Author Archives: nannyGOAT

26th July 2016

To celebrate Codenames winning the Spiel des Jahres Award, this week it was our “Feature Game”. Although the game seems to be very, very popular, it definitely has the “Marmite Factor” amongst our group. It also really needs a group of a reasonable size. Since it is relatively quick, even the most reluctant agreed to give it a go, especially as Cerise had made it for the first time in ages and it was a game she had really enjoyed last time we played it. It was also Turquoise’s first visit, so a team game seemed a good way of starting. The idea of the game is that there are two rival teams of Spies, each with a leader or Spymaster. The Spies are trying to locate their Agents, but these are only known by their Codenames, and only the Spymasters have the key to who is on which team. The Codenames are laid out on the table in a five by five array where everyone can see them together with some innocent bystanders and an Assassin. The Spymasters then take it in turns to give clues to their team so that the Spies can identify their own team’s Agents by pointing at them.

– Image by boardGOATS

Clues are of the form “word; number”, where “word” is a clue that connects several cards and “Number” is the number of connected cards. For example, the clue “bird; three” might connect “sparrow”, “beak” and “Naomi Campbell”. The team then discuss the clue and point to code cards, one at a time. If they get it wrong, their turn ends straight away, so ideally they should start with the answers they think are most obvious. If the Codename corresponds to one of their agents, then the team can guess again, and keep trying until they have exhausted their theoretical maximum number cards that match the clue (three in the example). Importantly, the only measure of “correct” is whether the Codename is one of the Agents, the agent chosen does not actually have to match the current clue. So, a team who can’t make sense of a clue or identify all the Codenames may decide point to a Codename that matches a clue given earlier in the game. For this reason, when a team get all their theoretical maximum number of Codenames for that turn right, they also get one extra chance.

– Image by boardGOATS

So, the trick is for the leader to come up with clues that cover multiple correct answers so that the rest of the team can identify the complete set before the opposition identify all theirs. Unfortunately, we had a particularly unconnected set of words and two Spymasters, Blue and Burgundy, who were particularly useless at this sort of thing. Consequently there were lots of clues like “continent; one”, and when Blue got adventurous and went for “music; two” she totally confused her team and was perilously close to a hint that could lead to the Assassin (Codename “Snowman”) and bring the game to an abrupt end. “Zooloretto; two” also fell on stony ground since nobody on Blue’s team had actually played it (where everyone in Burgundy’s team had). The game remained finely balanced as Blue continued to try to give slightly more adventurous clues which her team didn’t always get, while Burgundy played safe with smaller clues that his team understood.

– Image by boardGOATS

It all came to a head when, with only two Agents left to find, Burgundy decided to be adventurous and gave the clue “film; two”. His team quickly got one of them, “Alien”, but the second was more tricky. Green thought it was probably “forest” (as in “The Forest Moon of Endor”), but could also be several other things. Cerise, on the opposite team leant a hand and suggested that it could be “wind” as in “Gone with the…” or maybe “snowman”. Meanwhile, Burgundy remained stony-faced, in what were very trying circumstances. Eventually the team ignored Cerise (who had managed to suggest both the correct answer and the Assassin), which gave Blue and her team one last chance. With only one Agent left to guess, there was only a short pause before they finished the game. There was a big sigh of relief all round as everyone was put out of their misery, particularly Blue and Burgundy who had found the whole clue-giving experience very stressful indeed. Unquestionably, with the right crowd Codenames could be great fun, but sadly, we just aren’t it, so it is unlikely to get another outing in the near future – definitely not our group’s Spiel des Jahres this year.

– Image by boardGOATS

With that over, we decided to split into two groups. Black and Purple were keen to give Imhotep a try (one of the other Spiel des Jahres Award nominees), as they had wanted to play it at the UK Games Expo, but it had been constantly booked out of the games library. Burgundy had played it (also at Expo, with Blue and Pink), had enjoyed it and was happy to give it another go, so Green made up a group of four. As well as being the key protagonist in the film, “The Mummy”, Imhotep was also a priest and a great architect. So in this game, players take the role of builders in Egypt who are trying to emulate Imhotep. The premise of the game is very simple. On their turn, the active player chooses one of four actions: procure new stones; load stones on a boat; sail a boat to a monument; or play an action card. Players can only store a maximum of five stones and when they procure stones they can collect a maximum of three. Stones are loaded onto ships one at a time, but which of the five possible destinations the boats end up at and the order they are unloaded in is vital, so timing and planning is everything.

– Image by boardGOATS

Admittedly the lovely big wooden blocks make this game feel like a “junior” board game, but Imhotep is anything but. It is one of those games that is easy to learn but difficult to master. Although players have a range of options, trying to decide which one is best depends on what has already transpired, what opponents do and how the game will develop. What makes it particularly tricky is that the best plans in the world can be crushed by opponents with one small action: when they take a boat to the “wrong place”. It turns out the cubes are large for a good reason: stacking cubes is a key part of the game and anything smaller would make a very wobbly obelisk. There are four ships and five building locations, so one doesn’t get visited and the round ends when all four boats have sailed. There are six rounds in total with points scored in different ways for the different buildings; the player with the most points at the end is declared the best builder in Egypt.

– Image by boardGOATS

Once everything was set up, the game got under way, but then almost stalled. Nobody had any idea what should be a good opening gambit. Placing a cube on a ship was the easy choice, but which ship and in which position? After some head scratching, everyone began placing cubes on boats, making plans where wanted the ships should go, waiting for them to be full, when suddenly, Purple jumped the gun and sent the first boat on its way. She chose a boat with one cube of each of her competitors and sent it build an Obelisk, catching everyone by surprise. It wasn’t a particularly bad place to go, but the obelisk doesn’t score until the end and since the highest scores are for the tallest towers, it might not actually be the most efficient use of a cube, especially so early in the game.

– Image by boardGOATS

The rest of the first round continued to be a lesson in frustration as each of the other boats ended up somewhere other than where players had planned. The next boat went to the Burial Chambers (another scoring at the end of the game), the third to the Wall (scored at the end of the round, but only one point per cube) and the last went to the Market to get cards. As Green was first on the boat he had the first choice of the cards available and based on that first boat he chose the card that gave him an extra point for every 3 cubes in the Obelisk (any three cubes, not just his own). Now no-one other than Green wanted a boat to go to the Obelisk.

