Author Archives: nannyGOAT

Next Meeting – 28th June 2016

Our next meeting will be on Tuesday 28^th June, 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 Concordia, which is a strategic game of economic development in Roman times where players must rely on their advanced planning and consideration of opponent’s moves rather than luck of dice rolling or card draws. A longer game where time is strongly dependent on the number of players, we have several copies within the group, so we can play multiple games simultaneously if there is demand.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor jsper

And speaking of Romans…

Jeff was still working in the bar when, much to his surprise a Roman soldier walked in in full regalia. He stood at the bar and stiffly waited until Jeff had finished serving and asked him what he would like.

“A Martinus please,” replied the Roman.

“You mean a Martini don’t you sir?” Jeff asked a little confused.

The Roman answered, “If I wanted a double, I would have asked for it!”

14th June 2016

It was a quiet night and Blue was late, so everyone else got on with a quick game of Love Letter. Played with just sixteen cards, this is a great little game to play while chatting and doing other things (like eating). The idea is that each player starts with a card on on their turn, draws a second and chooses one of them to play. Each card has a number (one to eight) and an action; players use the actions to try to eliminated each other and the player with the highest card at the end, or the last player remaining is the winner. This time, we played Green’s Lord of the Rings themed version which comes with a pile of tiny magical rings, which certainly had an effect on Pine. Almost every round he had the highest value card, Smaug. While this can be an advantage, it can also be a curse as it can make you a target, but only Magenta managed to profit at all. Pine ran out the winner taking three rounds with Magenta taking the other two and everyone else failing to win any at all.

– Image by boardGOATS

With everyone fed, we moved onto our “Feature Game” which was Pi mal Pflaumen. This is a German game where the name is a play on the expression “Pi mal Daumen”, which roughly translates as “rule of thumb” or “roughly”. In this game, players are not interested in thumbs, but plumbs and other fruit. The game is a trick taking game with elements of set collecting and lovely artwork. The idea is that each card features a fruit, a number and most also have some sort of special action. Each player begins with a hand of cards and, starting with the start player, everyone takes it in turns to play one card. Then, the player who played the highest value card chooses one of the cards which they place face up in front of them, before they carry out the action associated with the card.

– Image by boardGOATS

The action could be steal a card from another player; take the “watchdog” card (which guards against other players stealing cards), or take three “pi” cards. Instead of an action, some cards indicate a scoring condition and the points awarded for achieving it. These are of the form of, for example, ABC or AAA, indicating three different fruit or three identical fruit respectively. The more fruit involved and the more similar the fruit, the more points they are worth. When a player owns both the scoring card and the matching Fruit cards, they are all removed from their display and put to one side to score at the end of the game. The game is played over three rounds and winner is the player with the most points at the end.

– Image by boardGOATS

We started off a bit tentatively, but by the end of the first round we were getting the hang of it and some people were just starting to get an appreciation of how clever the game is. Burgundy collected a huge pile of cards and Pine starting the stealing and then getting a lot stolen from him. In the end, it was a very close game with almost everyone finishing with thirty-one points, except Green, who much to his surprise was two points clear. The game, on the other hand, received a mixed response: Pine and Magenta really liked it, while Green, despite his win was largely unimpressed. No doubt it will get another outing and we’ll see if opinions change.

– Image by boardGOATS

Pi mal Pflaumen had taken much longer than expected, and Magenta fancied an early night, but felt she’d be able to squeeze another game in so long as it wasn’t too long. After a quick debate, Green’s eye fell on Port Royal, which we’ve played a few times now and were all convinced we’ve played several times in less than half an hour, certainly way less then the fifty minutes maximum the box claimed. In the end, the fifty minutes proved quite accurate and we decided that the time was probably dependent on the number of players…

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor msaari

The game is a fairly simple combination of “push your luck” and strategy, the idea being that players reveal cards until there is something they want, or they go bust. The active player can keep turning over cards until either they choose to stop or they draw a second ship card that they cannot repel. Assuming they choose to stop, they can then take a ship card or buy a character card before the remaining cards are offered round the table with players paying the active player one doubloon if they choose to buy/take a card. The clever part is the dual use of the cards as money and ships/characters, which means the distribution of cards changes for each game giving variety. The key to the game is the character cards though, as they are what enable players to build an engine and get an advantage over the opposition.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor bovbossi

