Author Archives: nannyGOAT

17th May 2016

Red and Blue were late arriving, so while they fed on lamb burger and chips, everyone else settled down to a quick game of Sushi Go! (with added Soy Sauce). This is probably the quickest and simplest of the drafting games. Drafting is very simple mechanism: everyone begins with a hand of cards and simultaneously chooses one and passes the rest on. Once the cards have been revealed, players pick up the hand they’ve been given and again choose a card before passing the hand on. In this way the hands progressively get smaller with players adding cards to their display. It is a mechanism used to great effect in more complex games like 7 Wonders and Between Two Cities, where other mechanisms are added to give the game more substance (engine building and semi-cooperative tile laying in these two examples). In Sushi Go!, the aim of the game is to collect sets of cards, with points awarded for different achievements depending on the type of card. For example, the player to collect the most maki rolls scores six points while anyone who collects three sashimi gets ten and so on.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor henk.rolleman

Everyone except Burgundy did reasonably well in the first round, with Green getting his nose in front thanks to some well-timed wasabi and a pair of tempura while Purple and Pine fought for the maki roll bonus. In the second round Burgundy managed reduce his deficit, and Green’s lead took a big dent. With Black as his main threat, however, Green felt sure he had the situation well under control as he was sat to Black’s left so was the one passing him cards in the last round. In the end, despite everything, it was a really tight game with almost everyone scoring thirty points before the puddings were evaluated. As the only one, Burgundy paid the full price for failing to pick up a single pudding card. In contrast, because of the seating order in the last round Green had been able to ensure that Black was unable to challenge him for the title of “Pudding King” leaving Green the winner by a healthy margin.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor kladan

With the lamb burgers dealt with, we moved onto our “Feature Game” which was Cargo Noir. We had two copies, so decide to set them up side by side so we could all play. This game is nearly ten years old and hasn’t been as popular as other games by Days of Wonder, so most of us had not played it before. The exact reason for the lack of enthusiasm could be the artwork which is 1950s style and quite drab in colour, so is perhaps less appealing than, for example the highly successful Ticket to Ride and Small World. Perhaps more significant though is the game play which appears to have a bit of “Marmite Factor” with some people raving about it while others seem to loath it with equal passion. This is curious because at it’s heart, Cargo Noir is just an auction game, built around set collecting, but with a little bit of bite.

– Image by BGG contributor fabricefab

At the beginning of the game each player has three ships and at the start of their turn, each ship will be located at one of the harbours, in the casino and the black market. On their turn, the first evaluate the status of each of their ships and resolve any auctions; then they trade any sets of goods for cards (which are worth victory points at the end of the game), before finally repositioning any left over ships. So, like lots of games, Cargo Noir is basically about turning money into points. Aside from the starting handful of money, the only other source is the casino and ships placed there yield two coins (yes, it IS the only casino in the world that gives out money!). These can be used to bid for the goods available in the harbours.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor ronster0

Each ship can visit one harbour and takes with them a stack of money. If it is the only ship in the harbour at the start of the players next turn, then the player gets all the goods laid out in the harbour. If they are not alone, the player can either leave the ship there and add enough money to the stack to win the current bid, or remove the ship from the board taking nothing. Thus, the trick is to bid enough to keep others away, but not enough to risk bankruptcy. The final location ships can visit is the black market, which enables players to either trade one of their existing commodities for one on display, or to draw a free tile at random from the bag which can be very useful as it gives a tile without spending money. Players get “credits” (but no money) for sets goods where all the tiles are either all the same or all different. Since larger sets give more “credits”, the ability to trade a commodity can enable players to buy more valuable cards.

– Image by BGG contributor DaveyJJ

There are some serious limitations for players to consider, for example at the start of the game each player can only carry forward a maximum of six goods to the next round – everything else must be sold. Similarly, having three ships can be seriously restrictive. So, some of the victory cards yield fewer points at the end of the game, but give smugglers an edge during it, providing extra cargo ships for example, or giving them access to a warehouse to store extra goods enabling them to build up more credits and buy more valuable cards. Players who choose to buy a syndicate card can even get money from the bank when they withdraw from a bidding war, which has the potential to provide a nice little earner while damaging opponents, if used wisely. The game lasts a fixed number of rounds (depending on the number of players) and the player with the most points wins.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor duchamp

With two copies and seven of us (most of whom were unfamiliar with it), we decided to split into two groups both playing the same game. In the four player game, Pine (who started) got off to a flying start while everyone else struggled, getting caught in bidding wars. A few rounds in, Red briefly got her nose in front, but Pine was better positioned and galloped away. As the game came to a close, Blue fought her way back into the game quickly buying two extra ships and engaging in a “collect as much as possible and sell immediately” approach which sort of worked, but it was too little too late. Meanwhile, Green collected a massive amount of uranium together, but couldn’t quite make enough on the last round to make a big impact leaving Pine to win with a healthy margin despite finishing with just four ships.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor duchamp

The other game was very close with Purple doing her best to scupper the plans of Burgundy and Black, but doing more damage to herself in the process. The game finished with Burgundy taking it by just five points which was particularly galling for Black as he was one coin away from getting the additional five he needed for the draw. There was a lot of discussion as to whether we liked the game. Green was of the opinion that there was too much downtime and it was time you couldn’t do very much with as the previous player had the ability to completely upset any plans made in advance. Red also had misgivings, saying she quite liked it, but wouldn’t bother to go out and buy a copy; Blue commented that as she already had a copy the question was more whether it should be kept, and it would certainly stay for a while yet. Pine on the other hand, had really enjoyed it (despite the faces he pulled at the start), but in general, consensus seemed to be that it was “OK”, even “quite nice”, but not a “great game”. It was also perhaps better with three than four and the downtime would have been very significant if playing with five.

