Author Archives: nannyGOAT

22nd March 2016

Red, Magenta, Blue, Burgundy and Green were first to arrive and decided to get the evening going with a quick light filler. After a quick debate, we decided that the best fit to the number of players and the time we wanted to fill was …Aber Bitte Mit Sahne (which means “…But Please, With Cream”, though the game is known as “Piece o’ Cake” in English). This is a cute little set collection game coupled with the “I divide, you choose” mechanic. The game starts with “The Baker” taking a pile of cake slices showing a selection of different types, and then arranging them in random order to form a wheel of eleven pieces which they then divide into five slices. Then the idea is that the other players take it in turns to choose which slice to take and how much of it to “eat”. Points are scored at the end of the game for the player with the most kept pieces of each type of cake and for the number of “blobs” of cream on cake that has been eaten.

– Image by boardGOATS

In case of a draw, all parties win the pints, but any set that has been not been eaten and is not the largest scores nothing. Thus, the player dividing needs to try to make sure that they are left with something useful after everyone else has chosen, but at the same time, they don’t want to give away anything that helps the opposition too much. After dealing out the piles for each round we realised that we’d inadvertently included the wild card slice from the mini expansion, but Blue couldn’t remember the rules, so we decided to take it out and do it again. In the event, the game itself was quite close with Red and Magenta fighting it out for first place and for the most strawberry gateau. In the end, Red took first place with thirty-two, three points ahead of Magenta with everyone else some way behind.

– Image by boardGOATS

We were just deciding what filler to play next when Black and Purple wondered in, so we decided to get on with playing something with a bit more bite. First on the table was the “Feature Game”, Glen More, which is a tile laying game set in the seventeenth century highlands. Black wasn’t keen as he’d played it before and had felt it was very random. Blue said she hadn’t got that sensation from reading the rules, but she did think that it had some very different elements to it and had no feel for how to go about playing it. Magenta and Red commented that they weren’t really selling it and wondered what the alternative might be. Black suggested The Voyages of Marco Polo and Green was torn as he really wanted to play both. Although Blue was very interested in playing Marco Polo too it has a reputation for being monstrously long and she has a very strong dislike for leaving games incomplete. Burgundy had read up on Glen More, so was keen to give it a try as was Blue, so despite its poor billing, Red and Magenta joined them to make a four and they quickly got going.

– Image by boardGOATS

Glen More is a strange mixture of mechanisms and it is initially hard to see how they fit together. The game has an unusual turn order mechanism (similar to that in Tokaido), where the player at the back goes first moving their token along the circular track, choosing a tile the fancy and replacing it with their marker. They then add the tile to their village and draw a new tile which is placed at the front of the row of tiles (keeping the number available the same throughout the game). When a player adds a tile to their village they must obey two basic rules: any road or river on the tile must connect with their existing road or river and the tile must be next to a clansman. Tiles cannot be rotated and each player starts with a village tile comprising a clansman, a road running vertically and a river running horizontally.

– Image by boardGOATS

Once the tile has been placed, all orthogonally and diagonally neighbouring tiles can be activated. Each tile gives the village some kind of benefit: yellow and green tiles provide resources, fairs and the like allow players to trade resources for victory points, village tiles allow the clansman to be moved, while distilleries allow the conversion of grain into whisky. Resources are essential because, as well as the potential to trade them for points, about half of the tiles also have purchasing costs that has to be payed before a tile can be added to a village. Resources can be bought and sold at any time during a players turn, but any that are bought must be used straight away and the cost will depend on the Market which reflects demand. When a player buys a resource, they place a coin on the market space and the next player must pay one more than the last up to a maximum of three after which, that resource is no longer available. A player selling resources takes the last available aliquot until there is no money available, after which they can no-longer sell, making currency circulation a contained system.

– Image by boardGOATS

Tiles can be activated in any order and then the new “last player” gets a turn. Since players can move as far forward as they like, jumping lots of tiles if they choose, it is quite possible that a player may have several consecutive turns, alternatively, they may decide to sacrifice turns in order to get a particular tile that is nearer the front of the track. There are three piles of tiles and interim scoring occurs every time one of the stacks is emptied. Scoring is also unusual as players score based on the difference between their position and that of the person in last place in that category. There are three scoring categories: locations, chieftains and whisky. The locations are special tiles which give some special powers that have an impact during the game, but are also a a source of points. At scoring time, players evaluate how many special tiles they have and then subtract the number of locations held by the weakest player in that category. This difference is then compared with a scoring table and points are awarded accordingly. Larger differences return a proportionately larger number of points. Chieftains and whiskey are scored in a similar way, with chieftains being clansmen that players moved off the board.

– Image by boardGOATS

For example, in a four player game, if the players have six, five, three and one barrel the “differences” will be five, four, two and zero which translate into eight, five, two and one victory points. Thus, as the player in last place, picking up a distillery, may actually have a bigger impact on the scores than adding to the scoring category that they are strongest in. This is because it reduces the number of points held by all the other players, where the difference is large, it can hurt players more efficiently too. At the end of the game, players also get points for any remaining money, but also lose three points for every tile they have more than than the player with the smallest village. So, when choosing which tile to take, each one has to earn its keep, in other words, the winning village has to be efficient as well as effective.

– Image by boardGOATS

Having explained the rules, everyone was still not much the wiser. We could all see what the mechanics did, but connecting them together was more tricky and we all felt we could only find out more by playing. Red went first, but as she had no clue what she was trying to do, she picked a nice looking grain tile that was some way down the track and went for it. Burgundy and Blue queried it as it meant she was likely to miss a couple of turns, but she said she was happiest that way as she didn’t feel she could make a better, more meaningful decision. By the next turn she wasn’t much wiser, but added a distillery to her village, no doubt making her clansmen very happy indeed as she started her whisky production. Meanwhile, Magenta’s village was already very resource rich and Burgundy had a couple of valuable Fair tiles that he could use to convert resources into points. Blue had no idea what she was doing, but was certain she wasn’t doing it very well whatever it was.

– Image by boardGOATS

By the first scoring round, Red was way out in front with a handful of whisky barrels and a very small village full of very merry Scotsmen. The lean nature of her village meant that everyone else was feeling the pressure to make every tile count as they knew it would cost them three points at the end. Despite her huge number of resources, Magenta was struggling to score points and Burgundy and Blue weren’t doing much better, slightly mesmerised by Red who appeared to be winning by miles despite spending most of it watching everyone else make bad decisions. Things hadn’t changed much by the end of the second round though it was clear that Burgundy was starting to make his Fairs count by activating them frequently and buying the resources he needed if he didn’t have them. Blue had picked up a couple of Special Location tiles and had distilled a couple of barrels of whisky, but with nothing like the efficiency of Red. In the third and final round, Magenta now had the maximum number of resources on most of her tiles and had finally started picking up a brown tiles so that she could make use of them. Blue managed to get herself in a mess, wanting to pick up a Special Location, but not being able to place it because her clansmen weren’t in the right place. In trying to fix the problem she tried to be clever and discard a tile, but quickly realised she should have played it instead. People were starting to run short of money as Magenta starved everyone else of cash by selling only the resources that were in highest demand. In the corner, Burgundy had finally got his engine working, but it still looked like it was too late to challenge the efficiency of Red.

