Category Archives: Games Night

29th December 2016 – boardGOATS do the Quiz

Our local is the The Horse and Jockey pub in Stanford-in-the-Vale, and we meet there every fortnight on a Tuesday. Every Thursday, they also hold a pub quiz, so as it was Christmas, we decided to get a special GOATS team together. Blue, Pink, Pine, Violet and Violet’s mum were all up for it, so we booked a table for 8pm to have dinner first. Unfortunately, Blue had over-indulged on turkey at lunch so had fallen asleep in the afternoon. Although Pink had woken her, he failed to do so very effectively, so they were a bit late and by the time they arrived, there was a bit of a queue for food. Not to worry though, we were nearly finished by the time the quiz started and were quite able to answer the first few questions and eat at the same time.

– Image by boardGOATS

The quiz typically consists of five rounds of ten general knowledge questions, a picture round, a “Who am I” round, and two anagrams. The “Who am I” round consists of five clues with players giving answers after each clue and teams scoring progressively less as the clues progress. This and the anagrams (which score three points each) can be quite critical and often sort the sheep from the goats. Only Pine and Blue had been before, and both had been part of teams that had not really troubled the scorers, so we were more than a little pleased when we got four points for the “Who am I” (Claire Balding, who apparently went to the same school as Miranda Hart) and, mostly thanks to Pine, the full six points for both anagrams! Correctly identifying Kim Jong Un (obscured by a Santa hat, beard and glasses) as well as most of the others in the picture round meant that we finished strongly. With a grand total of fifty-four points, we took first place, three points clear of “Something Simple” who finished second. After a quick chat with a nice couple from Faringdon who had been marking our answers and had played Karuba and Ticket to Ride with their family over the holidays, we took care of the complicated matter of the bill (taking into account our winnings) and Violet and her mum went home.

– Image by boardGOATS

Since Pine had his drink to finish and Blue and Pink had taken the precaution of bringing along a couple of small games, we decided to do what gamers do best and play games. First up was No Thanks!. This is a great little “push your luck” game where a card is turned over and players have to take the card or pay a mini poker chip to pass the problem on to the next player. At the end of the round, players add the face values of the cards together and offset this with any remaining points to give their total – the smallest value is the winner. The really clever part is that if a player has a run of consecutive cards, then only the lowest counts. Spice is added by the removal of nine cards from the original thirty-two consecutive cards in the deck. Blue did appallingly badly throughout, and while Pine won both the first two rounds, Pink won the final one by such a large margin that his aggregate total was the lowest overall, making him the winner.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

After that we played a few quick rounds of Love Letter. This simple game played with just sixteen cards is almost the ubiquitous filler game. Starting with one card, on their turn players draw a second and choose one to play. Each card has a number and an action and the player left with the highest card at the end is the winner. Pink tried to insist that Blue was always the Baron, only to get caught out as the Baron himself. Blue started the next round as the Princess, so swapped cards with Pink and promptly caught him on the next turn. In contrast, Pine managed to go nearly an entire round as the Princess only to be caught just before the end. It was close and it all came down the the last game, but in a move that would have drawn allegations of match-fixing in football, Pink drew his second card face up by mistake, and then chose not to play it. Pine gleefully assassinated Pink’s Baron once again, only to succumb himself a couple of rounds later leaving Blue to finish with three wins (to Pink’s two) and claimed victory.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning outcome: Gamers can be good at quizzes too.

28th December 2016

Being a Wednesday, and with lots of people away for Christmas, we weren’t sure how many to expect. In the event we had a reasonable turn out, and enough for a six player game of Chicago Express (aka Wabash Cannonball), the evening’s “Feature Game“. This is a fairly simple game, with just three possible actions per turn, but the consequences can be far-reaching. At the start of the game there are four rail companies B&O (blue), Pennsylvania Railroad (red), C&O (yellow) and New York Central (Green), trying to build routes from the east coat to Chicago. Unlike most train games, players don’t play the part of the railroads, instead they are investors, speculating in order to accumulate as much cash as possible. To that end, on their turn players can auction a share of one of the companies, extend a network of a company they hold shares in or “improve” one of the hexes that a rail-line goes through.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor kilroy_locke

At the end of each round, there is a dividend where owners of shares get a pay-out. The game is played over a maximum of eight rounds and the player with the most money at the end of the game wins. There are a couple of clever parts of the game. Firstly, there are the three action wheels. Each time a player takes an action, the associated dial is moved on one step. Each dial has a maximum number of steps per round and once this limit has been reached, that action is unavailable for the rest of the round. Once two action dials have reached their maximum, the the round is over and dividends are handed out. The dividend depends on the length of the railroad, where it goes, any upgrades along the route and the number of shares held. The second clever aspect of the game is the economic merry-go-round. When players buy shares, the money is paid to the company and it is this money that is then used to build rail routes. Money is gradually fed into the game via the dividend which is taken from the bank. Since the winning condition is solely based on money at the end of the game, there is a strong incentive to minimise the amount paid for shares. However, this can be a false economy as it can leave the company that short of funds for development.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor da pyrate

So, the balance is hard to strike, and as the game progresses, demand increases for the companies with the largest dividends. In general, there are eight rounds, but if three companies run out of trains or three companies run out of shares, then the game ends early, so players have to watch what they spend to make sure they don’t get caught out. Only money counts at the end of the game, shares are worthless, so players can’t afford to overspend. Chicago Express was a Christmas gift for Pink, and only Blue and Pink had played it before, and then only with two players. They explained what had happened and, as the game starts with an initial share auction they offered as much of their (albeit limited) experience as they could to help players value the shares, but the suspicion was that the game would play very differently with six.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor kilroy_locke

Blue took the first share in the Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR, red), Burgundy placed a stake in the B&O (blue), Pine invested in C&O (yellow), and Purple took the last initial offering, snapping up the New York Central share (green). That left Black and Pink with nothing at the beginning, but with their starting funds untouched. Because funds are replenished (at least in part) by the dividend at the end of the round, it is very important for players who lose out in the initial auction to ensure they get a stake before the end of the round or they risk having to fight a rear-guard action for the whole game. To this end, Pink started out on a concerted campaign to auction off shares. By the end of the first round, Pink had joined Pine in the yellow C&O and Black had gone into partnership with Blue in the PRR. Blue on the other hand had bankrupted herself by dividing her loyalties and joined Burgundy investing in the B&O.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor Mouseketeer

After the first round, everyone could see how things we playing out and it about then that another share in the New York Central was put up for auction. The dividend had been one of the highest; hitherto, Purple had held the only share and she was very keen to keep it that way. As the price crept up, players gradually dropped out of the bidding, eventually leaving just Burgundy and Purple. Burgundy pushed her to the limit, but thanks to her slightly higher dividend in the first round, Purple was able to hang on to her monopoly.

– Image used with permission of boardgamephotos

As the game progressed, more shares were auctioned and railroads gradually progressed westward, though the routes they took varied considerably. Black and Blue took the PRR by the most direct route as did Burgundy (with little help from Blue, his silent partner), while Green went to the north. In contrast, Pink and Pine took the C&O along the south coast, where there were lots of cities making it increasingly valuable and consequently, a target for takeover. There were lots of shares available though, which simply had the effect of diluting the holding and eroding its value. Nevertheless, Pine and Pink managed to hang on to the majority between them, so all their efforts weren’t totally wasted. Meanwhile, Purple managed to fight off another unwanted takeover bid, with Blue forcing up the bids this time.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor Toynan

It was about this time, at the start of the fifth round that train stocks and share certificates began to run out, and suddenly everyone realised that the game could be close to the end. Purely by chance, Blue hadn’t spent any money in the previous round having been repeatedly outbid, which meant she had more than anyone else. However, as she only had two shares she had one of the smaller shares of the dividend due, so she needed the game to end before the start of the next round. With this in mind, she began aggressively selling C&O shares, which not only brought the game to an abrupt end, but also led to a dilution of their value as others could see the writing on the wall. The tactic worked though, and after the last dividend had been handed out, everyone added up their profits and the game finished with Blue out in front with forty-two dollars, eleven dollars clear of Purple in second place.

– Image by BGG contributor damnpixel

As the dust settled, players considered what had happened with the benefit of hindsight. It was clear that although the game is unquestionably very clever, not everyone appreciated the combination of simplicity and difficulty. In truth, it really isn’t a “train game”, more an economics game with a train theme, which could be responsible for making it less popular than, say, Ticket to Ride. It can also be quite unforgiving, especially for players who fail to get shares in the early part of the game. Since only four shares are auctioned before the game starts properly, the higher player counts pretty much guarantee that someone will have to fight to stay in the game. On the other hand, if they are lucky, they may be able to get potentially valuable shares relatively cheaply by capitalising on the fact that others might have overpaid to ensure they don’t get left out. All in all, it definitely left some players with mixed feelings.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor da pyrate

With the post-mortem out of the way, we started a game of Las Vegas. We’ve played this simple game quite a bit, in fact, most times that it comes to games night it gets played, probably because it is an easy option. The idea is that players begin their turn by rolling their dice and then assign some of them to one of six casinos. Each casino is numbered one to six and has a jackpot drawn at random from a deck of money. Players must use all the dice displaying one number to bet on the casino of that number. Once everyone has placed all their dice the player who placed the most dice on a casino takes the highest value currency card with the person in second place taking the next and so on. The really clever bit is that before any money is handed out, any “draws” are removed, which leads to a lot of barracking. As usual, we included the Big Dice from the Boulevard expansion and the Slot Machine mini-expansion from the 2015 Brettspiel Advent Calendar. The Slot Machine acts like a seventh casino, except that it can hold dice of any number, but dice of each number can only be added once (though a player must add all the dice they have of that number).

– Image by boardGOATS

For some reason, this game always seems to take our group ages. Black commented that it was because we all play the same way, hedging our bets at the start of the round, hoping to be the last player with dice and to be able to use them to greatest effect. As Black pointed out though, in practice, most of the time, even when the dice roll to leave a player with the most dice at the end, it is rare they can actually use them to great influence. With that in mind, we tried to play slightly more aggressively, and also decided to play just three rounds instead of the usual four. In the event, game play was slightly quicker than in previous games, but not much, and in truth nobody really minded. The thing is, Las Vegas is very relaxing to play because there is are short spells of intense thought interspersed within longish periods while others play. Although this would normally be tedious, somehow watching others roll and the anticipation while they choose what to do is strangely compelling. This time, the first round was fairly even, but it was the second round where things got interesting. Normal service was resumed for Burgundy who got nothing and Blue didn’t do much better. Black was the real winner though, taking money from several of the casinos, many of which were quite substantial. He was less lucky during the final round, however, and it was Purple, who had been consistent throughout who finished in front with $370,000 just $20,000 ahead of Black in second.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor ckirkman

With the fog, and an early start the next day for some, Black, Purple an Burgundy headed off, leaving Blue, Pine and Pink to a game of Finca. This is a fairly light set collecting game centered around a rondel. The idea is that players have two options on their turn, the can move a meeple round the rondel to pick up fruit, or deliver sets of fruit to the Mallorcan villages. The rondel movement is the interesting bit: the number of meeples on its start space dictate how far the meeple moves and the number of meeples on the space at the end of its move indicates how many fruit the active player gets. If the meeple passes one of two markers during its move, the player gets a donkey cart token which can be traded in for the opportunity to make a delivery.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor mikehulsebus

The game has a couple of other features. Firstly, in order to stop players hoarding fruit and starving others, if there are insufficient fruit available when needed, everyone returns everything of that type that they have, before the active player gets their due. This also applies to donkey cart tokens an it forces players to deliver frequently. In any case, donkey carts are generally small and hold a maximum of six fruit, so there is rarely good reason for hoarding. Secondly, the villages each have a pile of demand tokens, face down except for the top one. Each of these depict some number of fruit from one to six. When a player delivers to a village, they take the demand token and the number of fruit on the token is equivalent to the number of points awarded to the player at the end of the game. Thus, a player could collect one token featuring six fruit, alternatively, they could claim two or more tokens that sum to six (or fewer – donkey carts don’t have to be full).

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor thepackrat

Finally, bonuses are available for players who collect sets of demand tiles numbering from one to six, and when all the demand tiles are taken for a village, the finca tile is evaluated which gives more points. The game ends when demand tiles have been taken for a set number of villages and points are added up. Pine was new to the game, though Blue and Pink had played it a few times before. So it was that Pink, slightly needled by his poor results in the first two games, showed the way, initially by delivering the first fruit and collecting the corresponding demand tiles, then by collecting a set of six tiles, and with it, seven bonus points. Blue collected plenty of fruit and turned them into demand tiles, but Pine and Pink between them took all the available “three value” demand tiles preventing her from getting a bonus. Pine quickly got to grips with the game, but his problems were compounded by the fact that he kept drawing with Blue when the finca bonus tiles were evaluated. So it was Pink led from the start, picking up both finca bonuses and set bonuses as he went and snatching tiles just before the others could take them, and he ran out the worthy winner with fifty-two points to finish the evening on a landslide.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

Learning outcome: A game needs more than trains for it to be a “train game”.