This time we included the Gambler promotional cards that were being given away by the manufacturer at the UK Games Expo at the start of June. This card allows the active player to take a gamble by turning over four cards at the same time and, if they don’t go bust, they can choose to take an extra card. Unfortunately, the Gambler didn’t seem worth the gamble, so nobody gave it a try which was a shame as the cards kept coming up. Despite this, the game was a tight one, with several layers in the running in the going into the final round. Burgundy had started the game and it was he who triggered the final round. Green went next, but couldn’t quite make the cards work for him. Pine and Blue followed, but had too much ground to make up. Magenta went last and drew level, but Burgundy had plenty of money left and was able to take the lead back finishing with fourteen points, one ahead of Magenta.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

Learning Outcome: Little card games can be just as much fun as big boardgames.

Boardgames in the News: What does Brexit mean for Eurogamers?

On Thursday, after a long and miserable campaign, the UK public voted to leave the EU. Boardgamers are a friendly bunch, so what does the imminent divorce mean for us? Obviously there’s lots of speculation and scare stories, but the most immediate and obvious effect is undoubtedly the cost and potentially the availability of boardgames in the UK. A copy of Ticket to Ride: Europe bought from Germany using Amazon.de would have cost €43.92 including postage, which would have been about £33.45 on Thursday evening at 10pm. At 5am the following morning, this had risen to £35.94, an increase of £2.50 in just seven hours. The same game bought from the USA from Amazon.com costs $64.69 (including shipping and tax waivers etc.) which was about £43.21 at 10pm on Thursday rising to a staggering £48.25 at 5am the next morning – an increase of over £5! The exchange rates will probably improve over time, however, it will be a while before they achieve pre-referendum levels and there will no doubt be more uncertainty to come too, no doubt.

– Image by boardGOATS

Next Meeting – 14th June 2016

Our next meeting will be on Tuesday 14^th June, 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 Pi mal Pflaumen, which is a trick-taking card game with elements of set collecting and lovely artwork. Players simultaneously play cards and then claim one of the played fruit cards based on the strength of the card that they played. Each card depicts a fruit, and a scoring pattern or a special action. At the end of the game players tally their points based on completed contracts and whoever has the highest score wins.

– Image by boardGOATS

And speaking of fruit…

Jeff was working in a bar when a duck walked in and asked, “Got any grapes?” Jeff, very confused by this, told the duck that no the bar didn’t serve grapes. The duck thanked him politely and left.

The next day, the duck returned and again said, “Got any grapes?” Again, Jeff politely explained that no, the bar did not serve grapes, never had served grapes, and, furthermore, probably never would serve grapes. The duck, a little ruffled, fluffed his feathers slightly. thanked him and left.

After a week of this, Jeff was beginning to lose patience. So, one day, when the duck came in, before it could say anything, Jeff started, “Listen, duck, this is a bar: we do not serve grapes! If you ask for grapes again, I will nail your beak to the bar, got it?”

The duck was silent for a moment, and then asked, “Got any nails?” Totally confused, Jeff replied, “No…” Before he could get any further, however, the Duck continued, “Good. Got any grapes?”

31st May 2016

For the first time since he and Cerise’s new arrival, Grey turned up. Everyone was really pleased to see him, and as he fancied a “nasty” game, he joined the group playing the “Feature Game” which was Vanuatu. On the face of it, this is a fairly straightforward role-selection and worker placement game, but with more than the usual amount of interaction. The aim of the game is to obtain prestige in the archipelago of Vanuatu, by moving tourists and goods, fishing, and drawing sand pictures. The game structure is simple enough: players start by choosing a character, then they choose actions they would like to carry out, before the actions are resolved. There are one or two nasty elements that became more apparent as the game progressed.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor henk.rolleman