– Image by boardGOATS

The second round began a little more cautiously. Everyone had a better idea of how the round would go and began placing their cubes in particular positions on the ships. The game continued to frustrate everyone as the ships just wouldn’t go where players wanted them to go. This is frustration is similar to that in Zooloretto where players place animals on trucks, but have to wait until the next turn to collect them, if someone else hasn’t got there first, of course. In Imhotep, it was usually pretty obvious where players wanted the boat to go, so someone else almost always got there first to send it somewhere else!

– Image by boardGOATS

The unusual scoring of the Pyramid (not steadily increasing or decreasing points) meant that everyone tried to position themselves carefully for that optimum high scoring space, but no-one ever managed to get the boat set up quite how they wanted. As a result, again no boat went to the pyramid. The obelisks grew, and the pattern of the Burial Chamber was going in Black and Burgundy’s favour and the Wall scored a few more points, mostly for Purple. The Wall was beginning to show its strength as a cube placed there can score round after round until it is covered – potentially scoring well. The market cards were dolled out, with Burgundy and Black both taking a blue extra action cards for later use. Green wasn’t sure what to take and ended up with a purple end game scoring card which would only come into it’s own if he could collect a few more. In the third round the pyramid finally got started, in Black’s favour. The game continued in much the same way, individual plans were more and more obvious and as a result became harder and harder to fulfil. The trouble was, in taking an action to scupper someone else it often helped a different player or upset their own plans.

– Image by boardGOATS

By the end of the game nobody was sure who the winner was going to be. Before adding all the end-game scores, Burgundy was ahead of Black and Purple, with Green trailing behind. Everyone had managed a couple of areas in the Burial Chamber, but despite best efforts to scupper him, Burgundy still had the largest area. The Obelisks had become a fraught battle field at the end. Black had thrown down the gauntlet to take a boat there which only had two of his cubes and pushed him into the lead, but in the penultimate round Green had sailed a sneaky little single cube boat which made his tower equal. By making sure that he placed a cube in any boat that Black had used, Green then ensuring that he would at least share the Obelisk spoils. The presence of a single cube boat in that last round, was interesting, but no-one wanted to use it as it was guaranteed that the cube would get taken to the least useful dock, so in the end the Obelisk scores for first and second place were shared between Black and Green with Purple and Burgundy sharing the scores for third and fourth place.

– Image by boardGOATS

With Black now several points ahead, Burgundy and Green were vying for second with only the the green and purple end-game scoring cards left, though only Black and Green had any. Black scored points for every three cubes in the burial chamber, which extended his lead and now looked unassailable. Green got his Obelisk cubes score, which proved to be the same as Black took for the burial chamber, but with three purple cards giving him another six points he leap-frogged over Black to win by one point. It was an incredibly close game which suggests that where cubes go may not matter as much as it feels like it should. On one hand, this seems like a good thing as it relieves the pressure of all those boats going to the “wrong place”, but on the other hand it may suggest the game is a little too balanced making strategy play is less important, which would be a great shame. Everyone really enjoyed it, however, and would definitely play it again especially as it plays quickly and the alternative tile options look as though they would add variety and new challenges to the game keeping it fresh. For our group, from the nominations list, this would definitely have been our choice of Spiel des Jahres.

– Image used with permission of boardgamephotos

Meanwhile, everyone else was engaged in a brutal game of Colt Express, the worthy winner of last year’s Spiel des Jahres. This is a programming game, where players take it in turns to choose the cards to they will play, but only action them after everyone has chosen. Since everyone then takes it in turns to carry out their actions, the game is full of unforeseen consequences. The game has a Western theme and is played on a fabulous three-dimensional train. The idea is that each player is a bandit attacking the train trying to move about to pick up cash and jewels while avoiding the Marshall and shooting each other. Although we’ve played this a few times, we had a couple of people who hadn’t played it before so we had a quick run-down of the rules first. Each player starts with the same deck of action cards and six bullet cards. A round card dictates how many cards will be played and how (face up or down; in pairs or singly) and players each shuffle their action deck and draw six cards.

– Image used with permission of boardgamephotos

Players then take it in turns to play the action cards. At the beginning of a round everyone can see where everyone else is and it is easy to choose which card to play and predict its outcome. Before long, however, things begin to become unpredictable and by the time players have to choose a second card it is highly likely that plans will have gone awry, though of course, nobody know this yet. Once the cards have all been played, the pile of cards is turned over and the cards are actioned in the order that they were played. It is only at this point that people realise the mistakes they’ve unwittingly made, shooting nobody or the wrong person, trying to pick up jewels that aren’t there or finding they’ve got nowhere to go because the Marshal is in the way and has screwed up their plans. As the game progresses, things get worse too since shooting someone involves passing them a bullet card. This is added to their action deck, but is a dead card and gives no possible actions. Multiple bullet cards means the chance of drawing them increases making the action cards drawn all the more precious and adding pressure to make the maximum use of them.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

Colt Express is a light, fun game and inevitably, someone gets picked on. This time Blue was the victim (playing the character Django). Magenta (playing the innocent looking Belle) started using Blue for target practice, but Cerise (Doc) was very quick to join in the fun. Blue did her best to escape and briefly managed to grab the $1,000 strongbox (gold bar in our version of the game) before Magenta biffed her soundly on the nose and nabbed it. Meanwhile, Cerise and Turquoise were doing an excellent job of gathering up the loot and robbing the passengers blind, before they decided to try to empty their revolvers. Obviously, this was mostly at Blue’s expense and with so many bullet cards she struggled to do anything, but that didn’t put people off of course. Before long even the Marshall was getting in on the act and, much to her disgust, Blue finished the game with more bullets than action cards and no money or gems at all.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