13th December 2016

Unsure of who was coming, to get everyone in the mood, we started off with the quick set collecting game, Coloretto. We’ve played this little filler a few times, but somehow, Red felt she’d missed out. The game is very simple: on their turn the active player either draws a chameleon card and places it on a “truck” or takes a truck (which means they’re out for the rest of the round). The idea is that players are collecting sets of cards, but only three will yield positive points, with the rest scoring negatively. The really clever part of the game is the scoring which uses the triangular number sequence (one point for the first card, three points for two cards, six points for three cards etc.), which rewards one large set more than two or even three small ones. It was very tight between Blue and Ivory who both picked up sets of six, but Blue finished one point ahead thanks two her second set, three green chameleons.

– Image by BGG contributor SergioMR

With everyone arrived, we moved on to the evening’s “Feature Game”, Marrakech, a very simple little area control game played through the medium of the Persian rug. Played on a small grid, each player starts with thirty lire and a pile of pieces of carpet. On their turn the active play can rotate Assam, the master salesman a maximum of ninety degrees left or right, before they roll the die to find out how far he must be moved. If Assam lands on a carpet square of an opponents colour, then the active player must pay the owner “rent” equivalent to the total size of the carpet. Once Assam has been moved and any dues paid, the active player places a strip of carpet. The carpet pieces are all the same size (twice as long as they are wide) and cover two squares on the board. They can also overlap with pieces laid previously, but cannot be placed wholly on top of one single rug.

– Image by boardGOATS

This is where the strategy comes in – is it best to try to make a large contiguous area which will be very lucrative every time someone lands on it (but that players will avoid if at all possible) or is it better to make many small areas that players will be more likely to land on? The game ends when everyone has played all their pieces of carpet and the winner is the one with the most money (each visible piece of carpet earns its owner one lira). Marrakech is a nice little game, but what really makes it is the quality of the rendition. Assam is a beautifully made and painted wooden piece; the “coins” are wonderfully tactile wooden discs and the carpet is well, a strip of coloured fabric. Without these touches, the game would still be as good, but would be very abstract.

– Image by boardGOATS

We had two copies and plenty of people who were interested in it (to quote one of the GOATS, “I want to play the carpet game!”), so we played two parallel games. Red, Blue, Ivory and Pine were first to get going with the slightly newer, brighter version of the game. Pine and Red started out quite aggressively building large areas of carpet, trampling on each other and Blue and Ivory in the process and building a mini-carpet-mountain seven or eight layers high. Throughout, it felt tight, but in practice, there was only ever going to be one winner and Red finished eleven lira ahead of Blue in second place. On the next table, playing with the more traditionally “sandy-coloured” version, Green, Ivory, Purple and Black were playing a slightly more strategic and less vindictive game. The result was a closer game with everyone within four points of each other, but was won by Green, just two lira ahead of Black.

– Image by boardGOATS

With both games finishing almost simultaneously, there was a quick bout of musical chairs, with Green joining Ivory and Blue for a game of Ivor the Engine (its first outing with the “mammy sheep” picked up at Essen). This is a cute little game with a viciousness that lurks just below the surface and belies the gentle art-work from the Ivor cartoons as drawn by Peter Firmin. The idea is that players are travelling round Wales collecting sheep and the person with the most sheep at the end of the game is the winner. A single sheep can be collected whenever you start your turn on a town or village with sheep in it, but more sheep can be collected if you are in a town or village without sheep and perform a task to “help Ivor”. Helping Ivor comes at a price, however, as in order to do this you have to play one of the dual-purpose cards from your hand, which means you cannot use it to help you in other ways. At the end of your turn you add one card to your hand from the face up displayed cards, however, when the chosen card is replaced from the draw-pile though mixed in with the errand cards are event cards which can be nice or nasty.

– Image by boardGOATS

Blue got lucky, and started off in Grumbly Town which happened to have only one sheep. Since she also had a card for Grumbly Town, this meant she could pick up the one sheep and then play the card to help Ivor, netting a total of six sheep before Ivory had even had a chance to take a turn. That was where her luck finished though, and Green soon caught up quickly followed by Ivory. The cards fell well for Green as he picked up several cards for Tewin as he traveled to the south-east corner of the board picking up lots of sheep as he went. Ivory had a little poke at him, taking a couple of his sheep when he had the chance, then , out of fairness, he then had a go at Blue, taking both the last sheep and the lost sheep token from her current location. Next turn, Green did the same to Blue and just to compound things, “the game” joined in, giving a total of nine sheep she’d missed out on.

– Image by boardGOATS

Feeling rather “got at”, and in desperate need of time she tried to stop Green from finishing the game by doing the only thing her cards allowed her to do – put sheep in Tewin to slow Green down. It was all too little too late, and twenty-five sheep is not an awful lot, so it wasn’t long before Green passed the threshold and triggered the last round. Still with no useful cards and in a position that was not going to trouble the scorers, Blue was forced to do nothing, leaving Ivory to do what he could to catch up. With some effort he was able to cross the line, but was still some way short of Green who still had his final turn to come. In the final accounting, Green finished on thirty-five, nine sheep ahead of Ivory, and more than twenty clear of Blue, in what had been a very unforgiving game.

– Image by boardGOATS

Meanwhile, Red, Black, Purple and Pine were looking for something to play. With Burgundy away worrying about his MOT, Pine fancied his chances at Splendor. We’ve played this little chip-collecting and card development “engine building” game quite a bit, but we all still seem to quite like it when we are looking for a light filler game. Since Black, Purple and Red had also suffered at Burgundy’s hands recently, they were very happy to join Pine in the certain knowledge that, for once, Burgundy wouldn’t win. The idea of the game is that players collect chips to buy gem cards which can, in turn, be used in lieu of chips. More expensive cards are also worth points and the game end is triggered when one player reaches fifteen points (and the round is completed to give everyone the same number of turns). Points are also awarded for “nobles” which go to the first player to get a specific combination of gem cards and the player with the most points at the end is the winner.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor henk.rolleman

Everyone was up for it, and it started out with players taking it in turns to pick up cards, keeping everyone guessing as to who had the edge. Before long, Black, Pine and Red edged ahead, then suddenly, Black declared he had fifteen points and everyone else panicked. It wasn’t long before someone smelled a rat and there were demands for a re-count. With the discovery that Black had miscounted and only had fourteen points, there were the inevitable tongue-in-cheek accusations of cheating and a second “final round” began. Although this gave everyone a second chance, it wasn’t quite enough, and Black won with eighteen (despite “cheating”). Pine finished in second, three points behind, so he’ll have to wait a little longer to win Splendor. One thing everyone was pleased about, however, was that at least Burgundy hadn’t won, and that was almost as satisfying as beating him, though not quite, obviously.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor henk.rolleman

With Ivory and Green heading off early, that left five players and a debate as to what to play next. Somewhere in the discussion “Beans” got a mention, and from then on, despite conversation moving onto Christmas music and everyone’s favourite version of “The Bean Rhyme” (“Beans, beans, good for your heart…” – who knew there were so many different versions?), the final game was inevitably Bohnanza. This game is very simple: in front of each player are two “Bean Fields” and on their turn, players must plant the first card in their hand and may plant the second. Once the active player has planted the card(s) from their hand, then they turn over the top two cards from the draw deck: these must be planted by the end of the turn, though not necessarily in one of the active player’s fields if they can be traded. Once all these cards have been planted, the active player can then offer to trade any unwanted cards in their hand before their turn ends with them replenishing their hand from the draw deck.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor spearjr

The catch is that players are not allowed to change the order of the cards in their hand which must be “planted” in the order they arrive. However, it is possible to remove unwanted cards by trading them away (either during their turn or with the active player). This simple mechanic coupled with the different availabilities and values of cards when they are harvested, are the critical parts of the game. Thus one of the key points is the ability to value a bean and not overpay for it, or equally important, not give it away for less than it is worth. The problem is that “value” depends on perspective, and this caused an otherwise friendly little game with a bit of bite to become a little bit nasty.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor spearjr

Blue had picked up and planted the first two Cocoa beans, so when Purple drew a third, Blue asked whether she would trade. Blue didn’t have much to offer, but offered what she could and pointed out that there were only four Cocoa beans in the game and since we were less than a quarter of the way through the deck on the first pass, Purple could be waiting a long time. Purple had other plans though and commented that it was a very valuable card and determinedly planted it. On her next turn, Blue dug up her pair of Cocoa beans and put both in her money stack. So it was more than a bit irritating for her when she promptly drew the fourth Cocoa bean card. Blue was feeling a bit obstreperous after the rough treatment in Ivor and Purple was unable to offer a good trade. So, much to Purple’s disgust and despite the difficulties it caused both of them, Blue planted the offending bean before immediately digging it up.

– Image by boardGOATS

This had a couple of consequences. Firstly, Blue’s plans were now in tatters, and secondlym Purple had to choose whether to get rid of the Cocoa bean (with singles being hard to get rid of) or whether to wait for the second pass through the deck. Purple doggedly stuck with it, so it was particularly unfortunate when Blue drew the Cocoa bean card almost as soon as the deck was turned. With little chance to get rid of it and still in a very kamikaze mood, Blue planted it a second time before digging it back up again. Purple was not impressed. Fortunately, on the third pass, the Cocoa bean finally landed in the hands of Red. She wasn’t in a silly mood like Blue, so Purple finally got her second Cocoa bean and was able to harvest them for two coins. It was only just in time though and she had played nearly the entire game with only one field, and still finished third – quite an achievement. Red finished in first place, just one coin ahead of Blue who had spent most of the game trying to dig herself out of her self-inflicted mess.

Learning outcome: Value is dependent on circumstances and very much in the eye of the beholder.

29th Movember 2016

Different week, different people, different sickness, same late start… After Burgundy had finished worrying the pub staff by changing his supper order (given how fast Blue can polish off a pizza he thought he might be able to eat a Hawaiian quicker than his usual ham, eggs & chips – he was wrong), we split into two groups, with the first playing the “Feature Game”, The Climbers. This is a great three dimensional strategy game that looks like it is designed round a set of children’s building blocks. It’s appearance belies its true nature however, and, although it looks like a kiddie’s dexterity game, it is really a strategy game with almost no dexterity component at all. Red and Magenta thought it looked cool and Burgundy had read the rules on line so was also keen to give it a go, so the group was pretty much self-selecting with Blue making up the foursome.

– Image by boardGOATS

We began by placing the two Triple-height blocks in the centre and randomly piling the rest of the bricks round it, covering all the visible surfaces, then Blue started explaining the rules. It was at about this point that we realised that Burgundy had read a very different set. The game was originally released in German as Die Aufsteiger. Since it is very language independent, when they were translated into English, a few changes were made to the rules and when the second edition was brought out the rules were revised again with some of the additions listed as optional variants. This means that there are effectively three different sets of rules and to make things worse, lots of people have their own “House Rules” as well. Since nobody had played it very much we decided to stick to the rules as written in the copy we had, without the addition variants.

– Image by boardGOATS

The game is played in turn order with each turn comprising three steps. Firstly, the active player can move a block, any block so long as there isn’t anything on it, and they can place it anywhere, in any orientation as long as there is sufficient space. Next the active player can move their Climber as far as they like within the rules. Climbers can climb up any step below their head height unaided as long as the face they are climbing onto is grey or their own colour. They can also use their long and/or short ladders to climb larger distances, but they are fragile and therefore single use (though that’s not very green as Red pointed out). Finally, the active player may place a blocking stone which prevents a brick being moved or used until that player’s next turn. Probably the most difficult part of the game is the concept of “space”. There are three different sized coloured blocks: Cubes (2a x 2a x 2a), Half-height (2a x 2a x a) and Double-height (2a x 2a x 4a). These blocks have each face painted a different colour, the five that correspond to the player colours and one side that is grey. There are also two Triple-height blocks that are plain grey and are the base of the setup.

– Image by boardGOATS

The square faces of the blocks can be considered to consist of four smaller squares – this is the basic unit (a x a). This basic “a²” unit is sufficient space for one Climber. Blocks can be placed offset, like bricks in a wall sitting on two or more other bricks, so long as these basic “a²” units are observed and remain whole. The undersurface of each block must also have full contact with the blocks underneath – there cannot be any holes or overhangs. If a Climber is sat in an inconvenient place, he can be “nudged” out of the way using a block, provided that he isn’t knocked off or moved onto a different block. This can make space for placing a block, or for a Climber: Climbers can only sit on their own colour or grey and need an “a²” unit each. Thus, several Climbers can sit on a large grey face. The winner is the player who’s Climber is highest at the end of the game.

– Image by boardGOATS

Red and Magenta started climbing one side, with Blue and Burgundy progressing up the other. Red stole a bit of a march as everyone else got in each others’ way leaving Magenta to fight a rear-guard action on her side. Meanwhile, Blue and Burgundy fought for supremacy, until Blue managed to extricate one of the large grey blocks and use it to simultaneously screw up Burgundy and create a second summit at a similar height to the one Red was occupying. With this second peak to fight over, there were effectively two races competing against each other, but it wasn’t long before first Burgundy, then Blue and Magenta were forced to take a pause in climbing. It was at this point that we realised the mistake we’d all made. Players can choose whether to climb or not, but the game ends when all players successively don’t (or can’t) finish their turn on a higher level. With all three of us failing to climb, that left Red with potentially the final turn. Although she was highest, Blue and Magenta were blocks at the same height, so we had to invoke the tie-breaker which meant the first player to reach that level would win. Since Red had got there first, she had no incentive to move and, in was thrilled to finish in first place in what had been a hard-fought game.