– Image by BGG contributor thornatron

Green decided to get an early night so the rest of us decided to finish with an older, large group game, Saboteur. This is a bit of an old favourite, and is one of the original hidden traitor/social deduction games. The idea is that each player is either a Dwarf or a Saboteur and players take it in turns to play cards with the Dwarves aiming to get to the treasure, while the Saboteurs try to stop them. There are two types of cards that can be played: tunnels and special cards. The tunnels come in different shapes and must be played in the correct orientation, so Dwarves try to push the path in the right direction, while Saboteurs try to play disruptive cards while trying to look like they’ve done the best they can with the hand available. Meanwhile, special cards include “rockfall” cards which can be played to remove a tunnel card already played and maps which can be used to see where the gold is hidden. Most importantly, however are “broken tool” cards which can be played on another player to prevent them building tunnel cards until they (or another kind-hearted soul) plays a matching “fixed tool” card to remove it.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor mikehulsebus

We usually play with a few house-rules. The rules suggest that the game should be played over three “rounds” with the winning team semi-randomly receiving “gold” cards; the overall winner is then the player whose gold cards depict the most gold pieces. Now, we find that the game can sometimes outstay its welcome and the addition of the gold at the end of the rounds feels like an attempt to make more out of the game, but in actuality just makes it more frustrating as there is a large amount of randomness in their allocation. So firstly we dispense with this aspect altogether and treat each round as a game in its own right. That way, we can play one or two games/rounds and then move on, or play extras if everyone is enjoying themselves or time dictates. Secondly, the teams are drawn from a pool cards so that there is an unknown number of Saboteurs around. Although it’s nice to have this additional uncertainty, we’ve always found (particularly with six players) that the minimum number of Saboteurs makes the game very easy for the Dwarves, so we tend to play with a fixed number of Saboteurs. This time, we debated whether to add the expansion, Saboteur 2, but decided against it as the characters seemed to be completely random draw and we didn’t really have time to think about the implications properly – maybe next time.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor mothertruckin

The first “game” was very cagey with everyone looking very “saboteur-y” and everyone accusing everyone else of “saboteur behaviour”. In the event, it turned out that all the dwarves had poor hands, and it was fairly clear that the Saboteurs had won when first Pine and then Blue outed themselves to ensure that the Dwarves didn’t make it home. The accusations were already flying about as the cards were being dealt out with Pine commenting that it was highly unlikely that he would be a Saboteur twice in a row and even more unlikely that Blue would be too. This quickly degenerated into a discussion of probability and how the probability was actually exactly the same as last time as the two events were independent, even though the probability of the identical set of Saboteurs is relatively unlikely. Unlikely it may have been, but this time it happened. In an effort to do something different and in the hope that her behaviour would look different, Blue outed Pine as a Saboteur since everyone was already somehow suspicious. Nobody really fell for it however, and it was a fairly easy win for the Dwarves.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor mikehulsebus

Since we’d had two games with the same Saboteurs, we decided to play a third. This time things were going reasonably well for the Saboteurs as the Dwarves were struggling with poor cards again. Red was already looking shifty, so when the Dwarves suddenly got it together and headed in the right direction quickly, nobody was terribly surprised when she outed herself because by playing a “rockfall” card. As she drowned under a hailstorm of “broken tool” cards, Red declared that the other Saboteur was going to have to pull their finger out or it would be all over. Black was sat to her left, but miscounted the distance to the gold and played a map card. This left Purple and Pine to finish the game and everyone question why Black hadn’t played his rockfall card, especially Red who was quite vehement in her criticism of Saboteurs who don’t pull their weight! With that, much hilarity ensued and eventually everyone headed home.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor mothertruckin

Learning Outcome: If you are going to try to win, don’t leave it too late.

Boardgames in the News: Oxford Science Festival

Science Oxford (formerly known as The Oxford Trust) is a charitable organisation that was set up in 1985 with the mission to “encourage the pursuit of science and enterprise” and the long term aim of “making connections between science, enterprise and society.” This year, as part of the Oxfordshire Science Festival, they are holding a boardgame evening including a talk by Reiner Knizia. Dr. Knizia is the designer of over six hundred Euro games, including Keltis which won the Spiel des Jahres in 2008. The event will be held at the Old Fire Station on George Street in Oxford on 28^th June and will be followed by games in the Thirsty Meeples across the square. Tickets can be booked online and are £10, though there is a 10% discount for tickets to Science Festival events booked before the end of May with the “Earlybird10” voucher code.

– Image from scienceoxford.com

Spiel des Jahres Nominations 2016

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

Kinderspiel des Jahres
Leo Muss Zum Friseur (aka Leo) by Leo Colovini
Mmm! by Reiner Knizia
Stone Age Junior (aka My First Stone Age) by Marco Teubner
Kennerspiel des Jahres
Isle of Skye: From Chieftain to King by Alexander Pfister & Andreas Pelikan
Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 by Matt Leacock & Rob Daviau
T.I.M.E Stories by Manuel Rozoy
Spiel des Jahres
Codenames by Vlaada Chvátil
Imhotep by Phil Walker-Harding
Karuba by Rüdiger Dorn

A couple of weeks ago, we discussed the possible winners of these awards and we felt there wasn’t really an obvious winner this year; now the nominations have been announced it is clear why we felt that way. Our group are not huge fans of the “social deduction” games that have become popular of late, and since three of the six nominations in the two categories of interest to us are of this type, they are not games we have focussed on. That said, we are very, very fond of Isle of Skye, and Karuba got its first outing last week and probably deserves another go. Imhotep was only only released a few months ago and hasn’t yet made it to the table, but otherwise it looks like this year will be a fairly quiet one from our point of view.