For everyone else, however, the game was quite close. Magenta had managed to hang onto the gold bar (aka strongbox) and one gem, but it wasn’t enough to compete with Turquoise and Cerise. Turquoise had picked up a massive five money purses while Cerise added the Sharp Shooter bonus to her one gem and single purse. Much to our surprise, both totalled $1,850 which meant we had to check the rules for a tie-breaker. It turned out this was the number of bullets received, which meant that even though she was a long way from competing, Blue had an influence on the result. As well as being a bullet-magnet, Blue had just about managed to fire a couple of shots in return. Cerise had been one of the main attackers, so she had caught a few of Blue’s bullets as well as a couple of Magenta’s. Since Turquoise had rarely fired at anyone, she had picked up just two bullets and with it, her second win of the evening, with Cerise getting her comeuppance.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor lacxox

With it nearing “pumpkin time” for Magenta and Turquoise, there was just time for one last quick game and, almost inevitably, that was 6 Nimmt!. How this game is still interesting for our group, is a bit of a mystery. It is short, everyone is always happy to play it and, since it has such a small footprint, it gets brought every week which means it is there when the occasion is right, the mystery though is why people haven’t got bored when other games have long since fallen off the radar. This time Purple started badly picking up twenty Nimmts in the first round while Turquoise began with a clean sheet. Burgundy started well with just two Nimmts, but since he always has one good round and one bad, everyone was just waiting for him to start collecting cards in the second round. Magenta and Blue both had consistently low scores, but they weren’t low enough, and while Purple also made a virtue of consistency, that’s not so good when the scores are both high. Sadly, Turquoise was forced to pick up a couple of high-scoring of cards while Burgundy, very unusually managed to string two good rounds together. With a clear round for his second, Burgundy took the game with a total of just two Nimmts, beating Turquoise into second place.

– Image by boardGOATS

With Cerise, Magenta and Turquoise heading off, that left a short hour for something else. Black was keen to play Isle of Skye, the winner of this year’s Kennerspiel des Jahres, but Green somehow hadn’t played it and we debated whether it would overrun. Before long we’d prevaricated enough to definitely rule it out due to lack of time and we started hunting round for something else. In the end we settled on The Game, a nice little cooperative card game that was nominated for last year’s Spiel des Jahres. We played this quite a bit for a while, but somehow it has fallen out of favour a little of late, but for no very good reason. The rules are simple: on their turn, the active player lays a minimum of two cards on any of the four piles following the appropriate trend – two piles must always increase, two decrease; the exception to this is if you can play a card where the interval is exactly ten in the wrong direction (known as “The Backwards Rule”). Players can talk about anything so long as there is no specific number information given and the aim is to cooperatively get rid of all ninety-eight cards by playing them on to the four piles.

– Image used with permission of boardgamephotos

The Game started badly and then it got worse. Before long we were wondering whether we were even going to get through the deck. Our excuse was that the game is harder with five, but that may or may not actually be the case. Eventually, we finally managed to exhaust the draw deck, leaving just the cards in hand, but it was inevitable that we weren’t going to be able to place every card as several players had lots of very low cards in a run. In the end we finished with eight unplayable cards. We felt we might have been able to place a couple more with a bit more planning, discussion and thought at the end, but everyone was tired and it was home time, so our collective competitive streak had deserted us. Maybe it will come back for next time…

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: Prize-winning games can be a little bit hit and miss and depend strongly on the group too.

Summer 2016 Oxford Meeples Big DoG

On Saturday, August 6^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 that will depend on weather and other commitments as usual.

– Image from oxfordmeeples.org

Boardgames in the News: Asmodee on the March Again?

It’s been quite quiet recently, but summer is now here and with it, the silly-season of take-overs and mergers, which inevitably means Asmodee are at it again. Asmodee, (originally known as Siroz), started out as a small French game publishing and distribution company, specialising in the family market. Their best-known product was probably Dobble, though there were others too. In 2007, the investment firm, Montefiore acquired 60% of the company and invested €120 million to finance Asmodee’s international growth. Their expansion history began a bit like this:

Acquisition of Belgian game distributor Hodin (2008)
Acquisition of Spanish games developer Cromola (2009)
Acquisition of German producers Proludo (2009)
Acquisition of 60% stake in UK-based distributor, Esdevium Games (2010)
Acquisition of Abalone (2010)
Partnership with Libellud (2010)
Set-up of a subsidiary in Shanghai, China (2012)

Meanwhile, the Canadian F2Z Entertainment, the parent of company of Pretzel Games, also own Filosofia Éditions (who bought Z-Man Games in 2011) and bought the U.S. company Plaid Hat Games last year. Then, in January 2014, the private equity company Eurazeo bought 83.5% of Asmodee and the mad expansion began all over again, but this time in earnest:

- - Acquisition of Days of Wonder (2014)
  - Acquisition of Ystari Games (2014)
  - Acquisition of Asterion Press (2014)
  - Acquisition of Pearl Games (2014)
  - Acquisition of exclusive distribution rights to all Queen Games products (2015)
  - Acquisition of rights to the English versions of the Catan series of games (2016)

Last summer we speculated how long it would be before Asmodee turned their attention to F2Z Entertainment with their enticing range of games including Pandemic and Carcassonne. Well, last week, Asmodee announced that it has entered into exclusive discussions to acquire F2Z Entertainment with closure of the acquisition expected to take place in the coming months. Who will be next, Rio Grande Games perhaps?

– Image from escapistmagazine.com

Next Meeting – 26th July 2016

Our next meeting will be on Tuesday 26^th July, 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, to celebrate it winning the Spiel des Jahres Award, the “Feature Game” will be Codenames. This is a very popular word-based deduction game played in teams of “Spies” who are trying to identify the other spies on their side. The idea is that the team leader gives clues to the rest of their team who are trying to choose particular word-cards (code-names) from an array. The trick is for the leader to come up with a clue that covers multiple correct answers so that the rest of the team can identify the complete set before the opposition identify all theirs. It is very quick to play so we can move onto something a little heavier, possibly even Isle of Skye, the winner of this year’s Kennerspiel des Jahres, or one of the other nominees, like Imhotep or Karuba.

– Image used with permission of boardgamephotos

And speaking of Spies…

Jeff was working as an intern for MI5 when, after a month doing some very tedious paperwork, he was summoned to his bosses office on the top floor.

