Author Archives: nannyGOAT

Spiel des Jahres Nominations – 2015

Each year a jury of German-speaking board game critics (from Germany, Austria, Switzerland), review all the games released in Germany in the preceding twelve months. Their job is a really important one amongst gamers, because they award the coveted Spiel des Jahres, the German Game of the Year. There are also other awards including the Kinderspiel and Kennerspiel des Jahres (Childrens’ and Connoisseurs’ Games of the Year). These awards are highly lucrative for the winners as many German families look for the red logo when choosing games to buy at Christmas.

– Image from spieldesjahres.de

The criteria used by the judges include:

game concept (originality, playability, game value),
design (functionality, workmanship),
layout (box, board, rules),
rule structure (composition, clearness, comprehensibility).

The announcement of the Spiel and Kennerspiel des Jahres awards will be made early in July. Last year, the winner was Camel Up with Splendor as runner-up and Istanbul taking the Kennerspiel des Jahres award. The nominees for this year have just been announced and this year, unusually, we haven’t played any of them in the group yet. However, one of our more popular two-player games, Patchwork was included as a recommended game and we are planning to play one of the nominees, Machi Koro, this week.

5th May 2015

We weren’t sure whether Yellow and Orange (who recently moved to Swindon) were coming, so we started out with a quick game of 6 Nimmt!. This is an older game, and though very simple it is one that everyone in our group somehow struggles to remember the rules for. The game is played with a deck of cards numbered from two to one hundred and four and features a number of “Bulls Heads” (mostly just one, but some have as many as seven). Four cards, chosen at random are turned face up on the table to make the start of four rows. The idea is that everyone then simultaneously chooses and reveals a card from their hand. Then, starting with the player who played the lowest card, players add their cards to the rows on the table.

– Image used with permission of BGG
contributor punkin312

Cards are added to the row that ends with the highest number that is below their card. Thus, if the cards on the table are four, ten, fifty, and seventy-two, a player with fifteen would add it to the row containing ten. If the card played is the sixth card in the row, then the player must take the cards and place their card in the empty space. If the card played is lower than the last card in all the rows, the player must take all the cards in a row of their choosing. The aim of the game is to be the player with the lowest number of Bulls’ Heads or “Nimmts”. As play continues, the number of cards in the rows increase (making it harder to play safely) and the number of cards in hand decrease on each turn (players don’t pick up after each turn), so the decisions get increasingly agonising, especially when the rows contain cards with a lot of Bulls’ Heads.

– Image by BGG contributor Niko the Shadow

Burgundy started the first round badly and finished worse, ending with thirty-five Nimmts, compared with Black and Purple who both finished the first round with none. The idea is that a game consists of two rounds, each played with a random half of the deck. Unfortunately, we miss-counted and used to many in the first round, so the second round included some repeated cards. Not that it helped Burgundy much as he finished the second round with twenty-one giving him a combined total of over fifty. Black and Purple did better, but it was Green who had the best over-all, with just two Nimmts in the first round and none in the second, he was the clear winner.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

We then moved on to our Feature Game which was another older game, The Settlers of Catan, which is celebrating its 20^th anniversary this year. As it is an old classic, we had three different editions available and countless expansions. Since everyone was keen to play it, we set up two parallel games. Although we’ve only played it once before in the group, everyone knew the game, so we just had a quick reminder of the rules as we were setting up. At its basic level, the game is one of resource management and civilisation building. Players start with two roads and two settlements. These are placed along the edges and on the corners of the hexagons of the modular board. Each hexagon has a number on it, and on each player’s turn, first they roll both dice and resources are awarded to players with settlements on the corners of the hexagon that corresponds to the total rolled. Once the resources have been handed out, the active player can trade resources with other players and use them to build more roads and settlements, develop their settlements into cities or buy development cards. Victory points are awarded for settlements, cities and the longest continuous road as well as via development cards (both as straight victory points and for the player with the most soldier cards, i.e. the largest army).