– Image from spieldesjahres.de

Next Meeting – 17th May 2016

Our next meeting will be on Tuesday 17^th May, at the Horse and Jockey pub in Stanford-in-the-Vale. As usual, we will be playing shorter games from 7.30pm as people arrive, until 8pm when we will start something a little longer.

This week the “Feature Game” will be Cargo Noir, in which players represent “families” that traffic in smuggled goods in a 1950s noir setting. Once players have collected goods, they can trade them in to add more ships to their fleet, allowing them to scout for wares in more locations, purchase victory spoils, or take other actions. The more goods collected, the more valuable they can be. The player with the most spoils at the end wins.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor Toynan

And speaking of the smugglers…

Jeff was working as a border guard checking people crossing from the USA into Mexico. One morning, José arrived at the border on his bike with two huge bags over his shoulders. Jeff stopped him and asked, “What’s in the bags?”

“Senior, It’s only sand.” replied José.

“Sand???” answered Jeff incredulously. “Well, we’ll just see about that – get off the bike!”

The guard took the bags, ripped them open, emptied them out and found nothing in them… except sand. Detaining José overnight, the sand was analysed, but only to discover it was in fact simply sand. In the morning, José was released, the sand was put into new bags and placed on José’s shoulders, and he was let across the border.

The next day, the same thing happened. Jeff asked, “What have you got there?”

“Sand,” answered José again. A thorough examination of the bags again showed there to be nothing but sand, and subsequently José was allowed to continue across the border. For a whole year this continued until one day José didn’t show up, and Jeff discovered him in a Cantina in Mexico.

“Hey,” said Jeff, “I know you were smuggling something. For a year it’s driven me crazy. It’s all I can think about… I can’t get sleep – even the dog thinks I’m beginning to lose it! I’m not working on the border any more, so just between you and me, what are you smuggling?”

Jose sipped his beer, smiled and replied, “Bicycles…”

3rd May 2016

Pine, Magenta, Red and Burgundy were all keen to give the “Feature Game”, Cheesonomics a go, especially when they saw the eye-catching truckle shaped box. Pine was especially enthusiastic when he realised that it featured both cheese and goats! The game itself is a fairly simple, set-collecting and hand management card game based on controlling and manipulating supply and demand of various types of cheese, all seasoned with a sprinkling of dreadful puns. Players have a hand of five “wedge-shaped” cheese cards each with a colour suit (corresponding to country) and an animal suit (milk type). On their turn, the active player can carry-out one of three possible actions: churn, produce or sell. Churning is a way a player can improve their hand. First they declare a suit (colour or animal) and everyone else has to pass a matching card to the active player. Once all the cards are in, the active player chooses five to keep and hands one card back to each player.

– Image by boardGOATS

Players can then place a matching set of cards in front of them to produce cheese; the cards must either have the same colour or the same animal. The last possible action is to sell cheese: a maximum of three cheese wedges can be sold at any one time and they must all be the same country (colour). The cheese is valued at the market rate which is calculated from the number of wedges of that colour displayed in the market. These wedges are different on both sides, so once a sale has been made, one market “share” is turned over (the market is “mooved”), which reduces the value for the next sale. The clever part of the game is the scoring: in addition to money made from selling cheese, players also get bonus points at the end of the game. The players who sold the most of each cheese type (i.e. animal) get extra points equivalent to the number of wedges sold. So, cheese is sold by colour, but bonus points are awarded for animals.

– Image by boardGOATS

Only Blue had played Cheesonomics before and that was a two-player game, so nobody really had a feel for how it would play. Red went first and churned, followed by Pine who asked for goats. Burgundy got a good starting hand and was able to produce a large batch of German cheese on his first turn, but otherwise we all got carried away churning cheese. The problem was that since everyone was churning cards furiously, we were all disrupting each other’s hands which meant we ended up having to churn again on the next turn too. Eventually, this seemed to dawn on us collectively and we all started producing what we had rather than trying to get the perfect hand first. With a couple of good hands early on Burgundy was also the first to sell and everyone else struggled to catch up.

– Image by boardGOATS

Pine eventually managed to sell some of his goats and Blue, the last to convert cheese to cash, shifted a large batch of Scandinavian (yellow) cheese and take a massive fifteen curds. It was all way too little and much too late though: the game suddenly ended and Burgundy’s excellent start coupled with the fact that he’d managed to focus almost solely on both reindeer and yak yielded huge bonuses at the end. Pine and Red had eventually spotted this and made a concerted effort to catch him, but Burgundy had just got too far ahead and won by two points with Pine in second.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor thepackrat

Black and Purple had eschewed the opportunity to play Cheesonomics and settled down instead to play Mijnlieff (pronounced Mine-Leaf). This “fancy noughts and crosses” game is played with beautiful little wooden tiles on a four by four wooden board. the aim of the game is to form lines of three, but since there are different types of pieces and your opponent controlling where you can play it is much more strategic. Each Player has eight pieces with two each of four different symbols where the different pieces dictate where the other player can put their next piece. For example, when a Greek cross (or “+” symbol) is played, the next player must place his piece on an empty square in an orthogonal line from the piece just played. Similarly, playing a saltire (or “×” symbol) forces the next player to place his piece in a diagonal line from the piece just played.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor thepackrat