The way the actions are chosen and then resolved is particularly unusual. Starting with the Start Player, players take it in turns to place one or more of their action selection tokens. Everyone starts with five tokens and can place tokens on any single action space. Players cannot pass, but if they don’t place all their tokens on their first pass they get another turn to place one or more tokens, and play continues in this fashion until everyone has placed all five tokens. The actions are then resolved with players choosing which actions to take. In order to carry out an action, however, the player must have the most tokens on the action space (with ties resolved using turn order as a tie-breaker). In the event that the player doesn’t have an eligible action to take, they must remove their tokens from a space without taking the action. This makes it particularly nasty as, where a player has multiple options available to them, they can use this to delay other players from taking actions and sometimes cause them to miss actions altogether. In extreme cases players can end up doing nothing for a whole turn.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor henk.rolleman

In the first round, Blue showed how to score points, garnering a massive fifteen points by using the Collector to enable her to pick up extra beef which she was then able to ship immediately completing a vessel that Burgundy had started. Unfortunately, this left her with no money which meant her game then stalled such that four rounds later she had failed to even double the score she’d had at the end of the first round. Burgundy had watched some video reviews and had a good idea of how the game played, as such, he was the only one who really appreciated what an unusually large haul Blue had managed to take in that first round. Despite the massive deficit, he began to steadily ship visitors and buy huts, something everything else made the mistake of letting him get on with. Black on the other hand, was discovering first hand just how nasty the game can be and really struggled to string actions together and turn them into points. Meanwhile, Blue and Grey engaged in an extended scrap over some fish. Blue came off worst since Grey had a spell as the start player, though he didn’t exactly come off unscathed either.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor henk.rolleman

In the closing rounds Black finally managed to build himself a hut; Blue finally managed to get her fish, sell them and then took the start player. This enabled her to disrupt Burgundy’s plans by first nicking the character he wanted (Diver) and then pinching the high value treasure from under his nose. It was all way too little and much too late. Although Black had found himself pushed out in the first half of the game and Blue struggled to make good on her early promise (crippled by the exhausting fish wars and a lack of money), the game was quite tight between first and second. In the event, the deciding factor in the game was an almost missed moment when Grey bought resources and shipped allowing Burgundy to follow suit and also pick up the bonus for completing the vessel. With a small difference between first and second (by our scoring) that could easily have given Burgundy the game. In the final scoring, Grey liquidated his huge pile of treasure, though it didn’t yield quite as much as expected leaving Burgundy the winner, six points ahead of Grey.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor henk.rolleman

Delivering tourists to islands is fundamentally very important in this game, which is something we didn’t really appreciate until we got to the final rounds. The rules state that each player scores “two prosperity points for each of their stalls, for every tourist pawn present on their island”. The example in the text clarifies that a player with two stalls on an island where there are four tourist pawns scores eight points per stall, or sixteen points in total. We hadn’t appreciated the extra multiplier, so we evaluated the scores twice using the rules and our original understanding. In the event, it had no effect on the placings, just increasing Burgundy’s majority. It did give us a better understanding of how tough the game is though. The harshness also leads to a lot of “analysis paralysis”, since each move is so very critical. That said, we all enjoyed the game and, by the end could really see how clever it is. An unusually nasty game, this is definitely one to try again soon and is well deserving of its new release.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor henk.rolleman

Meanwhile, the other table were playing Ivor the Engine. This is a great little game that Purple had been itching to play for some time and, since Pine likes sheep, Green was happy to join in. The idea is that players are travelling round Wales collecting sheep and the person with the most sheep at the end of the game is the winner. A single sheep can be collected whenever you start your turn on a town or village with sheep in it, however, more sheep can be collected if you are in a town or village with NO sheep and perform a task to “help Ivor”. Helping Ivor comes at a price, however, as in order to do this you have to play one of the dual-purpose cards from your hand, which means you cannot use it to help you in other ways. At the end of your turn you add one card to your hand from the face up displayed cards, however, when the chosen card is replaced from the draw-pile, the game has a sting in the tail: mixed in with the errand cards are event cards, and these can be nice, or nasty…

