Category Archives: Games Night

11th June 2024

The pub was not as busy as last time, and in any case, Pink, Blue, Black and Purple were there in good time for food. Once they had finished, they managed to squeeze in a quick game of Rome in a Day while they were waiting for food and eating. This is a cute little tile-laying game Black and Purple picked up from UK Games Expo as few days back. It is a bit like Kingdomino with the “I cut, you choose” mechanism to allocate the tiles. The “I cut, you choose” mechanism is used in a number of other games like, Castles of Mad King Ludwig, Isle of Skye, and Dice Hospital, but it is a more fundamental part of games like San Marco, and particularly …aber bitte mit Sahne and New York Slice.

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In the case of Rome in a Day, Players start by taking five land tiles drawn at random and place two buildings on tiles one and two. They then divide the five tiles into two groups—a bigger and a smaller one (in any ratio) and add a crystal to the smaller land set before offering them to their neighbour. During the four rounds the game is played over this neighbour alternates, right, left, right, left. So, each round, players choose a set from their neighbour and these and the tiles they were left with are added to their domain. At the end of the game, any building that stands on or adjacent to land of its own colour will score for each tile in the group and then players score for the diamonds they have collected—the player with the most points is the winner.

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Like in Kingdomino where players score better for a medium number of crowns in a medium sized area than for a combination where one is large and the other small, players benefit more if they can surround one large area of coloured tiles with multiple buildings of the same colour. The most successful at this was Pink who scored well for three coloured areas, the green Olive Groves, the blue-purple Vineyards and the yellow Wheat Fields, while the others didn’t score at all. As a result of his ruthless scoring strategy, he finished with fifty four points, eight points clear of second place, which went to black by a single point.

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The game was just coming to an end when Jade, Sapphire, Plum and Byzantium arrived, followed by Pine, Ivory and Teal, and then the inevitable debate as to who would play what began. In the end, Jade led a group of four including Black, Purple and Sapphire in the “Feature Game“, Courtisans (the French for Courtier as it is spelled with an “i” rather than an “e”), which also came from UK Games Expo. The first game was essentially a learning opportunity where players tried to understand the learning the mechanics of the game. On their turn, each player receives and plays three coloured Family cards.

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One card is played at the Queen’s table to sway a family’s influence in a positive or negative way depending on whether it is placed above the table or below—at the end of the game, those with more cards below than above will have “Fallen from Grace”. The other two cards are then played, one in the player’s own Domain and the other in an opponent’s Domain. At the end of the game, each card a player has from an “Esteemed” Family is worth a point, while each card from an Family that has “Fallen from Grace” loses them a point. Thus the cards can be worth positive or negative points, depending on the Family’s status at the end of the game.

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Some of the Courtier cards have a special power, for example, Nobles count as two cards, Spies are played face down and their allegiance is only revealed at the end of the game, Assassins can be used to eliminate other Courtier cards, while Guards are not affected by Assassins. The game ends when the card deck has been exhausted and nobody has any cards left in hand. Players then total up their score and add any points earned from successful Secret Missions (each worth three) and the player with the most points is the winner.

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Black went first chosen by an app and began feeling his way forward. The group only realised there was a slight issue towards the end as they ran out of cards a bit early. It was then that it was discovered that at some point Black had acquired a second hand which he had placed on the table beside him. Despite only a few personal objectives being met mostly players scored scored well; the exception was Purple who was the only one to complete both objectives which added six points to her score at the end. It wasn’t enough for victory though, that went to Sapphire who had fifteen points, with Jade a point behind in second.

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Having felt their way through the first game, the group decided to play again. As the winner, Sapphire went first, and from the off, it was like everyone woke up together and all decided to attack. This time, everyone completed at least one objective, but this second game was a lot more treacherous and this was evidenced in the scoring. One of Jade’s objectives was to ensure at least one of the Houses had at least five cards bringing them into disrepute—Jade chose yellow which caused others problems. It didn’t have as much of an effect as his second objective though,which was to have fewer red cards than the player to his left. As a result of this, Black was the kind recipient of any red cards he acquired.

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While he tried to bring the reds into disrepute too, it wasn’t possible to do both. So, despite his best efforts they still scored positively and probably helped ensure Black’s victory with seven points, four more than Jade himself. The scores were much more diverse in the second game though with a range of sixteen points with the person at the back finishing with minus nine! Although savage, it had been a lot of fun; Jade commented that the game felt a bit like a dance with lots of nuance. Definitely one to play again, especially given the truly beautiful foiled cards which are a delight to play with.

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Meanwhile, Teal had picked up the Alpine expansion for one of his favourite games of the moment, Forest Shuffle, and was keen to give it its first outing. He was therefore joined by Plum, Byzantium and Pink who were also keen to see how it changed things. Forest Shuffle is mechanically a fairly straight-forward game, but playing it well is comparatively difficult as it requires good, robust strategies and an understanding of how to get the best from the cards. The idea is that players start with a hand of cards and, on their turn draw two more from the market (or “Clearing”) or play one into their tableau.

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There are two sorts of card, Trees and “Critters”. Before playing a Critter, players must have played a Tree, which then has spaces on all four sides. Birds and Butterflies are played to the canopy (i.e. above tree cards), Fungi and Amphibians are played at the bottom of the tree (i.e. below them) and Mammals are played either side. The clever part is that Critter cards are split so they show two critters (either left and right or top and bottom), so players choose which they would like to play, and where, tucking the other side under the tree, making the unplayed half invisible.

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The new Alpine expansion for Forest Shuffle only adds some thirty six cards to the game and, since roughly twenty additional cards are removed during setup, in practice it adds just sixteen to the deck. Of course, the cards are removed at random so many should be from the base game and the expansion adds new cards like the Mountain Hare, who scores as for the European Hare, but wants to stay alone so can’t share a space with another Hare. There is an extra Butterfly and more Trees too, which make these easier to score and help to balance the game somewhat. Additionally, there is the new Alpine Newt provides a new way of scoring, for players who have managed to pick up a lot of cards from the Alpine expansion cards.

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This time, Plum went for Trees in a big way with loads Horse Chestnuts which give more points the more you have on them up to forty-nine for seven or more. While she didn’t quite make the full seven, she scored a total of forty-eight for her Trees, fifteen more than the nearest player (Byzantium) and more than double what anyone else took. They, of course, got points elsewhere though. Pink, for example, went for Butterflies and, with the additional Phoebus Apollo Butterfly, took thirty-five points for them alone. Byzantium opted for a deer strategy and received a total of sixty-one points for all his Critters.

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The winner was Teal however, with everyone else totally overcome by “The Lynx-Effect”, where each Lynx he had gave ten points as long as he had a Roe Deer to keep them fed. Perhaps his victory was to be expected as he has played the game quite a bit with family, but his finishing score of a hundred and fifty was some way ahead of Pink and Plum who tied for second place with a hundred and nineteen. Overall, the Alpine expansion adds some pretty artwork and made a few of the alternative strategies a lot more viable, reducing the apparent dominance of Wolves and Deer which it has often been claimed are overly powerful.

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With the Courtisans and Forest Shuffle groups sorted, that left just three players without a game. Since Ivory and Pine both missed out on playing Little Town last time and neither wanted a particularly late night the decision was made to eschew Key Flow in favour of the lighter, quicker, tile-laying game. Play is very simple: players take it in turns to place their Workers in a space on the central board and then activate the eight spaces around them. These eight spaces could be Buildings, but may also be Trees, Rocks or Lakes pre-printed on the board giving resources (Wood, Rock or fish respectively). With three players, there are four Workers in each of four rounds and the player with the most points at the end is the winner.

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Little Town has had a few outings, but was the “Feature Game” last time, with two games played simultaneously, both with the starting tile set up. This time, a random tile setup was used drawn from the full set that included the Pier, the Marketplace, the Bar, from the variant set as well as the Shop, the Workshop, the Goldmine, the Bakery, the Pawnshop, the Quarry and Wheat Fields from the basic set. The twelve Buildings were completed by the Temple, the Cornucopia, and the Sushi Bar from the Goodie Buildings mini expansion. Blue and Pine both complained that their Objectives were considerably more difficult than Ivory’s as he claimed all his quite quickly.

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Eventually though, all three managed to complete all their Objectives. Pine misunderstood the fact that each Worker needs to be fed at the end of every round, rather than just at the end of the game. As it was a genuine error, rather than cripple his game at the end of the first round, Blue and Ivory let him pay with other resources leaving his unfortunate workers to gnaw on bits of stone, wood and coins. Other than that, the game proceeded according to the rules. Ivory majored on trying to convert Fish into points, while Blue tried to do the same with Wheat and Pine played the merchant, building the Gold mine and the Shop.

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As the game came to a close, Ivory had a substantial lead with forty-two, ahead of Blue in second with thirty and Pine with eighteen. This was without any of the points from the buildings (which Blue had a lot of) or from leftover money (of which Pine had an enormous pile). As it turned out, money is not worth much at the end of the game, and although Blue’s buildings were worth considerably more than Ivory’s, she still fell two points short of his final total of fifty-seven. So although we’ve still not been able to use the “sixty point tokens” we were only a handful of points shy.

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The others were still playing, so after some discussion, Blue, Pine and Ivory decided to give the 2022 Spiel des Jahres nominee, SCOUT, an outing. This is a clever little card game with two key features: firstly, as in Bohnanza, players can’t rearrange their hands, and secondly, the cards have different values depending which way up they are. Like Tichu or Haggis, SCOUT is a climbing game, that is to say, on each turn players are aiming to beat the previous score. In SCOUT, that means players have to play a higher value or larger meld, or a longer run or one of a higher value (and a meld of the same size always beats a run).

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These cards are played from hand, but have to be consecutive. In the event that a player can’t or doesn’t want to play cards from their hand (aka “Showing”), they may instead take a card from either end of the current winning set and add it to their hand anywhere, and either way up (aka “Scouting”). Additionally, once per round, players can “Scout and Show” which is take a card and then also play cards. The round ends when either nobody in the round has been able to Show or a player plays their last card and has nothing left in hand. At the end of the round, players lose a point for every card they have left, and this is taken from the total from their scoring cards and points earned when others Scout from their display.

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With three players, there were three rounds, the first of which was finished by Pine, though Ivory nearly managed to check out, leaving Blue with a large handful. The second round was much closer with Blue playing a nine-card run (though as cards in front of players at the end don’t score, and very quickly nobody could beat it, she didn’t get the advantage she felt she deserved). The final round was taken by Pine again, but it was also close again. The total favoured Pine, who finished with a total of twenty-six, a clear victory with Blue just pipping Ivory to second place by a single point.

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Forest Shuffle and SCOUT were both still going when the Courtisans finished, so they quickly set about playing a light filler that Jade had picked up from the Hachette UK stand that he had worked on at UKGE. Line-it, is another card game, played with a deck that consists of cards in four colors, numbered one to a hundred and six “Bet” cards (numbered three to five), which are shuffled together and laid out to create a market consisting of slightly more cards than there are players. Players then take it in turns to take a card and either add it to their hand or add it to the row of cards in front of them (their Line). There is a hand limit of two and the row must continue either increasing or decreasing.

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If a player can’t add the card to their hand or their Line (because it would break the ascending/descending pattern), they have to score their Line, then play that card to start a new Line. After drafting a card, players may choose to add one card from their hand to their Line and then score it. When scoring, if there is a Bet card in the Line, if there are more cards added since the Bet card than the value depicted on the Bet card, players get chips equal to the value of the Bet. If the Bet is lost, the player takes negative points instead. Finally, three cards are discarded from the Line and the others turned over and placed in the player’s scoring pile.

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Once each player has had a turn, all remaining Bet cards are discarded, and the other cards are placed under the Jackpot token that corresponds to their colour—these can be claimed whenever a player adds the third card of the respective color to their Line. The game ends when the draw deck depleted, and each player plays one last card from their hand, then scores their line and tallies their points, the player with the most points is the winner. As he had won the second game of Courtisans, Black went first.

