Author Archives: nannyGOAT

Boardgames on The Apprentice

In the next episode of The Apprentice, Lord Sugar will be telling the candidates that they must design a brand new board game, then sell it to shops across London. According to the press release, one team designs a globetrotting game for the whole family while the others come up with a dating game for adults. It will be interesting to see if any of the candidates know anything at all about modern, Euro-style games and what their “industry experts” have to say on the subject.

The Apprentice

The episode will be broadcast on Wednesday 12th November on BBC 1 at 9pm.

Next Meeting – 4th Movember 2014

Our next meeting will be on Tuesday 4^th Movember, 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 Secret Moon. This is a small quick card game that is the sequel to one of our most played games, Love Letter, and tells the story about what happens when the Princess receives her message and goes out to meet her young man by the light of the Secret Moon. This game has a lot in common with Werewolf, in that there are two teams: those on the side of the Princess, and those on the side of the Minister, but while everyone knows which side they are on, they don’t know who else is on the same side.

And talking of the Moon…

It was a couple of days after Neil Armstrong had landed on the moon and Jeff was chatting about it with his brother, Joe.

“Joe, do you think they’ll put a man on the sun next?” Jeff asked.

“Of course not,” replied Joe, “If you send a man to the Sun, he will burn up with the heat and stuff.”

Jeff sat and thought about it for a moment and then said, “Don’t be silly, they’d send him at night…!”

23rd October 2014: A Post Essen Special

This was a special Thursday night meeting because we’d had to cancel Tuesday (because the pub was holding a Chinese Night) and everyone who went to the Spieltage in Essen couldn’t wait to show off their new toys! As it was a Thursday, we couldn’t use the pub, so we spent the evening at a private house in the village, something we used to do routinely after the fire, but haven’t done since the pub reopened.

Typically, almost everyone came which meant we needed a second table! While people arrived and drinks were found, Essen was discussed and the games played and bought were presented. New games were the order of the day, so one table opted for Castles of Mad King Ludwig, while the other began with Istanbul, the 2014 Kennerspiel des Jahres. It was exciting to break new games out of their shrink wrapping, but something that hadn’t been appreciated, was the time it would take to punch the components and learn the rules.

Although Castles of Mad King Ludwig had a lot of components to remove from their cardboard frame, at least the rules didn’t need to reading as one of the players had played it at Essen and was prepared to teach it. Time was also saved someone the punching by using poker chips – although the components and box are generally really nice, the small cardboard money tokens are a little fiddly.

The game itself is quite a simple game in many ways: the idea is that players buy rooms to add to their castle. A deck of cards is used to determine which rooms are available, and game ends when this deck has been exhausted. The active player, or Master Builder then chooses the respective value of each room. The clever part is the sale, an idea which appears to have been borrowed from Goa, where all monies are paid to the active player except for those spent by the active player, which go to the bank. Thus, the idea is that the Master Builder wants to arrange the tiles such that rooms desired by the other players are expensive, but generally not too expensive, and similar to Goa, having a lot of money is powerful, but when you spend it, you generally give that advantage to the active player.

So, each room has a cost, but also a points value when placed, a size, and some sort of bonus for “completing” it. A room is considered complete when every door leads to another room and this is where there is a spacial element to the game, since it is necessary to ensure that doors are laid out in such a way that rooms can be completed if appropriate. The bonuses vary from an extra turn to money to extra victory point cards that are applied at the end of the game. Some rooms also yield bonuses for “adjacency” which is determined on a room by room basis when the room is placed.

Ably assisted by Purple, Black explained the rules to Blue and Pink and then play began. All was apparently proceeding well, when we discovered that despite the fact she was in the lead, Blue was unsure when the room bonuses applied – on placing, or to rooms added after placing. This confusion was duly rectified (it is on placing) when we discovered that Pink hadn’t quite got a complete grasp of the rules either. And then Purple, who was suffering with post-Essen lurgy, took her turn to have a fuzzy-rule moment. Meanwhile, Black, who was concentrating on keeping everyone else on the straight and narrow found his castle was suffering a little and was starting to fall behind, so he quickly took measures to improve his situation by building a couple of Red rooms which yield a lot of points, though have some significant penalties if you get things wrong.