Black managed to get a line of three, but Purple took the game with two lines of three and one of four giving her a total of four points to Black’s one. Since the supposedly quick little “Feature Game” was still going, Black and Purple moved onto another game we know quite well, Splendor. This is a game of chip-collecting and card development where players collect chips to buy gem cards which can then 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

The game was incredibly tight, but when Black was declared the winner, Purple looked slightly crest-fallen. On closer inspection, they realised that they’d missed scoring one of her nobles. Purple had managed to take two of the three available picking up both Isabel of Castille (awarded for four each of opals and diamonds) and Anne of Brittany (awarded for three each of emeralds, sapphires and diamonds). This left them on sixteen all and a draw, though on closer inspection there is a tie-breaker, so arguably Black took it as he had the fewest cards in his display.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor henk.rolleman

Since Cheesonomics had finally come to an end as well, we had a lot of options on what to play next. Half the group weren’t staying late, so we decided to play something short as a group before splitting up again into two groups (one of “light-weights” and one of “dirty late-night stop-outs”). Looking for something to play seven, our choices were limited, and as is often the case in our group, we settled on our old favourite, 6 Nimmt!. In the first round Black and Magenta were vying for the wooden spoon taking a total of twenty-four nimmts each. Unusually, Burgundy, though high scoring, was some way behind the race for the bottom, only taking fifteen points. Both Red and Blue kept a clean sheet so the question was which of them were going to be able to keep their score down in the second round too. In the end though, both quickly started picking up cards and it was Purple who took the glory, finishing with just three nimmts over the two rounds, her second win of the evening (and only robbed of a third by a tie-breaker nobody knew existed).

– Image by boardGOATS

With the fun filler over, the “light-weights” looked for a similarly light game to finish, but in the end, settled on Splendor, as it was still out and Magenta and Red were very familiar with it. This game was a very difficult one as all the cards in the second row needed lots of sapphires which were scarce throughout. Magenta tried to work round the problem by collecting nobles, but everyone struggled. For several rounds, Red was very close to the fifteen points needed to end the game and Magenta had four points available on a reserved card, but could not get the last ruby to buy it. In the end, but it was Pine, who was new to the game, who finally put everyone out of their misery, ending the game with seventeen points, three points clear of Red.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor henk.rolleman

On the neighbouring table, after a short debate, the “late-night stop-outs” settled on Isle of Skye: From Chieftain to King as their longer game. We’ve played it a couple of times before and it is hugely popular with the group. Borrowing heavily from tile-laying games like Carcassonne, Isle of Skye is a much deeper game without adding an awful lot to the rules. The idea is that players draw three tiles from a bag and and then secretly choose one to discard and set prices for the other two. This is done by placing the tiles in front of a screen and a discard token and money for the player’s stash behind. The money remains in place for the duration of the round, unless the corresponding tile is purchased by another player. This mechanism is very clever as if nobody else wants the tile, then the player uses the money to purchase it themselves. Thus, it is critically important to correctly evaluate the worth of the tile, depending on whether it is most desirable to sell it or keep it.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor henk.rolleman

The other clever part of the game is the scoring: This is mostly carried out at the end of each of the six rounds. At the start of the game, four scoring tiles are drawn at random and these are used in different combinations at the end of the rounds in such a way that each appears a total of three times, but only one is used in the first round while three are used in the last. We included the the extra tiles from the 2015 Brettspiel Advent Calendar in the draw mix and one of them came up. The four tiles were: points for animals next to farms (A), extra scroll scoring from the Advent Calendar (B), points for each tile with a road that is connected to a castle (C) and points for each enclosed region (D). Inevitably, everyone started out desperate for animals and farms, but since these scored in rounds one, three and five, all of a sudden they fell out of favour.

– Image by boardGOATS

Despite having loads of cash, Burgundy really struggled to get the tiles he wanted particularly as everyone else kept buying them off him. In contrast, Blue didn’t do too badly for tiles, but always seemed to be running out of money. This was exacerbated by the fact that she didn’t get any of the “catch-up cash” given out from the start of round three. It is only the number of players in front of them that dictates how much money players get (not how far behind they lag), but the amount can really add up: a player who is consistently at the back in a four player game will net an extra thirty sovereigns over the course of the game compared with a player who leads throughout. Theoretically, the difference in position between the first and last player could remain just one point throughout, so there is an art to being “just behind”, in the same way as there is an art to being at the back in Colosseum (which was our “Feature Game” last time). Clearly this time Burgundy had the knack, and Blue didn’t.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor henk.rolleman

While Burgundy and Blue were struggling with their respective finance issues, Purple quietly plugged away collecting barrels and brochs, while Black ended up with ships and when the corresponding scrolls turned up, they looked to be well placed, until Black ran out of money and a critical tile was taken from him in the final round. Despite her lack of money, however, Blue didn’t over-reach herself and managed to enclose her scrolls early giving her extra points at the end, but also for the Brettspiel Advent Calendar scoring tile during the game. Nearly bankrupting herself in the early rounds for those animals now proved worth it as she raked in the points for the scrolls she had enclosed. Enclosing scrolls was the key in this game as the other player to succeed in this area was Purple who finished a highly creditable second after a barn-storming evening.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor henk.rolleman

