Author Archives: nannyGOAT

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”.

Next Meeting – 31st December 2016

As is now traditional, our last meeting of the year will be the New Year party on Monday, 31^st December 2016. As it is New Year’s Eve we will be starting early and will be meeting in a private house in Stanford, with food later. Please get in touch if you would like to come along so we know how much food to prepare.

The plan is to start off early with the “Feature Game”, which, As has become traditional, will be the gorgeous, dexterity car-racing game, PitchCar. We will be eating later and maybe set off some fireworks at midnight, depending on how cold and wet it is!

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor garyjames

And talking of cars…

A policeman sees an elderly woman driving incredibly slowly on the motorway, so he pulls along side and notices her knitting in the driver’s seat. She remains focussed on the road and keeps knitting and driving.

He beeps his horn to get her attention, but she is oblivious and carries on.

Getting more frustrated, the policeman turns his siren on and, as she finally notices him, he signals for her to wind the window down.

After a time she finds the button and down goes the window.

Incensed, the cop yells, “PULL OVER!”

“Oh, no sweetie,” she replies holding up her knitting, “It’s a scarf, see?”

Next Meeting – 28th December 2016

Our next meeting will be on Wednesday 28^th December, 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 Chicago Express (aka Wabash Cannonball), which is an economic game with a train theme and zero-luck. The game is fairly simple, with three possible actions per turn and a maximum of eight rounds. The player with the most money at the end of the game wins.

– Image used with permission of boardgamephotos

And speaking of trains…

Jeff decided to visit his sister who was living in France. He assumed that most French would speak English, so didn;t even take a phrasebook with him. Unfortunately, Jeff fairly quickly discovered that many people spoke only their own language and this included the ticket inspector on the train. He punched Jeff’s ticket, then chatted cordially for a bit, making several expansive gestures. Not wanting to look stupid, Jeff simply nodded from time to time to show him that he was interested.

When he had gone, a pretty American tourist, also on the train, leaned towards Jeff. Initially, he thought his luck was in, but she just and politely asked if he spoke French.

Jeff blushed, “No,” he admitted.

“Ah, that explains it,” the American answered.

Not wanting to miss his opportunity with a pretty lass when she was a relatively captive audience, Jeff continued the conversation. “Explains what?” he asked.

“Oh!” she replied, “It explains why didn’t bat an eyelid when he told you that you were on the wrong train.”

13th December 2016

Unsure of who was coming, to get everyone in the mood, we started off with the quick set collecting game, Coloretto. We’ve played this little filler a few times, but somehow, Red felt she’d missed out. The game is very simple: on their turn the active player either draws a chameleon card and places it on a “truck” or takes a truck (which means they’re out for the rest of the round). The idea is that players are collecting sets of cards, but only three will yield positive points, with the rest scoring negatively. The really clever part of the game is the scoring which uses the triangular number sequence (one point for the first card, three points for two cards, six points for three cards etc.), which rewards one large set more than two or even three small ones. It was very tight between Blue and Ivory who both picked up sets of six, but Blue finished one point ahead thanks two her second set, three green chameleons.

– Image by BGG contributor SergioMR

With everyone arrived, we moved on to the evening’s “Feature Game”, Marrakech, a very simple little area control game played through the medium of the Persian rug. Played on a small grid, each player starts with thirty lire and a pile of pieces of carpet. On their turn the active play can rotate Assam, the master salesman a maximum of ninety degrees left or right, before they roll the die to find out how far he must be moved. If Assam lands on a carpet square of an opponents colour, then the active player must pay the owner “rent” equivalent to the total size of the carpet. Once Assam has been moved and any dues paid, the active player places a strip of carpet. The carpet pieces are all the same size (twice as long as they are wide) and cover two squares on the board. They can also overlap with pieces laid previously, but cannot be placed wholly on top of one single rug.