– Image by BGG server robot BoardGameGeek

Burgundy, Blue and Red played with a ten year old, third Mayfair edition, while Green, Black and Purple eschewed an older Mayfair edition and opted for the slightly easier setup provided by the fourth Mayfair edition. Green, Black and Purple were nearly ready to go, while Burgundy, Blue and Red were still separating the base game from expansion tiles. No sooner had this been noted by the first group when, calamity, quarter a pint of beer was spilled over their cards, narrowly missing their board! A hasty drying session ensued and the third copy of Catan came in handy after all, as it was temporarily cannibalised for cards.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor ronster0

Meanwhile, Blue, Burgundy and Red had finished setting out their randomised board and had started to critique it. There was only one good source of brick and nothing for ore, in fact, the only abundant supply of anything seemed to be wood and sheep of which there were plenty. This was exacerbated by the fact that nine was by far the most frequently rolled number in the first half of the game, which delivered both wood and sheep. Blue had gone first and had grabbed the best brick space, however, although Red and Burgundy apparently had two better starting positions, it was a bit claustrophobic as they were both camped in close proximity on one side of the board. Red really suffered as she ended up with two awkwardly placed positions and that made her game really tough. Everywhere she went she was blocked by Burgundy and Blue and although she challenged for the longest road, she just couldn’t get out of the trap. Although Blue had much more space to work with, good settlement positions were further apart which meant she had to build a lot of road before she could build. Consequently, she quickly picked up the Longest Road card. While Blue was road building, Burgundy got his nose in front and was first to build his third settlement. With the extra resources this provided, Burgundy was able to keep his nose in front, settling more and building cities first. He also had enough resources to buy a handful of Development Cards, which first of all netted him the Largest Army, and then enabled him to masterfully take the Longest Road card by building three sections in one turn. This, together with a single victory point card brought him to ten points bringing the game to a close.

– Image by boardGOATS

Eventually after a lot of mopping, the second game of The Settlers of Catan had got underway. As is often the case in this game, it was the statistically unlikely numbers which came up all the time and the more probable ones hardly ever! This time, five appeared time and again, until Purple was awash with sheep Wood, ore and wheat appeared often enough, but brick was not available at all, probably because they were both elevens and the twelve! So, the sheep were exchanged for brick and everyone quickly built their third settlement. Black obstinately refused to join up his two bits of road to claim the Longest Road card which left Green free to take it having extended his road slightly to try to get some ore into his production.

– Image by BGG contributor shannona

Everyone built a another settlement or two and Black started turning his into cities, but still didn’t join his roads. Green struggled to get sufficient wheat and ore, so started buying development cards instead of building cities (as they only need one of each rather than a total of five). In the process, Green also ended up with a number of soldiers which resulted in the Largest Army card. It was then that we discovered that Black had been inadvertently cheating. He had been using his port to swap two wood for his missing resources (he had two settlements on the wood hexagon that happened to be a six). Of course there would have been nothing wrong with that, except that in this case his port was for the ore port not the wood port! Green and Purple ribbed him mercilessly for the rest of the game (and indeed the rest of the evening, as he deserved.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor thephantomhennes

Fairly quickly Green had taken a commanding lead with five points to the others two and three, which then became six and eventually eight when he took the Largest Army card. Green kept plugging away at the development cards, trying to get victory points, but a clear lead meant he was also attracting the attention of the robber and his brick port was great considering he had three settlements giving brick, but the dice just weren’t playing the high numbers game. Eventually Green found a victory point card and he needed just one more to win. A settlement at the end of the road or a victory point development card (or perhaps a city) would do it, but by now Black had three cities and a settlement, plus that little gap in his roads. With people finally rolling sixes and Black gaining four wood every time, the inevitable happened. He built another settlement and the missing piece of road meant his was now one longer than Green. So Black went to ten points, and Green tied with Purple two points behind. Still, Black had cheated…!

– Image by BGG contributor olaha

The second game was still in full flow when Blue, Burgundy and Red finished, and decided to give a quick game, Yardmaster an outing. This is a cute little set collecting game with a train theme and some parallels with the Ticket to Ride games. In Yardmaster, however, players are building a locomotive rather than routes. On their turn players can do two actions. The actions are: draw a cargo card (either blind or from the face up discard pile); buy a railcar card from the four face up cards in the middle, or swap their “Exchange Token” with any other one around the table. To buy a railcar, players pay using sets of cargo cards, so a yellow number three railcar will cost three yellow “oil” cards. However, the exchange tokens allow players to use other cargo cards at a rate of two-to-one, so in the above example, if the player only had two yellow oil cards but also had two blue “coal” cards and the blue exchange token, they would still be able to buy the yellow number three railcar.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor joeincolorado