– Image by boardGOATS

With just enough tiles left for one turn each, Blue promoted most of her clansmen to chieftains, Magenta managed to use her Fair to trade five resources for a massive twelve points, Burgundy picked up yet another Special Location and Red asked whether she should have been scoring three points every time she placed something next to her Tavern (which she should, and so should Blue…). Before the final end of game scoring, Burgundy was some way out in front, but as he also had the largest village he was going to lose an awful lot of points. Surprisingly, Blue wasn’t far behind, so it all came down to how many points people were going to lose. In the end there was just one point between Burgundy and Blue, but Burgundy took it with forty-four points. In the end, Red was some way behind, but as we discussed the game, we felt she had left a lot of points on the table in the final few turns, and it was certainly possible to make a lean village strategy work. Similarly, if Magenta had been able to activate her Fair just once or twice more, she could have been way out in front. Nobody disliked the game, but we all felt a little bit non-plused about the experience, as we’d really struggled finding a path through the maze on the first visit (though we didn’t feel it was the luck-fest that Black had described). In the end, we decided that it definitely needed to be played again now we had a better idea of what was going on and it certainly was different to most other games we play.

– Image by boardGOATS

Meanwhile, the other group had settled down to play The Voyages of Marco Polo, which won the Deutscher Spiele Preis last year and was designed by the same pairing that put together Tzolk’in: The Mayan Calendar. It took a while to set up and explain the rules, especially as Black was the only one that had played it before, and even that was on-line. The game is played over five rounds with players recreating Marco Polo’s journey to China via Jerusalem and Mesopotamia and over the “Silk Road”. Each player has a different character and special power in the game. Each round, the players roll their five personal dice and can perform use them to perform one action each per turn. The actions include: gathering resources, gathering camels, earning money, buying purchase orders and travelling. The game ends with players receiving victory points for arriving in Beijing, fulfilling the most purchase orders, and having visited the cities on secret city cards that each player gets at the start of the game.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor henk.rolleman

Eventually we were all kitted out with merchants, camels, currency, houses, a contract and a couple of city (mission) cards; all that was left was to choose a character. There are eight different characters to choose from providing a range of different benefits, all relating to different strategies. Black gave a quick run-down of the character abilities, quickly dismissing two of them: Kubilal Kahn who starts in Beijing as opposed to Venezia where everyone else starts and Raschid ad-Din Sinan who can set the dice to whatever numbers he chooses at the start of the round instead of rolling them. He dismissed Kubilal Kahn, because he does nothing else for the player, although he does guarantee ten points for placing the first house in Beijing. Raschid ad-Din Sinan was dismissed as Black explained it “broke the game”. By that he meant that half the fun of the game is based on dealing with the dice players roll, not only must choosing the dice numbers take an age to decide, it also removes an element of luck and challenge.

– Image used with permission of
BGG contributor bovbossi

Pine, the start player, got to choose first and went for Mercator ex Tabriz, who we had all made positive, “Oooh! That’s nice!” noises about when it was explained. This would give Pine one resource every time someone else collected something in the market, quite handy. He thought that this would push him to a contract completing strategy. Green was next and went for Kubilal Kahn, despite Black’s dismissal. He felt that being on the other side of the board to the others would mean he was not in competition for the bonuses, and the neighbouring city would give him a free choice bonus at the beginning of the round, a handy one to have at the start of the game. He wasn’t too sure about his plans, but placing would help gain the city-mission bonuses, so a bit of travelling looked likely. Purple decided that the ability to teleport across the board from oasis to oasis would really help her complete her city missions and took Johannes Carprini. Since the board layout is very much east/west with very little north/south crossovers, all the pairs of cities on the mission cards were on different east/west tracks so being able to jump around the board almost at will looked to be very very useful for this strategy. In addition, the extra three coins at the beginning of each turn was a nice little sweetener. The experienced Black felt he was up for a challenge and chose Wilhelm von Rubruk which would allow him to place houses in every city he crossed (normally players have to finish in a city to place a house there). As an additional goal this gave him two extra houses to place after he had exhausted his personal supply for an extra ten points, if he could manage it. Clearly Black was also going to be doing quite a bit of travelling.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor henk.rolleman

Finally the game got underway with the satisfying sound of twenty dice being rolled, then studious silence as we each tried to work out what actions we could do with the different combinations we had rolled. A reasonable first goal seemed to be to gain the resources necessary to complete our starting contracts. The first dice placements were benign affairs. Pine was happy as collecting resources from the market proved popular and he quickly completed his first contract. Green also made use of his “free choice” bonus for reaching the small city to enable him to complete a contract. It was about half way through the first round that the true heart of this game revealed itself: how to place all your die actions on spaces already occupied by others. There is cost involved in placing second, and suddenly it seemed that money (or rather the lack of it!) could be a key factor. In most games, rolling a set of five’s and sixes would be met with squeals of pleasure – not this one. High dice rolls might unlock some tasty options, but at a price. Finding that you had only a four and a five to place down on the travelling track when you only wanted to move once, was very annoying. Such a move increases the cost from four (or three if you’re lucky enough to go first) for placing a single pip die to seven, and if you did decide to make use of the extra moves, that will be sixteen in total, and we’ll not consider the cost of three movements!

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

In the early rounds Black and Purple kept rolling fewer than fifteen in total, which gave them extra camels and/or coins to make up the difference, but it did also mean that their outlay was much less than Pine and Green who kept rolling, fours, fives and sixes. This meant that when there was something they wanted to do, they could at least afford it. While Pine and Green were left scratching their heads as to how on earth they were to use their remaining six. Pine often just placed it “in the purse” for a measly three coins. Although Green was having similar issues, he did at least have the advantage of gaining some decent first visit bonuses, to keep his game alive. Black and purple were making rapid progress across the board, although perhaps not quite as rapid as their respective characters might suggest was possible. Pine and Green, meanwhile, kept a steady pace on wrapping up the contracts to roar into the lead on the points track.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor henk.rolleman

Black commented how we did not seem to be using the black dice very much. In the online games they disappear very quickly (there are only five per turn). It was only during the last part of the last round that we realised that we had not fully understood the implications of the black dice rules. We had thought players could only have one black die per round (i.e. a maximum of five all game distributed over the five rounds), but they could actually have one per turn making them a good way of increase the number of action choices. The camel cost associated with them would reduce the ability to travel, but there are plenty of other ways to trade your way to victory in the game.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor jsper

In the last round or two, Black and Purple really wound up their travelling elastic bands and went flying round the board, ultimately completing both of their city-mission bonus cards, which neither Pine nor Green could manage. Green did eventually complete one, but Pine had barely moved at all, preferring to concentrate on completing contracts. When the final tally came, Green had romped away, proving Black wrong about the Kahn character. Black’s final speed-demon dash across the board netted him enough bonuses (although not his extra two house bonus) to bring him home in second place. Purple was just behind, proving that the teleportation device of the ancient east was a good way to get your presence felt, but she had neglected the contracts and did not manage to net quite enough extra points to sneak past Black. Pine’s contract strategy hadn’t been as successful as he’d hoped and we realised that his special bonus of receiving a resource every time someone else bought in the market, dwindled in later rounds as we all found other ways to get resources.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor henk.rolleman

In the end, despite our initial opinions we concluded that the characters are more balanced than we first thought. Our first game also called into question the widely held BGG opinion that contracts are a better way to gain points than travelling, though we will have to see if this opinion holds over time. Overall it was a really interesting game, with much variety in it from play to play and the dice action mechanism was also really clever and satisfying. It did take a long time to play, but next time should be quicker, and there will certainly be a next time as we all enjoyed its first outing and others are also keen to give it a go. Meanwhile, Glen More had long since finished, so rather than condemning Blue and Burgundy to a two player game, Red and Magenta suggested playing something quick. Near the top of Blue’s bag was 11 Nimmt!, a game so far only released in German that Blue had picked up last year at Essen. Designed by Wolfgang Kramer, the same person who brought us one of our favourite, 6 Nimmt!, we were keen to see if this really was five nimmts better…

– Image by boardGOATS

The game is played with a deck of cards numbering one to a hundred, each also with some number of bulls heads, or Nimmts on it (much like 6 Nimmt!, though the distribution is different). Each player starts with a hand of ten cards and the aim of the game is to be the first person to get rid of them all, or (since the game is played over several rounds) at least finish with a low scoring hand, i.e. as few Nimmts as possible. In contrast to 6 Nimmt!, the game is played in turns rather than simultaneously and the game starts with one card pile. On their turn, the active player must discard a card that is above the top card on the pile, but within ten of its face value. If they do not have a suitable card (or choose not to play it) then they must take the stack into their hand and replace it with two new face up cards drawn from the draw deck making two new piles. If a player takes a stack comprising three or more cards, then the player also takes a Bull Card which allows that player to play more than one card at a time on one stack so long as they are all within ten of the top card. Should they end up with a second Bull Card, then they can play on more than one pile, and this is where it becomes an advantage to pick up lots of cards, because with several Bull Cards, players can discard a lot of cards very quickly and have more control over the game.