We had a little over half an hour left, so we decided we could fit in one last game. We couldn’t afford to spend too long thinking about it. Since Black expressed an interest in Karuba as he’d heard good things about it and Blue assured everyone that it wouldn’t take the forty minutes claimed on the box, we decided to give it a go. This is a game that Blue and Pink bought at Essen last year and is very similar to Das Labyrinth des Pharao which they picked up at the same time on behalf of Black and Purple. In the event, Karuba did take just about forty minutes, but that included setting up and teaching. The game is a bit of a cross between bingo and a tile-laying solitaire. The idea is that every player has the same number of numbered tiles which the players simultaneously place when the number is called. Unlike Das Labyrinth des Pharao, the tiles the orientation is fixed, which narrows down the number of possibilities and helps to reduce “analysis paralysis”. Both games are loosely themed with explorers, but in Karuba they are crossing the jungle to find treasure rather than exploring a pyramid.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

Each player has set of four coloured explorer meeples and matching coloured pyramids, with the aim being to get the explorers to the corresponding pyramids by laying tiles to make a path. Everyone begins with the same layout (chosen collectively) and players score points for getting their meeples to their matching temples first. Everyone draws the tiles in the same order, since the “caller” (Blue, in this case), draws their tiles at random and calls out the number for everyone else to play too. Once the number has been called, each player can either place the tile on the board or discard it and move an explorer along a path where the distance corresponds to the number of exits on the tile discarded (i.e. two, three or four squares). Some tiles have crystals or gold nuggets next to the path and an explorer who stops on the tile gets to pick up the treasure which are worth points at the end of the game.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor henk.rolleman

Our explorers all ended up a long way from their pyramids, so sharing a common route was essential and it was just the logistics of how to do it that everyone had to work out. With time at a bit of a premium, Blue didn’t hang about and kept the tile drawing moving quickly. Burgundy got a bit carried away picking up crystals before getting his explorers in a tangle (the paths are too narrow for meeples to pass each other). Purple, for whom spacial awareness does not come naturally, unfortunately managed to completely cut off one of her explorers and Black got into a bit of a tangle too before he managed to extricate himself from the mess and bring them home safely. Blue, the only one to have experience with the game neglected picking up crystals and got three of her explorers home first netting an unassailable fifteen points, in a game that definitely benefits from experience of how to balance crystals and getting to temples. While packing up, we discussed the game and the fact that it is likely to be one of the nominees for the Spiel des Jahres award this year given the lack of other good competition.

– Image used with permission of
BGG contributor henk.rolleman

Learning Outcome: GOATS like cheese, but they like whisky more…

Boardgames in Faringdon

A free evening of “continental board and card games” is being held monthly at the Pump House on Swan Lane. The Pump House Project is a community project based in the old theatre in Faringdon, providing a variety of low cost activities for all ages and abilities in the locale. Amongst other things, it is the first designated Parkour centre in Oxfordshire and has a set of specially designed Parkour equipment, one of the first sets of this kind in the country. The games evenings will be much more sedentary, however, and are family friendly (children are very welcome so long as they are accompanied by an adult). The next one is this Friday, 13^th May, from 6.30pm until 9pm and free refreshments will be available.

– Image from thepumphouseproject.co.uk

Boardgames in the News: Record-breaking Carcassonne

Hans-im-Gluk recently announced a new record breaking game of Carcassonne. Three Swedish players laid 10,007 tiles in just twenty-five hours smashing the previous, ten year old German record of 4,194 in forty-three hours. Paul Sydby, Marie Sydby and Robert Wagman played competitively over two days with Mikaela Lincoln Börjesson acting as stand-in when one of the others needed a break. The rules were slightly modified for simplicity (for examples, there were no farmers) and everyone played “nicely” to keep things moving along efficiently. Paul won the epic game with a total of 11,886, a little over one thousand points ahead of Robert in second place. The biggest city scored eight hundred and fifty-five points and was shared by all three players while Paul took the longest road which was thirty-five tiles long. The layout covered a massive ninety-two by one hundred and eight rectangle without gaps, and it took Paul approximately two weeks (at about an hour per day) to sort all the tiles back into their original one hundred and thirty-nine boxes!

– Image from FaceBook.com

Spring 2016 Oxford Meeples Big DoG

On Saturday, May 7^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 starts from about 10.30 am and continuing ’til late. Entry is free, although donations towards rent of the hall and refreshments will be appreciated. Children are welcome when accompanied by an adult. Several of the GOATS are hoping to attend, but how many actually make it will depend on other commitments as usual.

– Image from oxfordmeeples.org

Next Meeting – 3rd May 2016

Our next meeting will be on Tuesday 3^rd May, at the Horse and Jockey pub in Stanford-in-the-Vale. As usual, we will be playing shorter games from 7.30pm as people arrive, until 8pm when we will start something a little longer.

This week the “Feature Game” will be Cheesonomics, which is a strategic set collecting, hand management card game based on controlling and manipulating the supply and demand of various types of cheese. It plays quite quickly, so it should give us plenty of time to play something a bit longer once everyone has arrived.

– Image by boardGOATS

And speaking of the cheese…

Joe and Jeff were in a bar having drinks when a beautiful young woman approached them and said, “Whoever can use the words ‘liver’ and ‘cheese’ in a creative sentence can be my date for the evening.”

The boys thought their luck was in and Joe, quick off the mark said, “I love liver and cheese!” Before the woman could reply though, Jeff interrupted, “Liver alone, cheese mine!”