– Image by boardGOATS

Green, Black and Purple joined the others playing with children’s building blocks, with a game of Totemo, an early Tony Boydell gem (he of Snowdonia and Guilds of London). This game consists of of colored wooden blocks that have a small dowel attached on one end and a hole in the other. This allows them to be placed in the wooden peg-board. The game starts with one of the multi-colored wild pieces placed in the center of the board. Each player starts their turn with three wooden totem pieces. To place a piece, all totem pieces it touches must abide by the color wheel. So, for example, a purple block may be placed on its own or adjacent to purple, red or blue blocks; the more blocks it touches, the higher its score. There are also several blocks with two feathers on top which are totem toppers and cannot be placed on the bottom level. In addition, no other totem piece can be placed on top of them. Players can only place one totem piece per turn unless they land on a space seeded with a bonus marker. At the start of the game, several bonus markers are placed round the board – landing on these enables the active player to place another block, up to a maximum of three.

– Image by boardGOATS

At the end of their turn, the active player replenished their set of totem blocks. Each round, the start player moves the round marker until it gets closer to the tee-pee indicating the last round. Alternatively, the game can also end if there are no more totem blocks in the bag. With apologies for not ironing the playing cloth and quick recap of the rules, the game was under way. The first rounds were, typically, feeler rounds with players just trying to do the best they could. Black and Purple had played the game many times before while Green, had played it only once and that was a few years ago. Black and Purple managed to make use of the bonus markers by landing on the correct space on the scoring track and began to pull away from Green who was stuck with red bricks he could only place on their own since there was a predominance of blue bricks on the board.

– Image by boardGOATS

This forced Green to change his strategy from simply trying to get the highest score possible to getting the exact score to land on a bonus tile and go again each time. He started this new approach with a bang, placing all three of his blocks in one go and shot into a healthy lead. Throughout the game players were each left with one or two blocks they couldn’t easily place, either because they were the wrong colour or were “toppers”. The game took longer than it should have as everyone was guilty of over analysis at different times, but Black and Purple slowly caught up with Green, and going into the final round were both in the lead once again. Unfortunately neither could quite reach their respective bonus spaces and just added a modest amount to the final score. Green however, placed all three of his blocks and took the lead by more than ten points, with it winning the game.

– Image by boardGOATS

With both games finishing together and nobody up for a late night we decided to opt for a large group game, and prompted by Magenta, we quickly settled on Las Vegas. This is a very simple game where players begin their turn by rolling their dice, then they assign some of them to one of six casinos. Each casino is numbered one to six and has a jackpot drawn at random from a deck of money. Players must use all the dice of one number to bet on the casino of that number. Once everyone has placed all their dice the player who placed the most dice on a casino takes the highest value currency card. The really clever bit is that before any money is handed out, any “draws” are removed, which leads to a lot of barracking. This time we included the Slot Machine from the 2015 Brettspiel Advent Calendar. This is like a seventh casino, except that it can hold dice of any number, but each number can only be added once (though a player must add all the dice they have of that number).

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

We also added the extra dice for more players from the Boulevard expansion, as well as “bigguns”, large dice which count as two in the final reckoning. Green kicked off the first round, which turned out to be very unproductive for both Blue and Burgundy who struggled to get anything of any value. Burgundy struggled in the second round as well, as did Black and their problems were compounded by the small number of high value notes that were repeatedly drawn. Meanwhile, Red was struggling to keep her eyes open, so while everyone else was playing the long game, she was played her dice as quickly as she could then dozing while everyone else finished the round without her. The problem with everyone playing small numbers of dice in the early part of the game and hanging on to dice for as long as possible was that it slowed the game down considerably, not that anyone really minded on this occasion. It wasn’t until the last round that we began to realise that this strategy didn’t really work, a conclusion that was reinforced by the fact that a slightly embarrassed Red won the game, some $50,000 ahead of Magenta and Blue in second and third.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning outcome: Sometimes sleeping through a game isn’t a disadvantage.

15th Movember 2016

It was another very quiet night thanks to work commitments and illness, so we started late. Our numbers were bolstered by the return of Yellow, who visited back in July when he was in the area for work. Clearly we hadn’t frightened him too much last time and he made a return visit, bringing us up to a total of six. This gave us two possible options: split into two groups of three, or play something with six players. With six players, Keyflower is usually in the mix as it plays very well with that number, and indeed it had been part of the “possible plan” for the evening. However, the “Feature Game” was Key to the City – London which also plays six and is a slightly more streamlined re-implementation of Keyflower. Since everyone was keen to try it so we decided to give it a go with with the full complement.

– Image by boardGOATS

The basic structure of both Keyflower and Key to the City is actually fairly simple, but the strategy behind the games is much more complex. Both games are played over four rounds with players bidding for tiles to add to their village/borough. The bidding is particularly unusual as the currency is “Meeples” and, although bidding must increase and “follow suite”, it is free-form, i.e. all the tiles are auctioned simultaneously. So, players take it in turns to bid, but as the round progresses, players have to decide whether to “spend” Meeples on bidding for other tiles, or whether to keep an emergency supply in case someone tries to out-bid them on a tile they really want. Tiles are generally worth points at the end of the game, but most also provide some advantage when they are activated during the game. This could be the provision of a resource, or it could be the opportunity to convert one resource into another. Any tile in play can be activated by any player placing a Meeple on it. So players can get a benefit from tiles belonging to other players, or even tiles that are still being auctioned. Tiles can be activated many times, but each time, the cost goes up and the player must use an extra Meeple.

– Image by boardGOATS

When activating tiles, players also have to “follow suit”, so Meeples must be the same colour as any others already there, or, if the tiles is being auctioned, the colour should match any previous bids. At the end of the round, any Meeples used to activate a tile are returned to the owner of the tile, thus, player’s are effectively paying Meeples to activate other players’ tiles. And Meeples are valuable, very valuable. The disadvantage for the tile owner, however, is that once their tile has been activated, they may not have enough Meeples in the correct colour to use the action themselves. The round is over when every player has passed consecutively, at which point, all losing Meeple-bids are returned to their owner, all winning bids are placed back in the Meeple bag, all tiles are handed to the winner (or removed from the game if there were no bids) and any Meeples used to activate tiles go behind the owners player screen.

– Image by boardGOATS

Three of the players were familiar with Keyflower, but only one had played Key to the City before, as it was only released at Essen this year. Although the basic structure of the game is the same, it is slightly simpler and more streamlined. For example, in Keyflower, green Meeples are “special” and can only be acquired by activating certain tiles making them much rarer. Thus, players with green Meeples have a big advantage when bidding and activating as it is much harder for other players to follow suit. In Key to the City on the other hand, there are no green Meeples at all. Similarly, in Keyflower, tile placement is very important as resources must be located where they are to be used and can only be transported by road (which needs activation in itself). This is not a consideration for players of Key to the City, however, there is a different positional aspect to the game. The octagonal wooden resource cylinders that feature in Keyflower are replaced by wooden utility “connectors”. These are placed across the edge of a tiles and used to link tiles together. At the end of the game, tiles that are connected together can score points for players with the correct corresponding scoring tiles.

– Image by boardGOATS

Another significant difference between Keyflower and Key to the City is the way the rounds end. In Keyflower, players can continue taking it in turns to bid or activate tiles until everyone passes. In addition to the village tiles, players can also bid for boats which determine the turn order as well as the number and colour of Meeples they get in the next round. These are not present in Key to the City, instead, players have an additional, one-off option of “sailing”. When a player passes, they can, as in Keyflower, rejoin the bidding in later turns if they wish. In Key to the City, players can instead choose to sail, which finishes their round. This is potentially dangerous as it leaves the player without the option to counter-bid if someone else outbids them. However, there is an incentive to sail earlier as the first players to sail can choose to take the river tile (which give scoring opportunities) or start the next round, with the earliest adopters thereafter getting more Meeples to use in later rounds.

– Image by boardGOATS

With three players unfamiliar with both Keyflower and Key to the City we began with a rundown of the rules as well as highlighting the differences between the games for those who had played Keyflower. Once done, as everyone looked at their final round tiles, Ivory asked what a winning score might be. Simultaneously Blue and Yellow responded with “fifty” and “a hundred”! A quick look through the book showed, much to Yellow’s dismay, that the group’s winning scores for Keyflower have generally been above seventy-five. As everyone digested this and we began the first round rather tentatively as players were uncertain of the value of the different tiles. Blue and Yellow were keen to avoid over-paying as they had knew how valuable Meeples could be later in the game when they can get scarce, consequently, they refused to couter-bid beyond their comfort zone and finished the first round with almost nothing between them. Green, on the other hand, led the way and acquired a lot of tiles with Ivory, Magenta and Pine, all new to the game, following his lead. It was towards the end of the round that the great rules debate happened.

– Image by boardGOATS

Yellow and Green had both sailed and the question arose whether sailing counted as passing, because if so, everyone had passed, if not everyone else could continue bidding. Blue checked the rules which said, “If a player passes they can play again later, unless all the other players who have not already sailed also pass. If all the remaining players also pass then all players sail in the order that they passed.” Green was adamant that this could be read either way, and started checking on the BGG rules fora to see if there was discussion on the subject. By the time he had established that there wasn’t, everyone else had decided that bidding should continue, had done the bidding the wanted and the round was over. We muddled through the second round in a similar fashion with Yellow and Blue finally taking some tiles and strategies starting to emerge. Pine and Magenta struggled with the implications and wider objectives of the game, while Ivory (also new to it) purred quietly in the corner as he began to get his head round the game, collected tiles and started to build a strategy.

– Image by boardGOATS

Magenta started out enticed by the monument tiles while Yellow, struggling to win bids started collecting river tiles and began connecting them and taking tokens to exchange for upgrades. Ivory, still purring softly in the corner, managed to pick up tiles that required brown and red connectors as well as the Barbican which provided them. Blue was trying to connect her tiles, but didn’t have the tiles to provide the connectors as they had mostly come out in the first round when she had failed to pick up any tile at all. Pine was just starting to get his head round the iconography, but getting hold of connectors was proving challenging. Meanwhile, Green was ominously winning the bids for the buildings that provide Skill tiles, including the Bank of England and the Senate House and seemed to be trying to re-implement his favourite Keyflower strategy.

– Image by boardGOATS

As we went into the last round and the final tiles were revealed, everyone looked round and tried to decide what they might get and how far they could to push their luck to get a few extra points. With everyone trying to upgrade their buildings, the need for Skill tiles was great and, since Green had a most of them, he received a lot of Meeples in return, most of which were red. This inspired him to go for Lords Cricket ground which would give him two points for each one if he could secure it. Green commented how much he hated cricket at which point he realised that he was winning both the Oval and Lords. Blue took the Oval from him before Ivory went “all in” with a huge pile of red Meeples, with it taking about twenty points from her. With their own projects to complete, nobody obstructed Green in his plans and he finished with a massive thirteen red Meeples (and the scoring tile) as well as a very large pile of Skill tiles.

– Image by boardGOATS

With the final round over, players began to add up their points. Although six-player games can be epic, one of the disadvantages is that it can be very difficult to see what players at the opposite end of the table are doing. Thus, it was only at the end when we went through the scoring that players could really see what everyone else had been doing and where they were getting their points. Ivory, with his large pile of yellow Meeples, substantial sewage and underground systems finished with a very creditable sixty-six. This score was exactly matched by Blue who had a vast telecom’s network and had picked up a couple of monuments which she had managed to upgrade to get the full twelve points. It was Green however who finished with the highest score, nearly twenty points ahead of Yellow and Blue thanks largely to a massive twenty-six points for his pile of red Meeples and much the same again for his Skill tiles.

– Image by boardGOATS

As we packed up there was the inevitable postmortem. Magenta and Pine could both see how clever the game was and were keen to give it another try now they had a better understanding of its flow. Ivory had really enjoyed it too and was also keen to give it, or (Keyflower) another go. The others focused on the comparison between Key to the City and Keyflower. Green said he strongly preferred the artwork for Keyflower, while Blue felt that the axonometric projection and sharper style was better suited to the London theme. She also commented that if Key to the City had been released first, it would have received all the plaudits and Keyflower would have felt “more fiddly”, consequently, perhaps Key to the City was a better game to learn with. The overwhelming consensus though, was that a typical game collection didn’t really need both, but we’d happily play either. As Magenta and Ivory headed off, discussion moved on to the current KickStarter for Keyper, which it turned out, two of us had backed, but we won’t see more of that for another year.

– Image by boardGOATS

There was just time for a quick game to close with, and we settled on Isis & Osiris. This was a another game picked up at Essen and had got its first outing two weeks ago. Green was the only player who had been part of that game however, so we all needed a run-through of the rules, which were simple enough. At the start, players are dealt a pile of tiles, face down, and get a handful of octagonal wooden blocks in their colour. Game play is very simple: on their turn, the active player can either place a tile face down, first showing it to everyone else, or they can place a block. At the end of the game, all the tiles are turned face up and players score points for those tiles orthogonally adjacent to their blocks.