– Image by boardGOATS

From the start it was apparent that 11 Nimmt! is very different to our much loved 6 Nimmt!. There is a lot less gratuitous glee at other people’s misfortune when they are forced to take fists full of cards, but this is replaced by strategy and planning. The lack of simultaneous play also makes it feel a lot more solitaire than 6 Nimmt! and, though there was plenty of opportunity to scupper someone else’s plans, without knowing the contents of their hand it was hard to do it in a constructive way. It took us a few rounds to get the hang of it, but before long we were starting to see the strategic advantage of picking up cards as well as getting rid of them. The rules suggested playing the same number of rounds as there are players, but we ended up playing six rounds just to fill time. Despite Red and Blue both winning rounds, Magenta was the clear winner after four rounds thanks to her consistency and she added just one to her total in the extra rounds compared to everyone else’s ten and, as a result, she finished the clear winner. Although we all enjoyed it and could see that it was probably a better game with lower player counts, we all felt that it hadn’t usurped 6 Nimmt!, which would retain its special place thanks to its fast play and generally chaotic fun.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: Sometimes subtle changes to a game make a huge difference.

Boardgames in the News: International TableTop Day 2016 – Save the Date

On 2^nd April 2012, actress Felicia Day launched Geek & Sundry multimedia production company. It was part of Google’s Original Channel initiative, a one hundred million dollar project to bring new and original content to YouTube as a means to kick-start GoogleTV. One of the original three programs on the Geek & Sundry Channel was TableTop, a largely unscripted web series about boardgames, co-created and presented by Wil Wheaton (who is perhaps better known as Wesley Crusher in a former life). The series has been highly successful, especially in the US where it has been credited with increasing sales of the games featured (the so-called “Wheaton Effect”).

– Image from theguardian.com

To celebrate the launch of the program and of tabletop gaming in general, Geek & Sundry founded International TableTop Day. Inevitably originally US centred, over time, the initiative has spread so that now, every spring, gamers host thousands of events all over the world, and every year, the event grows. Although boardGOATS are not currently planning anything specifically for International TableTop Day this year, there is lots going on nearby in Reading. The Reading Boardgames Social group is holding two full days of gaming at the Reading Ukrainian Community Centre on Saturday 30^th April and Sunday 1^st May and Eclectic Games are also holding holding events during opening hours on the day itself (Saturday 30^th April). There will almost certainly be more events in Oxford as well, so put the date in your diary!

– Image from tabletopday.com

Next Meeting – 22nd March 2016

Our next meeting will be on Tuesday 22^nd March, 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 Glen More, which is a tile laying game set in the seventeenth century highlands. The game has an unusual turn order mechanic (similar to that in Tokaido) as well as a novel scoring system and was chosen following the success of Isle of Sky: From Chieftain to King.

– Image by boardGOATS

And speaking of Scottish Glens…

When Sandy MacGregor came back from his first trip to London, everyone in the Glen was keen to find out how he had got on.

“So bonny lad, did ee like it?” one elder asked over a wee dram.

“Oh, it was no’ bad, really,” commented Sandy, who was busy thinking about other things.

“As good as that, was it?” came the dry response.

” Well,” Sandy expanded, more thoughtfully, “There was just the one thing wrong. The other guests in ma hotel just would nee go to their beds. They were in the corridor ootside ma room shouting and banging on ma door until three o’clock in the morning.”

“So what did you dae, Sandy?” the elder asked.

Sandy shrugged, “Och, I just kept on playing ma bagpipes.”

8th March 2016

While Burgundy finished his ham, egg ‘n’ chips, the rest of us continued our political discussions from two weeks ago. This time we discussed the length and timing of the school day, the inevitability of double-parent working households, the cost of childcare and whether or not parents should be paid to stay at home and look after their little ones. We were expecting Black and Purple, but eventually, someone suggested playing a quick game, to which Blue commented that you could guarantee that they would arrive just as we finished setting up. A brief debate about what to play followed before we settled on one of our old favourites, Walk the Plank!, a simple pirate themed “programming” game where players try to push each other along a plank and off the ship.

– Image by boardGOATS

Since everyone had played Colt Express fairly recently, the rules were quick to reprise: everyone simultaneously chooses three cards and the order in which they are going to play them, placing them face-down; starting with the first player, players then take it in turns to play one card until everyone has played all three. With lots of aggressive options the game is always quick and fun, and the last pirate standing is the winner. We had just finished the summary when Black and Purple arrived, but since it is only a short game we carried on. Blue started the game by immediately shortening the plank and before long there was no plank left (a situation we allow through a “house rule”). When Green Green played a “Drag to Sea) with only one pirate left which was perched precariously on the edge of the boat, it was inevitable that he would take Blue’s only pirate with him for company, leaving everyone else with two pirates each.

– Image by boardGOATS

It didn’t last, however, and before long Magenta’s last pirate received the Big E from Burgundy and joined the others watching the goings on from Davy Jones’ Locker. With all the carnage in the first round (eleven pirates down in just fifteen cards), there were just two players left with two pirates each all on the ship. Although the rules say the last two players share the victory this seems strangely friendly end for an otherwise savage little game, so we always play to the death. The second round began a little cagily with both players extending the plank, but then Burgundy was paid out for his treachery to Magenta when, in a moment of stupidity, one of his two remaining pirates dragged his pal off the end of the plank, leaving Pine the clear victor with two pirates still standing. It was an exceptionally short game thanks to the early vindictiveness, but in truth, it is a much more fun game when it is played that way.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor thepackrat

Despite the compressed nature of Walk the Plank!, Black and Purple still managed to squeeze in a little two-player abstract game called Mijnlieff (pronounced “Mine-Leaf”). This is a beautiful little game made out of wood and designed by the designer of Dodekka, Andy Hopwood (Hopwood Games). Black described the game as “fancy Noughts and Crosses” since the aim of the game is to form lines of three, but since there are different types of pieces and your opponent controlling where you can play it is much more strategic. The game is played by placing wooden tiles on a four by four board. Each Player has eight pieces with two each of four different symbols where the different pieces dictate where the other player can put their next piece. For example, when a Greek cross (or “+” symbol) is played, the next player must place his piece on an empty square in an orthogonal line from the piece just played. Similarly, playing a saltire (or “×” symbol) forces the next player to place his piece in a diagonal line from the piece just played.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor thepackrat

Game play is really quick, so much so that despite Walk the Plank! finishing in record time, with Purple taking it by three points to Black’s two. With everyone finished, we had a quick show of hands as to who would like to play the “Feature Game”, Kingdom Builder. When seven hands went up, Green asked who was very keen to play it and nobody looked interested. The most enthusiastic was Burgundy who had played it before, so Magenta swapped seats with Green to make a foursome with Blue and Pine. On the face of it, Kingdom Builder is also a simple game, played by placing small wooden huts (Settlements) on a board made up of different terrains laid out using a fine hexagonal grid.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor msaari