When buying a railcar, if the number or colour match the previous car, then it must be added to the end of their locomotive. If not, then players can park it in their personal sorting yard and add it later, when another railcar is being bought and added to the locomotive. This is the clever part of the game as it allows players to “stack” points in their personal train yard enabling them both to take some risks and strategically remove railcars from the grasping hands of their opponents. Players score is the total of the numbers of the on the railcars making up their locomotive (waggons in the sorting yard do not score). Burgundy started with a succession of ones and gradually built a very long, if not very high scoring loco. Meanwhile, Blue and Red grabbed a couple of higher scoring waggons each.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor moonblogger

Although quick, Yardmaster was still going when the second game of Settlers finally finished and Green, Black and Purple were looking around something to play and opted for Plague & Pestilence. This is another old game, dating back to the early 1990s and has been out of print for a long time, however, Green had brought along a self-printed version. The game is played in two “phases”. The first is the Prosperity Phase. During their turn, the active player rolls a pair of purple six-sided dice which indicates how much their population increases by. Then the active player draws Prosperity cards to refill their hand and plays one. A special Death Ship card is shuffled into the Prosperity deck and drawing it indicates the start of the second phase, the Plague Phase. This is played exactly the same as the first phase, but the dice rolls now indicate how much the active player’s population decreases by. As the game progresses, the plague ravages the populations and players are eliminated; the last player is the winner.

– Image by boardGOATS

Green, Purple and Black had played Plague & Pestilence recently (though not on a Tuesday) and Purple had won decisively with a whole handful of population cards, so was looking forward to a repeat performance. With it being a game where being nasty was not just possible, but obligatory, Purple and Green quickly ganged up on Black to punish him for cheating in The Settlers of Catan. Water off a ducks back, he responded with “Pied Piper” cards and “Mass Migrations”! However his attempts at getting Green and Purple to fight came to naught thanks to Purple’s apparently endless supply of “Negotiated Settlement” cards. Populations rose and fell, city improvements were built and destroyed. Some surreptitious changing of population cards from small denominations into large ones to reduce the size of the their pile and hide the true value of the hand went on. Then the death ship arrived and the game was really afoot.

– Image by boardGOATS

Meanwhile, Red, Burgundy and Blue were bringing Yardmaster to a close, having ridden out a spell of poor railcar cards. Burgundy was just a handful of points away from winning, and with a cards in his sorting yard needed to buy the red one in the middle, but it was Blue’s turn. Red urged Blue to take the card or Burgundy would end the game on his next go, but Blue had other plans and using her Exchange Token bought a yellow three and took the opportunity to move all the cards from her sorting yard onto the end of her locomotive, giving her a score of twenty, seven more than Burgundy.

– Image by boardGOATS

Plague & Pestilence was still ongoing, so, after a quick chat about Yardmaster, Blue, Red and Burgundy decided to give its little brother, Yardmaster Express a go. This shares the locomotive building feature, but is even quicker and simpler than Yardmaster, though much more luck-driven. The game is based on card drafting, so the start player begins with a hand of railcar cards, draws one from the draw deck and then chooses one to add to their loco. As before, the waggons must match in colour or number, but this time, the cards are “split” so they contain two waggons and the front waggon may not be the same as the rear one. Scores are the sum of the numbers on the waggons, as before, but bonus points are awarded to the player (or players) with the longest continuous set of waggons of the same colour. This can be significant as the bonus is equal to the number of waggons. If a player cannot match the colour or number they can play the card face down as wild, but these score less and break any otherwise continuous string of waggons. Once a card has been chosen, the had is passed to the next player who draws a card and chooses one. There is a little bit of opportunity to screw over the next player by taking the cards they want, but otherwise, the game is highly luck dependent, and this time, Blue was the lucky one.

– Image by boardGOATS

Over in Plague & Pestilence, survival was the order of the day. Purple unfortunately had several very high roles and no improvement cards to reduce them, so quickly found her deck dwindling. Green and Black, however, were getting better luck on the roles, and combining them with City Improvements, managed to hold on to more of their population. Purple, with a population reduced to just ten, had one last go at Green with a “Pied Piper” card, but ultimately it wasn’t enough as she rolled 9s and 10s and within a couple more turns was dead. The gloves were now off between Green and Black. Well not so much gloves off as desperately trying to shore-up our own populations against the relentless tide of plague and death. Green eventually managed to win the war of attrition, thanks in no small part to four consecutive trade centre cards (which increased his population by ten each time)!