– Image by boardGOATS

The game features the iconic art-work from the Ivor cartoons as drawn by Peter Firmin and little wooden sheep. We have variously called the “square five sheep” pieces “flat pack” sheep or “squashed” sheep, however, Pine’s commented that if you get five sheep, you get enough to make a rug! With only three playing we began the game quite spread out. Green and Purple stayed near their starting location to collect the last sheep and thus pick up the lost sheep bonus (an extra two sheep), but Pine got caught out by a double space. He had thought it was only a single space with one sheep and was expecting a bonus which disrupted his plans. Aside from that, it was a fairly quick start and we had all gathered in a number of sheep. Pine was the first to use a card action on somebody else and with both Green and Purple having a similar number of sheep, he let chance decide who was to lose two of their flock. Unfortunate for Purple fate decided it was she who must lose. In the very next round, Green was able to claim his second Grumbly Town card for four more sheep, so perhaps Pine/chance chose the wrong player to kibosh.

– Image by boardGOATS

To compound this mistake, the first event card to turn up resulted one sheep being lost from every region. This left Pine and Purple in cleared regions (good for claiming the cards, but not good for claiming the two-sheep bonus). For Green, however, one sheep remained. This helped him to get the 2-sheep-bonus and the location card. From this point on it was another “Get Green” game. Unfortunately for Purple and Pine, they had little opportunity to do this and the events (which came all together) were fairly benign. Green had one more “nasty” action card to use, which he played on his nearest competitor (well it would be unfair to play it on the losing player), so Purple lost another two sheep. In the end Green claimed his twenty-fifth sheep with a five sheep town card. His event card bonuses brought his total up to thirty-three with Purple close behind with several end of game bonuses. Overall it was a bit of a baaa-rmy game…

– Image by boardGOATS

With the fishing wars still underway in the South Pacific, Purple, Green and Pine moved onto Alhambra, another of of Purple’s favourites and also new to Pine. This is a tile laying game where players are building their city. Basically, on their turn, the active player buy coloured tiles with different coloured money cards and add them to their Alhambra. If they can pay with exactly the correct amount, they can buy another tile, but if they over-pay, they get no change and their turn ends. While this all sounds simple enough, there is the little problem that most of the tiles have walls along one, two or three edges, and when placed, these must match up without partitioning the Alhambra. These walls are critical as poor play in the early stages can mean it is possible to get backed into a corner later in the game. We’ve played Alhambra a few times as well as its predecessor, Stimmt So!, so we decided to play with a couple of expansion modules: The City Gates, which can be placed where there are two adjacent parallel walls enabling the player to build behind the wall, and The Magical Buildings, which provide one tile extra of each type which can be placed in any orientation.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor EndersGame

Purple went for the Purple Towers. She was able to come so dominant in towers that Green was not able to attain any, and Pine only got 3. It seemed that whenever a tower tile came out the bag, it was just before Purple’s turn, and she was not averse to over-paying for them, though often she did not need to. It happened so regularly it was funny and she before long she had to buy the tile just to maintain the magic, even if it was detrimental to her actual game plan! Green went for the Green Garden tiles. He also quickly became dominant in them and was going to stop when he had the unbeatable majority, but when the Garden tile without a wall came out it was such a good fit for his Alhambra that he just had to go for it. Green also took the first two White Palaces, but was unable to get his hands on the others. Pine and Purple snapped them up to equal his two and Purple surpassed Green into the lead, which she then maintained, despite a last minute battle for the last couple of tiles.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor EndersGame

Red and Brown tiles were in very limited supply at the start of the game. Pine managed to collect a single one of each, and that was all he needed to maintain supremacy in these colours for quite some time. In the second half of the game everyone managed to get one red tile so the real battle for red did not happen till the final few turns. The final market board had three red tiles on it, so Green and Pine shared the category. The brown tiles were also loaded towards the end of the game, and Green took the lead briefly before Pine took it back again.
Blue tiles were fought over by Pine and Green. Both had two by the first scoring round and had to share one point (meaning they scored nothing); this was a tight battle, but Pine just clinched ahead at the end. Purple managed to place her Alhambra with some very long walls. She had a 17 point wall by the second scoring, but then had to do several re-designs as she found herself blocked with not enough gates to help her out. In the final scoring, Green romped home with nearly a hundred and fifty points, leaving Pine and Purple to fight it out for second place. For a while, it looked like Pine might take it, but Purple’s Towers and long wall clinched it in the end, in what had been a much tighter game than the scores suggested.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor EndersGame