At the start of the game, each player is dealt a terrain card and on their turn, they have to place three settlements on that terrain type. As far as possible, the Settlements must be adjacent. At the end of their turn, the player discards their card and draws a replacement. Play proceeds in clockwise order until one player has run out of Settlements, then the round is completed and scores are tallied up. While these are the basic rules, there are also specific rules that change for each game, and since the board is made up of four modules chosen at random from a set of eight, the number of possible layouts is vast. Each module board also has three special hexes on it: two with a gold scroll-work border (Locations) and one with a silver scroll-work border (Castles). The Castles give points for players with an adjacent building at the end of the game while the Locations give an in-game benefit.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor SpaceTrucker

At the start of the game, each Location has two hexagonal chits on it which are taken by the first two players to build next to it. These chits give players extra actions that they can take on their turn, but the nature of the Location and corresponding action is dependent on the boards chosen. In this game we had the Tower, the Tavern, the Barn and the Paddock. These allowed players to add an extra Settlement along the edge of the board; add an extra Settlement to where a player had a row of three or more Settlements; move an existing Settlement to a space matching the active player’s current terrain tile, and move one Settlement two spaces in a line from its current position (i.e. jump).

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor kilroy_locke

Points are awarded at the end based on the rules cards and a subset of three are drawn from a total of ten at the start of the game. For this game, we draw the Knights, Discoverers and Citizens cards which gave two points for each settlement a player built in the horizontal row where they had the most Settlements; one point for each horizontal row in which they had at least one settlement, and one point for every two Settlements in each player’s largest settlement area. Thus, to score one well, you needed a horizontal line, a vertical line and a clump, all with a limited number of huts. To make the problem even more challenging the board layout had a large mountain range across the middle with a couple of awkwardly positioned rivers. We all blamed Burgundy for his awful “choice” of boards and layout…

– Image by BGG contributor pphh

Although the rules are prima facie quite simple we got into a bit of a tangle with the modifications caused by the Locations. Blue kept forgetting that the Tower and the Barn were subject to adjacency restrictions and Pine struggled to see the point of the Barn at all. Blue made an appalling start, while Burgundy’s best laid plans were stymied first by Blue and then by Magenta. Meanwhile, Pine had got two groups of Settlements and was trying to build a vertical ribbon development to connect the two. As Burgundy’s supply of Settlements dwindled faster than anyone else’s, Pine desperately needed to draw a desert terrain card, but kept drawing woodland cards which were nearly useless for him. In the final round everyone tried to make the best of their limited number of remaining Settlements before totalling up the scores. It was very, very close, but Blue finished with a round fifty, just two points ahead of Magenta, with Pine and Burgundy both within two points of her.

– Image by boardGOATS

Kingdom Builder isn’t a long game, so Black, Green and Purple decided to opt for something short and light so settled on another old favourite, Splendor. This is a fairly simple card game with a very loose gem merchant theme. On their turn, a player can either collect chips (gems), or use chips to buy gem cards. Most of the gem cards are effectively just a permanent source of chips, i.e. can be used to buy other cards, but the higher value ones also provide victory points. Nobles can also give players points and these are claimed by the first player to collect certain combinations of gem cards (e.g. three each of onyx, sapphire and diamond). The game finishes at the end of the round when one player gets to fifteen points, and the winner is the person with the most points.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor henk.rolleman

Three of the four randomly selected Noble cards required a set of three green emerald cards as part of their requirements, with differing selections of the other colours; white diamonds, red rubies, blue sapphires and black onyx. The fourth Noble required four cards of each white diamonds and black obsidian. With the first card selections it was clear that both Black and Green had studied the distribution of cards required to win Nobles tiles and were fighting hard to get the green emeralds that were available. Unfortunately, the number available was quite small, but nothing compared to the scarcity of rubies. The first of these was nabbed by Purple and Green, who failed to get the second was left unable to get the remaining one which was an expensive, high scoring, level three card. Early on Black marked his intentions by reserving a level three (taking the bonus “wild” gold chip). Meanwhile Purple was busy building a large supply of diamonds while Green concentrated on the low level emeralds and sapphires. With half a dozen cards each, scores were low and close, but quick glance across to Kingdom Builder showed they were still going through the rules…

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor henk.rolleman

Black reserved another high value card, Purple had managed a large haul of diamonds, both cards and chips and green had got his three green emeralds, now joined with three sapphires. Rubies still refused to come up with any kind of regularity which meant that players priorities usually changed quickly when one did come up. Green was the first to obtain a noble when he got his third diamond card. He did this with mostly non-scoring cards and so this only put his score on a par with the others. The game entered a new tenser phase when Green quickly picked up his second noble after taking a third ruby card, though even he couldn’t quite believe he had managed to get three of them. Black finally paid up for one of his put away cards and now the points were close to the end.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor henk.rolleman

Black was just two points from getting the fifteen needed to trigger the end-game, and a study of the available cards showed Green that Black could get it with a diamond card on his next turn. Green persuaded Purple that she needed to take the diamond card using her gold chip (she couldn’t afford it otherwise) as she would not get another go if she didn’t and could not afford the high value one she was saving for anyhow. Luckily the replacement card was not one which Black could afford so he had to take chips instead pushing the game into another round. Green grabbed a high value level three card taking the bonus gold chip (giving him all he needed to buy it on his next turn) and Purple bought her high value card. Black bought his last reserved card, which put him on sixteen points giving Green one last turn. With a flourish he paid for his reserved card card which gave him three points and claimed the final noble for another three, giving him a winning total of seventeen points. It was a few moments, before Green noticed and the others didn’t spot it at all, but Green’s last card was not a black onyx, but a fourth ruby – he had not got the noble after all. Perhaps it was a touch of colour blindness from the excitement of the end-game, but Black was the winner after all with Green and Purple finishing in joint second.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor henk.rolleman

Kingdom Builder should only take thirty to forty minutes, but for some reason it took nearly twice that, so Green, Black and Purple moved on to play Tobago, a really pretty game in which the players possess different parts of treasure maps and try to use narrow down the possible locations faster than everyone else in order get to the treasure first. The idea is that on their turn, players can either can either play a card on one of the four Treasure Maps or move their little 4×4 truck up to three “legs” (a leg being anywhere within the current terrain, or a move from one terrain to another). Playing a card narrows down the number of possible places that the Treasure could be, for example, “in the jungle”, “not next to a hut” or “in sight of a statue” etc.. Each clue card placed must narrow down the possible locations by at least one hex, cannot contradict a previous Clue, and cannot eliminate all possible locations for the Treasure. Eventually there will only be one possible location, after which, the first player to get there retrieves the Treasure.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor Lord Warlock

When a Treasure is retrieved, everyone who helped narrow down the treasure location by playing a card gets a share proportional to the amount of effort they put in. Initially, each player gets a Treasure card for each clue card they contributed. They look at the card(s) secretly before they are shuffled together with one drawn blindly from the deck. A card is then drawn at random and, starting with the player who found the Treasure, it is offered to each player in turn until someone takes it. The order corresponds to the order they made their contribution, so some players may have made multiple contributions and therefore may get multiple chances to take a Treasure card. Once a player has taken a treasure, that contribution is considered fulfilled. The Treasure varies in value, but there are also two “Cursed Treasure” cards (also known as “Baad Treasure”). If one of these is turned over, the remaining Treasure cards are not distributed and anyone left in loses an amulet (if they have no Amulet, they lose their most valuable Treasure card instead). The appearance of Amulets is triggered every time a Treasure has been found and they can be collected by players moving their 4×4. The player with the most Treasure at the end of the game wins.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor Toynan