– Image by boardGOATS

This is where the strategy comes in – is it best to try to make a large contiguous area which will be very lucrative every time someone lands on it (but that players will avoid if at all possible) or is it better to make many small areas that players will be more likely to land on? The game ends when everyone has played all their pieces of carpet and the winner is the one with the most money (each visible piece of carpet earns its owner one lira). Marrakech is a nice little game, but what really makes it is the quality of the rendition. Assam is a beautifully made and painted wooden piece; the “coins” are wonderfully tactile wooden discs and the carpet is well, a strip of coloured fabric. Without these touches, the game would still be as good, but would be very abstract.

– Image by boardGOATS

We had two copies and plenty of people who were interested in it (to quote one of the GOATS, “I want to play the carpet game!”), so we played two parallel games. Red, Blue, Ivory and Pine were first to get going with the slightly newer, brighter version of the game. Pine and Red started out quite aggressively building large areas of carpet, trampling on each other and Blue and Ivory in the process and building a mini-carpet-mountain seven or eight layers high. Throughout, it felt tight, but in practice, there was only ever going to be one winner and Red finished eleven lira ahead of Blue in second place. On the next table, playing with the more traditionally “sandy-coloured” version, Green, Ivory, Purple and Black were playing a slightly more strategic and less vindictive game. The result was a closer game with everyone within four points of each other, but was won by Green, just two lira ahead of Black.

– Image by boardGOATS

With both games finishing almost simultaneously, there was a quick bout of musical chairs, with Green joining Ivory and Blue for a game of Ivor the Engine (its first outing with the “mammy sheep” picked up at Essen). This is a cute little game with a viciousness that lurks just below the surface and belies the gentle art-work from the Ivor cartoons as drawn by Peter Firmin. The idea is that players are travelling round Wales collecting sheep and the person with the most sheep at the end of the game is the winner. A single sheep can be collected whenever you start your turn on a town or village with sheep in it, but more sheep can be collected if you are in a town or village without sheep and perform a task to “help Ivor”. Helping Ivor comes at a price, however, as in order to do this you have to play one of the dual-purpose cards from your hand, which means you cannot use it to help you in other ways. At the end of your turn you add one card to your hand from the face up displayed cards, however, when the chosen card is replaced from the draw-pile though mixed in with the errand cards are event cards which can be nice or nasty.

– Image by boardGOATS

Blue got lucky, and started off in Grumbly Town which happened to have only one sheep. Since she also had a card for Grumbly Town, this meant she could pick up the one sheep and then play the card to help Ivor, netting a total of six sheep before Ivory had even had a chance to take a turn. That was where her luck finished though, and Green soon caught up quickly followed by Ivory. The cards fell well for Green as he picked up several cards for Tewin as he traveled to the south-east corner of the board picking up lots of sheep as he went. Ivory had a little poke at him, taking a couple of his sheep when he had the chance, then , out of fairness, he then had a go at Blue, taking both the last sheep and the lost sheep token from her current location. Next turn, Green did the same to Blue and just to compound things, “the game” joined in, giving a total of nine sheep she’d missed out on.

– Image by boardGOATS

Feeling rather “got at”, and in desperate need of time she tried to stop Green from finishing the game by doing the only thing her cards allowed her to do – put sheep in Tewin to slow Green down. It was all too little too late, and twenty-five sheep is not an awful lot, so it wasn’t long before Green passed the threshold and triggered the last round. Still with no useful cards and in a position that was not going to trouble the scorers, Blue was forced to do nothing, leaving Ivory to do what he could to catch up. With some effort he was able to cross the line, but was still some way short of Green who still had his final turn to come. In the final accounting, Green finished on thirty-five, nine sheep ahead of Ivory, and more than twenty clear of Blue, in what had been a very unforgiving game.