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Black and Purple both took (and completed) Bet cards early in the game, whereas Jade didn’t even take because his Lines weren’t right when the Bet cards were available because just didn’t make sense. Purple won the first jackpot of the game which was a tidy little stack of blue Diamond cards and Sapphire also picked up Jackpot cards later in the game. The game plays quite quickly and smoothly and this time out, it was close, well, close between Black, Jade and Purple—Sapphire was streets ahead, finishing with twenty-six points, a long way clear of Black in second with fifteen.

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Learning Outcome: UK Games Expo is a good source of new games.

28th May 2024

When Blue, Pink and Cobalt arrived for food, the pub was really busy and they struggled to find a table, ending up in the Bar. Their food had arrived by the time the others started to turn up, and although there was another free table by this time, it wasn’t conducive to playing games. Green, who we’d been missing in recent weeks arrived with Lilac for the first time in absolutely ages so there was a lot of catching up to do. It wasn’t long before more tables began to clear, and the group managed to find several together in the restaurant area, and once the feeders had bolted the remains of their supper they joined the group and everyone began to decide what they’d play.

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First up was the “Feature Game“, Little Town, a resource management, worker placement and tile placement game where players take on the role of architects guiding teams building a small town. There were two games of this—one with Blue, Pink and Teal, and the other with Black Purple and Lime. It is quite a simple little game: players start with a set number of Workers (four in the three-player game) and building Markers (six for three players). On their turn, they can place a Worker in an empty space on the central player board/map, or spend resources and build a Construction, placing a Marker on it.

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When they place a Worker, the player activates the eight spaces surrounding it. These can include Woodland, Mountain, or Lake to get Wood, Rock or Fish. Wood and Rock are useful to build, while Fish is important for players to feed their Workers at the end of the round (one Fish or Wheat per Worker, every round). Players can also activate Constructions, their own for free, and another player’s by paying them one Coin. There are twelve Buildings and five Wheat fields available for construction at the start of the game—once they are built, they are not replaced.

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There are twenty-nine buildings in the base game which can be drawn at random, but this time, both groups used the basic set (marked with a robin). This meant that some of the Objective cards which are Building dependent could not be used, so in the end, only the cards that didn’t require specific Buildings were used. The Objectives therefore included things like “Gather at least five resources in the same turn” or “Have more Buildings than Workers”—these are scored during the game. Buildings come in two types: Those that give Resources when activated, and those that can be used to convert Resources into other Resources, Coins or Points. The game lasts four rounds, after which players score for each of their Buildings and one point for any three unused Coins.

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Once the rules had been outlined, both groups started playing. Before they’d got more than a turn in, however, Cobalt commented that he was surprised that Blue hadn’t got metal coins to go with the game, at which point, Blue produced her utility set and both groups swiftly made the substitution. Unfortunately, these new coins were a little slippery leading to a couple of rounds of “Hunt the Game Piece”. Little Town is a really good little game though, accessible, but with meaningful decisions and one that doesn’t outstay its welcome. Despite starting with essentially the same setup, the two games, progressed quite differently.

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Pink and Blue built Points engines converting Coins and Wheat respectively, while Cobalt converted a Coin into Wheat and Fish, then and Wheat into lots of Coins. On the neighbouring table, however, the Coin to Wheat and Wheat to Coins buildings were owned by different people, Black and Lime respectively while Purple was busy converting Wood into Points. Both games were quite tight, with Lime’s forty-two beating Black into second place by just two points. The other game was even tighter though. Pink rolled back his final move following a suggestion by Blue to pick up an extra point, but she would have done better to keep her mouth shut as that extra point meant he tied for the lead with Blue on fifty-five.

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It was as players were discussing the game and starting to pack away that Pink spotted a way of getting another extra point, but this was deemed too late and the game was deemed a tie. Packing away, there was some confusion as the manifest indicated there should be twenty-nine Objective cards, whereas Blue’s copy had thirty. Despite several recounts (and confirmation that there weren’t any in the Goodie Buildings mini expansion), the issue couldn’t be solved, and the group came to the conclusion that one more than expected was better than one less…

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Meanwhile, on the next table Teal was leading a game of Salmon Run with Green, Pine and Lilac. This is a game that was played quite a few times in the group some years ago when it was first released, but the last time it got an outing was in 2015—nearly ten years ago. Teal had decided that his copy had been sitting on the shelf unplayed and unloved for too long and it was time for it to move on. It got a stay of execution though, and as a result, it got a Tuesday night outing. A fast paced, deck-building, race game, Salmon Run is a sort of cross between Dominion and Flamme Rouge. Although the game is not particularly complex, the first game was a learning game.

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The idea is players are Salmon, racing to be first to get to the Spawning Pool. The board is modular and therefore the River can be changed to give variety and replayability. Players start with a deck of cards containing three Swim Forward, three Swim Right, three Swim Left, one Wild and one Bear and draw four of these. On their turn, players can play up to three cards, however, playing three means they will draw a Fatigue card. These will ultimately reduce players’ choice and slow their Salmon down, so mostly players stick to playing two, replenishing their hand to four cards at the end of their turn.

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Depending on the modules used, the River includes obstacles like Rocks, Currents and Rapids, as well as special spaces which allow players to pick up special cards (that can be used to counter Currents, Rapids and Eagles) to add to their Swim deck. Teal began by moving a Bear onto the space with Pine’s Salmon, giving him a Fatigue card. Then, much to Pine’s annoyance, Lilac and then Green did the same before fianally Lilac did it again. Pine was very unimpressed—for one who loves wildlife, he really wasn’t happy about repeated visits from all those bears!

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Green I played a Rapids card and there was some discussion where the card should be discarded to, but in the end there was no catching Teal, who was first to the Spawning Pool, and was some four spaces ahead Lilac, his closest challenger. As Little Town was still going on both tables, the group decided to play a second time now they knew how to play as they thought they’d be quicker (which they were). The River was a changed a little to make it a bit more challenging and then the Salmon began their second run. This time, Pine, Teal and Lilac went one way round the rapids, while Green went the other.

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This time the bear was moved away from players by Teal so nobody got caught. As the River took a bend to the right, Green ended up with only Swim Left cards so had to just discard and bang his salmonny head against the rocks, falling behind. Teal and Pine had both picked up a lot of Fatigue cards, but they both got to the Spawning Pool. As Pine had one less though, he was the winner of the second game. It had been a lot of fun (despite the Bear attacks, and the headaches from banging against the rocky bank), so maybe the stay of execution deserves to be extended a while longer.

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With both games finished and the late start, there wasn’t time for something long, so as is often the case in such circumstances, instead of lots of discussion, the group decided to play the old favourite, 6 Nimmt!. With ten, the group decided to play the game over one round, which meant everyone started with ten cards, a lot more than usual. This didn’t seem to improve the quality, however, a sentiment that was epitomised by one comment, “These are all bad with a capital F…” The first few rounds were a little slower than usual as everyone had more cards to choose from than usual.

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Once everyone had chosen their card, they were simultaneously revealed and added to the end of the appropriate row, with players picking up cards when theirs was the sixth card to be added. Nobody managed to avoid picking up cards, but unusually, the scores were all quite close—so close that the winners, Green and Blue, tied with nine, while Pink took third place with eleven and Cobalt top-scored with twenty-three. One game is rarely enough when it comes to 6 Nimmt!, and everyone was keen for another mad ten-player game. This time the scores were more diverse: Lilac succeeded in avoiding the chaos and won with a clear round, while Teal added thirty-six to his first round twenty two to finish with the most points overall (Cobalt only took seventeen in the second game).

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Blue took second place in the second game with five (giving her the best combined game total of fourteen), while Pine came in third with ten points. Green was the most consistent with nine and eleven, but Lilac claimed the nearest to a “Mike Game” with one exceptional round and one awful one, though her bad wasn’t as bad as his usually were. Everyone was just packing up when the evening came to a smashing end as the wine glass that Lime had carefully put safely to one side bit the dust. Oh well, less washing up…

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Learning Outcome: Little Towns can give quite big games.

14th May 2024

Pine was already sitting outside marking his birthday, when Blue and and Pink rocked up and ordered their tea. Jade and Sapphire soon joined the group, ferried by newcomer, Tangerine who not only brought gamers, but also his shiny new copy of the “Feature Game“, Faraway, which he had won at Gweeplefest a few days earlier. This game is has been a bit of a hidden gem whose popularity is rapidly gaining traction as more people play it. It is quite a simple game, but one which really messes with the head. Some of the group played it a few weeks back and it was so popular that it seemed a good idea to Feature it so more of the group could try it.

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The story is that players are exploring the mysterious land of Alula in search of its secrets, meeting its inhabitants and listing its wonders in order to gain more fame than everyone else. In practice, however, it is a fairly simple little card game with a market with a trick-taking type element. Players simultaneously chose one of the numbered cards from their hand and starting with the the player that played the lowest card (similar to 6 Nimmt! or Kingdomino), everyone takes it in turns to choose one from the market to add to their hand. Players then simultaneously choose another card, and again, choose one to add to their hand. The game ends after everyone has played a total of eight cards, and then everyone scores.

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There are a couple of very clever things about the game. Firstly, if the card someone plays is numbered higher than their previous card, they take a card from the Sanctuary deck. These cards a really important because of the second clever element, the scoring. Each card has a number and a colour, while some also have resources and some have also have scoring conditions. The scoring is clever because the cards are played left to right, but the scoring is from right to left—at first glance, this looks like it makes things easy, because early in the game players find out what they need to get points and can then focus on getting the resources they need as the game progresses.

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However, the scoring is tensioned against the ability to get Sanctuary bonus cards. This is because the scoring cards are generally those that have a higher number and are therefore the ones players want to play first (following them with resource cards which generally have a lower face value). To get a Sanctuary card though, players have to play a higher value card than the immediately preceding one, and Sanctuary cards are very useful because they are eligible for scoring regardless of when they are played. Thus, trying to play cards increasing and decreasing in value to score the most points backwards really messes with players’ heads!

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Tangerine, started one game and explained the rules to half the group, comprising Plum, Byzantium, Blue, Pink and Pine, while he ate his supper. Meanwhile, Jade and Sapphire took their copy to a neighbouring table where they were joined by Teal, Black and Purple, and started a second game. Although it is a very simple game, the backwards forwards up and down thing got to several of the group at various points, including Blue (who lost the ability to count), Teal (who did all his scoring forwards instead of backwards), Pine (who struggled with the how maps worked) and Purple (who couldn’t get her head round the reverse scoring). Jade’s game was the first to finish, with Sapphire beating jade into second place by a single point and Black taking third.

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There was a general appreciation of the art and the mechanism though the theme was a bit invisible. There had been such confusion, however, that the group decided to “do a Lime” and play again. This time, the finishing order was exactly the same, but the game wasn’t as close with Sapphire’s eighty-two being the highest score of the evening. On the other table, Plum was the victor with seventy, followed by Tangerine and Byzantium in third. This game had taken a little longer, and with six, there is a lot of downtime, so although everyone had enjoyed it, the group decided to split into two groups of three. Blue tempted Plum and Sapphire to a game of Calico with cries of “Kittens!”, while Pink and Pine lured Tangerine into a game of Ticket to Ride: San Francisco.

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San Francisco is one of the smaller city versions of Ticket to Ride. The game play is much the same as the original, but the maps are smaller, players have fewer pieces and they only play a maximum of four. In all the games, players take it in turns to take coloured cards into their hand from the market, or play cards to place pieces on the board connecting locations to satisfy tickets and score points. Each version of the game has its own specific unique rules, and this one is no exception with players collecting Souvenirs which give points at the end of the game. Players collect these by building a route (in this case made of trolley cars rather than trains) to the cities where they are available.

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Each player can only collect one of each Souvenir, but a full set of seven gives twelve points, which is a lot. Tickets are also always key though. This time, Pink escaped early from Alcatraz to Twin Peaks which gave him a high scoring eight points. Unlike Pine (who always seems to draw routes he’s already completed), Tangerine was unlucky and and instead picked up some negative points late in the game. It was very close between Pink and Pine though, but the Souvenirs made the difference and Pink (with five) just edged it, beating Pine (who only had two Souvenirs) by three points.