“It’s all very funny,” his boss explained, “The CIA have asked for our help – seems they’ve lost track of an operative in Ireland, chap by the name of ‘Murphy’, do you think you would be able to find him?”

Jeff was very, very excited and very keen to get out of the office – his very own secret mission – Wow! The chief spy continued, “All I can tell you is that his name is Murphy and that he’s somewhere in Ireland. If you think you’ve located him, tell him the code words, ‘The weather forecast calls for mist in the morning.’ If it’s really him, he’ll answer, ‘Yes, and for mist at noon as well’.”

So Jeff got on the next plane to Ireland and stopped in a bar in a small town. He casually said to the bartender, “Maybe you can help me. I’m looking for a guy named Murphy.”

The bartender replied, “You’re going to have to be more specific because, around here, there are lots of guys named Murphy. There’s ‘Murphy the Baker’ who runs the pastry shop on the next block; ‘Murphy the Banker’ who’s president of our local savings bank; ‘Murphy the Blacksmith’ who works at the stables, and, as a matter of fact, my name is Murphy, too.”

Hearing this, Jeff figured he might as well try the code words on the bartender, so he said, “The weather forecast calls for mist in the morning.” To which the bartender replied, “Oh, you’re looking for ‘Murphy the Spy’ – he lives just down the street.”

12th July 2016

The hungry were feeding when an itinerant gamer from the north-west wondered in to join us. In the area for work, Yellow has been visiting several local game groups recently and was nice enough to come and join us for the evening. In addition, Grey made another unexpected appearance; apparently Cerise was away with the little one, so he was free to come out and play with us. Unfortunately for them though, our start was delayed a little while Blue and Burgundy scoffed their supper as quickly as they could and everyone else talked politics. Normally politics is a topic of conversation people avoid for fear of arguments, but it is amazing how everyone in the group seems to agree at the moment. In fact, as the evening wore on, it felt like history was being made as we watched: news come in that the Labour NEC had decided that Jeremy Corbyn should be able to stand as leader without needing the usual support from members of the Parliamentary Party, and the Petitions Committee had decided to schedule a referendum debate for 5th Sept, following the petition that garnered over four million signatures.

– Image by boardGOATS

Eventually, we decided to get on with it with Blue and Magenta keen to play the “Feature Game”, Puerto Rico. Surprisingly (as Puerto Rico is Green’s favourite game and it was with him in mind that we chose it), Green was keen to play Amerigo instead. He had missed out on playing it on Friday night with the Didcot group and it had clearly been playing on his mind over the weekend. By the same token, Burgundy and Black were less keen to play Amerigo as they had played it on Friday and they quite fancied Puerto Rico instead. Purple had played it on Friday, but was keen to play again, so the group naturally split into two with Pine joining those playing Puerto Rico and Grey and Yellow joining the Amerigo group.

– Image by boardGOATS

Puerto Rico is an older game, and in many ways the archetypal Euro game. The idea of the game is quite simple in that on their turn, the active player chooses a “roles” then everyone takes it in turns to carry out the action associated with that role. Each role has a “privilege” which the active player gets which gives them a little bonus (as well as the opportunity to take the action first. Once everyone has chosen a role, the remaining role cards are “improved” by the addition of money, the used role cards are returned to the pool and the start player (The Governor) moves one player to the left before the new Governor starts the next round. The aim of the game is to get victory points which are awarded for buildings and for shipping goods. However, to build, players need money, and before they can ship goods, players need to be able to produce the goods with a plantation (and where necessary process them in the appropriate building).

– Image by boardGOATS

Each building/plantation has a special bonus, but for a player to receive this, the building needs to be occupied by a “colonist”. All these activities are carried out through the role cards. For example, the Builder enables players to construct a building, but the player who chooses the role gets the privilege of paying one doubloon less than they would have done otherwise. Similarly, the Craftsman is used to produce, but the privilege allows the player who chose the role to produce one extra item (of those they had already been able to produce). Other roles include the Captain (enables players to ship goods); the Trader (allows players to sell goods for money); the Settler (players can take a plantation tile and add it to their island); the Mayor (the ship of “colonists” arrives and they are divided amongst the players), and the Prospector (everyone does nothing except the person with the privilege who takes a doubloon from the bank).

– Image by boardGOATS

The “colonists” arrive by ship, are dark brown and work on the plantations, so many gamers have assumed the term is a pseudonym for African slaves and in the USA this means some people have refused to play the game. We are not like that in our group and, though we have no problem talking about slaves, we had far more fun talking about “colonists” in a way that everyone knew what we really meant. What with that and the references to the Big Meerkat (that’s in the centre of Newcastle you know), the Orifice building (otherwise known as the Office), Worf (Son of Mogh), and the Big and Little Whorehouses (or perhaps they were really warehouses), much of the game was carried out in a sort of code. This special group understanding was continued in the game play too where Magenta kept getting in Burgundy’s way, much to everyone else’s obvious delight, though Magenta insisted that it was all purely accidental.

– Image by boardGOATS

Burgundy started, so he, Blue and Black began the game with an indigo plantation while Magenta and Pine started out with a corn field. Pine found it quite hard to see what we needed to do, but he soon got past that and, as the game wore on, he quickly monopolised the tobacco market. He remained the only player dealing in tobacco for most of the game which was quite important due to the way shipping works: when a player chooses the Captain role, players take it in turns to place goods on one of the three ships. Each ship can only carry one type of cargo and they all have a finite space. As the only player shipping tobacco, whenever Pine was able to transport some of his tobacco he simultaneously prevented others from shipping their goods. Since this is the key way to get victory points, before long, Pine had built a sizeable pile and looked to be romping away with it. Meanwhile, Black, then Magenta and Burgundy moved into sugar which made them uneasy allies, sometimes working together to get sugar into a ship, but otherwise competing to get their goods into the last space on a ship.