As the game headed towards the conclusion, Black was clearly in front and pulling away, but that was without the final scoring. At the end of the game there are points available for any bonus cards held by players as well as for winning the King’s Favour. The King’s Favours are scored separately with points potentially available for the everyone as players are ranked and score points accordingly. There are four competitions that change with each game, and in the four player game, first place earns eight points, with four, two and one for second, third and fourth place respectively. In this game, the King favoured castles with the largest footprint of living and utility space, as well as those with a lot of corridors and circular rooms. Having picked up a lot of orange utility rooms early in the game, Blue had a lot of bonus points to score as well as coming first in two of the Kings Favour competitions, taking her well clear of Black in second place.

Meanwhile, Green, Azure, Red and Orange battled their way through learning the rules to Istanbul. This is also a fairly simple game where players are trying to lead their Merchant and his four Assistants through the Turkish bazaar. There are sixteen locations each with an associated action, but to carry out an action, the Merchant needs an Assistant to help out. The problem is, once an action has been completed, the Merchant must move on, however, the Assistant remains to complete the details of the transaction. The play-area is made up of tiles representing each stall, so there are four possible layouts: “Short”, where the distances between places that work well together are small making game-play easier; “Long”, where places that work well together are far apart, which forces players to plan ahead more; “Challenging”, where similar places are grouped together, and “Random”. As nobody had played it before, we didn’t know quite what to expect, so for this game, we chose “Short”.

Thus, a player’s turn consists of moving their stack of pieces (with the Merchant on top) one or two stalls around the bazaar. If the stack ends on a space where there is already an Assistant of the same colour, then the stack is placed on top of that Assistant, otherwise, the bottom Assistant in the stack is removed and placed next to the stack. Then, if the play wants he can perform an action at that stall, for example, buy goods at the fabric, spice or fruit warehouses, sell goods at one of the markets, or buy gemstones from the dealer etc.. If the player does not have an Assistant to collect or leave, then the players turn ends straight away, similarly, if a player meets someone else’s Merchant, they must pay them two Lira each, and forfeit the right to an action. Meeting one of the other characters in the game also has consequences: the Governor allows players to buy bonus cards; the Smuggler allows players to buy or trade goods, and a family member can be captured and sent to the Police Station in return for a reward. The game ends when a player has five rubies.

Each player tried different strategies and tactics and to begin with, everyone was quite close and before long, everyone had with two or three of the five required rubies. At this point, Green and Red looked at the gem dealer and felt that his gems were very expensive and that it was going to be a while before anyone could get enough to end the game. However, Orange was buying goods and then selling them in the market and then used his double buy bonus card to jump from two rubies to four. Meanwhile, Azure had gained a special bonus token that allowed her to change a dice roll and then set about visiting the “Tea House” and gambling on dice rolls. With the ability to change dice rolls, it meant she could call higher and therefore win more money which she took next door to buy her rubies. By the time Green and Red realised that Azure had enough to buy her remaining rubies, it was too late and Azure had secured the win.

Despite having to learn the game from scratch, Istanbul finished long before Castles of Mad King Ludwig, so they decided they liked the gem-stone theme and went on to play a game that is already quite well known within the group, but has been so popular that a copy was also purchased at Essen – Splendor. From the group who had finished, only Green was familiar with it, so he took the responsibility of teaching. Red started out collecting rubies, while Green bought onyx and diamond and Azure and Orange went for across section. Orange built up a stack of chips which enabled him to quickly build a good stack of non-scoring gem cards, these, in turn rapidly led to a lot of low level scoring cards. Red continued to concentrate on Rubies, but branched out a little and gaining some of the high scoring cards. Then suddenly, one player remembered the option to reserve a card and take a gold token and before long everyone was doing it! Green thought he was about to win and activated his saved five-point diamond card to claim three points for one of the Nobles (four onyx and four diamond) only to realise that he already had enough diamonds and it was onyx that he needed! Meanwhile, Azure quietly got on with building a mixed set of gems cross-colour starting with low value, moving on to middle and finishing with high values and with it took the game. No-one secured the patronage of a Noble, though Green came closest as he took second place.