19th April 2016

Our “Feature Game” was to be Colosseum, which several people were keen to play, but there were two issues: it plays better with four than three, and always seems to take a lot longer than it should so we wanted to get going. We knew that Green was going to be late, but we didn’t know how late and that made a huge difference to our game plans for the evening; with six present already, should four get going and risk leaving two to play on their own all night if Green couldn’t make it at all in the end, or should we play something short together first and risk not having enough time for Colosseum? Texts were sent and there was much discussion including the inevitable mention of 6 Nimmt!, but aside from that we seemed to have few genuinely short fillers that would play six. Before we could actually make a decision, Green turned up and solved the problem for us and Burgundy and Blue started setting out Colosseum eventually joined by Blue, Pine and Magenta.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor Toynan

The idea of the game is that each player is a Roman impresario, producing great spectacles in his or her arena in the hopes of attracting the most spectators. As such, the game comprises elements of auction, trading and planning with the ultimate goal of set collecting, where the sets represent groups of performers that have to match the program chosen. A complete program will attract its maximum number of spectators, where an incomplete program can cost players severely. There are several unusual aspects of the game, but the most obvious is the scoring; rather than summing the points during the game, a player’s final score is the number of points they scored for their most successful production, i.e. their most successful of the five rounds. Each round is broken down into several phases. First players can invest capital in improving their production, by for example, buying season tickets (which give a guaranteed five additional spectators for each subsequent round) or perhaps investing in a more expansive program which might increase the number of points available if it is completed successfully. Once all the players have improved their infrastructure, next they attend the market and bid for performers.

– Image by boardGOATS

The auctions are unusual in that each player has an opportunity to initiate an auction (i.e. choose which of the five sets are going to sold) and if they win, then the market is restocked, otherwise the next auction is chosen from fewer options. We decided to play what we thought was the original variant where each player can only win one auction; once they have won, they are then not able to bid on any later sales. However, on later inspection we discovered that thanks to the different variants available we had scrambled it slightly. Rereading the rules indicates that if a player loses an auction they initiated, they have the opportunity to try again, but with a smaller pool to choose from. In our auctions, each player was able to initiate just one auction, and if they won, the market was restocked and the next player had a go, whereas if they lost, they had to fight it out in a later auction. Auctions lead to all sorts of interesting dilemmas: is it better to bid and try to force someone to pay more, or is the risk of ending up with unwanted tiles too great? With our variant, we found that it was also sometimes better to let the initiator win because a better batch of tiles might come out, but failure to win an auction after initiating it was also a problem as it risked getting left with a choice of paying for unwanted tiles or getting nothing, which really added pressure.

– Image by boardGOATS

Given the relative shortage of tiles in the game, coming away with nothing is not really an option, but with a minimum bid of eight, the wrong tiles can be expensive. That said, the next phase is an opportunity to trade, and occasionally trading away something that is highly prized by others can turn out to be particularly productive. Like Settlers and Bohnanza, trades do not have to be symmetrical and must go through the active player, but in addition to trading tiles, money can also be used to sweeten a deal, or even buy an unwanted tile outright. Finally, players take it in turns to produce their spectacle. In order to do this, they roll a die (annotated with Roman numerals, obviously) which they can use to move one of the dignitaries, the Emperor, two Senators and three Consuls. These increase a players total for that round if they are in the arena when it is scored. If on the other hand, a player can move one of these characters onto a special “resting space” they get an “Emperor’s medal” as a reward. These can be traded in for money, the chance to move a dignitary forwards or backwards up to three spaces, three extra spectators or two can be used to get an extra investment opportunity at the start of the round.

– Image by boardGOATS

There are lots of components to the score of each production. Firstly there is the basic score associated with the program: this has a maximum potential value with points deducted for missing performers. To this, bonuses are added for season tickets, podiums (obtained for winning a round), star performers, dignitaries, previously completed event programs and Emperor medals. If this score is higher than the player’s previous highest total, their marker is moved to this new maximum and they receive that total in money. Once every player has completed their spectacle, a podium is handed out to the player who is in the lead and the player who is at the back takes a performer of their choice from the leading player’s pool. Finally, every player discards one performer token used in the round as “natural wastage”.

– Image by boardGOATS

Each player begins the game with two programs, a small one and a larger one. Pine started out with no performers that matched either of his and some that weren’t even available in the market, but everyone else had at least a small degree of overlap. The first round was a little tentative and Blue ended up as start player, so went first and invested in a season ticket. The early investments are critical as they continue to have an effect throughout the rest of the game. Magenta decided to do something different and expanded her arena, while Pine also picked up a season ticket and Burgundy opted for an Emperor’s Loge (pronounced “Lowj”). The Loge is an interesting investment as it doesn’t directly yield points. Instead, it allows the player to roll two dice and move one or two dignitaries just before producing their spectacle, potentially enabling players to gain more points that way. Burgundy had another plan though and forfeited the opportunity to take extra points, taking an emperors medal instead. As the most experienced player, he was of the opinion that the medals are really important.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor kilroy_locke

Blue was forced to produce the larger of her two programs in the first round which gave her a podium to add to her arena, but also cost her one valuable performer – a mistake she decided not to make again. The other consequence was that she was forced to produce the lower value production in for the second round as her arena wasn’t large enough (she had bought a season ticket in the first round rather than enlarging her auditorium). In the second round, one of the market stalls unusually had two of the rare “wild” tiles in it. These are very powerful as they don’t need to be assigned as a particular artist giving players much more flexibility and two was very enticing. In the first round Blue had got herself into a real mess having gone first and not won her own auction resulting in a messy scrabble to get tiles at the end of the round (a consequence of the rules change). Having seen this, everyone else decided to play safe and opted to choose a market they needed and then won largely uncontested leaving Blue to go last and take the wilds very cheaply. Despite this, Pine took the lead which he retained for the next couple of rounds as well. It was at about this point that Pine commented that he thought there would have been more “gladiatorial fighting”, to which Burgundy replied that there would be plenty of that by the final round…