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Meanwhile, the kitty-philes were playing the extremely frustrating game Calico, which is all about trying to entice cats to come and sleep on a patchwork quilt by making it with the patterns they like. In this game, players take it in turns to place a coloured, patterned tile from their hand into their quilt board before taking a replacement from the market. Everyone had played it before, but it had been a while, so the rules needed a bit of revision. Each player starts with three tiles in a fixed location with scoring criteria for the neighbouring tiles—satisfying these for either colour or pattern gives points, with more points for for those that satisfy both (which is not easy).

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Players then also receive a coloured button for every group of three adjacent tiles of the same colour (with a bonus if they get all six possible colours). Finally, there are the cats that give Calico its name. This time the cats in question were Almond, Tibbit and Shop Cat (from the Kickstarter Promo). Almond was attracted by a group of five tiles of one of the patters in a close packed predefined shape while Tibbit found a set of four tiles of one of the given patterns in any shape most appealing. Shop Cat was lured to the player with the longest connected chain of tiles in one of the given patterns with the player with the second longest attracting a smaller cat (worth fewer points).

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This last one was the subject of some debate as Byzantium ended up with both the longest and second longest chain and it was unclear from the rules whether he would get both. In the end he allowed the smaller Shop Cat to wander off, but fortunately it didn’t make any difference to the placings. Almond looked by far the most challenging kitty to attract and initially it looked impossible without failing on the fixed starting challenges. Plum thought she had made a mess of things, but Byzantium pointed out how Almond could be enticed using some of the partial tiles around the border of her player board and she was the only one to ultimately have that particular kitty to cuddle.

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Blue started badly, and in this game, when that happens things usually only get worse, which they did. Byzantium and Plum both picked up twenty-seven points for their buttons, but in both starting tiles and kitties, Byzantium had the edge (even without the second Shop Cat). In the end his final score of sixty-one points gave him a significant margin of victory, by seven points. Everyone agreed that Calico is a good game, but a very frustrating one when players can’t get the tiles they need. So Byzantium echoed everyone’s feelings when he commented, “That was fun, but very frustrating—I’ll be ready to play it again in another eighteen months…”

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As Faraway and Ticket to Ride had both finished, Tangerine took Jade and Sapphire home and Teal also headed off. That left Black, Purple, Pine and Pink to play a quick game of the old favourite, Coloretto. This is a very simple set collecting game, that makes a great filler. The idea is that players either take the top coloured chameleon card from the deck and place it on a cart, or take a card and add the cards to their collection. Players score points for their largest three sets (up to six cards, worth twenty-one points), while everything else scores negatively. The player with the most points is the winner. Playing with the Jubiläumsausgabe edition, as usual, there was a discussion about what the Golden Joker does and how it differs from the normal Joker.

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In the end, Pink was the victor and, for the second game in a row, pushed Pine into second place, this time with Black just behind. The evening looked to be ending there, when a couple of people from the bar came over and asked what we were doing. That led to a fairly wide-ranging discussion about Monopoly, Cluedo and Mystery of the Abbey amongst other games. The evening really did come to an end eventually, after Pink and Blue had dragged one of the interested parties into a quick game of No Thanks!. Unfortunately, there was a misunderstanding and he top-scored with ninety-three, but hopefully he understood that some of the games we play are not that complicated.

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Learning Outcome: Playing forwards and backwards at the same time makes heads hurt.

30th April 2024

Blue and Pink were unusually early and had already finished their pizzas when Pine rolled in. He was soon followed by Black and Purple and then Lime and Teal giving a total of seven for one of the quietest nights for a long time. With seven, the question was how to split the group and what would everyone play. For seven players, the go-to game is generally Bohnanza, which Blue inevitably suggested. Pink suggested playing it later, but when Teal commented that he’d never actually played it, that was the decision made. There was no way that state of affairs could continue, so the “Feature Game” (which was to be Canvas) was put on the back burner until later, and the Beans came out.

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Bohnanza is best part of thirty years old and is, despite him designing a huge number of excellent and popular games since, including Agricola, Caverna, Le Havre, A Feast for Odin and Patchwork, is arguably, still one of Uwe Rosenberg‘s best games. It is a really simple game of set collecting and trading, that when explained sounds strange, but when played is great fun. While everyone else chatted, Blue explained the rules and how to play to Teal. The important thing is players cannot rearrange the cards in their hand (similar to recent Spiel des Jahres nominee, SCOUT).

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So, players start with a hand of cards, and, on their turn, must plant the first Bean card in the front of their hand into one of the two “Bean Fields” in front of them. Then they may, if they wish plant the next Bean into one of their Fields, but each Field can only contain one type of Bean. Once they have finished planting from their hand, the active player turns over the top two Bean cards, which must be planted, but may be traded and planted in another player’s Field if agreements can be reached. Once these Beans have been dealt with, the active player can trade any cards from their hand, but all cards involved in any trades must be planted straight away.

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Finally, the active player tops up their hand taking Bean cards into their hand (three in the case of the seven player game). At any point, players can harvest one or both their Bean Fields converting some of the cards into Bean Thaler (according to the “Beanometer”), placing them face-down in their scoring pile, returning the other cards to the discard pile. However, players cannot harvest a Field with a single single bean in it unless all their Fields have only the one Bean in them (a rule that can sometimes make things unbelievably difficult). The game ends after three passes through the deck and the player with the most Thaler at the end is the winner.

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There are a few, very clever things that really make the game work. Firstly, there are different numbers of the different types of Beans in the deck—some beans are very common and give a small return, others are quite rare and give a better return. The number of each card present in the deck at the start of the game is printed on them. This is key, because it helps players to work out the rarity and therefore the value of different Beans when arranging trades. However, the value also changes according to the situation in the game and how many players want each Bean type at the time.

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Further, because the rare Beans give a larger yield, more of these are removed from the deck, which makes them increasingly rare as the game progresses. This is because there are disproportionately fewer in the discard pile when it is shuffled to give the new deck. Players can also buy a third Bean Field, but choosing to do this is a real gamble and only worthwhile if it can be done early in the game. Choosing when to harvest is also critical, because harvesting a big Field just before the discard pile is shuffled will increase the length of the game. Finally, players can be generous in their trades in the hope that the generosity will be returned, however, giving away trades too cheaply can cost a player the game.

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Once Blue had finished explaining the game, Black started and explained his way through his turn. Teal quickly caught on and got engaged in trading and planting Beans with everyone else. There was a lot of debate about players buying their third Bean Fields with about half the players buying one and Teal leaving it to the second round (much against Black’s advice). Several people, including Purple, Teal and Pine got into Black-eyed Beans—quite an achievement given how few of them there are in the pack—and Blue had a couple of goes with the similarly rare Red Beans. Pink tried for Soy with mixed success and almost everyone planted some combination of Wax, Coffee and Blue Beans at some point during the game.

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Teal quickly realised how quick you have to be declaring an interest in a trade in a game where if you snooze, you lose. And with seven you have to be keep an eye on what’s going on, which can be difficult given how far away some players are. In the corner, Black quietly got on with his game eschewing the third Bean Field option as he felt there wasn’t time in the seven player game to recoup the cost, and perhaps he was proved right as he ran out the eventual winner with twelve Bean Thaler, closely followed by Pine with eleven and Blue with ten. It had been a lot of fun, but as usual, had lasted longer than it really should, leaving little time before the first people needed to head home.

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So after some discussion (where pink suggested Ticket to Ride: Northern Lights again), everyone settled down to play 6 Nimmt!. This had recently had an outing with the new Jumping Cow mini-expansion, but this time the group chose to play it without the additional madness. 6 Nimmt! is also a simple game that is a lot of fun: Players start with a hand of cards and simultaneously choose one to play, then, starting with the lowest value, these are added one at a time to the four rows on the table. If a player’s card is the sixth in the row, instead, they take the first five into their scoring pile and their card becomes the first in the row.

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This is another very clever game that does a lot with very little (which is probably why it is still so popular despite the fact it is thirty years old). Different cards give a different number of points (or Nimmts), and players can also introduce a little bit of their own randomness by playing a card lower than the final card in all the available rows and thus, taking a row of their choice, upsetting everyone else’s plans. The Jumping Cow mini-expansion adds more of this, but the group felt it didn’t really improve the game, so stuck with the chaos and fun of the original game, also eschewing the mathematical complexity of the Professional Variant.

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This time, both Pink and Pine managed to avoid picking up any cards in the first round. However, Blue only picked up two Nimmts and Teal collected seven leaving it all to play for, at least for most people—Black’s twenty Nimmts had already put him out of the game. In the second half, Lime picked up twenty-four giving him the top score of thirty-eight (some way ahead of Purple with total twenty-nine). Black managed a clear round, but there was nothing he could do about his pile of Nimmts from the first round. It was tight between the top three, but Pink just took victory with ten, three fewer than Blue and Pine who tied for second place. From there, the evening deteriorated into chatter and we decided to leave the “Feature Game“, Canvas, for another day.

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Learning Outcome: You can have a lot of fun with nothing but an old deck of cards.

2nd April 2024

While Blue, Pink and Cobalt were finishing their supper, Plum led a quick game of Draftosaurus with Black, Purple and Cobalt (who had already finished his pizza). Cobalt was new to the game, so after a quick rules explanation the group were passing dino-meeples left and right and building themselves exciting dino-parks. The game is really quick and simple: players start with a handful of wooden dino-meeples, and on each turn, they draft one, that is to say, they choose one and pass the rest on. The chosen dino-meeples are then placed in the players’ parks, obeying the rules on the Die (the active player who rolled the Die excepted).

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The Die roll forces players to choose from locations in one half of the board, or restricts them to playing in an empty pen or one without a T-rex, making things considerably harder. Players draft a hand clockwise, and then a second hand anti-clockwise, after which, points are scored for each pen and totalled up to find the winner. This was Plum’s fiftieth game—it was one of their group’s go-to warm-up and filler games played remotely during the global pandemic on BoardGameArena. Although her 24% success rate seems really good at first, at four players, one out of four could be seen as about par.

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Plum marked her milestone with a change of strategy, forced by the Dice to go for the most T-rexes, but it worked giving her victory with forty-one points. Purple took a very respectable second with thirty-five points—one of her best scores in this game. From there, Cobalt headed off to play Meadow with Blue, Jade and Sapphire, while everyone else joined Plum, Black and Purple to play the “Feature Game“, which to mark the thirtieth anniversary of 6 Nimmt!, was the new Jumping Cow mini-expansion. 6 Nimmt! is one of the group’s favourite games and was arguably responsible for keeping us sane when we were stuck at home in 2020 and as a result, won the Golden GOAT Award.

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The game is super-simple: players simultaneously choose a card from their hand and then, starting with the card with the lowest face value, they are added to one of four row. Each card is added to the row that ends with the highest value card that is lower than the card to be placed. If that means the row now has six cards, the active player takes the first five cards in the row into their scoring pile, with their card becoming the new first card. The new Jumping Cow expansion is a single additional card that lurks at the end of the row. Cards are added as normal, however, when one is added to the Jumping Cow row, the Cow jumps to another row, the one with the lowest face value at the end.

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The Jumping Cow Card does not have a value itself, but it does add to the number of cards in the row. So if the card added is the sixth, the player takes the other four cards and then the Cow jumps. If the row the Cow jumps to has five cards in it, the active player takes four of those too before the Cow jumps again… Thus, as Plum discovered this time, multiple jumps can lead to collecting a lot of points! The game was the usual entertaining fun, but although the Jumping Cow expansion adds more madness, 6 Nimmt! is a near perfect game that needs little to no improvement (although we have found the Professional Variant an occasional worthwhile addition).