Green’s strategy was to contribute as many Clues as possible, Black went for a drive to dig up treasure and Purple complained of having a terrible set of clue cards (to be fair she had a lot of “not in …” cards, which did prove difficult to place on the “in play” Treasure maps, but for some reason she was reluctant to start a new one). It was a slow start, but after the first treasure had been found and the Amulets started to appear we got into our stride a little more. About half way through the game, Green checked the rules on what to do with the discarded Clue cards and instead found a small rule which stated that the one who takes the last Treasure card immediately places the first Clue on the now empty treasure “map”. We felt that this might have speeded the game up a little and implemented the rule.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor Lord Warlock

Green and Purple were the first casualties of the “Baad Treasure”. They both had Amulets, but annoyingly a six point and a five point treasure were both lost. The second time round we were all affected and everyone lost an Amulet, but the lost cards were not high value so it felt less of a loss somehow. With only three treasure cards left in the deck (game ends when they are exhausted) placing Clues was quite tricky. Only one of the treasures would be found, and placing your clues on the others would result in nothing, but which one would be “found” first? In the end it was a treasure only Green and Purple benefited from. In the final scoring, Purple came out the richest finishing with thirty-eight, and Black came in second just four behind. So for all her complaining about her hand, she had made it work to her advantage. It also looked like Green’s strategy to spread clues thinly across all Treasure maps and let others do the actual finding, had failed as it made him almost certain to lose out when the “Baad Treasures” came up.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor jayboy

By the time Kingdom Builder finally finished, Tobago was well under way, with no sign of finishing soon. Magenta took an early night, so while Pine was at the bar, Burgundy and Blue discussed the options. Given the time available, it was a toss-up between two games that Burgundy said he couldn’t get the hang of: Isle of Skye and Blueprints. Blue gave him the choice and in the end, he chose the latter as we’d not played it for a while. This is a clever little building game where players are architects who must use different coloured dice (representing different materials) to build different structures from their blueprints. The idea is that on their turn, each player chooses a die from the central pool and adds it to their building. Each die must have the same value or higher than any it is placed on top of. At the end of their turn, they roll a replacement from a bag, thus replenishing the dice supply. Once each player has placed six dice, their building is evaluate depending on the colour of the dice they used, how many they are and their position etc. For example, black dice score more if they are placed high up, whereas orange dice score more if they are surrounded by lots of other dice.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor kilroy_locke

The person with the best building wins the round winning the Gold Award which is worth three points at the end of the game. Points are also available for Silver and (depending on the number of players) Bronze. There are also Special Awards (which are worth two points at the end) which go to players who fulfil other specific criteria, such using five dice out of the six in the same colour or having a building with a height of five or more. In the first round, Burgundy demonstrated exactly how he couldn’t get the hang of the game, but failing to make the Special Award he was trying for and also not scoring highly enough to take either the Gold or Silver awards. The second round was notable for the number of black fours that were rolled, and how, despite that, Pine somehow managed to take the Special Award for using four dice with the same number, but with fives while Blue failed to do the same with fours. Going into the last round, both Burgundy and Pine tried to collect green dice, leaving Blue the pick of the rest, her third Gold Award, second Special Award and a clear win with thirteen points.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor dotKeller

With the evening coming to a close, there was just time for a quick filler. Black commented that there was always “the old favourite” and since Pine claimed he’d not actually played it (though the logbook proved he had), there was no opposition to a quick closing game of 6 Nimmt!. We reminded Pine of the rules: players simultaneously choose a card, then simultaneously reveal them before playing them in ascending order placing each on on the highest card that is lower than the card being played. When the sixth card is added to a row, the first five are taken and the number of heads contributes to the player’s score, lowest score wins. The thing that makes the game so compelling is that any grip is incredibly tenuous and once it begins to go wrong it tends to escalate horribly. In the first round, Green seemed to pick up everything and in the second it was Burgundy’s turn. Black and Pine had two mediocre rounds and Purple made the only clean sweep. It was Blue who got lucky this time though with two very good rounds totaling just two and four, so she took the game with a combined total of six, slightly ahead of Purple with twelve.

– Image by boardGOATS

We tend to play a variant over two rounds with half the deck in each round and not resetting the table in between. This led to a bit of discussion as to why things tend to cascade. The problem is that there are always some rows that get blocked off as they pick up a couple of high scoring cards as well as a finishing with a high face value card. This means the chance of a player being forced to add something to (and take the row) is small, and nobody will take it voluntarily as the hit is too great. In our game, three rows got blocked off early on in the first round which meant we spent nearly the whole game playing cards on one row. The problem is that once a player has used, say, a low card that card is no-longer available, so the player is likely to be in the same position next time too. In the case of a six player game, things are exacerbated because it is the sixth card that triggers the pick up. Thus, in our game, the first first player would take the singleton, leaving the next four players to add to the row and the player with the highest card to take the row and no better off for next time. That doesn’t really detract from the fun though and it is still wonderfully stressful in a good way, so justifiably one of our favourite fillers.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcomes: Sometimes some games just take much longer than expected.

Next Meeting – 8th March 2016

Our next meeting will be on Tuesday 8^th March, 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 Kingdom Builder, which is an area control and network building game where players create their own kingdoms by skilfully building their settlements, aiming to earn the most gold at the end of the game. The game is fairly light and won the Spiel des Jahres in 2012.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor msaari

And speaking of gold…

Jeff came home drunk at four in the morning. It had been a really good night, but his wife didn’t see it that way was very upset, yelling and crying because she thought he was with another woman.

In despair, Jeff pleaded, “No, honey, I swear, I was at this bar, and it was so fancy that even the urinals were made of gold!” Obviously his wife didn’t believe him, so she called the bar.

“Hello,” she said, “My husband claims to have spent the night at your bar and I have one question; are your urinals plated with gold?” To which she heard the bartender say, “Hey, Clarence, I think we found the guy who widdled in your saxophone…!”

23rd February 2016

After another quick game of Love Letter (a resounding win for Magenta), we moved on to our “Feature Game”, Kobayakawa. This is a simple little Japanese micro-filler game with elements of betting and push-your-luck. The rules sounded unpromising, but it was much more fun on the table. The idea is very simple: from a deck numbered one to fifteen, each player is dealt a single card with one extra one face up in the middle. Like Love Letter, players draw a card and chose which to keep, but the aim is different as players are trying to set themselves up for the second phase of the game. In the second phase, players take it in turns in player order choosing whether to pay a token to join the bidding or not. The player with the highest card in hand wins the pot and the winner over all is the player with the most tokens after seven rounds. There is a catch, however, as the player with the lowest card gets to add the face up card to their total.

– Image by boardGOATS

It is at this point that the little bit of strategy comes in: in the first phase, players can choose to replace the face up card instead of drawing a card into their hand. It is only a very little bit of strategy though, since play is strictly in player order and at the start of the round you have almost no information. Thus, a player who has chosen to keep a low card can find their round is trashed when the last player in the round changes the face-up card from a high value to a low one. That said, the game is not meant to be an intensely deep strategy game, and it was much more fun than it sounded on reading through the rules. Pine took an early lead with Green crashing out as he ran out of tokens. Although we enjoyed it, we felt the end-game could do with a little work as the rules say that everyone who has enough tokens must pay two to join in the last round of bidding (instead of one as previously). This increases the value of winning the final round and means the preceding rounds can be essentially meaningless unless a player has managed to accrue more than half the number of tokens available (and in that case the final round is pointless instead). We felt that maybe the game would be better with an early target, with the winner being the player to collect, say, three times the number of tokens as players, and if that hadn’t happened by round seven, then play the final round.