– Image by boardGOATS

Meanwhile, Red, Black, Purple and Pine were looking for something to play. With Burgundy away worrying about his MOT, Pine fancied his chances at Splendor. We’ve played this little chip-collecting and card development “engine building” game quite a bit, but we all still seem to quite like it when we are looking for a light filler game. Since Black, Purple and Red had also suffered at Burgundy’s hands recently, they were very happy to join Pine in the certain knowledge that, for once, Burgundy wouldn’t win. The idea of the game is that players collect chips to buy gem cards which can, in turn, be used in lieu of chips. More expensive cards are also worth points and the game end is triggered when one player reaches fifteen points (and the round is completed to give everyone the same number of turns). Points are also awarded for “nobles” which go to the first player to get a specific combination of gem cards and the player with the most points at the end is the winner.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor henk.rolleman

Everyone was up for it, and it started out with players taking it in turns to pick up cards, keeping everyone guessing as to who had the edge. Before long, Black, Pine and Red edged ahead, then suddenly, Black declared he had fifteen points and everyone else panicked. It wasn’t long before someone smelled a rat and there were demands for a re-count. With the discovery that Black had miscounted and only had fourteen points, there were the inevitable tongue-in-cheek accusations of cheating and a second “final round” began. Although this gave everyone a second chance, it wasn’t quite enough, and Black won with eighteen (despite “cheating”). Pine finished in second, three points behind, so he’ll have to wait a little longer to win Splendor. One thing everyone was pleased about, however, was that at least Burgundy hadn’t won, and that was almost as satisfying as beating him, though not quite, obviously.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor henk.rolleman

With Ivory and Green heading off early, that left five players and a debate as to what to play next. Somewhere in the discussion “Beans” got a mention, and from then on, despite conversation moving onto Christmas music and everyone’s favourite version of “The Bean Rhyme” (“Beans, beans, good for your heart…” – who knew there were so many different versions?), the final game was inevitably Bohnanza. This game is very simple: in front of each player are two “Bean Fields” and on their turn, players must plant the first card in their hand and may plant the second. Once the active player has planted the card(s) from their hand, then they turn over the top two cards from the draw deck: these must be planted by the end of the turn, though not necessarily in one of the active player’s fields if they can be traded. Once all these cards have been planted, the active player can then offer to trade any unwanted cards in their hand before their turn ends with them replenishing their hand from the draw deck.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor spearjr

The catch is that players are not allowed to change the order of the cards in their hand which must be “planted” in the order they arrive. However, it is possible to remove unwanted cards by trading them away (either during their turn or with the active player). This simple mechanic coupled with the different availabilities and values of cards when they are harvested, are the critical parts of the game. Thus one of the key points is the ability to value a bean and not overpay for it, or equally important, not give it away for less than it is worth. The problem is that “value” depends on perspective, and this caused an otherwise friendly little game with a bit of bite to become a little bit nasty.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor spearjr

Blue had picked up and planted the first two Cocoa beans, so when Purple drew a third, Blue asked whether she would trade. Blue didn’t have much to offer, but offered what she could and pointed out that there were only four Cocoa beans in the game and since we were less than a quarter of the way through the deck on the first pass, Purple could be waiting a long time. Purple had other plans though and commented that it was a very valuable card and determinedly planted it. On her next turn, Blue dug up her pair of Cocoa beans and put both in her money stack. So it was more than a bit irritating for her when she promptly drew the fourth Cocoa bean card. Blue was feeling a bit obstreperous after the rough treatment in Ivor and Purple was unable to offer a good trade. So, much to Purple’s disgust and despite the difficulties it caused both of them, Blue planted the offending bean before immediately digging it up.

– Image by boardGOATS

This had a couple of consequences. Firstly, Blue’s plans were now in tatters, and secondlym Purple had to choose whether to get rid of the Cocoa bean (with singles being hard to get rid of) or whether to wait for the second pass through the deck. Purple doggedly stuck with it, so it was particularly unfortunate when Blue drew the Cocoa bean card almost as soon as the deck was turned. With little chance to get rid of it and still in a very kamikaze mood, Blue planted it a second time before digging it back up again. Purple was not impressed. Fortunately, on the third pass, the Cocoa bean finally landed in the hands of Red. She wasn’t in a silly mood like Blue, so Purple finally got her second Cocoa bean and was able to harvest them for two coins. It was only just in time though and she had played nearly the entire game with only one field, and still finished third – quite an achievement. Red finished in first place, just one coin ahead of Blue who had spent most of the game trying to dig herself out of her self-inflicted mess.