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This time, the top scorer (aided by the Jumping Cow) was Plum with sixty-one, closely followed by Ivory with fifty-seven. Purple did very well to limit her takings to nineteen, but she was beaten into third place by Pink who just kept his to single figures with nine. The winner was Teal, however, with just four from the first hand and a clear round from the second. From there, with six, the options were limited, but the group decided to stick together and, after eschewing Bohnanza, opted for another golden oldie: For Sale. Remarkably, Ivory had somehow not played this before, and was really taken with it, so much so that he immediately looked to see if he could get a copy and everyone was shocked to find it was out of print and the only copy available was for forty pounds on ebay!

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For Sale is really simple: Players start with a hand of cash and use this to bid for buildings, with a face value from one to thirty. In the second half of the game, cheques are revealed and players have to choose one of their properties—the player with the highest value building then takes the highest value cheque, thus the idea is not to waste high value buildings when the takings available are low. Pink, Plum and Teal were all really close and ended in a three-way tie for third place. Ivory and Purple were some way in front, but separated by a single point with Purple just taking victory, with a final taking of fifty-six thousand dollars.

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Casting about for another game that plays well with six, Bohnanza was passed over once again, this time in favour of Saboteur. Saboteur is a hidden traitor game where players are Dwarves tunneling to find gold. With six players, the rules have either one or two Saboteurs, however, as the game is always difficult for the Saboteurs and impossible alone, the group chose to forgo the ambiguity and go for a guaranteed two Saboteurs. Once the Saboteurs knew who they were, everyone got a hand of cards: a mixture of tunnel cards and special cards. On their turn, players play a card and draw a new one. Tunnel cards extend the network, while special cards allow players to break or mend tools stopping other players from building tunnels (or reinstating that ability).

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Additionally, there are Treasure Map cards which allow players to look at one of the three potential gold cards to see if it is gold or coal, and Rockfall cards which allow players to collapse the tunnel by removing one card. Usually, the Saboteurs hide for as long as possible in an effort to acquire some good “Saboteury cards” and play them with a lot of impact. Choosing the right time for that reveal is really critical though, leaving it too late means there isn’t time to do enough damage. This time then, Black announced his position very early by playing an obviously obstructing tunnel card and was swiftly followed by Pink who compounded the poor Dwarves’ problems by playing a Rockfall card.

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The Evil Criminal Masterminds were aided by the fact that when the Dwarves played their Treasure Map cards they struggled to find the gold. The game turned out to be quite epic, but success just fell to the Saboteurs, giving them a rare victory. As Teal and Ivory waved farewell, the others looked for something else to play. Saboteur is a great game, and although it is not as old as 6 Nimmt!, this year is also Saboteur’s anniversary year. It is celebrating twenty years, as is another old favourite, No Thanks!. In choosing this, those that had played all five games had played over a hundred years of popular games in one evening.

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No Thanks! is a super simple, push-your-luck game, where players are trying to finish with the lowest score from the total face value of their cards minus any chips they have. On their turn, players either take the top card and any chips on it, or pay a chip to pass the problem on to the next player. There are thirty-three cards in the deck (numbered three to thirty-five), but nine are removed at random, which is what makes the game really tick—when scoring, players only count the lowest card of a run. This time. Pink top-scored with forty-nine points. Plum and Purple both took forty-eight points for their cards, but in Plum’s case this was off-set by her enormous pile of chips, leaving her with just twenty.

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It wasn’t enough though. Black managed to just scrape through with only a single chip left at the end, giving him a total of thirteen points, and with it, victory. While everyone else had been sampling a smorgasbord of golden oldie games, Jade, Blue, Cobalt and Sapphire were revisiting the relatively new Meadow, which they’d missed out on playing last time. This is a fairly simple game, where the complexity is in choosing and placing tokens to get cards that combine well together. Players take it in turns to play an Action Tokens either in the Market or round the Campfire, and complete the associated Actions. The Market consists of a four by four grid of face up cards.

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Players play an Action token in the market to define a row or column with the number on the token dictating which card they will take from that row or column. They then place a card in their play area. This can be the card just collected or one from the player’s hand, but the prerequisites must be satisfied. Playing around the Campfire gives a special action and the option to additionally place a bonus point token on a tree-stump between any pair of symbols currently displayed in the player’s area. At the end of the game, the total score for the cards played is added up together with any bonuses and the winner has the most points.

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Last time, the general feeling was that the game dragged a little with four, so Blue suggested that instead of playing with the full eight rounds, maybe playing with six (as for the three player game) would make things easier. Jade interpreted that as the suggestion to play with the three player board, but as quickly became apparent, the campfire circle is smaller with three, leaving fewer bonus spaces available making that element of the game very competitive. Blue and Sapphire were already committed to their strategy as placing later bonus tokens give more points, so they went for the bonuses doubly hard.

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Jade kept getting Cobalt’s name wrong in a way reminiscent of Blue with Ivory’s name some ten years ago—that lasted the best part of a year, but hopefully Jade will sort it out before then. It didn’t seem to put Cobalt/Chromium/Cadmium off his game though. From early on, he focused on building some Landscape cards adding some valuable Observation and Discovery cards. Sapphire’s starting hand included a Wolf icon for his card from the North deck, and he played that nice and early giving him the opportunity to use it to claim a couple of the bonus spots giving him all three and a total of nine points. Blue also claimed her third quite early leaving only two for Jade and Cobalt/Chromium/Cadmium to share between them.

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Although she couldn’t see it, going into the final couple of rounds it was tight between Blue and Cobalt/Chromium/Cadmium. The game is very tight though, with only four turns per round, so it is important to make sure they all count. In the final round, Blue was fortunate in going first and was able to grab and play a couple of high value cards. Jade and Sapphire also added a couple more cards to their tableau all of which made it really hard to call. In the end, Jade (who had the most valuable tableau) pipped Sapphire by a single point (after a couple of recounts) and Cobalt/Chromium/Cadmium was two points clear, finishing with forty points. The winner, however, perhaps thanks to those final couple of cards, was Blue with a total of forty-three.

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Learning Outcome: Golden Oldies are golden for a reason.

19th March 2024

There were a few absentees again, but the group still made it into double-figures. So, after the usual chit-chat, the group split into two—the first group playing the “Feature Game“, Meadow, while the other, larger group, played a couple of lighter games. Meadow is a very smooth, engine building, set-collection card game with charming artwork. Players take on the roles of explorers competing for the title of the most skilled nature observer. Reviews refer to it as a “Splendor Killer”, that is to say, these people feel it has a similar feel to Splendor, but is a better game. It is also considerably more complex, though not especially difficult in its own right.

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Players start with four or five Action tokens (depending on player count), a Road token and a double-sided Ground card. There are four decks of cards, North, South, East and West, and players also begin with a card from each of the North, East and West decks and two from the South deck. Players then take it in turns to play one of their Action tokens either in the Market or round the Campfire, and complete the associated Actions. The Market is the simplest: this consists of a four by four grid of face up cards. Players choose a notch along the edge of the board to play their token in and this defines a row or column and the number on the token dictates which card they will take from that row.

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There are four types of cards: Ground, Observations, Landscapes and Discoveries. After taking a card from the Market, the active player then plays a card from their hand or the card drawn into the play area in front of them. In general, each card has a large symbol in the top left corner usually with smaller symbols below—these smaller symbols are prerequisites for playing a card and the player must already have them in their area before they can play the new card. Ground cards are just played in the players’ Meadows and are the lowest cards in the Meadow stacks.

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Landscape cards are similar, but require a Road tile, and are played in the Surroundings area, above the player’s Meadow. Observation and Discovery cards are played on top of existing cards (in the Meadow and Surroundings respectively), such that the new symbol replaces one of the old ones. Instead of collecting a card from the Market and playing a card, players can play their Action token in one of the notches around the Campfire. This activates the special Action shown on the token (take one card from the Market; take two Road tokens; take three cards blind from any deck and keep one; play two cards).

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Players taking the Campfire option can additionally place a bonus point token on a tree-stump between any pair of symbols as long as they are displayed in their play area. Players have three tokens (valued two, three and four points) giving a total of nine extra points at the end of the game if they manage to place them all. Finally, in the absence of anything else they can do, players can place their Action token on a bench on the Campfire board and play one card. This is really very much a last resort as this is a much weaker action, giving half or less than the other options give.

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Pink led explaining the rules to Plum, Lime and Teal, and was roundly chastised by Pine from the next table for not knowing what a Meadow was, and confusing it with “normal grassland”. The first round was a little slow as the group found their feet, but then it was all go. Plum started with a Badger card which is quite high value and features a Wolf icon, so she planned her strategy round that. As the game progressed, everyone was collecting Satchel icons and expected them to be needed for something in the second half of the game. However, after the South cards were swapped for the North deck at the half-way stage, there was a slow realisation that they were just the final step on the path (though that could change with the inclusion of expansions of course).

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Plum’s Badger card turned out to be quite difficult to place, so as players can have a hand of ten cards, she filled her hand to give her the most options. Someone else took the space around the campfire on one side of the wolf before she got to it, but as the the icons on either side weren’t as rare she was able to take the other easily enough and followed it with two more to get the full nine Bonus points, the only one to do so. There was a problem with an odd token around the fireplace that featured a Stag with a red border, that turned out to be from Envelop U: Big Encounters. This is a mini-expansion that comes with the base game, and had been confused with the core game as one token had been accidentally left at home.

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The game was enjoyed by all, though with four it perhaps slightly over-stayed its welcome a little. The eventual winner was Plum with sixty-one points nearly ten points ahead of Pink in second. Meanwhile, on the next table, the rest of the group were having a light evening, playing as a group of six. First up was Die Wandelnden Türme (aka Wandering Towers)—a game that has been very popular in the group since it first came out a eighteen months ago. The idea behind this game is that on their turn, players play two cards from their hand of three cards, one after another, performing all the moves if at all possible. There are three types of cards, those that move a Wizard, those that move a Tower and those that move either a Wizard or a Tower; in each case, the number of movement spaces is given.

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Players can only move their own Wizard and each Tower and empty space can hold up to
six wizards (if a move would exceed that limit, it cannot be made). Whenever a Wizard’s move ends in the space with the Ravenskeep, the player drops the Wizard into the keep—this is one of the key targets during the game as the winner must have all their Wizards trapped in the Ravenskeep. In contrast to Wizards, players can move any Tower segment along with everything on top of it (Tower segments and Wizards). Whenever a Tower’s move ends in a space with Tower segments already in it, the new Tower goes on top, imprisoning all the Wizards it covers—all nine towers and the Ravenskeep could end up in the same space!

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Whenever a Tower covers Wizards, imprisoning them players get to fill one of their Potion Vials, turning it over—this is the other key target during the game as the winner must have all filled all their Potion Vials. The player with both, all their Wizards in the Ravenskeep and all their Vials full of Potion, triggers the end of the game, with play continuing until everyone has had the same number of turns and all players that fulfill the criteria share victory. Jade led the group, reminding everyone of the rules and explaining them to those who had not played before.

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Cobalt managed to tease a few extra rules out of the rule book , in particular that no more than six Wizards can sit on any one Tower segment, and a player’s turn finishes immediately if they place a Wizard in the Ravenskeep. Aside from this, much amusement was had, especially as the stacks of Towers got really tall, they didn’t quite make it to the maximum of nine plus the Ravenskeep, but they did reach a good six or seven segments in one stack. Black was the first to fulfill both the end-game criteria and Cobalt trapped dropped the last of his Wizards into the keep before the round finished.

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As Cobalt still had two empty Vials, he took second place with Sapphire and Jade taking joint third. Staying together as a group of six, they then went on to play King of Tokyo, a fast dice roller along the lines of Yahtzee where players control a monster try to destroy more of the city than their opponents while also attacking the other monsters to either take them out or keep them down long enough to enable the attacker to take victory. Players each have a Monster and two dials which are used to track their Monster’s health (starting at ten) and the number of Victory Points they have gained. The winner is either the first player to earn twenty Victory Points or by being the last Monster standing.