– Image by boardGOATS

This was followed by a short break during which we discussed what to play next and got side-tracked by an (unusually serious) conversation regarding the upcoming EU referendum. As the debate disintegrated into general moaning along the lines of European stereotypes Green felt a game of Lancaster was in order, as it is a game where players are directing noble families from the time of Henry V, vying for power and favour amongst themselves, with a side order of fighting the French. This is a game that has had a couple of outings recently since we first played it just after Christmas, but this time we decided to add the Reward Tiles mini-expansion. Pine was the only one not to have played it before, so we had a quick run-through of the rules. Players take it in turns to place their knights in one of three places: in the shires; in their castle, or in the wars in France. Once the knights have been placed, players then vote on and evaluate “the Laws” which give players a benefit just before they get their their rewards for knight placement. After five rounds, the player with the most points wins.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor Baartoszz

The mini-expansion added reward tiles which are drawn at the start of each round and placed next to a county on the game board. During the rewards phase, the player who takes control of the county may collect the reward tile instead of the imprinted basic reward (collecting both the nobleman tile and the reward tile if they pay the extras). Clearly these weren’t going to have a huge impact on the game, though they would make some of the benefits slightly more available during the game, something that had the potential to help out Purple who insisted that she never did very well as Green and Black always knocked her out of the castle improvement counties (something that was not denied). The first round of knight placement was a benign affair as no-one seemed up for a fight. Black concentrated on beating the French, Purple inevitably went for castle improvements, Green wanted the starting token and Pine thought building up his knights would be a good start.

– Image used with permission of
BGG contributor kopernikus

Then came the first phase of voting for the Laws. Confusion abounded concerning quite how it worked, and having been fairly unanimous in our votes we prepared to discard two laws and replace them with two more. A quick check of the rules about how we do this indicated that we’d done it all wrong: we should have voted for the new laws we wanted not the old laws we wanted to keep. There was a little more discord at the ballot box when we tried again, but we still got two new Laws. With that, the most complicated part of the game, out of the way for the first time, we went into the rewards round with players counties collecting knights, castle improvements, voting cubes and squires, and awarding points for the victory in France. It was when we came to the rewards from the Laws that Green realised that all his calculations as to what he would get were wrong since number of squires and money had suddenly changed. It was only when placing the knights in the second round that Green realised that the rewards from the Laws should be awarded immediately after the vote and before the rewards from the rest of the board. We changed to follow the rules for the rest of the game, but did think that it could make an interesting variant as it provides an extra level of uncertainty into the game.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor kilroy_locke

Over the next couple of rounds, Black continued his grudge against France, Purple tried to build her castle (largely unsuccessfully), Green gathered voting nobleman around his table and Pine built up his fighting strength. By round three Purple and Black had both accumulated a lot of squires and Pine and Green found themselves being kicked out of a few counties and having to replace somewhere else and by the fourth round, the knives were really out and the counties were changing hands like “pass the parcel” at a birthday party. Pine and Green had superior knight strength, but Black and Purple had the upper hand with squires; battles raged across the land and the rivers ran red with the blood of so many faithful soldiers.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor henk.rolleman

The battles continued into the final round, however, Black had often swiped the nobleman from under the noses of the other players by judicious use the free nobleman king’s favour and the free nobleman alternative reward from the expansion (the only person to actually take advantage of it in the whole game). Eventually, everyone settled with several sending their knights home to treat their wounds, and the game ended except final scoring. Black began the scoring several points ahead of the others and it looked like his fighting in France may have paid off, especially as he had managed to gain quite a table of nobleman as well. The superior knights of Green and Pine and the better castles of Pine and Purple brought them a little closer to Black prior to the nobleman scoring. Black and Purple finished with the same number of nobles giving them fifteen points, but Green finished with two more which he had snuck in right at the end and took him to a near full compliment giving him an extra thirteen points and with it the win, leapfrogging Black in second place with Pine finishing just one point behind in third.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

In discussing the game after, Pine said he quite enjoyed it and we ruminated on how weak the castle improvements seemed to be, more because they were so hard to get early on, when they would provide the most benefit whereas later on they were of less use. This brought in the idea of using the expansion extra reward tokens all at the beginning of the game rather than only one new one out each round. We also wondered if placing them randomly rather than on specific counties could work, though that might need some thought.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

Meanwhile, Blue, mindful that Green and Burgundy had been keen to play Endeavour again, had produced that as a her offering for a game about international treaties. With Green engaged elsewhere, Blue and Burgundy recruited Magenta to the cause and gave her a rules run-down as she had not played it before. The game felt much less confusing than last time as it was fresh in Blue’s and Burgundy’s minds having played it within a month. So, despite all the little bits that need to be set out, the perceived complexity of the game and the relative inexperience of the players, Endeavour was actually under way first. The game is played over seven rounds, each of which consists of four phases: Building, Population, Income and Action. The idea is that players have four status tracks which correspond to Industry, Culture, Finance and Politics, which roughly correspond to the four phases and dictate what players are allowed to do at each stage. The game is actually much less confusing than we made it last time, though there are a number of apparently little rules that have the potential to make a large difference. For example, last time at least one player had multiple copies of one building which can significantly change the balance of the game as well as potentially making that building unavailable to other players.

– Image by boardGOATS

Players start by choosing a building: although the choice is very limited at the beginning so everyone begins with only a slight variation in direction, we have a feeling that the choices made very early on in the game are critical. Similarly, getting the first round of settling and shipping right is vital as this gives both position and a crucial fast start on the status tracks allowing players an early toe-hold in the game. As such, Magenta was at something of a disadvantage not having seen the game play out before, though with just three players (compared to four last time) there was just a little more wriggle room. Burgundy and Magenta began by building Shipyards, so Blue decided to do something different (largely just for the sake of it) and built a Market instead. Although she didn’t plan it that way, it meant that she was first to start picking up cards from the Asset Deck in Europe, giving her an alternative method of building her status tracks.

– Image by boardGOATS

Meanwhile, Magenta and Burgundy were both engaging in shipping though Magenta was having the better of it managed use to build up her Population and Income tracks and quickly took the Governorship of South America. Somehow, Burgundy had got things very slightly out of kilter and was unable to put them right. Before long his Income status track had fallen behind which restricted his available population as well as blocking up his action spaces. Magenta was on roll judiciously shipping, settling and picking up Asset cards, and generally playing a very canny game. In the previous game, with four players, almost all the board had been opened up in what had been a very tight game. This time, with only three players, large sections of the board didn’t get explored much at all. This was exacerbated by Blue only starting her shipping slowly, so Burgundy had to make almost all the running in India, which was hard work, but necessary for him to build a network of settlements. Matters were made worse for him with Blue pouncing on one of his key targets.

– Image by boardGOATS

Although everyone finished in much the same place, as before, with nearly complete status tracks and a near full set of cards, it was clear that Burgundy had struggled and Magenta had really done very well. Blue’s position was less clear as she hadn’t done quite as well as Magenta on the status tracks (especially as she had to discard one of her cards at the end of the final round), but had picked up points elsewhere, in particular on her Asset cards. In the final count, Burgundy was nowhere near as far back as we had thought and it was clear that if he had been able to increase his income just slightly, earlier in the game, he would have been way out in front. As it was, Blue finished some twelve points clear thanks to her Asset card victory points and more cities than anyone else.

– Image by boardGOATS

Lancaster was still under way, so Burgundy, Magenta and Blue decided to play something small and quick that they all knew. The minimal set-up time and its more relaxed feel commended The Game, and since the decision had to be made quickly, no-one really looked any further. We’ve played this simple little card-laying co-operative game a lot, so the only thing we needed to check was the number of cards in the starting hand. Unfortunately, an appalling deal quickly put paid to our “R&R” and the stress levels quickly rose as it looked highly likely that we weren’t going to even get through the deck. In the event, we just about managed to get to a point where the draw deck was depleted, but that was it and we finished with seventeen unplayed cards. Lancaster was drawing to a close, but scores still had to be tallied and there were a lot of bits to put away, so we decided to give it another go, with speed. Not thinking seemed to help (or maybe it was the practice from the previous try), because we made a much better fist of it, finishing with just four unplayed cards.