Learning outcome: Value is dependent on circumstances and very much in the eye of the beholder.

Christmas GOATS – Calendar Update

– Image from ranworthsquareprimary.co.uk

The Calendar has been updated, but here is a quick summary of the key dates for GOATS and Didcot Gamers:

Christmas 2016
Tuesday 13^th December 2016 (Last normal meeting of the year)	Games from 7.30pm at the Horse and Jockey pub in Stanford-in-the-Vale.
Friday 23^th December 2016 (Didcot Gamers at Home)	Games, but not at The Loop.
Wednesday 28^th December 2016 (Extraordinary Wednesday GOATS)	Games from 7.30pm at the Horse and Jockey pub in Stanford-in-the-Vale as usual, but on a Wednesday.
Thursday 29^th December 2016 (GOATS do the Quiz)	Quiz Night at the Horse and Jockey pub in Stanford-in-the-Vale from 9pm, with possible food before hand.
Saturday 31^st December 2016 (New Year Party)	Games and food from 7pm at Barney’s House.
Friday 6^th January 2017 (Didcot Gamers)	Games at The Loop in Didcot (back to normal).
Tuesday 10^th January 2017 (boardGOATS)	Games from 7.30pm at the Horse and Jockey pub in Stanford-in-the-Vale (back to normal).

Boardgames in the News: How to Beat Your Husband at Boardgames

According to an article published in the Medical Journal of Australia’s Christmas issue,¹ the trick to beating your husband at boardgames is to play Australian Rock Music. The study was carried out in May by Daisy Fancourt and co-workers from the Centre for Performance Science at the Royal College of Music and Imperial College London and won the journal’s “Christmas Crackers” competition. Three-hundred and fifty-two members of the public were randomly chosen to listen to either the sound of an operating theatre, rock music or classical music while using surgical tweezers to remove three of Cavity Sam’s organs from the game Operation. Researchers recorded the time taken to remove the pieces; the number of mistakes made in performing the surgery, and any perceived distraction.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor IronMoss

The researchers found that rock music (specifically the Australian AC/DC) impairs the performance of men, but not women when undertaking the “complex surgical procedures”. It leads to increases in the time taken to operate and a trend towards more surgical mistakes. Classical music, on the other hand, was associated with lower perceived distraction during the game, but this effect was attenuated when factoring in how much people liked the music, with suggestions that only people who particularly liked Mozart found it beneficial. The authors concluded, “Men are advised not to listen to rock music when either operating or playing board games.”

¹ Fancourt, D., Burton, T. M. W. & Wlliamon, A. Med J Aust. (2016), 205(11), 515; doi:10.5694/mja16.01045.

Next Meeting – 13th December 2016

Our next meeting will be on Tuesday 13^th December, 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 Marrakech, which is a strange, yet very simple little area control game where players take the role of a salesperson who tries to outwit the others by placing pieces of carpet.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor Ceryon

And speaking of carpets…

Jeff was engaged as a door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesman. One day, he managed to bully his way into a woman’s home in a rural area.

“This machine is the best ever,” he exclaimed, whilst pouring a bag of dirt over the lounge floor. The woman said she was really worried it may not all come off, so Jeff added, “If this machine doesn’t remove all the dust completely, I’ll lick it off myself.”

“Would you like ketchup on it?” she asked. “We don’t have electricity out here…”

Christmas GOATS – 2016

For the last few years, on New Year’s Eve, we have had a bit of a party in a private house with a bite to eat followed by games. These things rapidly become “tradition”, so this year we are once again holding the now “traditional”, New Year’s Eve Games Night. In the past, because of the way the holidays have fallen, this has replaced a normal Tuesday games night, but this year, we will holding both! So the next two meetings will be, Wednesday 28^th December, at the Horse and Jockey pub and Saturday 31^st December, at “Barney’s House”, sorry – wrong link, “Barney’s House”. The pub is also holding their usual Thursday night Quiz, and some of us will be going along on 30^th to make up a GOATS team. These are in addition to the normal meeting on 13^th December and 10^th January 2017. More details will follow nearer the time, but we look forward to seeing everyone at New Year.