– Image by boardGOATS

With both games finally finishing more or less together, we had a quick chat and then decided to finish as we had started, with another game of 6 Nimmt!. This time we started with the correct number of cards and, as before, Burgundy managed to start collecting Nimmts like they were going out of fashion. Once again, Black managed to avoid picking up any Nimmts in the first round, but this time it was Blue that joined tied with zero at the halfway point. Much to everyone’s surprise it was Burgundy however, who won the second round with just three Bulls’ Heads. Unfortunately, with eighteen in the first round he was always going to find it hard to compete for the lead, which left Blue and Black with fourteen overall, having finished both rounds with exactly the same number and the evening finished with a draw.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: New games can be good, but classics remain popular for a reason.

Next Meeting – 5th May 2015

Our next meeting will be on Tuesday 5^th April, 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 The Settlers of Catan. Often the feature is a new game that people want to play, but this is an older game, celebrating its 20^th anniversary this year. “Settlers” was a pioneering game as it has a trading phase that keeps everyone involved throughout. Players then use the resources to build roads, settlements and cities, but must beware the robber who can attack at any time…

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor kilroy_locke

And speaking of robbers…

Jeff was really short of money, so he decided that he had to take desperate measures. He got out a balaclava and broke into a bank. When he got in, he pointed his gun at the cashier said, “Give me all your money, or you’ll be GEOGRAPHY!”

Despite looking down the barrel of a gun, the cashier couldn’t help laughing and said, “I think you meant to say ‘HISTORY’.”

Very stressed by it all failing to go according to plan, Jeff answered angrily, “Don’t change the subject…”

Next Meeting – 5th May 2015

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor kilroy_locke

And speaking of robbers…

Despite looking down the barrel of a gun, the cashier couldn’t help laughing and said, “I think you meant to say ‘HISTORY’.”

Very stressed by it all failing to go according to plan, Jeff answered angrily, “Don’t change the subject…”

21st April 2015

While Blue attacked her pizza, Red, Green, Burgundy, Black and Purple attacked a quick game of Coloretto. This is a great little little set collecting game that forms the basis of the well-known boardgame, Zooloretto. The idea of Coloretto is that players take it in turns to either draw a chameleon card and place it on a truck, or take a truck (after which they are out for the rest of the round). Each truck can hold a maximum of three chameleons and the round continues until every player has taken a truck. The chameleon cards come in seven different colours and players are collecting sets which score according to the triangular number sequence (one point for the first card, three points for two cards, six points for three cards etc.).

– Image by BGG contributor SergioMR

The clever part is that each player can only score three sets as positive, all the others are negative, and the highest score wins. Thus, there is an element of push your luck and players can make life difficult for each other by putting cards a cards someone wants with cards they don’t want. As usual, the game came down to a choice between taking the one or two safe wanted cards and waiting to see if a useful third card might be added to the set. With a five player game, however, there was always a high risk that someone else would take it, so Burgundy started off very cautiously and managed to quickly collect a lot of red chameleons and a few two point bonus cards making him the obvious front-runner. Green had also started out going for reds, but quickly realised he would have to broaden his horizons. Meanwhile, Red, who was new to the game began to realise what cards people might want and how to cause them problems. It was purple however, who finished with her nose in front with final total of thirty-one, thanks to the large number of cards she had managed to accrue.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

Although Zooloretto is a more popular game (possibly helped by its cute animal theme), it is arguable that Coloretto is actually a better one. In Zooloretto, players are building a zoo and instead of simply collecting sets of cards, they are collecting sets of animal tiles and have to place them in pens. If you can’t place an animal, then it goes into the barn, where others can buy it or, if there space becomes available, it can be recovered and placed in a pen. The light nature of the game and cute animals make Zooloretto very accessible for families, but there are more bits and it does take longer to play. There is no question that the tile/card drawing and truck choosing mechanism is very clever and integrates well with the zoo theme, however, Coloretto is a simpler, “purer” game, which is short enough that it doesn’t risk outstaying its welcome.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor Toynan