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Players take turns before passing the Dice on, clockwise. They get a maximum of three rolls, but can stop early and any number of Dice can be put aside after each roll. The Dice are not locked, so Dice set aside after the first round can be rolled in the third if desired. The dice feature numbers one, two and three, a Claw, a Lightening Bolt, and a Heart. The numbers give the player Victory Points and the Claw indicates damage inflicted on a chosen opponent. The Lightening Bolt gives the player an energy cube which can be spent on Power Cards, and the Heart increases the Monster’s Health (though the Monster must be outside the City to be able to take advantage of this).

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Once the dice have been rolled and resolved, players can buy Power Cards from the face-up display—these typically cost between two and eight Energy, and can be very useful at helping to control the game. The other key part of the game is the Monsters’ locations: they can be “In Tokyo” or “Outside Tokyo”. To enter Tokyo a player must roll one or more Claws; when a monster in Tokyo is attacked they will take damage and the player has to decide whether to stay in Tokyo or not. If they Yield Tokyo, they allow/force the attacking monster to enter Tokyo in their place. This is critical because Monsters deal damage based on their location and any Monsters in Tokyo deal damage to all monsters outside Tokyo and vice versa.

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One of the handicaps of being in Tokyo is the fact that a player cannot heal whilst in Tokyo. However, when a Monster enters Tokyo it earns a Victory Point for doing so and if it starts its turn in Tokyo, then it earns two Victory Points. These points help a player inch towards that winning total of twenty. With six players the Tokyo Bay location on the game board is also used, effectively meaning that two Monsters can be in Tokyo at the same time, improving the balance and preventing five monsters ganging up on one, while also discouraging everyone outside Tokyo to try and displace them rather than just focus on collecting Energy, Healing or Victory Points.

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Unusually for the games the group plays, King of Tokyo has player elimination—when a player’s health falls to zero, they are out, a fate suffered by half the players in the game this time. Jade was first to be knocked out, but Sapphire and Cobalt weren’t far behind. With six players, Black’s stay in Tokyo which lasted three full rounds was quite remarkable. It was perhaps no surprise therefore that he was the eventual victor, collecting the full twenty Victory Points, some way ahead of Pine in second with eight and Purple just behind him in third.

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Learning Outcome: A meadow is grassland which is not regularly grazed instead being left to grow to produce hay.

5th March 2024

The evening started with everyone unsure who was coming, so the nine players present split into three groups of three, with Blue, Pine and Lime starting with the “Feature Game“. This was the very short, light, Make the Difference, a game that is basically “spot-the-difference” in board game form. The idea is that each player gets a pre-printed picture and simultaneously add five extra “features” to their pictures. Once everyone has added their “extras”, players take it in turns to place their pictures in the centre of the table (covered with a sheet of acetate to make it a little more difficult to spot the difference between printing and drawing), together with an unadulterated copy.

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Players have one minute (timed with a slightly grumpy egg-timer), during which a player spotting an addition gets a point, then a second minute, during which both the spotter and the modifier get a point. After the two minutes, any un-spotted additions are assessed for size, and if they are large enough, the modifier gets two or three points. The additions have to be a single line, may extend an existing feature, and can’t just increase the width of an existing line. This time, Pine went first with his picture, and the slightly mardy timer gave Lime and Blue a few extra seconds to spot his additions as Pine encouraged it to behave. Most of his additions were spotted, partly as a result.

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Lime went next, and players were slower to spot his additions giving him extra points. Blue was the last, but this time Pine and Lime really struggled. For some reason, Blue seemed to be better hiding hiding her additions, taking six points for lines that weren’t spotted during the two minutes of play. In contrast, her poor spotting let her down, giving her a total of eight points, and just enough for second place. The winner was Lime, however, with ten points. There was a little chatter while they packed away, but as there were no new arrivals, the trio moved on to play something else, and quickly chose to give the recent Northern Lights edition of Ticket to Ride another outing.

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Ticket to Ride: Northern Lights has had a couple of outings since it’s group debut last summer, and has been quite popular in the group. The game is a fairly standard edition of Ticket to Ride (take cards from the market, or play cards to place trains), but the map is set around the Scandinavian countries of Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland. Like all the variant games, this one has a couple of minor rules tweaks, principally, the addition of bonus cards which give points at the end of the game and bonuses for completing some of the longer Ferry routes. Locomotives are also handled slightly differently as the market is not refreshed when saturated by them, and for Ferry routes only, they can be replaced by any two cards of the same colour.

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This time, the bonus cards drawn at random were the Locomotive Collector (A), International Tycoon (G), Polar Express (H) and the Ferry Master (J). Pine went first and started placing trains much to Lime and Blue’s horror. A few turns later, Lime headed up the Norwegian cost, while Blue started building an extended route from Bergen in the west through Stockholm to Tallin in the east. It was then that Pine, with his north-south route got in her way and began costing her points thanks to the fact that with only three players the double routes weren’t in play.

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As he had done last time the group played, Lime churned through his trains remarkably quickly catching Pine and Blue on the hop slightly. After the last few turns had been played, the bonus points were allocated with each player winning one (Lime for the most Ferry routes; Pine for the most tickets ending in the Arctic Circle and Blue connecting the most countries while nobody had any Locomotive cards at the end of the game). Pine claimed a completed Ticket for eighteen points which he had almost completed when he drew it (AGAIN!). Also like time, Lime finished with a nice round hundred points, and once again was pipped pipped to victory by Pine, albeit by a larger margin (ten points rather than three).

– Image by boardGOATS

With that over, Lime headed home, leaving Blue and Pine to kill time while waiting for one of the other games to finish. In this, they played a little “wallet game” called Circle the Wagons. This is a simple, quick game where players take cards from a market and add them to their player area, building a map, scoring points according to the largest areas of each terrain type and three addition scoring criteria selected at random. These scoring criteria are printed on the reverse of the cards and are drawn at random at the start of the game. The first bonus card drawn was “Boom or Bust which gives points for two or fewer Mines/Pickaxes, none for three to six and four or five points for seven or eight (or more).

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The other bonus cards were Claim Jumpers which gives the player with the most Mines/Pickaxes nine points (though they lose five if their opponent as more Guns), and Bootleggers which give two points for each Beer Bottles next to a Wagon (and minus one for any not next to a Wagon). Once the bonus cards had been picked, the remaining fifteen cards were shuffled and arranged in a circle. The first player, in this case Pine, could then choose to either take the first card, or take another, later card, leaving any that had been skipped for his opponent, Blue, who then had the same choice. Play continues until all the cards had been taken.

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This time, Pine started prioritising Pickaxes, given the fact that two of the bonus points scored for them. Blue was slow to get started with these and ultimately scored nothing for Boom and Bust and for Claim Jumpers. She collected Beer Bottles instead and prioritised scoring for her terrain. Blue’s thirteen points for Beer Bottles exactly matched Pine’s for his Pickaxes, though he picked up half a dozen points for his Beer as well. Blue took six points for her Forest and four for her Plains, while Pine got five points for each of his Desert and Water terrain. It was closer than it seemed during the game, however, with Pine finishing with thirty-five points, just three more than Blue.

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By this time, Pink, Teal and Ivory were bringing Viticulture to a close. This is one of the group’s most popular worker-placement games and a particular favourite amongst Pink and Teal who have been promising each other a game for months. The game is quite simple and doesn’t really do anything fancy, it just does what it does very well. The idea is that players are making wine, which they do by placing their workers on spaces on the central board. Each space has a limit to how many workers can occupy it, with each player having a “Grande” worker who can muscle in anywhere. This time, the group played with the Tuscany expansion, which adds a few little extras.

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Firstly, whereas the base game has essentially two seasons spring and autumn (with visitors in summer and winter), the Tuscany expansion has actions for all four seasons. Players can also build special buildings (which give additional powers and special options for those that make the effort to build them), and claim regions to gain influence (and bonuses) which scores points at the end of the game. The player order works slightly differently to the base game and the end of the game is triggered when someone passes twenty-five points (rather than twenty in the original game). This time, however, nobody took advantage of the opportunity that Tuscany provides to build buildings, instead focusing on the basics of planting grapes and harvesting them.

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There is a now a well-known and frequently used tactic of selling a field at the start of the game to provide equity in the early part of the game. Teal and Ivory both went down this route while Pink decided to try something else, but that didn’t go well for him. His problems were exacerbated by his inability to get access to fulfilling orders later in the game. Ivory started acquiring points early taking an early lead. Teal wasn’t far behind, but never quite managed to overhaul Ivory who triggered the end of the game and finished with thirty-one points, seven more than Teal in second place.

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When Viticulture finished, Ivory and Teal headed home, leaving Pink to join Blue and and Pine in a couple of quick games of Botswana. This is a sort of simple stock-holding game where players are collecting animals. The idea is that there are five suits of animal cards, each numbered from zero to five—these are shuffled and dealt out to the players with a small number left out for ambiguity. Matching the suits, there are five sets of five plastic animals. Players take it in turns to play a card (any card) and then take an animal (any animal) until someone plays the sixth card in any suit.

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When the last card is played in any suit, the game ends immediately and players score points for their animals with each animal being worth the face value of the last card played in that suit. Thus, Zebras might have been worth five points each, right up until the last card was played which could be a zero, rendering them totally, point-less. Somehow, it is a hard game to understand—far from random, a bit like 6 Nimmt!, it is very hard to control and manipulate the scoring in a particular direction. This was quite evident in the two rounds played this time.

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In the first round, Blue held a few key Elephant cards and was able to manipulate the game end to ensure they scored well. With a couple of high scoring Lions added to her menagerie, she ended the game, ensuring she finished with thirty-five points. It was very tight between Pink and Pine, but Pink just edged second place with twenty-two. The second round was also close with just two points between Pink and Pine, but this time they were vying for victory. In the end it was Pink again, this time triggering the end of the game allowing him to ensure his Leopards scored well.

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Botswana is a lot of fun and as they packed up, there was quite a bit of chatter. Pine pointed out that the backs of the cards said “Wildlife Safari” and wondered why. Blue commented that there were lots of different versions, but couldn’t remember the differences. A little bit of research shows that the game was originally released as “Flinke Pinke” and then “Quandary” and eventually “Loco!”, all with simple colour suits. Then, in 2010, the boring colour suits were changed for animals by Eagle-Gryphon Games, who initially republished the game as “Botswana”, before increasing the size of the box and calling it “Wildlife Safari”. Presumably this particular copy was released when small boxes were still available, but the company had run out of matching cards…

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Meanwhile, on the next table, Cobalt had persuaded Plum and Byzantium to join him playing the rather epic-looking Nightmare Cathedral. This is a card-driven action-selection area-control game set in the fantasy world of late Polish surrealist painter and sculptor Zdzisław Beksiński. The game is adorned with his artwork and beautifully sculpted miniatures. Players control Units, which act as a resource, whilst an imposing Cathedral is built in the centre of the board. Once the Cathedral is completed, two Nightmares (out of a selection of eight) appear next to the Cathedral and can be controlled by a player on their turn if a certain condition is met. Each Nightmare, represented by a unique sculpt, has varying abilities such as converting or devouring units as they move around the map.

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The game ends when a certain number of Units have been devoured, or, less likely, after completing three rounds. The winner is determined by points, which can be obtained from climbing the Ritual track, building Forts, Devouring the most Units, or completing objectives on Dream cards (the latter being the largest source of points). On a their turn, the active player selects an action with their Dreamer from one of five on the day/night action track, although they cannot select an action adjacent to their dreamer’s current space. After performing the action, other players get to follow, either Conforming or Dissenting depending on whether their dreamer is adjacent to the current action space.

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The active player then moves their Dreamer to the adjacent Night space, a section of the Cathedral is built, the turn marker moves to the subsequent space and the next player takes their turn. Each player starts with a tableau of five cards, one for each action type, that details how each action can be performed, as well as the Conform/Dissent actions. The players also have a hand of cards, which come in two forms: action Upgrades or one-time Effects; each card also contains combat symbols. The five basic actions are: Ritual (spending/removing followers to move up the Ritual track); Summon (producing Followers); Fortify (spending Followers to Build/Upgrade Forts); Manoeuvre (moving Units and/or Shaper, performing a conversion and then initial Conflicts); Develop (playing Development cards from hand, either to Upgrade actions or gain one-time benefits).