Azure and Orange, Green and Pink headed home leaving Blue, Red, Black and Purple with just time for a quick game of the Romeo and Juliet themed card game, Council of Verona. This is another new game, but it has a lot in common with Love Letter, a quick little game that we’ve all played a lot and are very familiar with. The idea of Council of Verona is that on their turn, they play a card (a Montague, a Capulet or a Neutral) either in Exile or in Council. Broadly speaking, the cards come in two categories: cards with an action and cards with an agenda. So once they’ve played a card, players then they choose whether to perform any action associated with that card and, if they wish, they may then play an influence token on any agenda cards in play. Each player has three influence tokens, a zero, a three and a five. At the end of the game, the influence tokens are evaluated for any agendas that have been successfully fulfilled and the scores totalled up accordingly.

The rules suggest that you play three rounds and draft the cards at the start, but since we were all unfamiliar with the game, all tired and two of us were suffering from post-Essen-lurgy, we decided to play just one quick game and deal the cards out randomly and try to get a feel for it. Blue and Purple played Romeo and Juliet (who want to be together) into Council and added influence tokens, while Red played Prince Escalus (Neutral who wants council to be balanced) and added a token. Blue then played Lord Montague (wants more Montagues on Council than Capulets) and Black, Red and Purple retaliated by shuffling things around. Blue who went last, played Lady Montague allowing her to swap two influence tokens giving her a winning score.

Learning Outcome: New games are a lot of fun!

Next Meeting – 23rd October 2014: A Post Essen Special

Our next meeting will be on Thursday 23^rd October and will be held in a private house in Stanford. Please get in touch if you would like to come along and need directions. 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 will be a special meeting because we had to cancel Tuesday (because the pub was holding a Chinese Night) and everyone who went to the Spieltage in Essen can’t wait to show off their new toys! For this reason, the “Feature Game” will be “something brought back from Germany”.

And talking of Germany…

Jeff was dealing with his late German Grandfather’s effects. He had been clearing the cupboard and had decided to give all his Grandfather’s old clothes to the local charity shop. He handed over the bag of clothes to the shop assistant who was rummaging through it when a horrified expression formed on her face.

“How dare you bring this uniform in to my shop!” she exclaimed angrily. “This is a symbol of pain, shame and humiliation.”

Hugely embarrassed at this turn of events, Jeff quickly took back the bag.

“I’m truly sorry,” he stammered, “I had no idea my Grandfather was an Arsenal fan…!”

Essen 2014

It is that time of year once again, when a boardgamer’s thoughts turn to Germany, specifically, Essen. Essen is a German city in the industrial heartland on the River Ruhr. In German, “Essen” means “food”, but to gamers it means “Spiel” – the largest games fair in Europe and, arguably, the world, The Internationale Spieltage (which is held in Essen of course). The fair runs for four days every year and everyone who is anyone goes. As in most years, a lot of new and exciting games are released at the Fair. This year, amongst other things, there are expansions for some of our favourite games including Keyflower and Snowdonia. There are (of course) lots of exciting new games as well, including Click & Crack, Castles of Mad King Ludwig, Evolution, Five Tribes, Cat Tower, Subdivision etc. There are a few of us going this year and it is certain that they will bring back some exciting new toys to play with.