– Image by boardGOATS

As players played their wooden blocks, the following players turned over negative tiles and placed them next to them, ensuring lots of negative scores. As more and more negative tiles put in an appearance, we were all wondering what had happened to the positive ones. By about half-way through we were were certain they had to appear soon, but with four players, some of the tiles are removed from the game, and we were all coming to the conclusion that those tiles were all the high scoring ones. As it turned out, that wasn’t quite the case, though the balance of the tiles in the box was definitely on the positive side. Once all the spaces had been filled, we turned over the tiles and it became clear that one wooden block made all the difference. With three of us finishing with negative totals, it looked a lot like the score line from an episode of QI, but it was Pine that finished with a massive “plus seven QI points” to win the game.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: Some games need to be played more than once.

1st Movember 2016

Blue and Red arrived first, with Red telling the tale of her exciting weekend. It wasn’t long before Burgundy, Pine and Green had arrived so, at Blue’s behest, Red began telling it all over again. She had been part of a teem entered into to a twenty-four hour “jigsaw-a-thon” in Belgium. The Unofficial World Jigsaw Puzzle Championship is held every year in a place called Hannut and includes teams from all over the world. This year, there were one hundred and twenty four teams, each fielding four active members at any one time (though as many interchanges as required were allowed). Each team was competitively “jigsawing” in a little pen, Red explained, and when a puzzle was finished the team involved cheered madly and set off a klaxon. Red’s team came a very creditable fifty-ninth, which was particularly remarkable as they had primarily gone along to have a good time where other teams took it very seriously and were exceptionally well organised. Everyone was quite taken with the idea though, so much so that Green suggested entering a GOATS team next year. It remains to be seen whether that actually happens…

– Image from 24hpuzzle.be/flickr.com

Green had his own exciting tales to tell about his visit to Millbrook Proving Ground and Burgundy had been to Wembley to see the season’s last American Football match of the NFL International Series which had turned out to be “a great game for neutrals”. Consequently, it was gone 8pm before we realised that Black and Purple still hadn’t arrived and nobody knew whether they were coming or not. Texts followed just as Black and Purple walked in commenting how great the NFL match had been. Needless to say, we were late starting as we chatted on about that again. Eventually, we split into two groups, with Green, Black and Burgundy settling down to play the “Feature Game”, Batavia. Batavia was the Dutch colonial name given to the Indonesian city of Jakarta from the seventeenth century. Batavia was also a ship of the Dutch East India Company (Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie, or VOC) that was built in Amsterdam, and shipwrecked on her maiden voyage in 1629 off the Western Australian coast. The game, Batavia, on the other hand, is concerned with shipping commodities from the spice islands in the seventeenth century and features both the city Batavia and the ship Batavia.

– Image used with permission of
BGG reviewer EndersGame

Batavia is played over several rounds on a map of Asia featuring the central islands of the spice trade route. Players are merchants visiting trading posts of the five East India Companies throughout Asia, gaining “majorities”, which earn the right to different commodities, which in turn translate into money that wins the game. Each round consists of two phases: an auction phase and a movement phase. In the first phase, a die is rolled to determine how many cards will be auctioned. Then, players bid using their promissory notes increasing the bid until everyone has passed with the highest bidder winning the cards and the right to go first. The interesting part is that the winning bidder does not pay the bank, instead paying the other players by dealing the promissory notes round the table. This is a very clever balancing mechanism, because it means the total number of promissory notes in circulation remains unchanged throughout the game. Players who fail to win an auction also have in increased chance of winning the next time, and promissory notes are worth bonus points at the end of the game, giving them an intrinsic value in their own right.

– Image used with permission of BGG reviewer EndersGame

One the auction has been completed the auction winner begins the movement phase. Each player has a choice, they can take two cards or play ship cards and move their merchant figure to get a new trading post counter. Ship cards can only be played if the active player has, or can can achieve a majority of cards in one of the five trading companies – cards are played into a tableau and the player with the most cards of a particular shipping company gets the corresponding Company Seal which indicates possession of the majority in that company (and can be taken from another player if necessary). Thus a player with a Company Seal can play any cards they wish, but if they do not have a Company Seal, they must play enough cards to earn the right to get one, and then can play additional cards as well. In other words, if a player does not have any of the Company Seals, and can’t play enough cards to get one, then they must draw two cards instead. Once the active player has played cards and has at least one Company Seal, they may move their Merchant figure along the hex-track to a trading post counter that corresponds to one of the Company Seals they own. They take this tile which represents gaining the matching commodity from that trading post and is marked by placing a wooden Crate in the appropriate warehouse for that commodity.

– Image by boardGOATS

Once a player has played their cards and moved their Merchant, they may, if they wish, turn their hex-tiles into points (or Gold). The commodities on the tiles are of no significance, but the tiles traded must be from different companies; the more a player trades, the better the return, i.e one tile gives one point, but five tiles (from each of the five different companies) yields a massive fifteen points. There is a catch though, trading is prohibited if the hex-tile just acquired comes from a company that the player already had a counter for. Worse, trading post tiles cannot be turned into points at the end of the game, which means decisions can be tense, especially towards the end of the game. There is another catch though. Every time a ship card is played, the token that corresponds to that shipping company is moved along the Pirate track, as is the Pirate cannon. When the cannon reaches a certain point, players forfeit all cards that correspond to the shipping company token that has made it the furthest along the Pirate track. This fulfills many functions, including ensuring the number of cards in play doesn’t become unwieldy and preventing one player from getting an unassailable majority as well as encouraging players to diversify. The game end is triggered when one player reaches the end of the trading post track and the round is finished to ensure everyone gets an equal number of turns.

– Image by boardGOATS

We had nearly completed the set up when we discovered several pieces missing from the box that had been used elsewhere and not returned. Rather than abandon the game though, we scavenged bits for the company seals and ‘navigator’ pieces from other games, primarily Vasco da Gama (at least some part of that game is being played). With that sorted, we were quickly under way. The early rounds of the game were characterised with high dice rolls, meaning that there were a lot of cards available for each auction that both Burgundy and Green paid handsomely for. While Burgundy and Black made steady progress, laying claim to a few different commodities, Green raced ahead concentrating on just nuts and vases, the two highest valued commodities available in the game at that point. Black, on the other hand, won so few auctions that he had to miss his turn twice, collecting just two cards instead.

– Image by boardGOATS

During the early part of the game we discussed the optimum number of trading post hex-tiles to a swap for points. The more a player trades, the better the return, i.e one tile gives one point, but five tiles (from each of the five different companies) yields a massive fifteen points, but more is correspondingly more challenging. Burgundy explained that he felt that three was a good number as four was rife with risks of not being able to get one of the two remaining companies available. He stuck to his guns and exchanged after just three chits, while Green and Black both managed a four relatively easily. Elsewhere in the game, Cloth and Coffee were conspicuous by their absence, until about half way when Cloth materialised creating a veritable textile market quarter. Coffee didn’t become available until the second half of the game and two thirds turned up in the final ten spaces, but by then Green was so far ahead of the other two that neither of them stood much of a chance to even get a foot-hold in that particular racquet.

– Image by boardGOATS

In the end, although Burgundy had placed more crates overall, he only had the majority in one commodity, while both Green and Black managed the majority in two each. However with Green snatching the most valuable majorities and the end Target Token he was a clear winner. Black, who had seemed to be on the back foot for most of the game, just snatched the bonus for finishing with the most promissory notes (everyone must have been pretty even handed about their assumptions of card values, to finish with almost exactly the amounts we started with). When Green snatched that final trading post hex-tile, Burgundy and Black were both a long way behind and plans were scuppered, but it did mean they had a reasonable choice to gather a final useful token. Ironically, Burgundy placed a final crate in Cotton, which removed Black’s majority there. If he hadn’t done that, Black would have beaten Green by one point. It just goes to show that the player to watch out for isn’t always the most obvious one.

– Image by boardGOATS

Meanwhile, on the next table, after a short debate about what to play, Blue, Red, Pine and Purple started on Kerala: der Weg der Elelfanten, “the way of the elephant”. This was one of the games that came back from Essen and, as a light tile-laying game got its first outing last time. Pine and Purple had enjoyed it and Red had missed out last time so was keen to give it a go. The idea is that on their turn, the active player draws the same number of tiles from the bag as there are players and then chooses one to add to their display of tiles. The everyone else takes it in turns taking a tile and adding them to their own display. Play is mostly simultaneous as players puzzle over where to add tiles according to the fairly simple rules. Tiles must be placed next to a tile with an elephant on it and the elephant is then moved onto the new tile. It can be placed in an empty space, or on top of a previously laid tile. However, a large part of the game is to finish with exactly one contiguous region of each colour (except the player’s own colour which can have two regions) as any extras must be removed and each tile taken away scores minus two points at the end of the game while any missing colours score minus five.

– Image by boardGOATS

Blue drew with Black drew last time, thanks to a large number of “apron” tiles which score five points each when placed so that the apron matched the correct colour. This time, everyone else was wise to how valuable these were and Blue had to fight harder for points. In this game, positioning elephants and choosing suitable tiles (or leaving everyone else with poor tiles) is everything. Both Purple and Pine and pine got themselves in a bit of a tangle with multiple regions of the same colour. For the most part though, by the end of the game they had managed to connect the relevant areas and minimise the number of points lost. It was Red, playing for the first time who got the best of the tiles. She was no doubt helped by the fact that Blue (sat to her right), got herself in a terrible tangle and ended up trying to build her way out of trouble by placing tiles on top of others. The problem was that no sooner had she fixed one problem than another came along, which meant she was more concerned about choosing the best tiles she could for herself than leaving tiles that were difficult for the next players. Once again, the game finished in a tie, but this time it was Pine and Red who finished in joint first place, nearly ten points clear of the others.

– Image by boardGOATS

Batavia was still underway, so the group moved onto a nominally quick little card game, called Fleet Warfside. Although the game is about the fishing industry and uses the same artwork as the original Fleet card game, the game play is quite different. The idea is that Wharfside is the sequel, with players buying and selling fish (caught in the original Fleet). Players begin the game with a handful of fishy goods cards which they can use as currency or trade for points. In ascending value, the goods cards each represent shrimp, oyster, tuna, swordfish, lobster or king crab. Thus, two oyster cards are worth more than two shrimp cards and two king crab are worth more than two of anything else. However, an extra card will always be worth more so three shrimps for example is worth more than two of anything else, even the valuable king crab. Over-paying is allowed, in fact, it is over-paying that means the game works as, at its core, Fleet Wharfside is a set collecting game, and players need to be able to cover all the bases as prices are constantly changing.

– Image by boardGOATS

On their turn, players can either carry out a Market action or use the Wharf. Market action involves buying contract or building card from the face up Market. The price of each of the four individual cards is set in advance and is given by an indicator card immediately above the contract cards. When a card is bought, the price of one of the four cards will change as the indicator card is rotated (usually increasing the price). The Market affected depends on the replacement card drawn. Instead of carrying out a Market action, players can instead visit the Wharf. This allows them to do a variety of actions including: use any special abilities that come with the contract cards; assign a maximum of two goods to contracts and store king crab for scoring at the end of the game. If a contract is completed during this phase, the assigned goods cards are placed on the discard deck and the completed contracts removed from the player’s tableau and placed in their scoring pile. Bonus points cards are awarded for the first and second contract of each type to be completed. A Wharf action is finished with a visit to the Wharf where players can take two cards from one of the two pools of face up cards. There is a hand-limit, but players can choose which cards to discard after they have picked up.

– Image used with permission of BGG reviewer EndersGame

The game end is triggered when a player completes a set number of contracts and the round completed so everyone gets the same number of turns. Points are scored for completed contracts/buildings (at face value); stored king crab (at a rate of one per card plus a bonus for the player with the most); contract completion bonuses; the largest set in-hand at the end of the game (one point per card), and the player’s personal Captain Bonus (each player gets a random Captain card at the start of the game which depicts one type of goods and the player scores one point per speciality on their completed contracts). Blue and Pink played Fleet Warfside on their way to Essen last month, but otherwise it was new to the group. Although it is a great little card game, it is not really like anything else we’ve played on a Tuesday, and as a result, everyone struggled a bit. Things were made worse by the fact that nobody really used the ability to over-pay, nor did they use the any two for one, which when judiciously used can speed things a long quite a bit. When explaining the game, Blue commented that although the goal was to finish contracts, in actual fact it was generally better to try to keep the maximum of three contracts for as long as possible, as each contract has a spacial power and as soon as a contract was fulfilled, its power was lost. Although this comment was well-meaning, it only succeeded in confusing Pine and Purple further.

– Image used with permission of BGG reviewer EndersGame

The effect was an endless stream of questions and queries and repeated questions and queries which gave Red a fit of the giggles. The advertised time for Fleet Warfside is twenty to thirty minutes, but although Blue was expecting it to take longer, even she wasn’t expecting it to drag on as long as it did. The problem was made worse since its sweet-spot is probably three players and with people agonising over what to do and questioning what the options are, the effect was even worse than it was. Unsurprisingly given that she was the only one to play it before, Blue finished as the winner five points ahead of Red in second place. Sadly, although it is a clever little game, with this group it was not a great success this time. Actually, it may be that the more abstract, less visual nature of card games is the problem, since the same people struggled with Port Royal Unterwegs last time and with Oh My Goods! the time before – perhaps something to keep in mind for the future.