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A player controls an area if they have a Fort present, or if there is no Fort and they have the most Units in the area. The board is also populated with a “neutral” player, called The Shadows, that can participate in conflicts and be Devoured for benefits. Each area is associated with one of four symbols, with the active symbol being determined by the turn marker (which changes every turn, cycling through each symbol). Certain actions refer to these symbols, for example when moving up the Ritual track, players must spend Units from areas matching the symbol on the next level of the track, or areas marked active by the turn marker produce if that action is selected. When producing Units by marked areas, the unit is produced by the player who controls the area, not by the active player.

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A player may forgo the action on the card to draw two Development cards to hand. Each player may have up to two Dream (objective) cards at any time, and may complete them on their or another player’s turn provided they match the criteria at the appropriate time as specified on the objective card. However, they may only draw new cards at a specific point in their turn from a display. Once the Cathedral is nearly complete, the Level II Development and Dream cards are mixed in with the initial Level I cards to provide enhanced benefits and more points. When a player initiates Conflicts, they get to choose which of the valid areas the Conflict(s) occur, and they do not need to participate in the conflict themselves.

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To resolve a Conflict, the two players involved reveal a number of Development cards from hand—the number determined by the number of units present in the Conflict area (plus one if they also have a Fort). Each card depicts claws and shields: a Unit is removed for each claw that was not deflected by a shield. The winner of the Conflict is the player who has a Fort remaining, or, failing that, the most Units in the area; the looser must retreat all remaining Units to adjacent areas. Each player starts with one action upgraded, drawn at random—each player drew an upgraded summons card.

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Cobalt played first, and was able to complete one of his Dream cards immediately. In the first few turns, Byzantium managed to pin Cobalt in one corner of the board, which severely limited his ability to expand and produce Units, whereas Plum was able to grow relatively peacefully on the opposite side of the board. Byzantium, and to some extent Plum, were able to make use of their expansion to move up the Ritual track. Plum was also able to expand her Forts to several areas. Cobalt was able to upgrade his forts in the limited areas he controlled, as well as draw up to the hand limit of eight development cards over the first half of the game.

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During the second half of the game, after the Cathedral was built and the Nightmares came out, Cobalt was able to make use of his Development cards (especially due to a very well timed fortunate draw) to control both Nightmares in a single turn to Convert and then Devour a sufficient number of his own Units to claim a high-scoring Dream card as well as ensure he had the most Devoured units for end-game scoring. Unfortunately, this time, the group ran out of time so had to end the game early, stopping after everyone had completed an equal number of turns (time which Byzantium used to move up the Ritual track and Plum used to built a few more Forts).

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Long before the game finished, it was clear that Cobalt was miles ahead and nobody was going to catch him. Plum held on to he Dreams for too long, while Cobalt and Byzantium were better at completing theirs. She did manage to get a Fort in the fourth corner of the map fairly early on which gave her somewhere to spawn her Units from, though. Ending the game early meant players didn’t get to make as much of their Upgraded Action Cards as they might have done and there were cards left in hand which could have come into play with another few more rounds. As a taster game, it proved quite different, however, and deserving of another try sometime, as long as there is time to complete it.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: You are never too old to play “Spot-the-Difference”, but that doesn’t make you good at it.

20th February 2024

Once everyone had finished eating, we moved on to the usual difficult decision of who was going to play what. The “Feature Game“, Wyrmspan which is a very new stand-alone game, based on the mechanisms of one of the group’s favourite games, Wingspan, with dragons instead of birds. It was not as popular as expected, though that was at least partly because it was a relatively quiet night and many of those who would have enjoyed it were away. In the end, Blue, Black and Pink settled down to play leaving two other groups of three to sort themselves out.

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Wyrmspan is very closely related to Wingspan, though it is less forgiving, that is to say, the consequences of mistakes can be much more severe. Like Wingspan, players are playing cards from their hand onto a player board, and activating the habitats in turn. In Wingspan, the cards are Bird cards played in three different habitats, Woodland, Grassland and Wetland, whereas, in Wyrmspan, the cards feature Dragons and they are placed in three different cave networks, the Crimson Cavern, the Golden Grotto, and the Amethyst Abyss. The differences are more than simply cosmetic, however. Firstly, before a Dragon card can be played, it is necessary to explore the cave which involves playing a card (and claiming a Bonus).

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This is one way of getting Resources, there are others (playing dragon cards for example as well as activating the Crimson Cavern). One of the key differences is that these typically provide only one Resource at a time. So, whereas in Wingspan, if a player needs a resource, they activate their Woodland habitat and visit the Birdfeeder, claiming the resource they want and a couple of extras, in Wyrmspan, they don’t have extras so every move as to be made to count. And this is all the more critical as “Planting Dragons” requires a lot of Resources and can be difficult to do, so it is important that the Dragon planted is then exploited as much as possible.

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Further, one of the Bonuses is movement on a new, separate board, the Dragon Guild. A step around this Rondel typically gives a Resource as a reward, and when players reach half-way round and all the way round, they get a more valuable bonus which depends on the Guild in play. The distribution of cards is very different too, in Wingspan, the majority of the cards have an effect when the terrain is activate, but in Wyrmspan, these are in the minority with most card effect happening when played or at the end of the round/game. That is not to say they are not important—their very presence enables players to do more when the cave network is activated.

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Further, in Wingspan, players have a fixed number of actions per round (with fewer in the later rounds), whereas, in Wyrmspan, players get a set number of coins at the start of each round and an action typically costs one coin. Some do cost more though, and occasionally players can pickup extra coins, which leads to variable length rounds. Thus, although Wyrmspan is very definitely Wingspan at its core (players pay Resources to play cards and then activate habitats) there are lots of differences which give the game a very different feel, and make it a tighter, slightly more challenging game to play. All that said, there has been a lot of discussion online saying it is much more difficult, but that is not how we found.

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Blue went first and playing a Spirited Hydraptere Dragon in the first round which gave her two extra coins and then she proceed to plan her strategy from there. Black prioritised progress around the Dragon Guild (Seafarers), which, as that was also high on Blue’s priority list, set them in competition. Meanwhile, Pink had started with two Hatchlings (Kindly Sea Serpent and Algal Lindworm) which looked like they would synergise well, so he worked towards playing them. Unfortunately, he came to the conclusion that this was a mistake as it slowed the start of his game and that he would have done better if he had ditched one of them.

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It is interesting to note, that many of the online comments have suggested that Hatchlings come at too heavy a price. However, discussion after the game suggested that all three players felt they were essential to the “engine” and were worth the effort albeit needing some care to choose the right dragon. As the game progressed, Black powered round the Dragon Guild with Blue snapping at his heels. Black took the straight six points from under Blue’s nose, so she took a free excavation instead. Then, towards the end of the game when Blue and Black were heading for their third Dragon Guild bonus Pink grabbed the three point for each completed column and then Black took the straight three point bonus.

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Blue was most unimpressed as between them they had cost her eight points by leaving her with a solitary straight single point, though she picked up a few more from her Tawney Northern Drake (which gave her two points for each marker in the Guild at the end of the game). Pink did well with his Guild points (despite only placing two tokens), but unfortunately it wasn’t enough. As well as his points from the Guild, Black had also prioritised the end of round Public Objectives. In a game with small margins, it looked like this might be enough for victory, however, Blue had a few more eggs, some more valuable Dragons, more tucked Cards and cached Resources. As a result, she just edged it with eighty-eight points to his eighty.

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Meanwhile, Green who had considered joining the Wyrmspan game, eventually joined Cobalt and Ivory in a three-player game of Terraforming Mars. This game is quite popular within the group, though it doesn’t get an outing very often. The game is set in the 2400s, when mankind begins to Terraform the planet Mars. Players take the role of corporations sponsored by the World Government on Earth to initiate huge projects to raise the Temperature, raise the Oxygen level, and increase the Ocean coverage until the environment is habitable. Victory points that are awarded for contributions to the terraforming, but also for advancing human infrastructure throughout the solar system, and doing other commendable things.

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The players purchase Project Cards which can give immediate bonuses, as well as increasing production of different resources. Some of the Cards only become playable when the Temperature, Oxygen, or Ocean coverage increases enough. Buying Cards is costly, so there is a balance between buying Cards and actually playing them. There are six different Resources: MegaCredits (money), Steel, Titanium, Plants, Energy, and Heat and players keep track of these on their personal player board. Players compete for the best places to build Cities, place Ocean tiles, and develop Greenery. They also compete for different Milestones and Awards worth many points.

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At the start of each round (or Generation) players purchase cards from four drawn privately. Then players take it in turns to carry out one or two actions: playing a card, claiming a Milestone, funding an Award, using a Standard Project, converting Plants into Greenery tiles, converting Heat into a Temperature increase, or using the action of a Card already in play. Once all players have passed, players get Resources according to their Terraform rating and production parameters. When the three global parameters (Temperature, Oxygen, Ocean) have all reached their goal, Terraforming is complete, and the game ends—the winner is the player with the most points.

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This time, the group played the Elysium map (from the Hellas & Elysium map pack), with the “quick-start” Prelude expansion (but without the Incorporation Cards) and with Card Drafting (after the initial starting hand). Ivory had the Valley Trust Corporation giving him increased money production which was further increased by his Research Network Prelude Card, ensuring that finance was not going to be a problem for him. Green had Tharsis Republic, giving him an injection of cash when any city was planned on Mars. Cobalt had Cheung Shing which gave him a two MegaCredit discount on Building Cards.

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Green and Ivory both placed early Cities; Ivory got built the Research Station giving him a discount on all future Cards. From there, Cobalt and Green then began focusing on Terraforming. Green used his initial Titanium (from Prelude Cards) to play several powerful Event Cards early on. Cobalt then played several action cards including Regolith Eaters, Aquifer Pumping, Extreme Cold Fungus and CHG Producing Bacteria which he was able to combine together well to climb the Terraforming Track, although Green’s Event Cards meant he was never far behind.

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While Green and Cobalt were busy Terraforming, Ivory focused on getting his Plant production up and running as well as further increasing his money production (partly through building another city on Olympus Mons, refilling his hand). Although the other two had sped ahead on Terraforming, during income everyone was getting similar income thanks to Ivory’s increased money production. However, the other were generating lots of Energy/Heat and getting a lot of other resources. As a result, Green took the first Temperature Bonus and Cobalt the second. Turn order meant Cobalt wasn’t able to grab the Oxygen Bonus, which went to Ivory. The Oceans were complete very early in the game, so there was no third Temperature Bonus.

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Ivory’s focus on money production as well as Plant and Micro-cards, allowed him to grab the Specialist and Ecologist awards in one turn. This forced Green’s hand to take the final milestone, Legend (for playing at least five events). Green then quickly grabbed the Legend award after. From there, Cobalt continued to focus on Terraforming (particularly Temperature), placing only one City and a handful of Forests, whereas Green and Ivory started placing Greenery tiles. Ivory managed to get to his plant production up to eight, giving him a Greenery tile each round. Ivory and, to a less of extent, Green also started building more Cities.

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Although this was going to score Ivory a lot of points at the end of the game, each City built was feeding Green’s engine, increasing his money production, quickly getting well into the teens. From there, the Awards were the focus. Ivory jumped first for Desert Settler, Green shortly after for Celebrity. Noting he had very little end-game scoring, Cobalt had to spend 20 MegaCredits to grab the last award, the Industrialist. All three players scored the maximum five points for each of the Awards they funded. It then became apparent that the end of the game was approaching: Ivory’s Greenery tiles were rapidly pushing the Oxygen to its maximum, the Oceans had been completed early by Green and Cobalt and Cobalt had focused on Temperature.

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Ivory picked up a number of Animal Cards (Livestock and Fish) and focused on getting animals on them while Green’s huge money production allowed him to play a large number of Cards. It looked like the game was about to end after Generation Seven, but taking that final Award prevented Cobalt from raising the Temperature the final step, forcing one last Generation. That allowed Ivory to get more Animals and Greenery tiles and Green more cards with points before Cobalt finally triggered the end of the game. Both Green and Cobalt were way ahead on Terraforming and everyone scored similarly for Milestones and Awards, but Ivory’s Greenery tiles, Cities and Animals got him victory just ahead of Green.