Next Meeting, 21st October 2014 – Cancelled

Our usual meeting place, the Horse and Jockey pub in Stanford-in-the-Vale, is hosting a Chinese Night, so unfortunately, there won’t be space for us to play games. Additionally, our alternative meeting place is unavailable on Tuesday that week, so sadly, we will have to put off playing with our Essen purchases until November. In the meantime, we can always sample the Chinese food at the Jocky…

7th October 2014

Blue’s dinner had just arrived when two new gamers walked in, closely followed by Black and Purple. While Blue munched her burger and chips, at Purple’s request, the others played a quick couple of rounds of Dobble. This is a game that used to be one of our “go to” fillers, but has been somewhat neglected over the last year or so. Being basically, glorified “Snap”, it is a good game to warm up or finish with and is very easy to teach. Not hampered by the fact that they’d never played it before, the wins were shared between Azure (well, it’s a shade of green) and Orange.

While we waited for Green to arrive we played a quick five player game of the “Feature Game”, Love Letter. This small card game is supposed to play a maximum of four, but we thought we’d try it with five. The basic idea of the game is to be the player with the highest numbered card at the end of the game. So, each player starts with a card in hand and on their turn draws a second and then chooses one to play. Since each card has an effect and there are only sixteen cards in the deck, by playing a card, players are both gaining information about what cards other people have as well as giving away information about their remaining card. Used correctly, this information allows players to attack others and potentially eliminate them from the game. Everyone had won a round and we’d already concluded that although we were enjoying playing it wasn’t really a five-player game. So, the arrival of Green meant we decided to stop when the first player reached two, which happened to be Blue.

Next we had the inevitable debate about what to play and whether to split into two groups. Azure and Orange commented that they liked worker placement games which put Keyflower in the mix, one of our favourite games and one we’ve played quite a lot. It plays six, but several of us thought it might drag, especially with players who had not played it before. Various other options were offered, but Blue is always happy to play Keyflower and others followed, so it quickly became a single six player game.

The premise of the game is quite simple: over four rounds (or seasons) tiles are auctioned using meeples (or Keyples) as currency. The clever part is that to increase a bid, players must follow with the same colour. Keyples can also be used to perform the action associated with a tile, any tile, it doesn’t have to be their own, but each tile can only be used three times in each round and, again, players must follow the colour. The aim of the game is to obtain the maximum number of victory points at the end. However, the high scoring tiles aren’t auctioned until the last round (Winter), so players have to keep their options open. On the other hand, the tiles that are auctioned in Winter are chosen by the players from a hand of tiles dealt out at the start, so players can choose to take a steer from that. However, for that to work, you have to win the tile at the end…

With six players, almost all of the tiles are used, which makes it very different to playing with the smaller numbers we are more familiar with. Somehow, with so many players keen to to get involved from the start, the Spring tiles were highly contested and Blue lost out finishing with none. During Summer and Autumn, players strategies started to emerge. Green was collecting green Keyples, while Black was collecting Yellow Keyples. Meanwhile, Azure was collecting resources, and Orange, Purple and Blue were concentrating on trying to upgrade the tiles they had. Purple struggled because everyone else seemed to want her coal and generally managed to get there first while Blue struggled because she needed a pick-axe skill tile and couldn’t get it.

Winter arrived and the Apothecary and Village Hall tiles came out for Black, the Key Market tile came out for Green, the Scribe and Scholar tiles came out for Blue and Orange who had collected quite a pile of skill tiles between them. Blue had secured the start player at the end of Summer and went first with a free choice of tiles and a massive pile of red meeples to fight with. Although she only had one set, she decided to chance it and went for the higher earning potential of the Scribe tile which yields ten points for every set of three. Orange went for the Scholar, Black bid for the Apothecary and Green went for the Key Market with one of his massive pile of green Keyples, leaving Purple and Azure to fight for the rest of the tiles, including the Watermill (which rewards groups of five resources) and the Keythedral (which gives a straight twelve points) amongst others.