With the arrival of Grey, and Blue finally finishing her pizza, we decided to split into two groups. The first played the “Feature Game”, Black Fleet. This was one of the games brought back from Essen last year and is a beautiful game involving skulduggery on the high seas. The game is very simple. Each player commands a merchant vessel and a pirate ship. Players also have a hand of two “movement” cards and on their turn choose one to play. Each of these cards has movement values the player’s merchant and pirate ships, but also allows them to move one of the Navy frigates. As the ships move they can carry out various actions. For example, before, during, or after its movement, a player can sell their cargo at the indicated price (two or three doubloons per goods cube) at the port if their merchant is in a space adjacent to it. Alternatively, pirates can steal treasure or bury it safely on an island. Once per turn, players can spend their gold to activate their bonus cards. These are cards that are dealt out at the start of the game and once activated, remain active for the rest of the game with the player that has activated all their bonus cards winning. In the event that more than one player succeeds in activating their bonus cards, then ties are broken by the amount of gold held at the end.

– Image used with permission of BGG
contributor The_Blue_Meeple

After a short rules explanation, we set our ships afloat, each hoping to get to another port to trade our valuable cubes. It wasn’t long before the first pirate came relieved a merchant ship of one their goods cubes. Then, the gloves were off and the game became one of attack and counter attack. With four pirate ships sailing the seas it was rare that anyone managed to dock into port with any more than two cubes, and sometimes they only had one to sell. However the two navy ships mostly kept the pirates from burying their loot. Very soon players were paying for their bonus cards and beefing up their attack or trading capabilities. Purple was heading down the trading route, but misreading her cheapest bonus card, she left that to one side and plugged away at getting her more expensive ones. On a sea so full of marauding pirates (and the occasional back-stabbing navy ship and ruthless merchant), this proved to be a difficult strategy to make work.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

Grey was trying a more balanced strategy, while Green and Burgundy were making their fleets the menace of the seas. The game seemed well balanced between Green, Burgundy and Grey until Burgundy turned over his penultimate bonus card and it became clear that he would earn enough on his next turn pay for his last card and finish the game. Green and Grey did what they could to attack Burgundy to prevent this from happening while also trying to turn over their last cards. Burgundy duly paid for his final card ending the game and giving Green and Grey one last turn. Green was able to turn one card over, however, although that would not be enough to tie with Burgundy, it would be enough to tie with Grey if Grey could be prevented from turning over his last card. Thus, Green abandoned his plans and instead in a ruthless pirate like manner turned the tables on Grey. This left Grey unable to pay for his final card and with less money remaining than Green, he finished in third place behind Burgundy and Green. As it turned out Grey would not have been able to buy his final card anyhow, which made Green’s last move look particularly vicious, but then if you insist in playing with a poker face, that’s what you get!

– Image by BGG contributor spielemitkinder

Although none of the players had played it before, on discussion with Blue and Black after the game, it is clear that Black Fleet is a much better game with four than three and everyone was keen to play it again. However, there was much discussion about the balance of the cards: since the bonus cards are drawn at random, some combinations end up being well balanced while others are less synergistic. For example, in this game, the cards definitely made it much harder for Purple to win, but easier for Green. We’ll have to play it again to see if this is something which detracts from the game, or makes it more of challenge!

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor henk.rolleman

Meanwhile, Black, Red and Blue tried out a game that was new to the group, K2. This is a fairly straight forward hand management game, that can get quite brutal as players find the route up the mountain increasingly challenging. The idea is that each player has two climbers, two tents and a hand of cards. Simultaneously, everyone chooses which cards they are going to play and then players take it in turns to move their climbers up the mountain. There are two possible routes which are slightly different lengths and difficulties.

– Image by BGG contributor Oskarete

Some cards enable players to move along the paths and others help them to increase their levels of acclimatisation. The acclimatisation cards are essential, because going higher up the mountain, saps your energy. The weather also plays its part, both making it more difficult to climb and reducing players’ acclimatisation and if a climber’s acclimatisation drops to zero, they die. As inevitable when playing a new game, an important rule got missed out – in this case, we didn’t realise until we were more than half way through the game that the weather only affected certain parts of the mountain, thus we made it much more difficult for ourselves. The winner is the player who’s climbers get the furthest up the mountain without dying.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor henk.rolleman