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This demonstrated how important it is to develop a really robust engine, which together with some other scoring Resources will generally allow the funding of awards. It is also key to keep an eye on the milestones and awards, since they can disappear almost instantly before you get the opportunity. Cobalt had only really played Terraforming Mars solo before this. In the solo game it is a race to Terraform the planet alone before the clock runs out (fourteen generations with the Prelude expansion). This requires a very different strategy to multiplayer Terraforming Mars, however, where it is much better to concentrate on a strong plant engine with some cities to add to the score, as demonstrated by Ivory.

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While Mars was being Terraformed and Wyrms were being “Spanned”, Teal, Purple and Pine were playing Glow, a strange little game which visually inhabits the domain of the graphic novel, the roman graphique, much beloved in France. Ben Basso and Vincent Dutrait’s appealing black and white line art is unique and stylised and sets the tone of gentle strangeness, which contrasts well with the brightly coloured dice and other game elements. In Cedrik Chaboussit’s Glow, players take the role of animal leaders recruiting a band of up to eight companions to make a journey to bring shards of light back to a dark world. The game ends after eight days and the winner is the player with the most Light Shards.

– Image by BGG Contributor Propi

Players start by selecting one Leader Card from a choice of seven and take the accompanying big dice noted on the Card. Dice in the game have elemental symbols on them, Cloud, Water, Leaf, Flame and Gem. The colour of the die gives an extra face of that coloured symbols, for example, the green die has two Leaf symbols on it. On day one and every subsequent day players select a Companion Card from the “Meeting Track” (Marketplace) which is refreshed every day with new Cards. Players take the selected Card into their tableau next to their Leader group to form their growing band. Players also take any small temporary dice that have been placed on the Marketplace card.

– Image by BGG Contributor a2b2c517

Once the recruitment phase is over, players simultaneously roll all their dice. Players can re-roll one or two of their dice if they either play a re-roll token (acquired through in-game actions) or move their scoring track token back to the next re-roll space, effectively losing points for this benefit. The dice results are then used to purchase actions at the base of each character card. For example two Flame symbols provides three Sparks, or a Gem and a Water symbol provides a re-roll token. Each die can only be used once on each card, but each card can be triggered multiple times if dice are available, and each die can be used on each card if legal.

– Image by BGG Contributor Propi

In addition to scoring point Sparks, players can earn re-roll Tokens, Footprints and Glow-Worms. Unused Feet score one Spark at the end, but have another use in the Journeying phase. If a player has glow-worms equal to or more than their Companions, they receive a ten Spark bonus at the end. The scoring track surrounds a map of the game world with multiple branching paths. Players start in one corner and in the Journeying phase, attempt to move their band meeple to point-scoring campsites of progressively higher value secured by pitching their tent on scoring spaces. To move along the paths players pay the indicated cost, such as a Leaf symbol, from the revealed symbols in their dice pool. Footprint tokens can be used as jokers to by-pass costs.

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At the round end, five new Companion Cards are dealt to the Meeting Track and players give back their temporary small dice by placing them on the matching symbols in the Meeting Track above the Cards. These dice are then taken when the Card is selected in the following round, thus increasing the value of certain Cards. Although the game phases are played simultaneously after the recruitment phase, this time, Teal, Pine and Purple opted to play sequentially to assist with learning the game.

– Image by BGG Contributor Propi

The complexity of the game comes from selecting Cards from the Meeting Track and weighing up potential Card actions against increasing a player’s dice pool. Choices include denying opponents Cards, weighing up the cost of re-rolls, planning for action combinations or focusing more on the Journey board for points. Pine selected the starting card of Braccio, giving two big green dice, and the action of two leaves providing a Footprint and three Sparks at the game end. During the game Pine got an extra big green dice with a Sketal follower early on to assist with maximising the Braccio special action focussing on Leaf generation for points.

– Image by BGG Contributor rascozion

Purple selected starting card Noctiluca with two big purple dice—the sixth face gives two Footprints and the action of three wild symbols scoring five Sparks. Purple went for a corvid strategy, selecting three crow-like birds. One of these, Kaar, effectively curses other players dice by locking away from use one symbol per turn if the black die is chosen along with the other dice. Teal selected Tocana, with three big red dice and four Sparks at game end. As the game developed Teal went for a wild symbol strategy and acquired two Torke cards to generate guaranteed points each round, or so he mistakenly thought at the time…

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Progress was made on the journey board by all, with Purple and Pine getting to the better quality campsite netting fifteen points each, inspiring reminiscences about woeful tales of camping experiences. At game end Teal scored a hundred and six, some fifteen ahead of Purple in second place. Unfortunately, when playing Glow later on BoardGameArena, Teal realised that while the “wild” multi-coloured cost symbols powering actions could represent any symbol, they ALL had to match each other to trigger the benefits.

– Image by BGG Contributor Propi

Because Teal had more of this type of card than other players and acquired them early on, Teal had been unfairly gaining a point advantage by triggering Spark acquisition using mixed symbols. This explained Teal’s high score and he insisted on being relegated, recording his score as null and void—that left Purple to take the golden crown and Pine the silver medal. It had been a good game which has lovely presentation with immersive art. There’s lots of risk-reward decision-making, and another game would be great now that the rules are better understood, especially as simultaneous play should reduce playing time to the advertised forty-five minutes.

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With both Glow and Wyrmspan finished, there was just time for something quick before home time. There was some discussion about what to play, but eventually, the player count of six and the short time available fixed the decision as the old favourite, No Thanks!. This is a very simple “push-your-luck” game where players take it in turns to choose whether to take the face-up Card, or pay a Chip to pass the problem on to the next player. At the end of the game, players add up the face value of their cards and subtract the number of Chips to give them a total—the player with the smallest total is the winner.

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There are two additional rules that make the game work: firstly, if a player has a run of Cards with consecutive numbers, they only count the lowest number. This is tensioned by the second rule, which is that roughly one third of the Cards are removed from the deck at random before the start. This means players have to gamble on whether a card in a run is still available and it can make things go very wrong for people. This time, it went very wrong for Blue who finished with forty-eight and for Black who top scored with a massive one hundred and twelve! The winner, with a very reasonable twelve, however, was Pink, two ahead of Pine who finished with fourteen.

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Learning Outcome: Wyrms are more challenging to handle than Birds.

6th February 2024

People were still eating when Ivory rolled up nice and early to start setting up Ark Nova. Although it was not the “Feature Game“, we are planning to feature the Marine Worlds expansion in the next few weeks and wanted to play the base game before we did. So, Ivory was soon joined by Cobalt, Plum and Green on the other side of the table, leaving the rest to decide who would play the “Feature Game”, CuBirds, and what everyone else would play while they did. Before long, Pine, Pink, Lime and Blue were dealing out the bird cards while Purple, Black and Teal moved to the next table and rummaged through the game bags to decide what to get out.

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CuBirds is a fairly simple set-collecting game built round a central market. Players start with a hand of seven cards and, on their turn must place cards from their hand. They have to place all the cards they have of one type, adding them to one of the four rows on the table, at either end. If there is already a card of this type in that row, then they take all the cards between that card and the newly added cards into their hand. Optionally, if they have enough cards of a given type in their hand, they can complete a flock of them, that is play the cards, keeping one or two in their display (a bit like harvesting a been field in Bohnanza, where harvesting a field of five beans might leave a player with two Bean Thalers).

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The game ends immediately when one player’s collection has either three cards of each of two bird types, or seven different bird types (of the eight available) in front of them. It should play out in about half an hour, though inevitably, the first play through took longer as everyone felt their way through. When any player places the last card in their hand, everyone has to ditch their whole hand which can be quite brutal with players losing partial sets and having to start collecting again. Pink was the first to upset everyone’s plans, quickly followed by Pine.

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A lot of fun was had identifying the bird types, and nobody got close to guessing what the tall, thin, “little brown job” was, which turned out to be a reed warbler, but was soon universally known as “WeirdBird”. When the end of the game was triggered, both Blue and Lime had a magpie apiece with Lime’s paired with four toucans and Blue’s with three robins, while Pink just had two little ducks. Fittingly, as by far the most dedicated birder in the group, the winner was Pine with three flamingos and three “wols” with a spare parrot. It had been fun, but rather than play again, as he’d missed out on both the previous plays, Pink had been keen to give the new full-sized, Scandinavian Northern Lights version of Ticket to Ride a go.

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Like the other variants, Ticket to Ride: Northern Lights has slight changes to the rules and a new map, which in this case, similar to the older, festive themed Nordic Countries, though it plays up to five instead of just three. The base rules are quite simple: on their turn, players either take train cards from the face-up market (or the blind draw deck), or spend cards to place trains on the map for points. Once or twice during the game, players may instead choose to draw Tickets, which give players points at the end of the game if they are completed (i.e. the owner has connected the two locations with their trains) and score negative points if they are not.

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Northern Lights additionally has some triple routes (which only take effect with five players) and some routes have a “+X” next to them and when trains are laid on these the player takes X train cards from the face down pile. In general, Locomotive (wild) cards can replace any other card but for ferry routes they can be replaced with a pair of the same colour (that doesn’t have to be the same as the rest of the cards used). Unlike most of the other versions, however, if there are three or more face-up Locomotive cards in the market, the market is not refreshed. The biggest differences are the addition of Bonus cards, however, which extra points at the end.

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This time the Bonus cards used were Capital Investment (B), Local Area Network (F), International Tycoon (G) & Ferry Master (J). These gave Bonus points for completing Tickets to the capital cities (Stockholm, Copenhagen, Oslo and Helsinki); completing the most short Tickets; connecting to the most countries; and completing the most Ferry routes. The map is very tight with a lot of short routes, spread over a fairly long thin map and a wide variety of Ticket lengths. Everyone complained that their starting Tickets weren’t compatible, though Blue and Lime both kept all three of theirs, even so Pink surprised everyone when he took his first set of Tickets very early.

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Pine soon followed and his sniggering as he kept all the new Tickets was ominous, signalling that he’d already completed all three—a fact confirmed when he drew more on his next turn too. Blue and Lime covered similar spaces,connecting the north-west to the south-east, while Pine’s network dominated the east and Pinks sprawled over the south. Everyone was getting on with doing their thing when suddenly, Lime brought the game to a rather abrupt end, catching everyone else out. As a result, Pink and Pine both had an incomplete ticket that costing them fourteen and twelve points respectively, while Blue had two giving her a combined loss of sixteen points (though part of that was her own fault as she’d overstretched her self and would have run out of trains anyhow).

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In spite of that, it was a very, very tight finish with just six points between first and third place, meaning the Bonus cards became much more critical than might have been expected earlier in the game. Lime set the target with a nice round hundred points, but he did not take any of the Bonus points and was just pipped by Pine who took several of them with Blue making up the podium. It had been an imperious game from Lime, and he was unlucky to have lost to Pine who was the first to admit that he’d got very lucky with his Tickets, especially the draw where he’d already completed the Tickets, quite remarkable given how spread out the network is on this map.

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Meanwhile Purple, Black and Teal had been playing Azul. This is a favourite game within the group, which is unusual as we tend to eschew abstract games. Players are mosaic building, taking tiles from a shared array of factories, adding them to their Storage on their personal player boards. At the end of the round, any full rows are scrapped with one tile progressing into the player’s mosaic. Players score when the tiles added form rows or columns, and the longer they are, the more points players get. The catch is that each Storage space can only hold one tiles of one colour. If there is nowhere to put tiles taken from the Factories, left over tiles go into the Scraps bin costing players points which can be very costly as Black found out when he lost fourteen in the final round.

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For a little variation, the trio added the Joker tiles and the five double score markers from the Special Factories Promo tiles. The Joker tiles are a set of ten beautiful promotional tiles that can serve as a proxy for any of the other tiles, though their aesthetic comes at a price as players can’t use them for end of game color Bonuses. The five double score markers allow players to double the points scored for a row or column, by taking the marker of the matching colour. Everyone took one of these during what was a hard-faught game where Purple and Black tied for with seventy points. The clear victor was Teal, however, with eighty-eight points.