– Image by boardGOATS

Since Batavia had finished, Green, Burgundy and Black looked round for something to play that might fill the time while Fleet Wharfside ground on. Green’s eye fell on Isis & Osiris, a little game that Blue and Pink had brought back for him as a present from Essen. The pieces needed removing from their frames and nobody had played it before so there a flurry of rules reading, though in truth it was a simple enough game. The game comprises elements of strategy and memory. At the start, players are dealt a pile of tiles, face down, and get a handful of octagonal wooden blocks in their colour. Game play is very simple: on their turn, the active player can either place a tile face down, first showing it to everyone else, or they can place a block. At the end of the game, all the tiles are turned face up and players score points for those tiles orthogonally adjacent to their blocks. The catch is that the tile values range from minus four to plus four (with no zeros), i.e. are both positive and negative.

– Image by boardGOATS

After the inevitable terrorism comments, we started. The skill in this game is to not only remember where all the best scoring tiles have gone, but also to work out when and where to place your own piece in order to maximise those tile placements: if someone turns up a high negative tile they certain to try to place it next to your piece and away from their own. While playing we soon realised that a real quandary was when to place the four wooden pieces. Placing them early ensures they are out and gets a large part of the board covered. Alternatively, waiting until near the end gives a better idea of where the scores are, but leaves less spaces in which to actually get those points. On reflection it seems that it really needs to be a balance, going early or late will probably end up with being boxed out of controlling your own destiny (not that you feel like you have much control normally anyhow).

– Image by boardGOATS

We were unsure what kind of scores we would get. We had the feeling it was one of those game where negative scores would be all too common, and even a single point might be the winning score In the end the scores were a little higher than that at four, five and eight. Burgundy admitted to forgetting where the scoring tiles were very early, on but still went on to win. It’s not clear what that says about this game, though we would need to play it a couple more times to find out how “random” it really is. With good players with good memories it could be a very challenging game. Still it did only take the twenty minutes claimed (including set up, explanation and confusion during scoring) which makes it a good filler, which is more than could be said for Fleet Warfside on the next table which was still going. It was obvious they would be another half hour or so, so with no messing our old favourite Splendor was out of the box and ready to go.

– Image by boardGOATS

In Splendor, players have just three options on their turn: collect gem tokens, buy a gem card using gem tokens (and/or cards), or reserve a gem card and receive a gold (wild) token at the same time. Players can have a maximum of ten tokens, though unlimited cards and the cards act as permanent tokens. Thus, at its heart Splendor is an engine building game built on a set-collection mechanism. Players score points when they buy some gem cards and for attracting Nobles which are awarded to the first player collect certain combinations of gem cards; the game end is triggered when one player reaches fifteen points and the player with the most at the end wins. One of the fun things about this game is that, despite its relative simplicity, each game plays differently. This time it seemed to be a token-heavy game, in other words everyone did a lot of token hoarding, keeping several key colours out of circulation, making progress in a particular colour tricky for everyone. As a result a number of gold tokens were taken for very lowly cards, several level twos and even a couple of level one cards. Indeed, Black took gold several times for want of anything better to do, since nothing else looked helpful. The lack of tokens seemed to weigh particularly heavily on Burgundy in the early parts of the game, giving Black and Green a little optimism that maybe this time they might be able to topple him for the first time in four games.

– Image used with permission of boardgamephotos

Overall it was a very tight game. Burgundy, in spite of his protestations of having nothing he could do, managed to take the first Noble card. Black quickly got another with a high scoring card, leap frogging him into a strong lead and Green wasn’t far behind in gathering his first Noble. Burgundy was able to build on his first Noble (one with three cards in each of three colours) by adding just two more cards to give his second Noble and put him within a whisker of ending the game with fourteen points. At this point, Black recognised that this could be his last turn, but he needed two turns to complete his plan. He did the best he could and also reached fourteen points. Green went next, but his plan worked out just in time, and he placed a reserved card worth three points giving him his second Noble in the same way that Burgundy had and helping him to fifteen points triggering the game end making it the last round. Unfortunately, thanks to the turn order, Burgundy got one final turn and it didn’t take a lot of effort to find a way to gather two more points to maintain his Splendor crown, albeit with a warning shot across his bows: next time we’ll get him, maybe.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor henk.rolleman

With Fleet Warfside finally over, Red there was still time one final short filler, and, after a quick discussion, we resorted to our old favourite, 6 Nimmt!. While Burgundy shuffled, the rest of us engaged in a discussion as to when we last played – after a look through the book, the verdict was July, which only left us to decide whether that was “ages” or not. We reminded ourselves of the rules: players simultaneously choose a card, then simultaneously reveal them before playing them in ascending order placing each on the row finishing with the highest card that is lower than the card being played. When the sixth card is added to a row, the first five are taken and the number of heads contributes to the player’s score, lowest score wins. We tend to play a variant over two rounds with half the deck in each round and not resetting the table in between which tends to result in a cascade of points in the second round, and this time was no exception. Black and Burgundy top scored in the first round with zero and one point respectively and nobody else close, setting up a head to head in the second. Victims of the second round cascade, unfortunately for them, Black and Burgundy both had disastrous second round. It was Red who redeemed a poor first round to win by one point from Purple and Green who finished in joint second place.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: Card games are more abstract and sometimes more difficult to understand.

18th October 2016

Magenta arrived first, and after a short delay while she fiddled with her phone she was joined by Blue (armed with lots of “Mammy Sheep” for Red and a pile of other bits from Essen for everyone else). Burgundy, Pine, Red and Cerise followed together with food. We were nearly done when Black and purple turned up and ordered their food, so while we were waiting we started a pair of parallel games of the “Feature Game”, The Game: Extreme. We’ve played the original version, The Game, quite a lot, so were keen to see what this added. The Game is very simple: as a group, players must try to to play every card from the deck (numbered two to ninety-nine) onto four piles. On their turn, the active player must play two cards from their hand on any of the four piles: for two of the card must be of higher value than the current top card, while for the other two it must must be of lower value.

– Image by boardGOATS

Players can discuss anything they like so long as nobody discloses any specific number information and they can play as many cards as they like on their turn so long as they play at least two (until the deck has been depleted, after which they must play one). To help eveyone out, there is also the so called “Backwards Rule” which allows players to push a pile back so long as the difference between the card they are playing and the card they are covering is exactly ten. Once the active player has played their cards, they replenish the missing cards. The game ends when all cards have been played or the active player is unable to play a card. The game is often compared with Hanabi, as it is a cooperative card game, but for Hanabi to work really well it needs to be played in total silence and with poker faces – anything less and clues are given away unintentionally and the level of “cheating” becomes arguable, but playing like this is very stressful. In contrast, we find that The Game is much more relaxed and “fun”, which is why we like it.

– Image by boardGOATS

The Game: Extreme differs from the original in that the cards have a different colour scheme and twenty-eight of them are marked with special “command”. There are seven different commands, three that take effect immediately and only directly affect the active player, and four that continue to affect every player on their turn until they are covered by another card. These commands are all nasty and vary from “play three cards” to “pick up only one card”, or “no talking”. It was very quickly apparent that the commands make The Game: Extreme much more difficult than The Game. What was less obvious was that it becomes much more stressful and, as a result, less fun. After both groups had endured two terrible rounds getting barely half way through the deck, Magenta, Blue and Burgundy came to the conclusion that a large part of the problem was that it felt like the game was playing the players rather than the players playing the game. Blue commented that it hadn’t felt like that with two players when , so maybe an extra card each would help? So Magenta, Blue and Burgundy gave it another try with seven cards apiece.

– Image by boardGOATS

This time, it was much better – everyone felt like they had meaningful choices instead of no choice, but it was still difficult. Clearly with the extra cards The Game was much easier, but still not trivial and the group finished with a creditable three cards remaining. Meanwhile, Pine, Red and Cerise had got bored with dispiriting losses and had moved onto Port Royal Unterwegs. This is supposed to be the travel edition of Port Royal, though how it is the travel edition, Heaven only knows as the box is the same size as the full version, which itself is big enough to include the expansion as well! Perhaps it is in reference to the number of cards, which is considerably less than half the number in the full game and, as a result it plays a maximum of four rather than the five in the original. The cards are different and the rules slightly more succinct too, which make the game play a little more streamlined.

– Image by boardGOATS

Port Royal is a very simple game: on their turn the active player turns over the top card of the deck and either takes the card if it is a Ship that they want; repels the Ship if they don’t want it and have sufficient cutlass cards to do so; buys the card if it is a Character card that they want and can afford, or places it face up in the display in front of the draw-deck and draws another card. They continue to do this until they have bought/taken a card, or a Ship is drawn that is the same colour as a ship already in the display and cannot be repelled, in which case, they go bust. The game uses the same dual use cards trick as Bohnanza where the cards have one meaning when face up and are coins when face down. In general, each Character card has a special power, but is also worth victory points at the end of the game. Port Royal Unterwegs is very similar except the characters are generally less complex and the game ends when someone gets to eight points instead of the usual twelve.

– Image by boardGOATS

These changes make Port Royal Unterwegs quite a bit quicker than its parent, but it helps a lot if players have an idea of what they are trying to do and what chances they need to take as there isn’t time for them to come round again. It turned out that of the group of players only Pine had actually played it before and he had scant recollection of it. Blue did her best to remind him from the next table, but as there were slight changes to the rules and she didn’t want to let the side down in The Game: Extreme, she couldn’t give them the help they really needed. After the event, Blue asked Pine what happened and he replied, “Just record it as three people who didn’t know what they were doing…” Red was similarly vague and aside from the fact that Cerise won and Pine came second, everyone seemed very keen to forget the whole experience. Maybe one to try again sometime.

– Image used with permission of
nonsensicalgamers.com

While all this was going on, Black and Purple on the next table were struggling with one of their Essen acquisitions, Best Treehouse Ever. This is a card drafting game where players spend three weeks (rounds) building themselves a tree-house. Similar to games like Between Two Cities, 7 Wonders and Sushi Go!, players start with a hand of cards (in this case six) and then everyone simultaneously chooses one room card and places it face down in front of them before passing the rest of the cards on to their neighbour. Once everyone has passed their cards on, everyone simultaneously adds their room to their tree-house. There are very few building restrictions, but it is these that make the game interesting. For example, tree-houses must be no more than six levels high and each room must be supported by two branches from the room below (except on the outside). The first room of any colour may be placed anywhere, but those that follow must touch a room of the same colour. If at any point a room card cannot be placed, it must be discarded, reducing the final magnitude of the tree-house and ultimately the number of points it can score.

– Image used with permission of nonsensicalgamers.com

The really clever bit is the “Balance Marker” – a wooden cube at the bottom of the tree. Everyone knows that when building a tree-house it must be balanced if it is not to collapse. So, rooms cannot be built on the same side of the tree as the balance marker, which shifts throughout the game based on the players room placement. Thus, the building restrictions require constant awareness of the position of rooms in a players tree as well as those in the trees of the opposition. While the ability to start a new set of coloured rooms gives flexibility, players must be cautious not to cut off existing colours too early. Once all cards have been played or discarded, the round is concluded by a scoring session where players choose one of the four game changer cards, which either multiply the score of one room colour or completely prevent a room colour from scoring. After three complete rounds there is a final scoring round where players with the majority of one or more room colours at the end of the game will score an additional point per room of that colour.

– Image used with permission of nonsensicalgamers.com

With just two players, the scoring s simplified – the multipliers are removed and players have one “this room doesn’t score” card each instead. As ties don’t score at all in the final round, these become quite critical in a head-to-head game. This time, both players had level five treehouses, though this was probably largely because it was the first time Black and Purple had played the game and they played too many rounds. In the final scoring, Purple dominated the red and brown rooms while Black had the majority in yellow and purple rooms. It was very tight, but Purple took the game by a single point. Best Treehouse Ever was a game that Black and Blue had discussed getting. Sadly, it was clear that Black was disappointed that it wasn’t at its best played with two, however, it will doubtless get another outing in the near future with more of us involved.

– Image used with permission of nonsensicalgamers.com

With Black and Blue suffering from “German lurgy” and Burgundy still recovering from his last bout, everyone was keen for an early night. Once Red, Cerise & Magenta had headed off, everyone else settled down to go through the rules of Kerala, a simple little tile laying game with beautiful presentation, while Purple multi-tasked and wrote an essay about her favourite tree-house. In Kerala, each player starts with a single tile in their own colour with two wooden elephants perched precariously on it. On their turn, the active player draws the same number of tiles from the bag as there are players and then chooses one before everyone else takes it in turns choosing one. Players then simultaneously place their tiles next to a tile with an elephant on it and move the elephant onto the new tile. The tile can be placed in an empty space, or on top of a tile previously laid. Thus, over the course of the game players’ elephants ponderously move over their play-area with players messing with the player to their left by leaving them with tiles they don’t want.

– Image by boardGOATS

Tiles come in the five different player colours: red, green, blue, black and purple. At the end of the game players require precisely one contiguous region of each colour (with two allowed for their own colour); if they are missing a colour they lose five points and if any regions appear more than once, tiles must be removed with a penalty of two points per tile. There are three types of tiles, Elephant tiles, Edge tiles and Action tiles. Elephant tiles score points at the end of the game with players receiving one point for each elephant visible. “Edge” tiles have one side with a different colour; if these are adjacent to the correct colour the player scores an additional five points otherwise they can be ignored. There are also two sorts of action tiles, which score no points but allows the player to move either a tile or an Elephant.