– Image by boardGOATS

While everyone else was engaged in building a productive plantation, Burgundy began by by using his land for quarries, lots of quarries. These make building cheaper, but don’t provide goods when someone chooses the Craftsman role. Seeing where he was going, Magenta picked up a Construction Hut which enabled her to choose a quarry instead of a plantation each time anyone chose the Settler role. Blue managed to pick up one quarry, but otherwise, between them, Burgundy and Magenta were in danger of getting all of them. Burgundy got round the potential for a lack of plantations by building a Hacienda which gave him an extra plantation every time anyone else Settled. He then coupled this with Hospice which meant that one of these plantations/quarries arrived complete with a “colonist” – a very powerful combination. For a long time Black havered over whether to try to get in on the quarry game or not. To begin with he decided not before picking one up anyhow.

– Image by boardGOATS

Pine was sat next to Magenta quietly coveting her Construction Hut, but it was pointed out that it wasn’t a good time to buy it and there were better things he could do, advice he took. It obviously rankled a little though because every time after that when quarries were mentioned he added, “Though I’m not allowed a quarry…”. Eventually, Blue decided she was struggling from a lack of both cash and victory points and needed to do something drastic to get back into the game. So, taking a leaf out of Pine’s book, she expanded into coffee and then screwed everyone else up by starting a coffee ship which took several rounds to fill. Eventually, she was joined by Pine who then variously helped her and got in her way.

– Image by boardGOATS

Blue and Black both made a hash of their timing with the crafting and shipping, and when Blue finally worked out what she was doing and planned what she needed for a large building she lost the plot and failed to choose the Builder role when she had the chance. So, when Magenta took the builder a couple of turns later, everyone had enough for a large building and Blue was left without her first or second choice. Magenta who had filled less than half her plantation spaces took the Residence just to stop Burgundy and Blue who had been able to fill theirs and would have been able to get maximum points for it (thanks to their Haciendas). So, Burgundy took the Fortress (which gave him one point for every three “colonists”) and Blue took the Customs House (which gave one extra victory point chip for every four already held). This left Black with the dregs from which he took the Guild Hall (giving him points for his production buildings). Meanwhile, Pine ominously kept producing vast amounts of tobacco and shipping it.

– Image by boardGOATS

By this time, Blue and Black were convinced that Pine was miles ahead, and everyone else was playing for the minor places. Pine in turn was convinced Magenta had a healthy lead; Magenta was certain she was losing, but continued to innocently obstruct Burgundy and the game turned nasty as everyone began to struggle to ship what they wanted. With the number of victory point chips available dwindling faster than the number of “colonists”, everyone scrabbled to build that last utility and ship those final crates. It turned out that it was a very close game: Magenta had a misleadingly large pile of singleton victory point chips; Pine probably would have won if the game had the game ended a round or two earlier, and Burgundy may well have won had it gone on another for another couple of rounds. In the end though, despite being quite convinced she was nowhere close, Blue finished in first place with fifty-six, just three points ahead of Pine with Black taking third on a tie-break.

– Image by boardGOATS

Meanwhile, on the next table, Amerigo was going full steam ahead. In this game players are exploring the islands of South America, securing trading routes, and building settlements. The game board is made up of a four by four grid of large tiles that make an archipelago. Players then have two ships each which they sail through the maze of islands, mooring at natural harbours to build trading posts, and then expanding settlements. The actions available to players are determined through the use of a special cube tower that contains lots of buffers and buttresses. The idea is that each of the seven actions has an associated set of coloured cubes: blue for sailing, black for loading cannon, red for buying buildings, green for settling etc. At the start of the game, all the cubes are put into the top of the tower a small number get stuck and remain inside the tower to be potentially knocked out at a later point in the game.

– Image used with permission of
BGG contributor punkin312

There are four rounds and each round consists of seven phases, corresponding to each action where all the cubes available of that colour are poured into the tower. Most of these cubes come out again, but some dislodge cubes previously caught in the baffles, while others others get stuck themselves. Of the cubes that come out, the colour that is in the majority dictates the number, while all the colours dictate the actions. Thus, if five blue, one green and one black come out, players can choose between sailing, building settlements or loading cannon, and in each case, they have five “action points”. So, the actions that are available are largely predictable, with a slightly random element meaning there is a tactical element (taking advantage of the actions currently available in the best way possible) as well as a strategic (long term plan) element to the game.

– Image by BGG contributor mcfer

Points are available throughout the game for all sorts of things, including being the first person to land on an island and establish a trading post; building settlements on an island; completing an island by settling on its last available space; collecting gold, and moving along the progress and special action paths. At the end of each round, however, the pirates attack and players have to fire their cannon to repel boarders. Anyone who has not loaded sufficient cannon to fend off the pirates, loses points which is particularly nasty, because these players lose as many points as they would if they’d had no cannon at all, and they also have to fire the cannon they had loaded!

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

Inevitably we all started off sailing to islands near to us, and generally we all did the main colour action in the first round. Grey toyed with the idea of not doing Cannon’s, but in the end decided to copy the more experienced players. So an easy and simple, first round, in a game that gradually became a more cut throat battle. Purple concentrated on running up her brown track and gaining the bonus action chits and spread across to a few islands. This strategy seemed to leave her struggling for points as the game went on. Yellow was unsure how best to approach the game, so tended to stick to the action colour sequence, but got hold of the red equals green equals red bonus chit, which he used to good effect to build up on his several islands. This strategy netted him a good haul of points as the game progressed.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor jsper

Grey was running an expansionist policy, getting to as many islands as he could. On top of this he, quite slyly, built over the extra empty trading post spaces, thus rendering them useless and gaining a monopoly on several islands, however, his score also seemed to suffer for this. Meanwhile, Green carried out a number of red planning actions to build up a large backlog of buildings to place. This meant he always had something to place in those tricky corners, but he lost out on his big islands by leaving it too late to place them. Early on, he nabbed the big six neutral tile (the only one in the game) and then realised that he was on the wrong side of the big island to be able to place it, so had to make a quick trip to the other side to develop a new trading post before he could place it for a whopping eighteen points. This strategy was proving quite productive and he and Yellow were regularly vying for the lead.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor Oceluna

In the last part of the game, while Purple and Yellow continued their general strategy, Grey decided he had enough islands and started to place his tiles on them to gain the resources. Green, having built as much as he could, was left wondering what to do next. He had lots of tiles still to place, but nowhere to place them without a new trading post. There were four left, all on the other side of the board and they were disappearing fast, so green started sailing. By using his gold and going round the outside he was able to get to the area in just one move. By this time, there were only two trading posts left as everyone else worked together to stop Green. With no more gold, Green was not quite able to get to a trading post and ended just one space away. Yellow took his turn and he built on the other trading post leaving Green to sail once more and place his trading post.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