With the knife-fight in a phone-box that was Vanuatu finally over and not enough time to play anything else really, we degenerated into chit chat. Blue commented that she really wanted to like Alhambra , but found that she preferred the game play of the simpler Stimmt So! and Black concurred though that was far from the majority opinion and the expansions certainly added a bit too. Green had taken two of the gatehouses and used only one as he had been very carefully building his Alhambra not to box himself in. Pine and Purple took and used only one each though Purple could certainly have used an second as she had several re-designs. She didn’t want to “waste” anymore actions “just” taking a gate though. Everyone used and loved the Magical buildings though, Pine got the most (three of them), while Purple used two and Green was only able to get his hands on one. In this game though, we found concentrating on only the highest scoring items is not always a guaranteed route to victory, but should stop you coming last! We finished with a quick discussion of our plans for the weekend, which included a visit to the NEC in Birmingham for several of us who were going to the UK Games Expo. Should be a good weekend!

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor EndersGame

Learning Outcome: Nice or nasty, tight games are the most fun!

Boardgames in the News: The Goat that wants you to Vote

What’s cute, funny and rhymes with votes? Why, GOATS of course! Which is why the latest gimmick in the Great EU Referendum Battle invokes our four-legged friends: “If you’ve got time to watch a goat gif you’ve got two minutes to register to vote.” Apparently, the plea was so successful that the voter registration website collapsed under the weight of applications, just before the deadline. Fear not, however, if you missed the deadline (midnight on 7th June), the government are considering special legislation to include people who registered after the cut off, so if you haven’t registered there may still be a chance.

– Image from http://www.gifgoat.party

UK Games Expo 2016

This weekend, 3^rd-5^th June, gamers will be converging on Birmingham for a three days of fun and games for the UK Games Expo (sometimes known as UKGE, or simply Expo). The event is focussed on gamers playing games and includes Euro Games as well as role playing games, miniatures games, and war games. In addition to tournaments there is lots of “open gaming” space and demonstration events for new designs. For the little people there is the “Family Zone” with activities specially designed for kids, and for bigger people there is a trade fair with all the latest games games and seminars presented by industry experts, panels and celebrity guests.

– Image from ukgamesexpo.co.uk

This is the tenth year of Expo and the event keeps growing and growing, so much so that this year, the event will be spread across two venues, the the NEC Hilton Metropole (comprising organised play and evening gaming) and Hall One of the NEC (trade, open gaming and the Bring and Buy). Since the focus is on playing rather than marketing, in general, there are fewer new releases than at some of the other conventions. One of the highlights of the event this year though will be the release of Tony Boydell‘s Guilds of London which had been planned for Essen last year, but was sadly delayed. Essen’s loss is Expo’s gain however, and everyone is looking forward to seeing it at last. Several of the GOATS are planning to go this year, some for just a day, others for the duration and it is certain that it will be a fun weekend.

– Image from ukgamesexpo.co.uk

Next Meeting – 31st May 2016

Our next meeting will be on Tuesday 31^st 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 Vanuatu, in which players are striving to be the most prosperous islanders in the archipelago. The game is a mixture of role selection and worker placement with a couple of little nasty twists thrown in for good measure.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor henk.rolleman

And speaking of the Vanuatu archipelago…

Jeff was visiting the island of Gaua for a holiday. He had got up late and was looking for a mid morning snack when he saw a little local shop. Jeff walked and asked the cashier, “How much are your doughnuts?”

“Oh, they are only ten vatus, sir,” she replied smiling.

Jeff thought for a moment, looking round, “So what about the coffee?”

The cashier continued smiling, “Why, it is only five vatus and refill is free.”

Jeff paused as he considered the complicated maths, then, very pleased with himself, he took out a ten vatus coin and handed it to the cashier saying, “One doughnut and one refill, please.”

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