– Image by boardGOATS

After a few slight rules queries, everyone got on with the gentle action of choosing tiles and moving elephants, but gradually everyone became aware of the game’s “Tusks” as Blue left Pine with something he really didn’t want for the second time and what had initially seemed like multiplayer solitaire suddenly wasn’t. As their areas expanded, players gradually got themselves into difficulties and then struggled to get themselves out of them again. Although nobody pulled their punches when choosing tiles to leave, everyone offered genuine assistance and friendly opinions, especially to those unfortunate players left with rubbish at the end of the round. Predictably, having played it before, Blue finished some way ahead of the pack, though Black, with a veritable troop of Elephants in a very tidy array joint top-scored with forty-five, eight ahead of Pine in third.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: Essen is Awsome, and Blue needs cloning.

4th October 2016

It was a quiet night, thanks to illness, work and other commitments. There were still enough of us to split into two small groups, the first of which settled down to play Endeavor. This is a game we’ve played a couple of times this year and still proves quite popular. This time, only Green had played it before and Grey and Ivory were unfamiliar with it, so it was necessary to have a complete run-down of the rules. The game is played over seven rounds, each of which consists of four phases: Building, Population, Income and Action. The idea is that players have four status tracks, one each for Industry, Culture, Finance and Politics, which roughly correspond to the four phases of the game and dictate what players are allowed to do at each stage.

– Image by boardGOATS

Players begin by choosing a building, some of which provide an increase in one (or more) of the four status tracks, some provide actions, while most others do a mixture of both. Players then move population markers from their general supply to their harbour according to their current culture level. A strong population is essential as it ultimately limits the number of actions players can take on their turn. The income phase allows players to move some of their workers from buildings back into their harbour as dictated by their current level on the income track. These add to the population players have available to do things with, while also making space on the buildings so that these actions are available for re-use. The first three phases of each round are mostly just preparation and book-keeping; the guts of each round are in the final phase, where players take it in turns to carryout an action of their choice. There are five basic actions: Taking Payment, Shipping, Occupying, Attacking, and Drawing Cards.

– Image by boardGOATS

In order to carryout an action, players must activate an appropriate building by moving a population marker from their harbour to the building. In the case of shipping, occupying and attacking, the actions are carried out on the central, communal player board. To ship, after activating an appropriate building, players can move one of the population markers to one of the six shipping tracks and take the token that was on the space. These tokens are useful as they add to the status tracks, but some also give a free action. Shipping is also important as it gives players a presence in a region which is necessary for occupying, attacking and drawing cards. When a player places the last token on a shipping track, The Governor card from the top of the pile in the region is allocated and the region is considered “open”. This means that players who already have a presence in the region can also occupy the cities within the region. This gives both tokens and victory points, but where a player occupies a city that is connected to another city they already occupy, they get an extra token, which can be very valuable, as well as providing extra points at the end of the game. This makes position very important, but if someone occupies a city that another player wants, one option is attacking.

– Image by boardGOATS

This is carried out in the same way as occupying, but is a separate action and costs an additional population marker. Occupying a region also adds to a players presence in the region: players can also draw the top card from a region’s stack and add it to their player-board, so long as their total presence in the region is higher than the card number. Cards are important as they also add to the status tracks as well as provide victory points, however there is a card limit which is enforced when a player passes at the end of the round and any status track points gained with the card are lost when cards are discarded. Once everyone has completed one action phase players continue taking it turns until everyone passes. Thus, the final possible action is taking payment which is the simplest action and allows players to move one of their population markers back to the harbour so that they can re-use the building in the same round. In addition to the five basic actions, some of the more expensive buildings provide a choice or even a combination of two of the basic actions. After seven rounds, points are awarded for cities, for connections between cities, for progress up status tracks, cards, some special buildings, and any left-over population markers.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor henk.rolleman

It was an inauspicious start: Grey was unhappy with the name, it hurt his language sensibilities, and he was very concerned as to where the “u” had gone. Green was definitely at an advantage as the only person to have played the game before, but he did his best to guide the others for their first few turns. In truth, there is very little choice to be made in the first round or so, however, what choice there is tends to turn out to be critical by the end of the game. With so little decision to make, the first round is always over in a flash, though the later rounds take progressively longer as the game goes on. Ivory and Green both started building Workshops for the extra brick, while Grey went for a Shipyard and started to ship. In the second round, Ivory and Green’s Workshop enabled them to build more valuable buildings and Ivory took a Guildhall to get in on the shipping act, while Green declined the extra brick and went for the Shipyard. This gave him a second green population token and popped him over into gaining three population markers. As the fog of first game confusion began to clear for Grey, he saw the advantage of the Workshop, so took it at the second opportunity.

– Image by boardGOATS

The first few rounds raced past as everyone developed their own board, increased their populations and took cities and shipping tracks, but some clear strategies were emerging. Green had a large number of cities in central Europe and a smattering of shipping routes, but was pushing strongly for Africa (to make connections with his European cities and give some great bonus action chits). Ivory was also keeping a strong hold in Europe, but not so much on the shipping tracks, while Grey was concentrating on opening up India and the Far East. Ivory had built up a healthy row of cards, and although he was the only one to resort to slavery so far, it was only the one card. In the fourth round Grey took the penultimate space on the India shipping track and gifted Green a super-turn, when he used his Dock to ship (thus opening up the region) and then occupied too. The newly occupied town linked to his European city and so he got that extra token too. Grey did get the bonus Governor card in consolation however. And then, the regions tumbled, next were the Far East and then North America.

– Image by boardGOATS

By the fifth round, the first four cards in the central region had all been taken, and a quick count up showed Green had five cities. He waited until the sixth round and, since no-one had attacked him, he took the final card and abolished slavery. Luckily Ivory was not too badly affected by this and avoided the collapsing house of cards such an event can often trigger. At the start of the final round, Grey spotted that Ivory had a cluster of four cities plus one in Africa: that gave him four connections. He also noticed that there was one cornerstone city that connected them all. So he bravely marched in, took the losses involved in attack and swiped several points from Ivory in one go. The final turns were used for mopping up as many points as possible and once everyone had passed, it was on to final scoring.

– Image by boardGOATS

Not unexpectedly given his extra experience with the game, Green scored the most, with victory points from most areas. Ivory was close behind in what had been a very enjoyable game. In fact Grey had not only got over the mis-spelled title, but had enjoyed it so much that he went on to try to find a copy for himself. Alas Endeavor is very out of print so if it can be found, it’s going to cost a pretty penny, which is a shame, as it is a really good game with good replay-ability, thanks to its random token layout. On the adjacent table, there was much debate as to what to play, but eventually, the group settled on Istanbul, winner of the Kennerspiel des Jahres two years ago. We’ve played it a couple of times, but Pine was completely new to it, though both Blue and Red had played it before. It 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.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor duchamp

The problem is, once an action has been completed, the Merchant must move on, however, an Assistant remains to complete the details of the transaction. Thus, the Merchant can only carryout a transaction if he has the help of an Assistant. When he runs out of Assistants, the Merchant cannot carryout a transaction and must either visit the Fountain and summon his Assistants or go back to stalls where the Assistants are to collect them. The central 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”. For this game, we chose “Long” routes to give us a slightly more interesting game.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

Blue began by collecting money and visiting the Wainwright to build up the size of her cart, while Red began collecting the special tiles from the Mosque’s while they were still cheap. Although Pine felt he understood the rules and the aim of the game perfectly, it took him a few rounds to work out how to go about making things work together effectively. So it was that Blue just managed to get to the Jewelers before Pine and use a double card to buy two gems. As Pine had only had the exact money for his own double gem purchase, he was now two Lira short and had to go and acquire more cash. To add insult to injury, he had just acquired his extra Lira when Red pulled a similar trick and Pine had to go and find yet more cash. While Blue and Pine were building piles of currency, Red was quietly collecting tiles from the Mosques and a full set gave her two gems.

– Image used with permission of of boardgamephotos

Blue and Pine completed their carts and, with her gems from the Jeweler, Blue seemed to have got her nose in front. That was before Pine, largely unintentionally, got his revenge for the problems Blue had caused him earlier in the game. Everything Blue tried to do, Pine was there first and obstructed her plans. In such a tight game, it was just enough to give Red the extra time she needed to get her fifth gem and trigger the end of the game. Despite a massive forty-two Lira, Pine needed two turns to change them into gems leaving Blue just ahead in second place with four gems. As Endeavor was still in the closing stages, Red, Blue and Pine investigated the “Feature Game”. To celebrate our fourth birthday this week, this was to be Crappy Birthday a silly little filler/party game. This game has a lot in common with games like Apples to Apples and in particular, Dixit. The idea is that each player has a hand of cards featuring strange potential gifts. On their turn, it is the active player’s birthday and everyone else passes them a card. The active player then chooses what they think is the best and worst and returns them to the original owner who keeps them as points.

– Image by boardGOATS

After a couple of turns, Endeavor came to an end and the group joined up for a proper game of Crappy Birthday. The key to playing this sort of game is knowing the other players. Although we meet regularly, we don’t all know each other all that well, so this was always going to be interesting. By the end, we’d learned that Red would quite like to bungee-jump; Green thinks turning his car into a caravanette would be fun (well, perhaps not his car); Blue has a pathological hatred of having her photo taken and Pine likes fluffy penguins and had been to the Westmann Islands and played with warm lava… In the absence of cake (partly due to a mix up) we completed two rounds and Ivory and Green finished in front with three points apiece. Given how unsuccessful social games often are with our group (most recently Codenames, which was very divisive), this was not expected to be a great success. However, the cards were such fun and so unusual, that we all really enjoyed it. Sadly, that means the game has poor replayability as, once the surprise has gone, the game will be much less fun.

– Image by boardGOATS

With that done, Red, Ivory and Grey headed off, leaving Pine, Blue and Green to play something quick. After a little chit-chat Splendor was the chosen game, with both Pine and Blue having unfinished business after getting soundly beaten twice in quick succession. In this game, players have just three options on their turn: collect gem tokens, buy a gem card using gem tokens (and/or cards), or reserve a gem card and receive a gold (wild) token at the same time. Players can have a maximum of ten tokens, though unlimited cards and the cards act as permanent tokens. Thus, at its heart Splendor is an engine building game built on a set-collection mechanism. Players score points when they buy some gem cards and for attracting Nobles which are awarded to the first player collect certain combinations of gem cards; the game end is triggered when one player reaches fifteen points and the player with the most at the end wins.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor henk.rolleman

The game started with both Pine and Blue going for it with all guns blazing. The set up included three special Noble tiles: one from the 2015 Brettspiel Adventskalender and two from the promotional tiles set, but all four Nobles included opals. So, it was just as well that there were lots of opals out at the start of the game. Blue and and Pine collected as many of them as they could. Green picked up a few too, but found the competition was quite stiff and went for more rubies and sapphires. It was Pine who picked up the first of the Nobles, but that galvanised Blue into action and she grabbed the remaining three in quick succession. She was still a few points short of the finish line, and it was then that Green realised he had misread one of the cards. Having had a similar lead and lost last time she had played, she wasn’t going to let this one get away, and ruthlessly gathered the remaining points she needed to quickly bring the game to a close. Blue finished the game with sixteen four points ahead of Pine in second place.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor henk.rolleman

Learning outcome: Some of the best games can be very difficult to get hold of.

20th September 2016

Since the planned “Feature Game” (Cuba) was a long one and we didn’t want anyone to get stuck playing two-player games all evening, we decided to play a quick filler until everyone had arrived. After a brief discussion, we decided to go for Between Two Cities. This game is quite popular with our group as it is both competitive, and cooperative and, as such, is totally different to anything else we play. The idea is that, instead of each player having a personal player board that they work on in isolation, each player sits between two boards which they share with their neighbours. The game play is based on card drafting games like Sushi Go! and 7 Wonders with scoring taking elements from tile-laying games like Carcassonne and Alhambra.

– Image by boardGOATS

The game is played over three rounds with players placing building tiles to construct cities consisting of sixteen tiles in a four by four array. Each player starts the first round with six tiles, of which they secretly choose two and pass the rest to the left. Once everyone has chosen their two, everyone reveals their choices and then negotiates with their neighbours to try to to ensure they get the tiles they want in the two cities they have a share in. Play continues with each player picking up the hand they were passed and choosing another pair of tiles etc. until there are no tiles left. In the second round players get three double tiles of which they choose two and discard the third. These double tiles contain two buildings in a vertical or horizontal arrangement.

– Image by boardGOATS

This is where things can get difficult, as the final city must form a four by four square and the location of buildings can be critical to their scoring. For example, a housing estate built in a city with lots of other different types of buildings is worth up to five points at the end of the game, unless it is next to a factory in which case it is only worth one point. Similarly, an isolated shop is worth two points, but a row of four is worth sixteen points. The third and final round is played the same way as the first, except that tiles are passed in the opposite direction. The winner is the player with the highest scoring second city. We had just begun getting the game out and revising the game play when Black and Purple arrived, the last two expected. So, in a quick switch, four jumped ship to play the “Feature Game” leaving Black and Purple to join Red, Magenta and Pine in Between Two Cities.