With only two single spaces left on this last island, there was a bit of a stand-off between Yellow and Green: whoever built first would gain a single point, but leave the other to get the three point bonus for finishing the island. Meanwhile, there was a total of eight pirates on the board which everyone had covered until Purple took the two-plus pirate attack bonus token. Purple was aright of course, but everyone else needed another two cannon if they weren’t going to end up with an eight point penalty. More turns were sacrificed to gain cannon which also sent players to the top of the line and provided extra gold. Purple and Green found themselves with no actions to do, so ended up trading action cubes for gold, while Grey and Yellow mopped-up island bonuses.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

In the very last action everyone swapped their gold for extra spaces on the white turn order track, just to get to that extra scoring location. With the game coming to an end and neither Green nor Yellow prepared to give quarter on the last island, neither took the final three points. Before the final scoring began, Yellow was in the lead, a few points clear of Green. As the final scoring phase began, it became apparent that everyone except for Purple had misunderstood the scoring the resource bonuses. We thought the number on the yellow action chits was its multiplier value, however, this number is irrelevant to the scoring, it only means it costs more to obtain. Grey was particularly annoyed as he had deliberately been going for the high value action tokens and had been choosing the resource tokens appropriately.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

In the end, it was very close with Grey and Purple catching up however, it wasn’t quite enough, and Yellow and Green remained several points ahead, tied on a hundred and thirty-one. The tie-breaker gave it to Yellow, as he was at the end of the turn order track and Green was five spaces farther back. On reflection though, Green later realised that he could have taken it had he known the rules better as he’d finished with six gold. He could easily have spent the surplus gold to move along the track, but had decided against it as, although it would have given him an extra five points, the gold was worth one point each so there had seemed no point.

– Image by BGG contributor jancis

Puerto Rico was still underway, and with Grey deciding he could do with an early night (while the Cat’s away, the Mice will play – and it seemed this Mouse had been playing quite a bit!), Purple, Green and Yellow opted for some quick, light-hearted fun with Om Nom Nom. This is one of our more popular games, and we’ve played it a few times on a Tuesday evening. Purple loves it and it was new to Yellow though, so despite his conviction that it’s completely random, Green joined in. The idea is quite simple, each player has a hand of “Predator” cards, and the dice represent “Prey”. Players simultaneously choose a card to play and then Prey is divided up accordingly. If there is enough Prey for all the Predators to eat, then players take their share of the appropriate dice. If not, the Predator(s) go hungry and the cards are discarded. The catch is that some cards are both Predator and Prey, which is where the game descends into double-think (or Luck as Green prefers to think of it).

– Image by BGG contributor jancis

Green has tried a variety of “methods” to beat the “luck”, but much like an inveterate gambler, a “technique” that works a couple of times almost always fails in the end, and so it proved this time too. In the first card of the first round, Green decided to change his card just before everyone revealed theirs which proved fortuitous as his hedgehog ended up with a bunch of frog dice and cards. So, Green swapped his second and third cards at the last second and he picked up Prey on both occasions. As the round progressed, Purple and Yellow also achieved some success and Green took another card, but by the end of the round, the scores were very even with Purple ahead by just one point. Probability can be a funny thing, but it was still quite a shock to roll nine carrots, each with a probability of one-in-six. And so began a little game of cat & mouse, literally with everyone trying to second guess each others choices and all ending up feeling that the carrots looked too good to be true and there was bound to be a fox hanging around.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor msaari

At the second attempt, Yellow found he couldn’t resist temptation and went for the carrots only to find Purple’s fox was waiting to pounce. Then, somehow (and nobody could work out exactly how), Purple ended up with the entire haul of carrots all to herself. By this time, Green had reverted to type and scored nothing for the round, Yellow produced a creditable showing, but Purple took an amazing twenty-nine points. The final round was a much more even spread of dice and scores. Yellow was getting better and better and won the round while Green got lucky and took a few more points. Purple was not so successful this time out, but it didn’t matter, as her massive score in the second round gave her a record-breaking forty-eight, according to the scoring card, a new high score!

– Image by BGG contributor jancis

Learning Outcome: Don’t ascribe to luck what others might call skill.

Spiel des Jahres Winners – 2016

The 2016 winner of the coveted German Game of the Year or Spiel des Jahres award is Codenames. Codenames is which is a word-based deduction game played in teams. Each team has a leader who gives clues to the rest of their team who are trying to choose particular word-cards from an array. The trick is for the leader to come up with a clue that covers multiple correct answers so that the rest of the team can identify the complete set before the opposition. It’s not really a game that really suits our group as several of the regulars aren’t very keen on social deduction games, but it is very quick to play, so, although we would probably have given the award to one of the two other nominees, Imhotep (manipulating large wooden blocks) or Karuba (“boardgame Bingo“), it may well end up as the “Feature Game” next week.

– Image used with permission of boardgamephotos

At the same time the Kennerspiel des Jahres was awarded, which honours more challenging games. It was introduced in 2011 to replace the jury’s habit of intermittent special awards for games too complex for the Spiel des Jahres (notably Agricola which was awarded a special “Complex Game” prize in 2008). This year the Kennerspiel des Jahres award went to Isle of Skye: From Chieftain to King, which is one of our favourite games. This year was a bit of a “Marmite” year for us as there were a lot of games on the lists that don’t really fit our group, including the two other Kennerspiel des Jahres nominees (Pandemic Legacy and T.I.M.E Stories). The Kinderspiel des Jahres award was announced last month and went to Stone Age Junior (aka My First Stone Age), which is a simpler version of the family worker placement game Stone Age.