– Image from youtube.com

29th Movember 2016

Different week, different people, different sickness, same late start… After Burgundy had finished worrying the pub staff by changing his supper order (given how fast Blue can polish off a pizza he thought he might be able to eat a Hawaiian quicker than his usual ham, eggs & chips – he was wrong), we split into two groups, with the first playing the “Feature Game”, The Climbers. This is a great three dimensional strategy game that looks like it is designed round a set of children’s building blocks. It’s appearance belies its true nature however, and, although it looks like a kiddie’s dexterity game, it is really a strategy game with almost no dexterity component at all. Red and Magenta thought it looked cool and Burgundy had read the rules on line so was also keen to give it a go, so the group was pretty much self-selecting with Blue making up the foursome.

– Image by boardGOATS

We began by placing the two Triple-height blocks in the centre and randomly piling the rest of the bricks round it, covering all the visible surfaces, then Blue started explaining the rules. It was at about this point that we realised that Burgundy had read a very different set. The game was originally released in German as Die Aufsteiger. Since it is very language independent, when they were translated into English, a few changes were made to the rules and when the second edition was brought out the rules were revised again with some of the additions listed as optional variants. This means that there are effectively three different sets of rules and to make things worse, lots of people have their own “House Rules” as well. Since nobody had played it very much we decided to stick to the rules as written in the copy we had, without the addition variants.

– Image by boardGOATS

The game is played in turn order with each turn comprising three steps. Firstly, the active player can move a block, any block so long as there isn’t anything on it, and they can place it anywhere, in any orientation as long as there is sufficient space. Next the active player can move their Climber as far as they like within the rules. Climbers can climb up any step below their head height unaided as long as the face they are climbing onto is grey or their own colour. They can also use their long and/or short ladders to climb larger distances, but they are fragile and therefore single use (though that’s not very green as Red pointed out). Finally, the active player may place a blocking stone which prevents a brick being moved or used until that player’s next turn. Probably the most difficult part of the game is the concept of “space”. There are three different sized coloured blocks: Cubes (2a x 2a x 2a), Half-height (2a x 2a x a) and Double-height (2a x 2a x 4a). These blocks have each face painted a different colour, the five that correspond to the player colours and one side that is grey. There are also two Triple-height blocks that are plain grey and are the base of the setup.

– Image by boardGOATS

The square faces of the blocks can be considered to consist of four smaller squares – this is the basic unit (a x a). This basic “a²” unit is sufficient space for one Climber. Blocks can be placed offset, like bricks in a wall sitting on two or more other bricks, so long as these basic “a²” units are observed and remain whole. The undersurface of each block must also have full contact with the blocks underneath – there cannot be any holes or overhangs. If a Climber is sat in an inconvenient place, he can be “nudged” out of the way using a block, provided that he isn’t knocked off or moved onto a different block. This can make space for placing a block, or for a Climber: Climbers can only sit on their own colour or grey and need an “a²” unit each. Thus, several Climbers can sit on a large grey face. The winner is the player who’s Climber is highest at the end of the game.

– Image by boardGOATS

Red and Magenta started climbing one side, with Blue and Burgundy progressing up the other. Red stole a bit of a march as everyone else got in each others’ way leaving Magenta to fight a rear-guard action on her side. Meanwhile, Blue and Burgundy fought for supremacy, until Blue managed to extricate one of the large grey blocks and use it to simultaneously screw up Burgundy and create a second summit at a similar height to the one Red was occupying. With this second peak to fight over, there were effectively two races competing against each other, but it wasn’t long before first Burgundy, then Blue and Magenta were forced to take a pause in climbing. It was at this point that we realised the mistake we’d all made. Players can choose whether to climb or not, but the game ends when all players successively don’t (or can’t) finish their turn on a higher level. With all three of us failing to climb, that left Red with potentially the final turn. Although she was highest, Blue and Magenta were blocks at the same height, so we had to invoke the tie-breaker which meant the first player to reach that level would win. Since Red had got there first, she had no incentive to move and, in was thrilled to finish in first place in what had been a hard-fought game.