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The five cities all had very different characteristics, for example, Pine shared two contrasting cities with Magenta and Red. The city he shared with Magenta had a pleasing arrangement of houses around a large central park with a couple of shops, bars, offices and a factory. On his other side he shared the top scoring industrial town with Red which comprised a small housing estate buffered from factories by a row of office blocks. Red shared her second city with Purple. This was built round a large park with lots of offices some bars, but only the one housing estate which cost it points. Purple also shared a city with Black comprised two small parks surrounded by houses and bars with a couple of shops thrown in for good measure. The fifth and final city was another industrial conurbation shared by Magenta and Black with lots of factories, and offices interspersed with bars and restaurants giving it a high score.

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The key to the game is to build two cities with similar scoring, but ideally using different components. The other important factor, however, is the layout of the buildings and keeping them flexible for as long as possible. The most successful in this regard was Pine, who was sat between the first and third highest scoring cities shared with Magenta and Red, who took second and third place respectively. Filling in the log book was quite a pantomime, accompanied by photos and complicated diagrams before the group moved on to their next game, Pi mal Pfloumen, also known in our group as “Oh my Plums!”. We’ve played this a couple of times, most recently last time, but on both occasions we struggled with the clarity of the rules. This time, we finally managed to play it right (we think) and unsurprisingly, the game worked much better played correctly.

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The game is one of set collecting built on a framework of trick taking. Each card has a value, a “fruit suit” and, in many cases, a special action as well. Players take it in turns to play a card, then, starting with the player who played the card with the highest face value, players then take it in turns to choose a card. These are added to their tableau in front of them. In general, any special actions are carried out when the card is taken, which can include taking “π cards” (which can be added to cards when they are played to increase their face value), taking cards from other players or claiming the Watchdog card (which protects from card theft).

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Some cards depict a “fruit mix” which lead to scoring opportunities, and can be claimed at any point when a player is taking cards at the end of the trick. It all made a lot more sense this time though Red still didn’t have a clue what was going on. It was quite a close game, but was finally decided when Red took a critical plum spoiling Black and Pine’s plans and with it taking the game, just ahead of Purple in second place. With Red and Magenta heading home for an early night and the game on the next table still going, Black, Purple and Pine were looking for something interesting to play. Blue suggested Oh My Goods!, which is a little card game, but as none of the others had played it (and Blue was engaged elsewhere), they settled down to decipher the rules. Meanwhile, the neighbouring table were just over halfway through their game of Cuba.

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Cuba is a fairly simple game mechanistically, but is deceptively complex thanks to the way actions interact and build on each other. Each player has a player board featuring a four by four array of plantations and/or buildings and a lot for storage. They also have a pack of five character cards each with an associated action. In the first part of each round, players take it in turns to play a character card until they have each played four of them. In the second part of the round, the remaining character provides the basis of each player’s votes in Parliament, with different characters providing different numbers of votes. This part of the game is vaguely reminiscent of voting for Laws in Lancaster. In Cuba, players can improve their position by buying more votes in a blind bidding phase with the winner choosing two which two bills Parliament will enact. There are a number of little features that give the game teeth, for example, any money spent on buying votes goes to the bank, regardless of whether the player wins or loses. Similarly, the start player (which decided based on the final character card played) can be critical as it is the tie breaker in the voting phase as well as giving priority in the next round.

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Getting these wrong can mess up plans spectacularly, but far more critical are the character cards played, the order they are played in and how they are played. For example, the Worker card allows a player to move their Worker to any plantation on their player board and then activate the plantation at its new location and all plantations orthogonal to it. Plantations can generate resources (rock, wood or water) or produce (sugar, citrus fruit or tobacco), but as the game progresses may be replaced by buildings. Buildings are placed over plantation spaces using the Architect card and exchanging them for resources. Like plantations, they are activated by playing the Foreman card who activates all buildings orthogonal to the Worker, but does not move the worker as part of the action. Thus, the relationship between playing the Worker card and playing Foreman card is very important.

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Furthermore, there is a significant distinction between resources (cubes), produce (octahedral blocks) and goods (rum and cigars created from sugar and tabacco): while resources and goods can be stored in the lot, produce will rot if left out overnight and must be moved to the Warehouse before the end of the round if they are to be saved. In order to move produce to the Warehouse, the Warehouse must be activated by the Foreman. This could be because it is one of the buildings orthogonal to the Worker or because the player sacrifices his positional advantage and activates the warehouse as a single building anywhere on the board. Thus, the position of the buildings is very important, not only because careful placement allows players to activate multiple buildings, but also because they are placed on top of plantations which are then no-longer usable. Produce can also be saved from rotting by either using buildings to turn it into goods or by playing the Mayor to place items on a ship. This last option can be difficult to rely on however as all merchandise must be placed on the same ship and spaces on each ship are limited.

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Thus, while Cuba relies on a good strategy, meticulous planning is also vital for success. Although we could all see this up front, only Green had played it before (albeit some years ago), so he was the only with an idea of the possible strategies. So, to give everyone else a few extra moments to familiarise themselves with their player board, Green was declared the start player and took the wooden blue sedan (pinched from the El Presidente expansion as a start player marker). Green began by building the Dam to increase his board’s water supply, while everyone else started with what appeared to be a more flexible opening by using their Worker to collect resources and produce. By the end of the first part of the first round, Burgundy had shipped a few goods, Green had collected a lot of water, and Ivory and Blue weren’t sure what they were doing, but had decided that collecting and storing produce seemed like a good base to start from. Then came second part of the round: bribing officials to decide which bills should be enacted.

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Since Burgundy had been the only one to ship goods he was the only one with fewer than five votes. Everyone secretly chose an additional amount, but as Green really, really, really wanted this one, he bid four of his ten pesos, while everyone else wasn’t certain how to value the bills and therefore didn’t bid. So Green chose his expensive laws for the round and in particular the water subsidy which would give him three points straight away. The second round mirrored the first with everyone choosing their “Worker” until Green played his “Architect”, building the Golf Course (which converts water into victory points). While everyone else could see what Green was doing, nobody else had worked out what was a good combination of buildings and therefore what strategy to play for. Blue made a mistake thinking the Bank she was would give victory points, but when she activated it she realised it gave her money. Still, it did give her an advantage during the bribing and in the second round was able to choose the laws. This time she changed the goods tax from citrus to sugar, and brought in the Harbour Act (this makes any fully loaded ships leave the harbour immediately with all remaining ships moving along accordingly).

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After taxes had been paid and subsidies received (Green had already converted his water and so did not receive the subsidy this time) the scores were evenly spaced with Green at the front, building a solid lead. Over the next few rounds everyone stumbled on, still not really sure what to do as Green developed quite a strong lead. Burgundy was the only one who was really doing any shipping while Ivory had managed to build a Rum Factory and was converting lots of sugar into Rum, which he was hoping to ship. Unfortunately, he really struggled since only the first ships seemed to required rum and the later ones all seemed to need cigars. By the time Ivory had given up and sold his rum, ships that did want it finally started appearing, but it was largely too late. It was at the end of round four when the game took a sudden turn though. Burgundy had worked hard on shipping, which the rest of us had mostly ignored. With the Harbour Law still in force, the ships moved on when full and nobody had noticed that Ivory had every piece of merchandise required for the top scoring ship. So when it was his turn he loaded it completely taking fifteen points, and with it, the lead. Suddenly everyone knew how important shipping could be.

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With only two rounds to go, it was a bit late to change strategies and only Blue made any inroads using her stash of pesos to win the laws and ensuring she could gather the full five points for fulfilling the taxes while everyone else struggled to get two points. This together with the Rum Café she had built gave her a sudden flurry of points, but it was too, little too late. In the final final scoring, Green was unable to catch Ivory who finished four points behind Ivory – not how anyone would have predicted from the early rounds where Green had been so dominant and everyone else had been learning. We had all enjoyed it though, especially once we’d got to grips with the difference between resources, produce and goods. The sudden change of fortunes as strategies clicked kept it interesting too, though in any future there may be more competition for shipping than there was in this one. It’s highly likely we’ll play it again soon though.

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As Cuba was coming to an end, Black, Purple and Pine were still making a bit of a meal of Oh My Goods!, getting bogged down in the complexity of the theory of “chaining”. Although this is the clever part of the game it is a complicated place to start in what is otherwise a simple game. Players start with a hand of dual purpose cards which can act as resources or buildings. They also start the game with a single card face up in front of them, a charcoal burner stacked with face down cards: charcoal. The idea is that this charcoal can be used as money to spend on building, or as charcoal to use as an input to other processes. At the start of each round players get an extra couple of cards before cards are turned over to make the morning market. This can consist of as few as two cards or as many as eight or more. The market provides input for buildings – there will be a second, evening market before the end of the round – but players have to use the morning market to provide a steer to decide which building they are going to activate and what they are going to build.

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Each player has one worker and must be assigned to the building he is going to activate. The worker can can work efficiently or lazily. If he works efficiently, he will need the necessary resources in full and will provide two items of produce. On the other hand, if he works lazily, he can manage with one less than the total necessary resources, but will only produce one item. The resources can come from the market, but can also be topped up from the player’s hand. Once each player has placed their worker, decided whether he will be efficient or lazy and chosen a card to build, the second market is revealed. Once this evening market has been completed, players take it in turns to carryout their production and, if appropriate, build.

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A building only produces if the necessary resources (on the bottom left corner of the card) can be provided either through the market or from a players hand. If the worker is efficient, then he produces twice and two cards are taken from the draw deck and placed face down on the top of the card as produce. If the worker is lazy, only he only produces once. This is where the game gets slightly nasty: if the player cannot supply the required input, then the turn is wasted, though if they have sufficient money, they can still use it to build. If a building is activated, it can additionally be used to “chain” i.e. produce goods using input from other buildings (rather than the market) and it was this that was confusing people. The problem is that this is only possible once a player has several building and although it is a key part of the game, the ability to build good working chains is highly dependent on the cards drawn. As such, it is not something to worry about too much when learning to play.

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Ivory and Green left, leaving Blue to try to explain to Pine, Black and Purple, and Burgundy to spectate. Perhaps it was because it was late and people were tired, or perhaps it was because the players had confused themselves, but the game itself was still rather tortuous. Pine’s concluding comment was that if Room 101 existed, he knew which game he would be sending there… In this light the scores seemed rather irrelevant, though it was obvious that the player who understood best was going to win and that was Black who finished with twenty-two points. He agreed that it was a clever game and he might be interested in giving it another go, though sadly it is probably beyond Blue’s powers of persuasion to encourage Purple or Pine to try again soon.

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Learning outcome: Sometimes, you don’t have to understand what’s going on, but it usually helps…!

6th September 2016

Pink (making one of his rare appearances) arrived first with Red and Magenta, closely followed by Blue and then Burgundy. So, with the food order done, we scratched about for something quick to play when Red suggested a little card game called Unter Spannung (aka 7 Ate 9). This was a game she had picked up in Germany a week earlier when she’d been travelling and had found herself unable to resist spending all her money in a toy shop. Although the rules were in German, Red and Blue had managed to come up with a translation and had played it quite extensively when they had been away in Switzerland for work. Neither Red nor Blue speak any German, so they weren’t certain that they were playing correctly, but they had found it to be fun all the same and taught everyone else the same way.

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They described Unter Spannung as “Dobble with maths” and basically, the idea is that each player starts with a hand of four cards and a deck of cards that they must try to get rid of. Each card has a number on the corner (the face value) and a modifier in the centre (of the form ±1, ±3 or ±3). The game begins with a single face up card in the centre and simultaneously everyone tries to play a card where the face value matches the total for the centre card (i.e. the face value plus or minus the modifier). Thus, if the card in the middle is 8±1, players can play any card with a face value of seven or nine. The snag is that cards are only numbered one to ten, so the the maths gets a little more tricky. For example, 8±3 is five or eleven, but since there is no eleven, it becomes one. Simple enough, though at the lower end things become more difficult as negative numbers don’t simply become positive, rather, zero becomes ten and any negative must be subtracted from this. So, 1±3 is four or minus two which in turn becomes eight…

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Like Dobble, cards are placed simultaneously in a frantic rush and the card then played becomes the new top card, which causes mayhem when someone has just got there first. Unlike Dobble, players start with a hand of four cards but can add cards whenever they want, so as soon as there is a bit of a lull in placing cards everyone frantically draws cards from their deck. The first player to get rid of all their cards (hand and deck) is the winner. Although the game nominally only plays four, we added an extra and just played a slightly short round. Red and Blue had an inevitable advantage having played before, and everyone else struggled to get their heads round it. The first round went to Red who stomped her authority on the game early on. Then Burgundy’s food arrived which he used as an excuse to duck out of the second round which Blue took having warmed up a little.

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With food and gamers arriving thick and fast, there was a brief hiatus, before we split into three groups. The first group (Black and Purple) began their belated supper while Red, Blue, Pink and Magenta began the “Feature Game”, which was The Manhattan Project: Chain Reaction. This is a fairly short resource conversion card game based on The Manhattan Project boardgame. In this simpler, card game version, players are firstly mining to create yellowcake, then purifying the yellowcake to get uranium which they can then use to make a bomb. Players start with a hand of five cards, each of which is dual function, providing either an action or a people. In order to get the yellowcake players need people to do the mining and then a mining card. There are several different types of people: labourers, engineers, scientists, etc. These can be provided directly by cards, or using people and location cards to generate larger numbers or people with different skills. For example, a University can be used to create engineers or scientists. Combining these with enrichment plant cards and yellowcake gives players uranium which in turn allows players to claim one of the face up bomb cards. When acquired, these can be augmented by the addition of a bomb-loading card which also comes at a price.