Players were beginning to pass, but Green was still increasing his stock of green Keyples, leaving Blue with a decision: keep her now much smaller supply of remaining red Keyples to defend the important Scribe tile, or try to improve her position by trading in one last tile to see if she could get another set or two. After a quick (mis)estimate of Green’s score Blue decided she had to go for the extra points, which increased her number of sets of skill tiles from two to five. While she popped out for a moment, Green under the impression that Blue had more remaining red Keyples, decided to use his two remaining reds to challenge for the Scribe tile in the hope that it would deplete her supply allowing him to win his choice of boats. Unfortunately, although Blue could match his bid, she didn’t have enough to beat it. Although Green did not fully appreciate it at the time, this did far more damage to Blue than to him and it told in the final scores. Green finished with sixty-six points, well clear of the pack, and Blue who (without the Scribe lost fifty points), finished just ahead of Black in second place. Despite our skepticism, Keyflower was very enjoyable with six and it turned out to be one of the best games we’ve played.

Learning Outcome: Don’t over-estimate the position of the other players.

Next Meeting – 7th October 2014

Our next meeting will be on Tuesday 7^th October, 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 Love Letter. This is a very small card game that we used to get out a lot, but seem to have got out of the habit of playing even though we still bring it. Although it only consists of sixteen cards and it is surprisingly entertaining. We have picked it this week because it is quick to play and will fill time nicely until everyone has arrived.

And talking of Love…

Jeff was spending the day out walking with his new puppy dog. Now, Jeff being Jeff, he’d brought a couple of cans of lager with him to have with his lunch, so an hour later the inevitable happened and he desperately needed to relieve himself. He was unsure what to do, since he needed both hands, but also didn’t want to let go of the dog lead. He decided to stand on the lead, but unfortunately, the young dog was startled and bolted as soon as Jeff began.

Jeff hinted high and low looking for the puppy, calling and calling. As night fell, so did the rain and Jeff suddenly realised that he was very lost and would need somewhere to shelter for the night. In the dusk, he happened upon a caravan which was unlocked, so he went in to rest on the bed. As he lay there he suddenly heard the noise of a key in the lock and in a panic he hid under the bed.

He was just quick enough to hide himself so that the young couple returning from an evening out were completely oblivious to his presence. So much so that, fortified from the bottle of wine they’d had with their romantic meal, they did what all young couples do in such circumstances and began to make love on the bed.

Breathing heavily, and caressing her hair, the young man complimented the girl, “In your eyes,” he said, “I can see the whole world.”

On hearing this the Jeff jumped out from under the bed and said, “If you can see the whole world, can you see where my puppy is?!?!”

23rd September 2014

We were late starting (again), though by the time we began we knew we were going to be short of people, so we started with Mr. Jack. This is an asymmetric, two-player game where one person takes on the role of “Jack” who is trying to escape, and the other tries to catch him before the escapes. We’ve played the pocket version a couple of times before, but this was the first outing on for the big version on a Tuesday evening at the pub.

The idea is that four of the characters are active in each round, with the four chosen at random in the first round, then the remaining four are played in the second round before the characters are shuffled and drawn randomly at the start of the third round. In the first round, the “Detective” chooses one character and plays it straight away; then Jack chooses and plays two from those left; finally the Detective finishes the round by playing the last character available. In general, on their turn, a character is moved one to three spaces around the board. However, each character also has a special ability which may be used to modify their action. For example, Miss Stealthy, can move up to four spaces and may move through buildings if she wishes, on the other hand, Inspector Lestrade can only move a maximum of three, but must move one of the barriers during his turn.

Thus, each character is moved in turn and at the end of each round, the question is asked, “Is Jack in the Light or the Dark?” If Jack is immediately adjacent to any other character, next to a street lamp, or in line with Dr. Watson’s lamp, he is in the Light, otherwise, he is in the Dark. The player playing Jack must respond truthfully, thus allowing the detective to eliminate some characters. If he is in the Light, Jack has survived another round, but may not actually escape until he is in the Dark again.

The game began with Green (playing “Jack”) choosing his alter ego at random from the eight possibilities: Sergeant Goodley, Miss Stealthy, Sherlock Holmes, Jeremy Bert, Inspector Lestrade, John Smith, Sir William Gull and Dr. Watson. Meanwhile Blue set up the board. Blue had played it a number of times before, and although Green had played the pocket version once, this version was entirely new. So, Blue felt really bad when she had eliminated half of the characters by the end of the first round, leaving just four possibilities. Green had a much better second round however, and going into the third, still had three characters left.