– Image by boardGOATS

Green, Black and Purple joined the others playing with children’s building blocks, with a game of Totemo, an early Tony Boydell gem (he of Snowdonia and Guilds of London). This game consists of of colored wooden blocks that have a small dowel attached on one end and a hole in the other. This allows them to be placed in the wooden peg-board. The game starts with one of the multi-colored wild pieces placed in the center of the board. Each player starts their turn with three wooden totem pieces. To place a piece, all totem pieces it touches must abide by the color wheel. So, for example, a purple block may be placed on its own or adjacent to purple, red or blue blocks; the more blocks it touches, the higher its score. There are also several blocks with two feathers on top which are totem toppers and cannot be placed on the bottom level. In addition, no other totem piece can be placed on top of them. Players can only place one totem piece per turn unless they land on a space seeded with a bonus marker. At the start of the game, several bonus markers are placed round the board – landing on these enables the active player to place another block, up to a maximum of three.

– Image by boardGOATS

At the end of their turn, the active player replenished their set of totem blocks. Each round, the start player moves the round marker until it gets closer to the tee-pee indicating the last round. Alternatively, the game can also end if there are no more totem blocks in the bag. With apologies for not ironing the playing cloth and quick recap of the rules, the game was under way. The first rounds were, typically, feeler rounds with players just trying to do the best they could. Black and Purple had played the game many times before while Green, had played it only once and that was a few years ago. Black and Purple managed to make use of the bonus markers by landing on the correct space on the scoring track and began to pull away from Green who was stuck with red bricks he could only place on their own since there was a predominance of blue bricks on the board.

– Image by boardGOATS

This forced Green to change his strategy from simply trying to get the highest score possible to getting the exact score to land on a bonus tile and go again each time. He started this new approach with a bang, placing all three of his blocks in one go and shot into a healthy lead. Throughout the game players were each left with one or two blocks they couldn’t easily place, either because they were the wrong colour or were “toppers”. The game took longer than it should have as everyone was guilty of over analysis at different times, but Black and Purple slowly caught up with Green, and going into the final round were both in the lead once again. Unfortunately neither could quite reach their respective bonus spaces and just added a modest amount to the final score. Green however, placed all three of his blocks and took the lead by more than ten points, with it winning the game.

– Image by boardGOATS

With both games finishing together and nobody up for a late night we decided to opt for a large group game, and prompted by Magenta, we quickly settled on Las Vegas. This is a very simple game where players begin their turn by rolling their dice, then they 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 of 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. The really clever bit is that before any money is handed out, any “draws” are removed, which leads to a lot of barracking. This time we included the Slot Machine from the 2015 Brettspiel Advent Calendar. This is like a seventh casino, except that it can hold dice of any number, but each number can only be added once (though a player must add all the dice they have of that number).

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

We also added the extra dice for more players from the Boulevard expansion, as well as “bigguns”, large dice which count as two in the final reckoning. Green kicked off the first round, which turned out to be very unproductive for both Blue and Burgundy who struggled to get anything of any value. Burgundy struggled in the second round as well, as did Black and their problems were compounded by the small number of high value notes that were repeatedly drawn. Meanwhile, Red was struggling to keep her eyes open, so while everyone else was playing the long game, she was played her dice as quickly as she could then dozing while everyone else finished the round without her. The problem with everyone playing small numbers of dice in the early part of the game and hanging on to dice for as long as possible was that it slowed the game down considerably, not that anyone really minded on this occasion. It wasn’t until the last round that we began to realise that this strategy didn’t really work, a conclusion that was reinforced by the fact that a slightly embarrassed Red won the game, some $50,000 ahead of Magenta and Blue in second and third.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning outcome: Sometimes sleeping through a game isn’t a disadvantage.