– Image by boardGOATS

In the third and fourth rounds everyone was trying to get in a position for a big push in the final round. Magenta bought a season ticket instead of expanding her auditorium in the third round and therefore ended up in the same pickle that Blue had found herself in at the start. With only the one medal Magenta was unable to buy an extra investment opportunity which mean she was forced reproduce a medium event in the final round rather than buy a new large event. She went into the final round with the most money though which had the potential to guarantee her a good auction. Blue eschewed a new program in the fourth round, opting for another season ticket instead to try and set herself up for a big final round. Pine was very keen for a trade with Blue in the penultimate round, but as she had completed her program and still didn’t know what she was going to do in the final round she declined much to his disgust. Repeating a lower value production in the fourth round also ensured that Blue just finished last and was able to add insult to injury taking a valuable token from Pine who was well in the lead with a massive fourty-nine.

– Image by boardGOATS

With one round to go, Blue questioned whether Burgundy thought the Emperor’s Loge had been worth buying in the first round. He replied that the wisdom on boardgamegeek.com is that the medals are essential and because the Loge allows players to roll two dice they really help with that strategy. By this time, the value of the medals was becoming very obvious as trading in pairs enabled both Burgundy and Blue to make an extra investment which enabled Blue (start player again in the final round), to buy the most expensive, largest program (No. 30). Pine promptly followed by taking No. 28 and with his star performers and having so many podiums from the earlier rounds he looked in a good position, though he needed a lot of acts to complete his show. Blue was in a slightly better position with three “wilds”, but had very few bonuses.Blue went for the market she fancied most and Magenta decided to bid against her. Having not bought a large program in the final round, Magenta had far more money than anyone else and therefore the upper hand. Eventually, as money is only significant in a tie-breaker, Blue bid everything she had. Magenta, seeing other options of at least as great an interest to her decided to let her have it and Magenta took what she fancied, uncontested.

– Image by boardGOATS

While Pine and Burgundy were trying to work out which markets to take in order to do themselves the best favours, Blue looked at her options and Magenta’s. Since she Pine and Burgundy’s discussions were getting complex and could not involve her, Blue got bored and decided to see if Magenta would be interested in trading one of Blue’s “wilds” and an otherwise superfluous lion for one of her “green men” and a chariot. This would give both players one extra performer overall, and complete Magenta’s program, so she agreed. Thus, when Pine and Burgundy had finished thrashing out all the options, Blue and Magenta’s trade went through on the nod and it was only when Pine and Burgundy came to trying to further optimise their situations that they realised that Magenta had things they wanted, but nothing to offer her in return. Pine tried his best to get Magenta to trade, but she was steadfast that she wasn’t going to help him without getting something useful in return. Burgundy’s offer of two horses initially looked promising as he thought it would enable Magenta to take the star-turn bonus from Blue, but it would only give a tie, so ultimately, that trade was also unsuccessful.

– Image by boardGOATS

Blue moved a Senator into her arena and scored a total of eighty-two setting the bench-mark for everyone else. Although it sounded a lot, Blue didn’t think it would be quite enough and indeed it was very, very close, much closer than anyone had thought it would be. In the end, the Blue just had enough to finish four points ahead of Burgundy who was just two ahead of Pine who came in third. With the scores so very close, we had the inevitable review of the game and concluded that the the key moment was probably Blue taking the two wilds so cheaply in the second round, which would not have happened without the unintended rules revision. The other key moment was in the final round of negotiating when Blue and Magenta agreed their critical trade. Pine was verging on indignant that after playing for two and a half hours, it was essentially up to Magenta to choose the winner and suggested that should be the learning outcome for the week.

– Image by boardGOATS

Meanwhile, on the neighbouring table, Black and Purple had persuaded Green to join them playing one of their old favourites, Vikings. This is a fast economic game, but despite the nominal “Viking” theme there is none of the usual Norse Gods, exploration or pillaging involved. Black and Purple had come across it again recently after a long break and fancied giving it another outing. It is a game that we’ve not really played before in the group and Green was new to it too, but was willing to give it a ago. It is one of those games where the gameplay is not complicated and yet the explanation took ages. In summary, the game consists of six turns and on each turn, twelve tiles and twelve meeples are randomly drawn, paired together around a rondel. in each round, players take turns selecting a meeple/tile combination until they’re all taken.

– Image used with permission of BGG reviewer EndersGame

The tiles are pieces of islands and there are left ends, right ends and middle pieces. As players acquire these tiles, they are considering which sort of meeple would be placed on that tile, as each tile can hold only one meeple. The rules for placing these tiles are fairly straightforward, for example, a partial island can’t connect directly to open water, etc. The meeples come in five different colors and these colors denote their function in the game. For example, the yellow meeples are miners and they bring in money every turn; the red miners are nobles and they bring in two points apiece every time you score points, and so on. Once the tile selection and placement has been carried out, all the yellow meeples will make the players some money. On even turns, VP will be scored. At the end of the game, players can gain bonus points for completing the most islands and/or completing the largest island.