– Image by boardGOATS

With Magenta heading home for an early night, there was just enough time (and people) for a quick game of one of our most popular fillers, Om Nom Nom. The game is quite simple with players simultaneously choosing animal cards to try to eat as much possible: for example, a cat will eat mice. Similarly a mouse can eat cheese, but only if it is not eaten by a cat first. The board is seeded with dice, after which there is a large dose of double-think as players try to guess whether everyone/anyone else is going to go for the largest tastiest helpings or not. As usual, Green moaned about how badly he does in the game, and tried his usual array of randomly choosing cards and going for his second choice rather than his first, but for all that, he didn’t do so badly in the end, though he was some way behind Blue who just pipped Pine thanks to a large helping of carrots (which, it turns out score double) in the final round.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor msaari

Learning Outcome: Games can be very different when you change even the smallest of rules…

Next Meeting – 23rd February 2016

Our next meeting will be on Tuesday 23^rd February, 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 Kobayakawa, which is a Japanese micro-filler game in the mould of Love Letter. We have chosen this game as it will leave plenty of time for something a little longer and we can choose what to play based on the people who are there.

– Image by boardGOATS

And speaking of Japan…

Recent reports indicate the Japanese banking crisis shows no signs of improving, if anything, it’s getting worse. Following last week’s news that Origami Bank had folded, it was announced today that Sumo Bank has gone belly up, Bonsai Bank plans to cut back some of its branches and Karaoke Bank is up for sale and is going for a song. Meanwhile, shares in Kamikaze Bank have nose-dived and five hundred jobs at Karate Bank will be chopped. Analysts report that there is also something fishy going on at Sushi Bank and staff there fear they may get a raw deal…

9th February 2016

Blue was delayed by washing machine shenanigans and Green by pancakes, so while Burgundy, Black and Purple were entertained by food, Red and Magenta distracted them with a few quick rounds of Love Letter. Magenta took the first two rounds winning the second by drawing the princess as the penultimate card; the third round went to Black when he played a Prince and asked Purple to discard her card which turned out to be the Princess. With the arrival of Green and Blue had finishing her pancakes, we decided to play our “Feature Game” which was Ticket to Ride and its variants.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor henk.rolleman

Which variant was the subject of some debate as we had all played different versions and everyone wanted to try a different one. For example, Blue had never played the original USA version, but all those that had didn’t want to play again; similarly while Green was interested in playing Märklin, Black and Purple weren’t keen; they were interested in Switzerland or Nordic Countries, but Magenta, Blue and Green were unenthusiastic about that. And so it went on, in fact, the only thing everyone agreed on was that we should split into a three and a four and nobody wanted to play Europe edition (as everyone had played that a lot). In the end, the group of three was based round Black and Purple who wanted to play with the Switzerland map and setup, and were joined by Burgundy who was fairly flexible. That left the group of four who decided to go for Nederland as none of them had played it before.

– Image by boardGOATS

The basic Ticket to Ride game can be summarised as follows: players take it in turns to carry out one of three possible actions and when one player has two pieces left or fewer, everyone gets one more turn before the game ends and points are tallied. The first action is to lay trains on the map, but in order to do this, they must spend train cards in the colour featured on the map. Thus, if a player wants to claim a four car route, they must play four cards of the corresponding colour and finally place four of their plastic carriages on the board in the correct location scoring points as they do so. If they do not have cards to claim the route they want then they can, instead, choose two cards, either from the five face up cards next to the board, or from the face down draw pile. “Laying trains” scores points, but a large number of a player’s points are scored at the end through tickets which give points to players that have connected several short routes together to connect two more distant cities. Each player starts the game with some tickets (chosen from a larger number), but on their turn may, instead of drawing cards or claiming routes, draw more tickets. At the end of the game, tickets which have been successfully completed score points, while unfulfilled tickets score negatively.

– Image by BGG contributor stormrover

Although this is a fairly complete summary of the rules for the original base game, each different version has slight modifications and variations that change the game slightly. The “Swiss trio” got under way first as Burgundy was quite familiar with the rule modifications: tunnels, ferry routes and country-to-country tickets; locomotive cards can only be used for ferries and tunnels, but can be drawn from the face-up cards without penalty. The game was very close with Purple trying to make a long route from east to west, Black travelling north to south and Burgundy doing a bit of both. The tunnels were a bit of a hindrance with everyone struggling to get through the Alps without paying extra.

– Image by boardGOATS

As the ticket scoring came to a close, Burgundy had his nose in front and looked to have the win in the bag, but carefully counting up the trains gave Black the bonus for the longest route and with it, the win by just two points. Burgundy was particularly cheesed off as he had attempted to claim a tunnel on his final turn that would have given him the longest route, but the fates conspired against him. It was only later that we realised that there hadn’t been a recount for the points awarded as trains were placed on the map and as, invariably points tend to get missed out, a recount is generally sensible.

– Image by boardGOATS

Meanwhile, Blue, Green, Red and Magenta had worked out the rules changes applicable to Nederland. There are no ferry routes or country-to-country tickets and obviously, no tunnels, however, in this low-country with countless canals and rivers, there are bridges instead. and these have a toll. Each player starts with “toll tokens” to a total value of thirty. Most of the routes are double routes, so can be claimed by two different players, this feature is common with all other versions of Ticket to Ride when playing with the maximum number of players, but in this game they are used for all games. The first player to claim a double route pays the marked toll to the bank, but the second player to claim that route pays the toll to the player who got there first. These tolls become quite critical in the end game as there are bonus points available for players who manage to conserve toll tokens, and these bonuses are sizable with fifty-five points going to the player with the most tokens at the end of the game and thirty-five and twenty for second and third. Players who can’t afford to build, can borrow from the bank, but that removes them from the race for bonus points as well as costing points at the end of the game.

– Image by boardGOATS

As is traditional, everyone began by moaning about where their starting tickets were. Beyond that, nobody really knew quite what to expect, but it was clear that this wasn’t a game where players could ill-afford to hoard train cards and wait as they were likely to find themselves paying tolls to other players and giving them bonus points. As such, everyone got going quickly and Red led the way placing several long routes giving her an early lead. Everyone else caught up, and as players started to run low on trains, they realised they had to watch the number of toll tokens they had left else they would have to begin to borrow and that would put them out of the running for the bonuses. Blue picked up extra tickets first, but they left her with a really tough decision as most of her track was in the north-west and the tickets she had were pretty much everywhere else. After a very long time thinking, she decided to keep them all and go for broke. The others soon followed, picking up more tickets, and Green had several goes with some corresponding to routes he had already claimed. It was only a couple of turns after she had drawn her extra tickets that Magenta counted her trains and started to make some uncomfortable sounding noises suggestive of possible problems ahead.

– Image by boardGOATS

Blue triggered the end of the game and it was all too close to call with less than ten points between first and last before the tickets and bonus points were added on. Green was the first to count up and there was a stunned silence when we found he had a massive one hundred and thirty-seven points from the tickets to add to his train total of fifty-two. Red had a couple of tickets that she had failed to complete so her ticket total took a bit of a bruising, but her problems were nothing to Magenta’s. She only realised she didn’t have enough pieces to complete all her tickets when it was too late, so all her hard work to fulfil her initial tickets was almost completely negated as she finished with a ticket total of just one! Blue had managed to complete all her routes and was pretty much neck-a-neck with Green which, like the other game, left it all down to the bonus points for toll tokens. Red took the fifty-five points for the most remaining toll tokens, giving her a very respectable one-hundred and fifty-four and third place. Blue picked up an extra thirty-five points and finished forty points ahead of Green who finished with the fewest toll tokens and therefore didn’t add to his score.

