Author Archives: nannyGOAT

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!

Next Meeting – 23rd September 2014

Our next meeting will be on Tuesday 23^rd September, 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 Stimmt So!. This is a game about investing buying shares in Aunt Emma’s various companies using different currencies. It is closely related to Alhambra, a game we’ve played quite a bit, and uses similar mechanisms.

And talking of investors…

Jeff’s brother, Joe was an investment banker. One day, Joe was at the pier of a small coastal Greek village when a small boat with just one fisherman docked. Inside the small boat were several large yellow fin tuna.

Joe complimented the Greek on the quality of his fish and asked, “How long does it take to catch them?” The Greek replied, “Only a little while.”

Joe then asked why didn’t he stay out longer and catch more fish? The Greek explained that he had enough to support his family’s immediate needs. Joe then asked, “But what do you do with the rest of your time?”

The Greek fisherman said, “I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take siesta with my wife, Maria, stroll into the village each evening where I sip wine and play cards with my friends, I have a full and busy life.”

Joe scoffed, “I am a Harvard graduate and could help you. You should spend more time fishing and with the proceeds, buy a bigger boat with the proceeds from the bigger boat you could buy several boats, eventually you would have a fleet of fishing boats. Instead of selling your catch to a middleman you would sell directly to the processor, eventually opening your own cannery. You would control the product, processing and distribution. You would need to leave this small coastal fishing village and move to Athens, then London and eventually New York where you will run your expanding enterprise.”

The Greek fisherman asked, “But, how long will this all take?”

Joe responded, “Probably 15-25 years.”

“But what then?”

Joe laughed and said, “That’s the best part. When the time is right you would announce an IPO and sell your company stock to the public and become very rich – you would make millions.”

“Millions… Hmmm… but then what?” the young Greek asked.

Joe continued, “Then you would retire, move to a small coastal fishing village where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take siesta with your wife, stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play cards with your friends…”

9th September 2014

It was a very quiet night possibly exacerbated by the closure of the A417, which impeded everyone who comes from the south.

We started out with a filler game called Taluva. This is really a thinly veiled abstract, but is very pretty for all that. On the face of it, it has a lot in common with Carcassone: players take it in turns to play tiles and then place a meeple. However, the tiles are twelve sided and comprise three hexagonal regions or fields, one of which is always a volcano. When placing tiles, they can be adjacent or on top of other tiles so long as the volcano sits on top of another volcano (the tile must also cover more than one tile and there cannot be an overhang).

The meeples are the real difference though: in this game, they represent buildings rather than characters, and the rules for placing them are a bit arbitrary. Players can place their building anywhere (buildings do not need to be put on the tile they’ve just placed), but the type of building dictates where you can put it and how many you can place. Thus, a single “hut” can be placed on any level one field (excluding volcanoes) to form a settlement, that is to say, the hut cannot be placed on a tile that sits on other tiles. On the other hand, an existing settlement can be expanded by adding huts to all adjacent fields of the same type, but in this case, the number of huts added depends on the level. So, a level two field (i.e. one that sits on top of one other tile) would get two huts and a level three field (one that sits on top of two other tiles) would get three.

Each player also has three temples and two towers to place, and these must be placed adjacent to settlement containing at least three huts (and no other temples) and on a level three tile in a settlement of any size respectively. The game ends when all players but one are eliminated because they are unable to place a building, or when one player wins by exhausting two of their type of building or when there are no tiles left. In the last case, the winner is the one who placed the most temples, then the most towers and finally the most huts.

We started at a leisurely pace before Blue remembered that we should have started with a subset of tiles and then it all became a little more frenetic. Having played it a few times before, Blue should have had the edge over Green, however it is one of those games that Blue has a bit of a blind spot for. So although Green felt he was stymied at every turn, he was only ever one or two tiles from taking the lead. The game finished with Blue and green level on towers and temples, but Blue had placed more huts, so just kept her nose in front. We concluded that we liked it, though there was nothing in the theme to assist remembering the rules. We also thought is would play very differently with more players.

After much debate (which ended in rolling the dice) we decided to play our “Feature Game”, Darjeeling. This is a game about collecting and shipping crates of tea. Each player has a tea-collector meeple which moves around an array of tiles, picking up tea. When they have a set of complete tea chests, they can choose to ship them. Bonuses are awarded for shipping larger loads and for shipping the type of tea that is in the greatest demand and the game ends when a player gets to a hundred points. The demand indicator is very clever – it consists of a double set of wooden disks lined up on a sloping track: when a tea is shipped the corresponding coloured disk is moved from the bottom to the top and the bonus is awarded according to the number of discs between the two discs of the same colour. So, if there are two discs of the same colour at the top of at the ramp, shipping that colour will give no bonus. As other teas are shipped, however, these two discs will gradually move down the ramp together until they are at the bottom when they will give the maximum bonus possible.