– Image used with permission of BGG reviewer EndersGame

It took Green a couple of rounds to work out how it all worked and ended up making a couple of little errors when laying out of his islands, which included not having an island space to place his gold Viking on and which meant he was able to get income, which was compounded by the bonus tile he had picked up which would enable him to gain an extra two coins for each gold Viking. In the meantime, Purple had a fair few noblemen who would not only score her well, but also enabled scoring for the large number of gold Vikings and fishermen below. She managed to avoid any ships in the first couple of rounds and so gained all the bonuses available to her. Black did have a number of ships, but he also had the warrior Vikings placed to combat them, so also gained a healthy bonus income. Green had a ship and a warrior, but both his scoring and income were low.

– Image used with permission of BGG reviewer EndersGame

After the first couple of rounds, the game progressed in pretty much the same pattern, except this time Green had sussed out what he was trying to do and regularly collected boatmen to redistribute his Vikings in time for scoring. However he was hampered by a lack of funds in the middle rounds, but when he finally got the gold guys out, he suddenly started to rake in the cash. This meant he was able to buy just what he needed in the final round, much to the others annoyance. By the end, Purple had a very red and yellow looking board and the longest island (six tiles long giving her five bonus points). Black had a huge fleet of ships, but most were covered by warriors and those that weren’t were not powerful enough to do much damage. He also had the most complete islands (seven which gave him a seven point bonus). Green had a relatively low scoring board, but he did have the most boatmen (giving ten bonus points). It had been a very poor game for fishermen, in fact, almost all the Vikings left in the bag were fishermen, so everyone was underfed, but Purple was less underfed than Black and Green.

– Image by BGG contributor dinaddan

So in the final scoring Black had won through, beating Purple into second place (the first time she had not won this game for some time) and Green came in third, though much closer than he thought he would be. It was then that Black realised that Purple had forgotten to score her bonus island tile, which gave her a massive extra nine points, and with it, the win! We discussed the bonus tiles after the game and although the rules were not clear, we felt we had probably played it wrong. We only replaced the tiles that had been taken each round, rather than swiping them all and laying out a new lot. Since there were four tiles per round for six rounds and we had two piles of twelve, it looked like what was meant to happen was a new set each round. This would have made more choices available (and more bonus fishermen which would have been handy). Green decided that he liked this game very much and would be happy for Black and Purple to bring it again.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

The shows were still going on on the next table, so we needed another medium weight game and decided upon the cute Panda game, Takenoko. While setting up there was a short discussion on the evolutionary dead-end of the Panda and how on earth did such a creature ever evolve in the first place. Although since they are such cute creatures, we were glad they did and they had led to the clever little game. The play area starts with one single hexagonal “pond” tile with two characters on top: the Imperial Gardener and the Panda. On their turns players first determine the weather by a roll of the weather die, then perform their two actions. These actions must be different and the player can choose freely from the five available: add a new bamboo plot; take an irrigation channel (which can be played or stored for later use); move one of the characters (either the Imperial Gardener or the Panda), or draw an objective card and add it to their hand. The aim of the game is to earn points by completing objectives. When a player completes one of their objectives, they show everyone and the card is placed face up in front of them. Players can complete as many objectives as they like on their turn and end of the game is triggered when one player full-fills a set number of objectives.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor nad24
and nonsensicalgamers.com

This game was a slightly unusual one as we all placed tiles in such a way that there was only ever one large field of each of the three colours and by half way, we all had mostly stopped laying tiles at all. In typical British style, the weather was mostly awful; wind; cloud; and rain. It was ages before the sun came out, but thereafter it made enough of an appearance to keep us all happy. Purple was the first to complete a mission card and Green wasn’t far behind, both tile pattern cards. The Panda and Gardener were mostly travelling between the pink and yellow fields, leaving the largely un-irrigated green fields untouched. This enabled Green and Purple to get some tower and bamboo chomping bonus cards, but Black was beginning to fall behind. His problem was that all his bonus cards were low scoring. He kept using his actions to take more bonus cards, but they always seemed to be low scoring, and unless he could get more points out of it he wasn’t going to win. He completed a few objectives on the way, but didn’t want to fill all of his eight with low scoring objectives so held back on claiming some. In the meantime, Green was rapidly claiming bonuses, mostly towers giving a healthy haul of points. Purple made a few miscalculations on which bamboos would grow and by how much and thus failed to get a card or two that she had planned.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor Oceluna

As the game approached the end, Green and Purple both had claimed six bonus cards and Black still only had four. But then with a flourish, suddenly Black finished the game. He had given up on getting higher scoring objectives and decided the best bet would be to get the ones he had got down and stop Green winning any more points, also picking up the two point bonus for finishing first in the process. Everyone else got one more go which was enough to give Green a seventh and Purple her eighth objectives. Totalling up the scores showed that Black had been right about not winning with low scoring cards. That honour went to Green, who finished nearly ten points ahead, with Black just taking second place. In the post game discussions, Blue commented that although she had always wanted to like the game she felt it just lacked something. Black said that he had always felt that the game was very Luck based, although Green did point out that if Black had just gone with the low scorers he would not to have wasted as many actions gaining the cards and could have finished the game earlier, before Green was able to amass all his points. However, Green and Burgundy both agreed that the tile layout bonus cards were the weakest as the points were usually low and yet did not seem any easier to get. This debate will probably run and run, much like the one about the Panda’s evolutionary dead-end…

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor ObeyMyBrain

Learning Outcome: Even after playing for two and a half hours, sometimes Magenta still gets to choose the winner.