– Image used with permission of boardgamephotos

Boardgames in the News: What Britain Buys

The Channel 4 series “What Britain Buys” has turned its attention towards our hobby with a ten minute piece by Mary Portas. Episode two includes interviews with Ben Drummond and Dean Tempest, founders of Big Potato (which produced John Lewis‘ top selling game last year, Linkee), as well as a visit to Oxford’s own boardgame café, Thirsty Meeples. There they speak to some of the customers and “Games Sommeliers” as well as the owner, John Morgan. There are lots of shots of gaming goodness including people playing Settlers of Catan, Riff Raff, Star Wars X-Wing, Takenoko and much more besides. The program is available to watch on demand from channel4.com and the interesting bit starts 37:15 mins in.

– Image from channel4.com

Next Meeting – 12th July 2016

Our next meeting will be on Tuesday 12^th July, 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 Puerto Rico, which is an older game, and in many ways the archetypal Euro game. The idea is that players assume the role of colonial governor on the island of Puerto Rico with the aim of amassing victory points by constructing buildings and shipping goods to Europe. This game was first demonstrated at Essen fifteen years ago in 2001 and for many years occupied a seemingly unassailable position at the top of the rankings on the BoardGameGeek website.

– Image used with permission of BGG reviewer EndersGame

And speaking of shipping…

Once upon a time there was a famous sea captain. This captain was very successful at what he did and for years he guided merchant ships all over the world. Never did stormy seas or pirates get the best of him. He was admired by his crew and fellow captains. However, there was one thing different about this captain. Every morning he went through a strange ritual. He would lock himself in his captain’s quarters and open a small safe. In the safe was an envelope with a piece of paper inside. He would stare at the paper for a minute, and then lock it back up. After, he would go about his daily duties.

For years this went on, and his crew became very curious. Was it a treasure map? Was it a letter from a long lost love? Everyone speculated about the contents of the strange envelope.

One sad day the captain died at sea. After laying the captain’s body to rest, the first mate led the entire crew into the captains’ quarters. He opened the safe, got the envelope, opened it and turned pale. After a moment, he showed the paper to the others. On it were just four words:

Port Left
Starboard Right

28th June 2016

Blue and Red arrived first, so once they had ordered food, they settled down to a quick game of Mijnlieff (pronounced “Mine-Leaf”). This is basically Noughts and Crosses or Tic-Tac-Toe with a bit of added strategy and some beautiful wooden pieces. We’ve played it a couple of times before on a Tuesday, but as it is an independently produced game (by Hopwood Games), it is difficult to get hold of and Blue had taken the chance to pick up a copy at Expo. The aim of the game is to form lines of three or four, but the different types of pieces force your opponent to control where you can play. For example, when a Greek cross (or “+” symbol) is played, the next player must place their 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 their piece in a diagonal line from the piece just played.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor thepackrat

Unfortunately, Blue forgot to mention that if there was nowhere a player could go, they were forced to pass giving their opponent a free move, so when this arose, Red cried “foul” and Blue offered to concede the game. It didn’t really matter much anyhow as Burgundy had arrived and so had food, so everyone’s attention was drawn elsewhere. As other people arrived, we moved on to the inevitable post-Brexit referendum discussion: the group consists of several continental European Union gamers (Denmark, Poland and Ireland), so we have a natural pro-Europe stance. Consequently, the group as a whole has been pretty horrified at occurrences of the last week, and its long term consequences (not least of which is the increase in the cost of games!). Before we depressed ourselves too much, however, we decided to play something to take our mind off it. Since we were unsure of who was coming and with Pine wanting an early night, we decided to begin with something short, and with two possible games it seemed appropriate to have a quick referendum on the subject… Saboteur went the way of the “Remain” campaign and lost by a tiny margin as we decided to turn the evening on its head and begin with 6 Nimmt! a game which we often finish and one that is guaranteed to cheer us all up.

– Image by boardGOATS

The game lived up its usual standard of chaotic fun, with Burgundy, Black, Pine and Green vying to collect as many high cards as possible. After our usual two rounds, Purple finished with eight, but Blue took it with just six nimmts, all garnered in the first round. With the fun over, it was on to the serious game and Pine left as he was “cream-crackered”. The rest of us split into two groups for our “Feature Game”, Concordia, a strategic game of economic development in Roman times. The game takes at least half an hour per person and with set-up and teaching, it was always going to take most of the rest of the evening. Played on a beautiful map, Concordia is a game of resource production and exploration. Notable cities which are connected via land and shipping routes, each produce one resource (indicated by tokens placed on the map allowing for variable set-up). Each player begins with a hand of Character cards and six colonists and a handful of resources. Everyone begins the game with the same set of cards; on their turn, the active player chooses a card to play, and then carries out the associated action.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor Space Trucker

These cards allow players to move colonists and build settlements, trigger production for all settlements in a given region, introduce more colonists etc., however one of the cards enables players to buy extra cards from the market (a face up display). The cards are played into a personal discard pile where they remain until the player plays their Tribune card to get all their cards back. Each player also has a warehouse of a fixed size which will hold a maximum of only twelve items, which at the start of the game includes four of their six colonists (two ships and two “Elvis-meeples”). So, managing resources and finances is one of the key parts of the game and it is essential that players have the right resources when they need them as there isn’t space to store excess. Another “pinch-point” is the cards; players can only play each card once before picking them all up. They also get income when they play their Tribune card to recover their cards, but as it is dependent on the number of cards they pick up, it is in the player’s interest to play as many cards as possible before collecting them all again – this also needs planning.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor Space Trucker

The most difficult part of the game is the scoring, however, which is tied up in the Character cards. In addition to a name and an action, each card is dedicated to a Roman God. Each God rewards the card’s owner with victory points at the end of the game. For example, Mars delivers points for colonists placed on the board. Each Character dedicated to Mars gives two points per colonist, so a player with all six colonists on the board at the end of the game and five Characters devoted to Mars will score thirty points. Thus, since the cards are effectively multipliers, in general, the strategy is to try to excel in one area rather than try to do a little bit of everything, but that is something that is definitely easier said than done.