Blue took the slightly harder eastern ridge while Black and Red took the western pass. Fortunately, Black started off trying to get one climber to the top, leaving the other safe at the bottom, which meant the western pass didn’t get too congested. Red and Blue tried to get the two climbers to help each other, but quickly realised the wisdom of Black’s approach as their climbers suffered from exposure, especially Blue’s on the exposed ridge. Black’s first climber made it to the top, only to find his way down blocked by Red. This turned out to be fatal as the extreme effort proved too much. By this time, Blue’s first climber had realised she was in difficulty and headed back to the foothills, just making it in time thanks to a lull in the weather. Red had also made it as high as she dared having had her route blocked by Black which delayed her progress to the summit. In the meantime, Black’s well acclimatised second climber had made it to the top and was also heading back down to avoid the same fate as his companion. Blue’s second climber then made a dash for it and, with the path clear, made it to the peak just as the game drew to a close leaving Blue the winner. Definitely a game to try again, but perhaps with the correct rules next time…

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor mothertruckin

Early starts in the morning left just Blue, Green and Burgundy, and they decided to give Blueprints another outing. We’ve played this a couple of times at the group and it always goes down well. Burgundy really struggled this time, but the game began as a closely fought battle between Green and Blue, enhanced by some really unlikely dice draws and rolls. In the first round, Green took first place in the general classification and an award, while Blue took second and the award for using dice with the same number. In the second round, positions were reversed with Blue taking first place and an award leaving it all to play for in the final round. However, Green finished the game three points ahead of Blue who lost out on tie-breakers to both Green and Burgundy in every category in the final round.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor bkunes

Learning Outcome: If you manage to get people to believe you are a threat, don’t be surprised when they attack you!

Next Meeting – 21st April 2015

Our next meeting will be on Tuesday 21^st April, 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 Black Fleet. This was one of the games brought back from Essen last year and is a beautiful game involving skulduggery on the high seas. The game involves pirates, merchants and naval vessels all seeking glory and fortune in the Caribbean.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor Toynan

And talking of pirates…

Pirate Jeff walked into a bar and the bartender said, “Hey, Jeff, I haven’t seen you in ages – What happened, you look terrible!”

“What d’ya mean?” replied Jeff, “I’m fine.”

“But,” The bartender stammered, “What about that wooden leg? You didn’t have that before.”

“Arrrr, well,” said pirate Jeff, “We were in a battle at sea and a cannon ball hit me leg but the surgeon fixed me up, and Oi’m fine, really.”

“Yeah,” responded the bartender, “And what about that hook? Last time I saw you, you definitely had both hands.”

“Arrrr, well,” said the pirate, “We were in another battle and we boarded the enemy ship. Oi was in a sword fight and me hand was cut off but the surgeon fixed me up with this hook, and Oi feel great, really.”

“Oh,” said the bartender more than a little taken aback. “And then there’s your eye patch? Last time you were in here you had both eyes.”

“Arrr, well,” said pirate Jeff, “One day when we were at sea, some birds were flying over the ship. Oi looked up, and one of dropped one in me eye.”

The bartender thought for a moment and then continued, “So, what happened? You couldn’t have lost an eye just from some bird lime!”

“Arrrr, well,” said pirate Jeff looking slightly embarrassed, “Oi really wasn’t used to the hook yet…”

18th April 2015 @ “The Mix”

The drop in gaming session at The Mix in Wantage was a great success. It started quietly, but there were lots of new people there and lots of games were played. Green arrived first and was setting up tables when Blue and Pink arrived. By the time the first punters arrived PitchCar, Riff Raff and Camel Up had been set up and other games were out ready to be tried. Before long Purple and Black had also arrived and there was a steady stream of games being played including Toc Toc Woodman, Escape: The Curse of the Temple and Cube Quest, and a steady stream of pieces flying across the room. Old favourites like Dobble, Incan Gold, The Great Balloon Race and Carcassonne also got an outing as well as the Lego game, UFO Attack.

– Image by boardGOATS

Thanks to everyone who came, both visitors and gamers – it was great to see it so well attended. Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves, so it’s definitely something we’d be interested in doing again in a few months time.

BoardGOATS @ “The Mix” – Saturday 18th April 2015

The Mix in Wantage town centre is holding a drop-in gaming session on Saturday from 10.30 am until 2.30 pm. Members of the club are providing games and will be teaching people how to play them.