The other clever part of the game is the scoring for shipping: points are awarded at the beginning of a players round according to the number of crates still on ships multiplied by their position in the boat-stack. When crates are shipped, they go onto a boat at at the top of the boat-stack, so a boat still at the top of the boat-stack at the start of a players turn will score points equivallent to three times the number of crates on the boat. When Purple, Black, Blue, Green and Pink played this game a while ago and Green managed to ship six crates and unfortunately nobody was able to ship anything for at least two rounds which meant for a while Green scored eighteen points every time at the start of each of his turn and consequently gave the rest of us a bit of a hiding. There was no way Blue was going to let that happen again…

Blue started, but Green was the first to ship with four crates. Blue followed immediately with four of her own. Since Green had just shipped, he was not in a position to ship again for a couple of rounds and as soon as he did, Blue shipped again straight away knocking Green off the top spot. Blue persisted with this strategy for several rounds, shipping immediately after Green even if the timing was suboptimal for her, but preventing Green from building up a commanding lead. In fact, before long, Blue was building a sizable lead of her own and it wasn’t long before she passed one hundred points, bringing the game to a close. A couple of poor final moves meant the score was closer than it should have been, but Blue ran out the clear winner.

We were a bit tired, so we finished off with a game we’ve played before, but haven’t played for a while, Citadels. The idea of this game is that players are trying to build a city and the game ends when the first player builds their eighth building. To do this, players choose character cards and then each character is called in the prearranged order. Thus, when the late characters are played, the situation may have changed significantly from when they were originally chosen. On a character’s turn, the active player first takes money or cards, and then (if they can) they build one of the building cards from their hand. There are bonuses available for players who get one of each building colour, the player who gets to eight buildings first (triggering the end of the game) and any others who finish the game with eight or more buildings.

With so few players, we included the Witch and the Wizard from the The Dark City expansion. Blue started quickly and built a valuable purple building, while Green started with cheaper buildings collecting a range of colours. Blue then built a very cheap red building which Green promptly destroyed using the Warlord. As the game came to a close, Green had a building of every colour while Blue had more buildings but was missing red and no matter what she did, could not replace the one that got zapped. Blue finished first with another high scoring purple building and Green finished with the Architect building two buildings to bring him up to eight. Blue’s valuable buildings and the extras for finishing first offset the bonus points Green picked up for a full set of colours and all eight buildings. So the game ended thirty-three all.

Learning Outcome: Sometimes games play very differently with the minimum number and maximum number of players possible.

Boardgames in the News: The Trenches of WWI

It is widely believed that there is a bit of a boardgame revolution under-way, but perhaps it actually started one hundred years ago in the trenches of WWI. As reported by by Steve Evans in “From Our Own Correnspondent”, although it is not widely known in the UK, the game “Mensch Ärgere Dich Nicht” was devised a century ago and became popular among German troops in the trenches. Families at home would order games from the manufacturer, who would send them straight to the frontline.

The game play is simple: players roll dice to move their four pieces round the board with the aim of being the first to get them home again. The name translates as “Man, Don’t Get Annoyed With Me”, which comes from the fact that players who land on another piece send it back to the start and it has to start all over again. In the UK it’s closest relation is Ludo, but there were also a range of variants which were popular in the 1980s, like “Frustration” or “Pop-o-matic Trouble”. The game is actually much older, however, dating back to sixteenth century India, where it is known as Pachisi, and there were similar games played by the Aztecs centuries before.

Next Meeting – 9th September 2014

Our next meeting will be on Tuesday 9^th September, 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 Darjeeling. This is a game about collecting and shipping crates of tea. Each player has a tea-collector meeple which moves around an array of tiles, picking up tea. When they have a set of complete tea chests, they can ship them, collecting bonuses for larger loads, but also for shipping the type of tea that is in the highest demand. The game ends when a player gets to a hundred points.

And talking of tea…

Jeff and his girlfriend were at a tea tasting session. The instructor explained, “Generally fresh tea smells very green, refreshing; if tea lacks freshness, it is likely you are getting little health benefit from your green tea.”

Jeff’s girlfriend asked, “What causes tea to go stale?”

The instructor replied, “When tea comes in contact with oxygen, it is oxidized. So it is important to make sure you buy your tea from a good supplier, otherwise it might not have been stored in an airtight container on its boat ride from China.”

Jeff asked, “How long does it take to ship tea from China by boat?”

“Oolong Time!”

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boardGames On Alternate Tuesdays in Stanford