– Image by boardGOATS

With two copies of the game available and everyone keen to play it, we decided to split into two groups, both playing Concordia and both adding the Salsa expansion. This is “Salsa” as in “Salt” rather than the Spanish “Sauce” or the Latin dance, so in addition to the standard resources of brick, wheat, tools, wine and cloth, we also had salt. Salt is “wild”, so can be used as anything and adds some peculiarities to the scoring, but otherwise doesn’t make a huge difference to the game. Both groups also chose to use the new Hispania board which includes the Iberia peninsula as well as the North Africa and Italian coast. The biggest change to the base game, however, was the introduction of the Forum and associated Forum tiles. These tiles come in two flavours, blue, which are perpetual, and green, which offer an instant, one-off reward. Each player can choose one from a starting hand of two at the beginning of the game, but otherwise, these are taken when players play the Tribune card. Since players have a larger choice of available cards if they are picking up more cards, and these Forum tiles can be quite powerful, this is another driver towards efficient use of Character cards.

– Image by boardGOATS

Burgundy, Blue and Red got going first. Burgundy chose the Claudius Pompeius Forum tile (which gave him an extra opportunity to sell whenever he was playing the Prefect card); Blue chose Gaius Mercellus (who yielded an extra sestertii for every item she sold), and Red kept Titus Valerius (who enabled her to exchange any other commodity for salt when she played her Tribune card). Burgundy went first and moved one of his colonists inland north-east settling in a brick producing city. The close proximity of the two nearest brick sources meant that this made it very difficult for anyone else to get into brick production. Consequently, when Blue went next, she headed north-east into Gallia, where there was wine and cloth to be had, and eventually brick, though that would take a few turns. This left Red to head towards the sun in the south of Spain.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor henk.rolleman

Blue started out with lots of cash, but no idea what to do with it, on the other hand, Burgundy knew exactly what he wanted to do but couldn’t find the money to do it. Red and Blue were relatively unfamiliar with the game so opted for the scatter-gun approach, while Burgundy was picking up as many cards as he could. Before long Red and Blue got away from the congestion of the Iberian peninsula, with Red taking over North Africa and Blue spreading to Corsica and Sardinia and across to the Amalfi Coast. This race to place settlements eventually dried up when Red found more fun activating Africa to pick up lots of goods. Since one of the end game triggers is a player running out of “houses”, Blue had to decide whether to end the game early by placing her last few “houses” or whether to try to push forward on other frontiers. Something told her that she was too far behind in collecting cards, so she decided to take a break from building and try to maximise points elsewhere, starting by buying as many cards as she could and then getting all her colonists onto the board.

– Image by boardGOATS

With only a couple of cards left in the market, Blue placed her final houses and triggered the end of the game. As suggested in the rules, we went through each of the Gods in turn, though with Burgundy’s enormous pile of cards, it all looked like it was going to be more a measure of how much he was going to win by. As we added together the totals, every time Blue picked up points, Burgundy took more and Red languished at the back. Before long, Burgundy had what appeared to be an insurmountable lead. When Mercurius was scored Blue’s large number of settlements began to tell, and with a lot of Character cards devoted to Mars and all six colonists on the board, Blue finally took the lead. With only Minerva to go, Blue looked to have taken it, then we all realised how many Specialist cards Red had. With all her high scoring Specialist cards and a lot of settlements in high value production cities (inc. lots of Salt which counted for each of them) it looked like she would take it the lead. In that final scoring phase Red picked up a massive thirty-nine points, but sadly it wasn’t quite enough, and with Blue taking the extra seven points for placing all her settlements, she was the clear winner, though there was just four points between second and third place.

– Image by boardGOATS

Meanwhile, on the next table, set-up and rules explanation took a little longer, but they were soon under way too. Coincidentally, two of the Forum tiles chosen were the same – Claudius Pompeius (chosen by Burgundy and Green which gave them an extra opportunity to sell goods) and Gaius Mercellus (chosen by Purple and Blue and which gave an extra sestertii for every item sold). Black, on the other hand, took Appius Arcadius which gave him the ability to move three spaces instead of two – potentially very powerful, especially in the early part of the game. Purple began followed by Black, leaving Green with a much more restricted choice, but gradually all three began their expansion across the board producing and trading as they went.

– Image by boardGOATS

In contrast to the game on the next table, the players used their Forum tile powers only rarely. Green made good use of his bonus tile several times early in the game, but he used it much less later on, when having the goods was more important than having the money. Purple used her bonus only a small number of times and Black did not use his bonus tile until almost the very end of the game, but then he used it to good effect to jump two spaces and build in a city that Green had his eye on. The game was probably about two thirds through when Green moved his ship and, unintentionally he claims, blocked Purple. And there he left it until the end of the game as his card collection action enabled him to buy a new ship which was much better placed to move efficiently to the other side of the board.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor henk.rolleman

Green took every opportunity to encourage his “Elvis-meeples” to leave the warehouse, but while Purple occasionally added colonists to the board, black persisted with only his starting two throughout the entire game. Eventually, Green ended the game by buying the remaining character cards. While Purple found she could do nothing in her final turn to increase her score, Black pulled a master stroke and used a special card to buy all four of his remaining colonists in one go, thus increasing each of his Mars scoring cards by eight, and since he had three of them this gave him a massive twenty-four points more from just one turn. It wasn’t enough though; the scores were all close, but Green finished twenty-four points ahead of Black largely thanks to the fact that he’d managed to get a settlement in each region and had plenty of scoring cards to go with it.

– Image by boardGOATS

While Black, Purple and Green put everything away, Burgundy, Blue and Red began the inevitable discussion of the game. We all enjoyed the game, but Concordia is probably one of Burgundy’s all-time favourites, as a result he has played it quite a bit. There is no question that this familiarity helped when choosing which character cards to buy and when,. This is unquestionably an advantage as it is clear that the only real strategy in the game is to try to match the Character cards to the cities and perhaps specialise in one direction. That said, there are many ways that this can be done and in practice, it is really quite difficult to it do well. Although for Blue theme is not the most important factor in a game, she feels it should be there to help players remember the rules. In Concordia, however, Blue felt that the scoring was a little arbitrary making the game feel just a little bit abstract. Red also enjoyed the game, but felt that the game was slow to get started and with such a beautiful map, it seemed a shame that it took so long before really exploring it. On the whole though, we were all in agreement that it was a very good game that needed playing several times, and we were all very willing to give it another go soon.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: Sometimes experience pays, sometimes less so.