– Image by boardGOATS

Pine had appeared towards the end of the game and, after a brief explanation of the rules, had commented on the name of the game in German: Zug um Zug, which translates to “step by step”, although Zug also means train. This kind of double-entendre is not uncommon in Euro game titles and prompted a discussion of other games with similar “jokes”. Blue mentioned Tier auf Tier which literally translates to the English title “Animal upon Animal”, a children’s game where players stack wooden animals, creating “tiers”. Magenta brought up her favourite game, Bohnanaza, where “Bohn” is the German for bean. Green chipped in with his offering of Citadels, which is called “Ohne Furcht und Adel” in German which literally means “without fear and noble” (colloquially translated as “without fear and nobility”). This is actually a pun on “Ohne Furcht und Tadel”, which means “without fear or blemish”. It is an old-fashioned expression seldom used now except perhaps when describing a perfect performance by Michael Schumacher for example, that refers to somebody being very valiant and chivalrous (ala King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table). Interestingly, when trying to find the correct literal translation, Green submitted “Ohne Furcht und Adel” to Google and got “Citadels” in return, perhaps a measure of how embedded games are in German life.

– Image by BGG contributor dr.mrow

With eight of us, and nobody terribly keen to play anything too cerebral, we decided to go for something light, 6 Nimmt got a mention, but we settled on Las Vegas, using the extra dice for more players players and the wild cards from the Boulevard expansion, and the Slot Machine from the 2015 Brettspiel Advent Calendar. This was a Christmas gift and had its first outing in January when it was the “Feature Game”, but as a light dice game that plays a wide range of player numbers it is quite versatile. On their turn, each player begins by rolling their dice, then assigning some of them to one of the six casinos. Each casino is numbered one to six and has a jackpot drawn at random from a deck of money.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor ckirkman

On their turn, players must use all the dice of one number to bet on the casino of that number. Once everyone has placed all their dice the player who placed the most dice on a casino takes the highest value currency card. The really clever bit is that before any money is handed out, any “draws” are removed, which leads to a lot of barracking. The Slot Machine is like a seventh casino, except that it can hold dice of any number, but each number can only be added once (though a player must add all the dice they have of that number). The game was a lot of chaotic fun with with lots of chit-chat and before long we had worked our way through the card deck and spent an hour doing it. Although there is a lot of down-time with so many players, it didn’t seem to matter very much and it was quite relaxing to chat about things.

– Image by boardGOATS

We found Slot Machine definitely added a useful extra option to the game, however, the “wild cards” were less interesting. This inspired a discussion about the value or otherwise of expansions. In an evening essentially devoted to expansions, it was interesting consider whether the addition of expansions took a simple game that everyone liked and made it unnecessarily more complex, or whether it breathed new life into a game people had become tired of. In the case of Ticket to Ride at least, it was clear that with a game that players had become almost too familiar with, the extra maps provided a nice alternative. Meanwhile, the game was providing an interesting background to the discussion and the end results were almost incidental. Magenta redeemed herself after the disastrous ticket fiasco, finishing with $390,000 and third. Second place went to Red with $420,000, but with her second victory of the night, Blue took home the bacon with $460,000, more than twice that of last place.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor joeincolorado

Learning outcome: Germans *do* have a sense of humour!

Boardgames in the News: What’s all this about a Hasbro-Mattel Merger?

In what is the latest of a long line of merger and acquisitions stories, it seems that the really big boys are now getting in on the act: according to a report by Bloomberg, late last year, Hasbro initiated talks with Mattel for what would become the worlds largest toy company. This is not the first time a merger has been proposed; twenty years ago, Mattel attempted to buy Hasbro for $5.2 billion, but Hasbro resisted the deal with what Mattel described as a “scorched earth” campaign. In the end, Mattel withdrew the offer citing an “intolerable climate” created by its competitor’s use of the media and politicians to fight the proposed takeover. Since then, there has been a lot of water under the bridge and representatives for Hasbro and Mattel have declined to comment, so we are left to speculate as to why the subject of a possible merger has arisen once more.

– Image by boardGOATS with components from wikipedia.org

Both Hasbro and Mattel are currently valued at approximately $10 billion with an annual revenue in the region of $5 billion. Hasbro owns brands as divers as Furby, My Little Pony, Playdoh and Nerf, but is perhaps best known amongst gamers for titles like Monopoly, Cluedo, Connect 4, Cranium, Battleship and Jenga. Mattel brands perhaps tend to be aimed slightly more at the toy market with Barbie, Hot Wheels, Matchbox and Fisher-Price some of their biggest sellers. There are also a number of games under the Mattel umbrella though, including UNO, Othello, Scene It?, Apples to Apples and Scrabble. Clearly, both companies have a very similar portfolio, and are essentially direct competitors. This has been very clearly demonstrated with Hasbro recently taking the licensing rights to Disney’s lucrative Frozen and Princess brands from Mattel, a change that will undoubtedly make a dent in their bottom line. While changes are often a sign of a robust market, such seismic shifts are seldom good for the companies involved at least in the short term, often leading to restructuring and job losses – we have seen something similar with Mayfair Games and the recent loss of the distribution rights to the Catan Brand.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor Susie_Cat

It seems there are two other key driving forces however. Firstly, it would make them much stronger competition for the Danish company, Lego, which has been growing much faster than its U.S. rivals. Secondly, both Hasbro and Mattel are looking to expand their presence in the digital market, with movie and computer game tie-ins similar to those seen with Hasbro’s Transformers franchise, and, according to Bloomberg, a merger would facilitate this. The real question though is, regardless of whether or not Hasbro and Mattel can agree a deal, would the regulators let it happen? In the last year alone, the U.S. Department of Justice has prevented Electrolux’s purchase of GE’s appliance business as well as stopping mergers between Office Depot and Staples, and Sysco and U.S. Foods, all due to concerns about industry concentration and the potential for higher prices resulting from the deals. So it seems quite likely that a deal between Hasbro and Mattel would go the same way. If they do merge, however, the giant Hasbro-Mattel would make Asmodee look like very small minnows indeed, right up until they get gobbled up too.

– Image from 3dprint.com

Next Meeting – 9th February 2016

Our next meeting will be on Tuesday 9^th February, 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 Ticket to Ride, which, despite being from the USA is a poster child for modern, family-friendly, Euro-style games. The game is based on a simple set collecting mechanic which players then use to build routes across a map in order to complete tickets. Winner of the Spiel des Jahres in 2004, there are a lot of variants and expansion maps available. So, since it is pancake night and there are likely to be some late arrivals, we thought we would go for a game that most people know, but where people can also try something new if they want to.

– Image by boardGOATS

And speaking of trains…

Jeff was travelling by train across Europe. In Rome, an attractive young woman joined him in his compartment, so he engaged her in conversation. He tried all his favourite chat-up lines and after a short while, the young Italian woman offered to show Jeff her legs if he gave her a two Euros. Utterly charmed by the flirty young lady, Jeff fished in their pockets for a two Euro coin and the girl pulled up her dress a bit to show her legs.

She could almost see Jeff’s tongue hanging out, so she went on, “If you give me ten Euros, I’ll show you my thighs.” She hadn’t finished speaking before Jeff’s hand was in his wallet fishing for a note and his eyes were popping out on stalks as the girl pulled her dress up a little further reveal her legs in full. Conversation continued, and Jeff couldn’t believe his luck when the young woman said, “If you will give me a hundred Euros, I will show you where I was operated on for appendicitis.”

Of course, Jeff couldn’t resist and almost without thinking he handed over the money. The girl then turned to the window and pointed outside at a building they were passing, saying, “See, there in the distance? That’s the hospital where I had it done!”