– Image from thewantagemix.wordpress.com

There isn’t an awful lot of space so the idea is to encourage people to drop in and play a short game or two. We are planning to bring a few eye-catching games like PitchCar, Riff Raff, Bamboleo, Toc Toc Woodman, and Saturn, but most of the gaming will be smaller filler games like Dobble, Turf Horse Racing, No Thanks!, Walk the Plank!, The Great Balloon Race and some of our other light favourites. We will also be bringing some classic gateway games like Carcassonne, Ticket to Ride, The Settlers of Catan and Jamaica as well as a small number of deeper games, just to show people what else is out there.

– Image by boardGOATS

The event has been well advertised and was mentioned in the Ramblings section of the April edition of the local magazine, “Round and About”, so we are hoping for a decent turn-out. Please pop in if you are in the area on Saturday.

7th April 2015

Blue and Pink arrived very early and decided to play a quick game of Onirim before their food arrived. This is a cooperative, two player game with an unusual theme: players are Dreamwalkers, lost in a mysterious labyrinth – they must discover the eight oneiric doors before dreamtime runs out trapping them forever.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor zombiegod

The idea is that both players have a hand of five cards, three that are their own, and two which are shared and kept face up on the table. On their turn the players can do one of two things: play a card, discard a card. Cards are played one at a time face up in front of the player. The aim is to play a three cards of the same colour in succession, which allows the player access to the oneiric door of the corresponding colour. The important thing about the cards is that in addition to a colour suit, they also have a symbol – a sun, a moon or a key. When played, adjacent cards must not have the same symbols (regardless of colour). This is much more tricky than it sounds as sun cards are most abundant and key cards have special powers, which means you don’t want to waste them. For example, if a key card is discarded, the player triggers the prophecy which means they can look at the next five cards, discard one and return the rest in any order.

– Image by boardGOATS

Once a player has played or discarded their card, they replenish their hand with a card from the draw deck. There are seventy-six cards in the deck, including eight doors and ten nightmare cards. Nightmare cards are a problem, when they are drawn, players have to deal with them in some way. Players can mitigate the effects of a nightmare by discarding a key card, discarding a gained door or by discarding the whole of their hand (i.e. all five cards, including the two shared cards). If the player cannot do any of these (or chooses not to), then they must discard the next five cards. This is bad because the deck is like a ticking clock and the game ends when there are no cards left to play. Worse, nightmare (and door cards) are not truly discarded as they are returned to the deck once the five cards have been drawn, so their effect does not go away. On the plus side, if you are replacing a card and you draw a door card, if you have a key card of the same colour, you get to keep it.

– Image by boardGOATS

Like Hanabi, this is a cooperative game that can be played with a lot or a little “table talk”. Since it is quite a tough game, we decided to play with all the cards face up, but with no talking. We had just started and the game was going unusually well when food turned up. Sadly, we were very easily distracted and quickly lost focus which led to inevitable defeat as we finished just one door short. Once we’d finished eating, we gave it another go, but quickly regretted squandering our good beginning in the first game as the second game had a terrible start. Things picked up, but we still didn’t get close, finishing with six doors. We were just finishing when Grey and Cerise wandered in clutching a new game called Slavika.

– Image by BGG contributor cnidius

Slavika is a card game of heroes and monsters with really beautiful artwork. Each player is the head of a household and has two hands of cards, one of heroes and one of monsters. On their turn each player plays three cards, the first card must be a hero, the last card must be a monster and the second card can be either a hero or a monster. Each player starts with six heroes in their family and five monsters, each with a strength; although monsters are replenished once played, heroes only return when they have finished being heroic. The idea is that there are a number of regions that players are fighting to protect from the monsters.

– Image by BGG contriutor cnidius

Each region is different and has a maximum number of heroes and a maximum number of monsters: when world is over-run with monsters, the battle is concluded and the combined strength of the monsters is compared with the combined strength of the heroes. If the heroes win, then the player who contributes the most to the battle (the most heroic player) wins the points and also the treasure stored on the island and the heroes fighting for that world are returned. If there is also a thief, however, then the most heroic player wins the points but the thief runs off with the treasure. If the monsters win, then nobody wins anything, the monsters leave, the heroes return home and another treasure card is added to the region and the fighting begins again. Blue had no idea what was going on, and Pink was not much wiser, but after a couple of rounds they got the hang of it a little and everyone realised that if people insisted on thinking before playing cards, it was going to take way longer than the stated thirty minutes!