It was then that Black and Purple walked through the door. With only two possible characters left, the ultimate conclusion of the game wasn’t really in any doubt, but rather than keep Black and Purple waiting, Blue decided to add a little spice to it the end of the game and guess and got it wrong… But then, who would suspect Sherlock Holmes’ sidekick Dr. Watson…?

With Black and Purple, we decided to play something a little longer that would take up most of the rest of the evening. After some discussion and presentation of likely candidates, we eventually decided to play Amerigo. This is a game that we had all played before though you wouldn’t have believed it if you’d been listening to the “table talk”.

In this game players are exploring the islands of South America, securing trading routes, and building settlements. The game board is made up of a four by four grid of large tiles that make an archipelago. Players then have two ships each which they sail through the maze of islands, mooring at natural harbours to build trading posts, and then expanding settlements.

The actions available to players are determined through the use of a special cube tower that contains lots of buffers and butresses. The idea is that each of the seven actions has an associated set of coloured cubes: blue for sailing, black for loading cannon, red for buying buildings, green for settling etc. At the start of the game, all the cubes are put into the top of the tower a small number get stuck and remain inside the tower to be potentially knocked out at a later point in the game.

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

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

It was the point-scoring for completing islands that really confused Blue, however and she never really quite got the hang of it. The islands are divided into two classes: small islands and large islands. Building on large islands always scores more points than building on small ones and these points are awarded at the time. Completing a large island wins the player a treasure chest which they can turn into gold, but there is much more to it than that. Anyone with a trading post on the completed island scores points determined by multiplying the number on the time marker for that round (which decreases by one each round during the game), by the number from the triangular series that corresponds to the number of trading posts they have (i.e. 1, 3, 6, 10, 15 & 21 for one to six trading posts respectively). Thus, completing an island on which you have a lot of trading posts scores a significant number of points, but you don’t have to be the player to complete the island and the earlier it is completed, the more everyone scores.

Black started out well managing to get an entire large island all to himself, by blocking off all the trading posts and proceeded to buy some large settlement tiles and build them on his large island. Meanwhile, Green had a bit of a nightmare as every plan he made got stamped on by Blue. It was clearly completely unintentional, as Blue had barely enough understanding of the game to manage her own plans never mind upset someone else! Green got his revenge, however, by picking up the “everyone else needs two extra cannon to fight off the pirates” progress tile. Nobody else was very impressed, especially purple who had just acquired the “fight off the pirates and get two gold” progress token.

Everyone was quite convinced that Black was the run-away leader as he’d been able to buy two of the valuable neutral settlement tiles every turn instead of just one and a large island all to himself. However, somehow, Black’s plan to fill the large island hadn’t quite come off and he’d been out maneuvered when building his largest settlements by Green and Blue who carved up the largest free space between them, so by the end of the game it turned out that he’d not actually been able to capitalise on a lot of the buildings he’d bought. Blue had also had problems building enough having picked up two progress tiles early which gave her two extra action points when sailing and two when buying settlement tiles (planning), but she had decided to get round the problem by sacrificing a turn and moving up the special action track to land on a green space. This gave her additional opportunities to build whenever white cubes came out of the tower and she ended the game with almost no unused tiles. This proved invaluable in the dying stages of the game as, despite a late charge from Green (who had a huge pile of “sticks”), she finished eight points clear.

Learning Outcome: You don’t have to understand a game to win it.

Our Second Birthday!

So we made it to our second birthday! It has been tough at times, we’ve had the pub fire to contend with, and with such a small group we’ve been down to as few as two players and even had to cancel occasionally when circumstances have conspired against us. But things have been looking more positive recently: the pub has reopened, we’ve moved back and we’ve had a few new people – we’ve even had to play more than one game at a time recently!

So here’s to our third year, let’s see what it will bring!

boardGOATS

boardGames On Alternate Tuesdays in Stanford