ve played this simple game quite a bit, in fact, most times that it comes to games night it gets played, probably because it is an easy option. The idea is that players begin their turn by rolling their dice and then assign some of them to one of six casinos. Each casino is numbered one to six and has a jackpot drawn at random from a deck of money. Players must use all the dice displaying one number to bet on the casino of that number. 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, which leads to a lot of barracking. As usual, we included the Big Dice from the Boulevard expansion and the Slot Machine mini-expansion from the 2015 Brettspiel Advent Calendar. 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).

– Image by boardGOATS

For some reason, this game always seems to take our group ages. Black commented that it was because we all play the same way, hedging our bets at the start of the round, hoping to be the last player with dice and to be able to use them to greatest effect. As Black pointed out though, in practice, most of the time, even when the dice roll to leave a player with the most dice at the end, it is rare they can actually use them to great influence. With that in mind, we tried to play slightly more aggressively, and also decided to play just three rounds instead of the usual four. In the event, game play was slightly quicker than in previous games, but not much, and in truth nobody really minded. The thing is, Las Vegas is very relaxing to play because there is are short spells of intense thought interspersed within longish periods while others play. Although this would normally be tedious, somehow watching others roll and the anticipation while they choose what to do is strangely compelling. This time, the first round was fairly even, but it was the second round where things got interesting. Normal service was resumed for Burgundy who got nothing and Blue didn’t do much better. Black was the real winner though, taking money from several of the casinos, many of which were quite substantial. He was less lucky during the final round, however, and it was Purple, who had been consistent throughout who finished in front with $370,000 just $20,000 ahead of Black in second.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor ckirkman

With the fog, and an early start the next day for some, Black, Purple an Burgundy headed off, leaving Blue, Pine and Pink to a game of Finca. This is a fairly light set collecting game centered around a rondel. The idea is that players have two options on their turn, the can move a meeple round the rondel to pick up fruit, or deliver sets of fruit to the Mallorcan villages. The rondel movement is the interesting bit: the number of meeples on its start space dictate how far the meeple moves and the number of meeples on the space at the end of its move indicates how many fruit the active player gets. If the meeple passes one of two markers during its move, the player gets a donkey cart token which can be traded in for the opportunity to make a delivery.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor mikehulsebus

The game has a couple of other features. Firstly, in order to stop players hoarding fruit and starving others, if there are insufficient fruit available when needed, everyone returns everything of that type that they have, before the active player gets their due. This also applies to donkey cart tokens an it forces players to deliver frequently. In any case, donkey carts are generally small and hold a maximum of six fruit, so there is rarely good reason for hoarding. Secondly, the villages each have a pile of demand tokens, face down except for the top one. Each of these depict some number of fruit from one to six. When a player delivers to a village, they take the demand token and the number of fruit on the token is equivalent to the number of points awarded to the player at the end of the game. Thus, a player could collect one token featuring six fruit, alternatively, they could claim two or more tokens that sum to six (or fewer – donkey carts don’t have to be full).

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor thepackrat

Finally, bonuses are available for players who collect sets of demand tiles numbering from one to six, and when all the demand tiles are taken for a village, the finca tile is evaluated which gives more points. The game ends when demand tiles have been taken for a set number of villages and points are added up. Pine was new to the game, though Blue and Pink had played it a few times before. So it was that Pink, slightly needled by his poor results in the first two games, showed the way, initially by delivering the first fruit and collecting the corresponding demand tiles, then by collecting a set of six tiles, and with it, seven bonus points. Blue collected plenty of fruit and turned them into demand tiles, but Pine and Pink between them took all the available “three value” demand tiles preventing her from getting a bonus. Pine quickly got to grips with the game, but his problems were compounded by the fact that he kept drawing with Blue when the finca bonus tiles were evaluated. So it was Pink led from the start, picking up both finca bonuses and set bonuses as he went and snatching tiles just before the others could take them, and he ran out the worthy winner with fifty-two points to finish the evening on a landslide.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

Learning outcome: A game needs more than trains for it to be a “train game”.