– Image by BGG contributor MacTele

By this time, Red, Yellow and Orange had also arrived and had riffled through the bags and chosen …Aber Bitter Mit Sahne (aka Piece o’ Cake). This is a cute little set collecting game that we first played a few weeks back. The idea is that one player divides the cake and then the others 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 of each type of cake and for the number of “blobs” of cream on cake that has been eaten. In case of a draw, all parties win the pints, but no points are scored for sets that aren’t the largest. 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 too enticing. Similarly, players choosing have to be careful to take something that is useful, and keep something they think they can build a large set of while maximising the number of blobs of cream they eat.

– Image by boardGOATS

Red ran away with the first game, but the second was much closer and came right down to the wire with Orange just beating Red by two points. Meanwhile, Blue, Pink, Grey and Cerise were still playing Slavika, so Red, Yellow and Orange decided to give Tsuro a try. This is a bit of an old favourite as it is fairly quick, plays up to eight, is very easy to teach, and has a nice healthy dose of tension. In summary, players start with a hand of three tiles each depicting track and a stone on the edge of the board. On their turn, the active player plays one tile in their chosen orientation and then moves their stone along the track. Players must try to stay on the board unless they have no choice and if two stones collide both players are out. Hands are replenished until there are no tiles left, and when people are knocked out, they redistribute their tiles amongst the remaining players. Last player on the board wins.

– Image by BGG contributor jeremiahlburns

With only three players, it was slow to get going, but before long Yellow and Orange had fallen off the board leaving Red to take her second win of the evening. Just as Red was finishing off her competitors, Pink was trying to use his thief to steal two treasure cards only to find that they were both “moon” cards. As two moon cards had already been found, that finally brought Slavika to a very abrupt end with Cerise the clear winner. This left time for another quick game of Tsuro, this time with all seven players joining in. With Pink’s help, Blue managed to run out of space after just a few turns and spent the rest of the game egging Orange into pushing Red off the board. Before long Cerise, Yellow and Red had all joined Blue spectating and the game was hanging in the balance with it unclear whether Grey, Pink and Orange would come out on top. Unfortunately for them, neither Grey nor Orange had useful tiles and Pink ran out the clear winner.

– Image by BGG contributor cnidius

The evening finished as it began with just Blue and Pink. Tempted though they were to have another go a finding the oneiric doors, they decided instead to play the “Feature Game”, Harbour. This is a recent successful KickStarter project and is a neat little worker placement game with a market manipulation twist. The idea is that each player has a single worker and can place them on one of the central buildings or a building owned by one of the players (at a cost if it is not their own). Each building enables players to buy goods or exchange goods they already have for other goods. Alternatively, some buildings allow players to sell goods and buy a building, and this is where the dynamic market comes in. There are four types of merchandise, and each has a value, but each can only be sold if a minimum quantity is reached. For example, players may get $5 for shipping fish, but they must have a minimum of five fish in order to be able to sell them. Meanwhile, wood may only yield $2, but players will only need two in order to be able to sell. When someone sells something in the market, demand changes the values at market, with the values of unsold goods increasing and the value of items just sold dropping.

– Image used with permission of BGG reviewer EndersGame

Each player can store a maximum of six of each item, and unless they have a building that allows them to store goods when selling, if they sell, they must sell everything. Thus, the game is all about timing and selling goods before other players and when the price is right. The game ends when one player has built four buildings, leaving the other players with one final turn. Blue and Pink had played the game once before and Pink was of the opinion that the person who managed to build four buildings first would win. Blue was less convinced as she felt that that player could get once less turn and that would allow other players to buy more valuable buildings. This wasn’t an opportunity to test these theories, however, as Blue quickly bought three high value buildings and Pink’s less profitable buildings were sufficiently undervalued to ensure that Blue’s commanding lead was insurmountable. It is definitely an interesting little game though and will get another outing soon.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor kladan

Learning Outcome: Don’t get distracted by food.

Boardgames in the News: International TableTop Day 2015

International TableTop Day was founded three years ago as a way for the world to celebrate tabletop gaming together. Every spring, gamers host thousands of events all over the world and every year, the event grows. Last year over 3,000 events were held in 80 countries, over all 7 continents.

– Image from tabletopday.com

Although boardGOATS are not doing anything specifically for International Tabletop Day this year, we will be holding a gaming day next Saturday at The Mix in Wantage.