The first three people to arrive started off with a quick game of Incan Gold. This is a relatively short “push your luck” type game where players have to balance chance against increasingly high stakes and out-manoeuvre the other miners to end with the most gem stones in their tent.

Just as we finished playing, two more people walked through the door, so as it was 8 o’clock, we started the night’s “Feature Game”. This was Finstere Flure (aka Fearsome Floors), which is a silly, yet clever game that seemed to repeatedly catch us out. Everyone has a number of tokens each of which moves by a different amount with players trying to get from one side of the board to the other and escape from Fürst Fieso (The Monster). The clever part is that the monster is attracted to the nearest player and changes direction whenever his path takes him closer to someone else. This makes predicting his movement very difficult and led to much hilarity as the monster repeatedly caught and ate people (especially when they were very close to winning).

The final game of the night was Niagara and was quite tightly fought.  This is a very unusual game where the central strip of the board is made of perspex disks that move, representing the river Niagara, moving at the end of every round.  Players have two little boats that they use to travel up and down the river to collect gems, but beware – anything too close to the Falls risks a watery end.

Learning Outcome: Hard won gems can be just as easily lost when water, landslide, spiders or worst of all, thieving gamers are about!