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All the cards come in a range of input requirements and outputs, but in general, the more expensive cards give richer rewards. There are always several bomb cards available and the game end is triggered when one player achieves a total of ten megatonnes of bomb (including any bomb-loading cards). The rules were a little bit difficult to disentangle somehow so it took us a while to really get to grips with what should have been a fairly simple game and there was a high chance that the player who understood first would win. In the event, luck played a fairly large part too as there are additional special cards. These are important as the hand-limit of five cards is quite restrictive and the special cards can enable players to get extras. It was Pink who managed to get the first bomb card, although Red and Magenta both had substantial piles of uranium and yellowcake respectively. Then from no-where, Blue suddenly built a seven megatonne bomb, quickly followed by Red and Magenta. It was all too late though as Pink finished the game and with it comprehensively won. In truth this isn’t really the sort of theme our group usually go for, and with a fairly heavy slice of luck and slightly rough roles we made heavy weather of it. That said, we felt it was definitely worth playing again.

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Meanwhile, Green, Ivory, Pine and Burgundy played Imhotep, one of the nominees for the Spiel des Jahres this year. We played it a few weeks back in July and it went down quite well, so since Green wasn’t able to stay for long it was a good opportunity for a second outing. In this game, players take the role of builders in Egypt who are trying to emulate Imhotep. The premise of the game is very simple. On their turn, the active player chooses one of four actions: procure new stones (very large wooden blocks); load stones on a boat; sail a boat to a monument; or play an action card. Players can only store a maximum of five stones and when they procure stones they can collect a maximum of three. Stones are loaded onto ships one at a time, but which of the five possible destinations the boats end up at and the order they are unloaded in is vital, so timing and planning is everything and, as we discovered last time, other players have the ability to screw up even the best laid plans. Thus, the challenge is to work out how to accomplish strategies when the boats rarely go where you want them to. There were two players who were new to the game this time, but it is easy to explain and play, although it is much much harder to work out where to place cubes in the boats and when to move things. It usually takes a couple of rounds for the game to settle in and for patterns to emerge, and this time was no different.

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Once the dust from the early quarry blocks had settled, Green had a one block lead in the obelisk (he had used the Obelisk to good effect last time out and narrowly won that game), Pine already had a good area in the Burial Chamber, Burgundy was big in the pyramid and Ivory had a smattering of cubes in most places. When a boat with a single cube space appeared, Green decided to take a punt on it and see where he ended up. Surprisingly it stayed put until all the other boats had been docked, leaving it with just two choices: the Pyramid for four points or the obelisk to extend Green’s lead there to two cubes. Pine was first to have to make that decision, and chose to defer it by cutting more blocks from the quarry, Ivory and Burgundy followed and did likewise leaving Green with a free choice. His supply of blocks was looking a bit thin though compared to the others and so he also chose to re-stock leaving Pine no choice since his sled was full. After deliberation between the others (no-one wanted Green’s advice) he chose the obelisk and Green was pleased with two cube lead as he thought it would be quite easy to maintain.

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As the game progressed everyone became more wily at positioning stones on the boats, and Pine was prevented from increasing the size of his Burial Chamber group and no-one else could get a larger grouping than two either! The ‘Wall’ received a number of cubes this game, including quite a few of Ivory’s, and eventually it reached the third level. Burgundy continued to dominate the Pyramid, while the the obelisk continued to grow and Burgundy was began to make inroads to Green’s lead, while Pine kept a watching brief in third. By the latter part of the game everyone was so focused on their own strategies that they often failed to notice Burgundy attempting to dominate one particular boat. The first time he did this he managed to collect two purple statue cards in one turn and the second time he got two cubes into the obelisk (although Green jumped aboard at the last minute to limit the damage). In the penultimate round, Burgundy had got three stones on a four stone ship.

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Green was next and a quick count suggested that if this were to go to the obelisk it would lose him the lead. So, he felt he had no choice; that boat had to dock somewhere else and he chose the Pyramid as the least damage, though it still netted Burgundy six points. That gave Pine an opening to get a couple of his stones to the obelisk so that he overtook Burgundy, pushing him into second. Going into the final round, the writing was on the wall. Burgundy could no longer win the Obelisk win, and as long as Green placed a stone on the same boat as Pine, he was guaranteed the full fifteen points for first place (as last time). Otherwise it was mostly just a mopping up exercise to get the most points possible with the last stones. Both Burgundy and Ivory had managed two or three purple statue cards and so the final scoring was tight. Despite being the only one without a green bonus scoring card (which gives points for the total number of cubes in the different areas), Green still finished a couple of points ahead of Pine in what was another close and enjoyable game.

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With both games finishing, Black and Purple having consumed their supper and Green heading off, it looked like it was change. However, in the event, Green was directly replaced by Black and Purple and the other group began another game of Imhotep. The game has an in-built expansion as each location board has a second side with slightly more involved building options. For example, while Side A has just one large Pyramid, Side B has three smaller Pyramids and players choose which one to add their cube to. Pink, who had played Side A at the UK Games Expo, was keen to give the alternative options a try. It turned out that these actually add quite a bit to the complexity as they add another layer to the decision making. This is because instead of just considering what everyone would get at each location, players have to consider what everyone will do at each location and what this will give them.

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So for example, instead of just looking at where all the cubes will go in the Pyramid and what they will score, the active player now has to consider which Pyramid each player will pick and what that leaves for everyone else. For this reason, it possibly wasn’t the best choice for a first game. As a result, as they had not played it before, both Red and Magenta struggled with trying to work out what they were trying to do and what strategies would work best. In the early stages, it was all very tentative. Instead of just building the highest, on Side B, points are awarded throughout the game for “mini-obelisks” containing just three blocks, though the early mini-obelisks are worth more. Blue got an early start with Pink following in second place. Meanwhile, Red and Magenta scooped up some of the early Market cards, correctly thinking they were important, hoping that it would allow them to learn what else might be a good strategy.

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It was in the third round it became apparent that we had a problem on our hands as Pink had taken a bit of a run-away lead in the Temple. When playing with Side A players add cubes to a row of five blocks, with additional blocks going into the second and eventually third rows. Points are scored at the end of the round for each stone delivered that is visible from above. With Side B, blocks are added in the same way, but the bonus are different. Thus, the first “space” on the alter will give one point or two extra wooden blocks. Other spaces give Market cards and even two points making it quite lucrative. Unfortunately, for the rest of us, Pink had somehow managed to steal a march on the rest of us. He then made a point of sending a small boats there which meant his early blocks continued to work for him well beyond their usual lifetime. This was not helped by the fact that Pink also contrived to ensure that the little boats contained his blocks, so any that were covered were covered by his own blocks so he continued to benefit. Blue, having played the game before could see the problem and managed to muscle in a little, but it was slow and Pink stormed into the lead with nothing anyone else could do about it.

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Eventually, Blue and Magenta managed to break Pink’s strangle-hold on the Temple, while Red began to fall behind but continued to collect purple Statue cards stacking up points for the end of the game. Magenta gradually began to dominate in the Burial Chamber too. With Side A, the blocks are placed in position in strict rotation and the each player scores points for their largest contiguous area according to the Triangular Number Series. With Side B, however, each row of blocks is evaluated independently and eight points awarded to the person with the most blocks in the row, with four points for second place and two for third. With three rows, a player who goes into this heavily can pick up a lot of points which is exactly what Magenta did, winning two and coming placing on the third as well.

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With the game coming to a close, we all thought Pink had it in the bag, but we still had the end game scoring cards to count up. Sadly, Red’s Statues didn’t get her quite as many as we thought, but it was very close with both Pink and Magenta finishing with forty-two points. Blue just managed to squeak ahead though finishing with forty-three in what turned out to be yet another tight game. So that was three out of three as it had been close first time we played as well when Green had won, taking the Obelisk. This led some of us to speculate whether the Obelisk is perhaps a little too powerful. Although it has featured heavily in all three games, the games have all been exceptionally close so the jury is still out. Now that we know it is a potential game changer though, next time there might be more blocks placed there and a greater battle for supremacy. In turn that could let someone else slip through and score heavily elsewhere which could make it interesting. It’ll probably get another outing soon as we can’t let Green remain unbeaten.

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While the second game of Imhotep was going on, at Blue’s suggestion, the other group got on with Isle of Skye: From Chieftain to King. This won the Kennerspiel des Jahres this year and has proved very popular with our group as there is quite a bit of variability in the set up ensuring the games remain interesting. Despite the fact that she wasn’t playing, it was Blue’s suggestion as she knew that Black, Burgundy and Pine liked it a lot and thought that Ivory might appreciate it too. Borrowing heavily from tile-laying games like Carcassonne, Isle of Skye is a much deeper game without adding an awful lot to the rules. The idea is that players draw three tiles from a bag and and then secretly choose one to discard and set prices for the other two. This is done by placing the tiles in front of a screen and a discard token and money for the player’s stash behind. The money remains in place for the duration of the round, unless the corresponding tile is purchased by another player.

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This mechanism is very clever as if nobody else wants the tile, then the player uses the money to purchase it themselves. Thus, it is critically important to correctly evaluate the worth of the tile, depending on whether it is most desirable to sell it or keep it. The other clever part of the game is the scoring: This is mostly carried out at the end of each of the six rounds. At the start of the game, four scoring tiles are drawn at random and these are used in different combinations at the end of the rounds in such a way that each appears a total of three times, but only one is used in the first round while three are used in the final round. This time, the first two scoring tiles drawn both rewarded mountain ranges, so although this could have made for an interesting, competitive game, in the interests of balance, we decided to chuck them back and start again.

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The four scoring tiles were: five points for the player with the most money and two for the player with the next most (A); two points for each cow on the road connected to the castle (B); three points for each vertical row with more than three tiles (C) and one point for each completed terrain (D). Burgundy started collecting cattle while Black went for sheep. Maybe it was because Black got there first, or perhaps it was because someone misheard, but Pine (who can usually be counted on to go for a woolly fleece) tried to use ships to build his score. Purple isn’t a great whiskey drinker, but as usual, she built her strategy on a foundation of barrels. This didn’t leave much for Ivory, but there is always someone who struggles with a lack of cash and someone else who seems unnecessarily flush. This time it was Ivory who made a killing on his tiles and with money in the scoring tiles it guaranteed him a solid number of points to build on. It was a another close game with only five points between first and third. It was Burgundy who just pipped Black to finish in front however, with Pine a close third.

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Red and Magenta were about to make a move, but with Isle of Skye still going, they stuck about for a couple more rounds of Unter Spannung, which Red and Blue took again, though it was a bit closer this time. As the other group finished and Ivory headed off too, the rump were left to play one last game. Black had been keen to play Pi mal Pflaumen, but had missed out when it was the “Feature Game” a few weeks back, so he was very keen to give it a go. This game is a relatively simple little card game, but one that we struggled with the rules for last time and contrived to make a bit of a mess of this time too. Pi mal Pflaumen (or “Oh my Plums!” as we call it in a sideways reference to another little card game, Oh My Goods!), is a trick taking game with elements of set collecting and lovely artwork. The idea is that each card features a fruit, a number and most also have some sort of special action. Each player begins with a hand of cards and, starting with the start player, everyone takes it in turns to play one card. Then, the player who played the highest value card chooses one of the cards which they place face up in a tableau in front of them, before they carry out the action associated with the card.

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

– Image by boardGOATS

Last time we played, we had a fairly extensive discussion about the rules. The rules are a little unclear: they clearly state that “when a card is taken you must immediately carryout its action”, but they don’t make it clear whether this applies to claiming points on “Fruit Mix” cards as well. We couldn’t remember how we played last time, but this time we played that points could only be claimed when the card was taken (with cards in the player’s tableau used to fulfill the condition). In an added complication, we also had to decide what implications this had for cards that players have stolen. The rules state that “you can immediately use a stolen card to create a Fruit Mix”. Initially we presumed that this applied only to the fruit mix cards, but a little doubt began to set in. Checking the rules fora online after the event suggested that Fruit Mix cards from the tableau could also be claimed, and the key phrase in the rules stated that “one or more Fruit Mixes” can be claimed when a card is taken, which is only possible if cards in the tableau are used, but this only became apparent some time after the game.

– Image by boardGOATS

It was another tight game with everyone claiming some low scoring Fruit Mixes in the first round, but Burgundy took a slight lead making him a target for the rest of the game. In the second and third round, the value of the fruit mixes on the cards increases adding a bit of all or nothing element to the game. For example, Blue had spent much of the game with low cards and, as a result had ended up taking the last card more than her fair share. The last card comes with a bonus “Plum” card though, so if she had managed to pick up the twenty-five, she could have claimed a massive twelve points for a total of four Plum cards. Purple did her best to help Blue out, but Black had a large pile of π cards and with Burgundy and Pink’s help was able to control things. In the end it was Pink who finished with the most points, just three clear of Blue with Black in third place.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning outcome: Well balanced games also make for tight results.