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Teal and Pine took their leave, so after some chatter, Purple and Black joined Lime, Pink and Blue in another game of CuBirds. This time, Black collected magpies but twice had enough for sets but kept losing them. Pueple got three WeirdBirds and was busy collecting parrots when the game came to an end. Both Lime and Blue tried to collect a set of seven different birds, but while Blue got close with five (and a duplicat “wol”), Pink was imperious. Before his final turn he had a set of three toucans and two sets of two (flamingos, ducks and robins), pretty-much guaranteeing him victory, regardless what he was left with, though he chose to check-out with another flock of flamingos.

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While all this was going on, on the other side of the room an epic game of Ark Nova was underway between Ivory, Cobalt, Green and Plum. This is a much longer game than we usually play with an advertised playing time of upwards of two hours and reputedly considerably more with inexperienced players and setup time included. It is all about planning and designing a modern, scientifically managed zoo, but the game-play is more like Terraforming Mars with animals, than Zoo Break or Zooloretto. That said, although it is quite complex, functionally it is not difficult to play on a turn by turn basis, though there is quite a lot to manage and keep a track of.

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On their turn, players take one of six possible actions: activating one of the five action cards (Cards, Build, Animals, Association and Sponsor) with a strength equal to the number above the card, or move a card back to the first space and take a cross token instead. When activating a card players perform the action based on its power level which is dictated by its position in the row. Once a card has been played, it is moved the first space in the player’s five card row (i.e.to the lowest power position on the left) moving the other cards to the right to replace the card removed, effectively incrementing their power by one. During the game, players can upgrade and turn over the action cards to a more powerful second side using various Bonuses.

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The Cards action is the simplest action, which lets players draw cards from the deck (the number depending on strength) then advance the marker two spaces along the break track which defines when the round ends. The Build action allows players to pay to construct one building on their zoo map. Players can build basic enclosures with a size of one to five, but they can also build a petting zoo for animal storage or pavilions and kiosks (which give players Appeal and money respectively based on adjacent filled enclosures). With the upgraded build action, players can build multiple different buildings and have access to the large bird aviary and reptile house which allow the storage of multiple animals.

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The Animals action allows players to add animals into enclosures in their zoo. Some animals have a special requirement and need a symbol in their tableau and/or the upgraded animal card. Adding an animal to an enclosure has a cost, and then the player turns over the empty enclosure of at least the size needed or places the listed cubes into a special enclosure (an aviary or a reptile house). The player then adds the animal card to their tableau and resolves the abilities on it and receives ticket sales along with possibly Conservation points and Reputation.

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The Association action allows players to take one task on the Association board with different tasks available based on their power level. This allows people to gain Reputation points, acquire a partner zoo they don’t already own, gain a partner university, or support a Conservation. Finally the Sponsor action allows players to play exactly one Sponsor from their hand which offer ongoing abilities. They can allow players to place unique tiles in their zoo and offer end game Conservation point opportunities. Some Sponsor cards have conditions on their play similar to the animal cards.

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Players take it in turns to take actions, resetting every time a break occurs, until the end game has been triggered. There are two tracks, Appeal (Tickets) and Conservation that follow the same course, but in opposite directions. The game end is triggered when one player’s pair of scoring markers cross, after which, everyone gets one more turn and then the end-game cards are scored. The player with the largest overlap between their Conservation and Appeal values is the winner. Everyone was familiar with the game and had watched the rules refresher video, so the group could make a fast start, however, Cobalt and Green had played a lot online and Plum had only played once, so there was a difference in experience levels.

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Green and Plum took early Association actions taking the two Reputation universities, scuppering Cobalt’s first turn who couldn’t make use of the double science university. Cobalt therefore took a partner zoo and snapped a Conservation project from the display in the first few turns. Early game sponsors included: “Veterinarian” by Green (grabbing him an additional university and allowing Conservation projects to be performed at Association level four instead of five, although he didn’t make use of this throughout the game); “Quarantine Lab” by Plum (providing her immunity to venom, constriction, hypnosis and pilfering); “Expert in small animals” by Cobalt (reducing the cost of two-sized animals by three); and “Expert in Herbivores” by Ivory (providing three money each time a herbivore is placed into any zoo).

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Plum was very pleased with her “Quarantine Lab” as it meant she didn’t really have to bother with the effects of red tokens that say you have been bitten or poisoned because it meant there was one less thing to get in here way and complicate her game. Cobalt used his expertise in small animals to good effect, especially when combined with partner zoos, with a petting zoo and several small animals, allowing his money to stockpile. Ivory concentrated on reptiles while Green played several negative effect cards early (e.g. boa constrictor), which hit Ivory and Cobalt (the latter multiple times, and grabbing some of that stockpiled cash). Plum appeared to take an early lead possibly due to her Quarantine Lab which kept her out of all the early pilfering and poisoning.

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Cobalt was first to complete a Conservation project, using the snapped card to release a herbivore into the wild and gaining the two-enclosure Bonus, immediately followed by Ivory. In the middle-game, the African Bush elephant and Serengeti National Park appeared side-by-side in the display, so Cobalt took the risky decision to nab these over two consecutive rounds, but was forced to discard five or six cards from an unexpected break. Having kept the elephant and Conservation project, Cobalt played these to grab an extra scoring card and race up the Conservation track and triggered the scoring card discard. Ivory and Plum took to the Appeal track. Green remained languishing on both tracks, particularly the Conservation track where he barely moved all game.

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Cobalt was first to upgrade his cards, leaving only the Association action not upgraded, whereas Green concentrated on Sponsors and Association actions. Plum was working through some difficult choices, ultimately deciding to having to flip the Animals card so that she could play the Elephant she had been nursing. She left the Reputation as the non-upgraded card, which unfortunately removed some of the better options that the Elephant gave. Plum was just a Europe icon away from being able to take the multi-regional goal, but ultimately forgot that having high Appeal is the negative element to the score and didn’t do the things to convert her Appeal to give her points.

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Green was slow to get going, but eventually, managed a master move with his first Conservation project and flew up the scoring to overtake Plum, and began chasing down Ivory and Cobalt. It was very close between Ivory and Cobalt on who would trigger the end game: Cobalt managed to keep his counters from crossing, causing Ivory to trigger the end game and allowing Cobalt one last turn. Although Ivory scored well on the final turn, Cobalt covered his zoo (giving him seven more Appeal) and scored more than twenty points in the final turn. In end game scoring, it became apparent that Plum had misunderstood her end game scoring card. She had thought it gave points for empty enclosures in her zoo (rather than empty spaces) and had set about building lots of them towards the end. Without this, her game would have ended very differently.

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Ivory took the third place on the podium having realised Green was closing and decided to end the game perhaps a turn or two earlier than he really wanted which may have inadvertently caused himself more damage as Green needed some three turns to score anymore. Green did exceptionally well taking a full four Conservation points from his Bonus card and three extra points from Sponsors, and with it, almost taking victory with a total of eighteen points. However, Cobalt’s final turn plus two scoring cards (one of which was for small animals) meant he won with a convincing score of thirty.

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It had been quite stressful getting the game completed in time, especially with some long turns where actions were chained together, for example Plum played one card which enabled another full turn, but with two new cards it was tough to decide which gave the better option. All that said, it had been very enjoyable and everyone had got on with their game and helped each-other where necessary. The group clearly demonstrated that the game can be played in around four hours even with four, so long as everyone knows what they are doing and keeps moving. It will be a few weeks before the Marine Worlds expansion gets an outing, but it will be exciting when it does.

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Learning Outcome: Reed warblers are weird warblers.

23rd January 2024

Despite missing a few people, we were still well into double figures, and more than enough for two groups to play the “Feature Game“, the Kittens module from the Kittens + Beasts expansion to The Isle of Cats. The Isle of Cats is a tile laying game where players are trying to rescue Cats and place them on their Ship while scoring points for completing Lessons (aka end of game goals). The game is played over five rounds, with each round starting with players getting twenty Fish and a hand of seven Cards. These Cards are drafted two at a time, that is to say, players keep two Cards and pass the rest to their neighbour and repeat until they have none left. Players then choose which Cards they want to use, paying their cost in Fish and discarding the rest.

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There are five different types of Card: blue bordered Lessons; green bordered Rescue Cards; yellow bordered Treasure Cards, brown bordered Oshax Cards and purple edged “Anytime” Cards (which can be played at anytime). Lesson Cards are objective cards and come in two types, Private and Public, with Private Lessons being secret, personal objectives and Public Lessons being revealed and available for everyone. These are revealed before anything else happens. Next players decide which Rescue Cards they are going to play—unlike the Lesson Cards, these can be held over for later rounds. Rescue Cards feature either “Boots”, or “Baskets” or a combination of both.

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Boots dictate player order, whereas Baskets allow players to rescue more Cats; players start the game with one permanent Basket which can be used once per round to rescue one Cat, but these can be augmented by temporary Baskets from the Rescue Cards. Once the Rescue Cards have been played, then, starting with the player at the top of the mountain (the one who played the most Boots), players start to rescue Cats. The Cat Tiles are drawn at random from a bag before the start of the round, placing Cats on both the left and right sides of the island. Players then take it in turns to use Fish to lure Cats into their Baskets and relocate them on their Ship.

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The first Cat can be placed anywhere on the player’s Ship, but thereafter, new Cats must be placed next to another Cat. At the end of the game, players score points for groups of adjacent Cats of the same breed (colour), with negative points for each room on their Ship which hasn’t been filled and any Rats on the deck which haven’t been covered. Finally, once everyone has rescued all the cats they can, players then take it in turns to play any Rare Finds Cards they choose from their hand—these are brown edged Oshax Cards and yellow bordered Treasure Cards. Oshax are friendly Cat-like creatures that are added to the player’s Ship and adopt the colour of a breed of the player’s choice.

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The Kittens module from the Kittens + Beasts expansion adds cute little Kitties that the fastest player (the one who played the most Boots), can rescue instead of fully grown cats. Being smaller they are are more flexible when it comes to placing them on the player’s boat and two can be rescued at a time, using only one basket. At the end of the game, they behave just like full-sized Cats for scoring and therefore can be highly lucrative, while adding little complexity to the game. Players also score for their completed Lessons and the player with the most points after the five rounds of the game is the winner.

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The first thing everyone had to do was decide who was going to play what and where. In an effort to separate couples who usually play together, Blue led one game with Sapphire, Ivory, Pine and Yellow (on his first visit), while Pink was persuaded to join Jade on the other side of the room along with Purple, Plum and Lime. That left Black, Byzantium, Cobalt and Teal who took themselves off to a third table. The first game (led by Blue) got going quite quickly, while the second (led by Jade) quickly realised that discretion is sometimes the better part of valour, and decided to skip the Kittens expansion and stick to playing the base game.

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Blue began by eschewing Boots and sitting repeatedly at the bottom of the hill, hoping to save them all for one large push later in the game. This was a plan reinforced by one of her Lessons which would give her extra points if she finished the game as the first player. Pine, Yellow and Ivory all had a shot at collecting Kittens, while Yellow and Ivory got lucky getting several Oshax cards in the deal which they prioritised buying and playing. It is always difficult to get a feel for who is winning in this game, but going into the final stages, it all felt quite tight. Blue played all her Boots and a load of baskets in the final round, but was trampled by Sapphire who played a massive fourteen Boots to take the lead and much to his delight, costing Blue a massive Cat Carrier full of points.

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Her problems were made worse by the fact she didn’t realise her Lesson giving her a two points for each visible rat at the end of the game was in addition to rather than instead of the negative point they usually accrue. In a close game, such loses are costly, and this was quite close with only twenty points between between first and last place and only three points separating third and fifth. There was more of a gap to Pine with seventy-five points in second, but the winner on his first game with the group was Yellow, thanks to a large clowder of blue Cats and only one room on his boat unfilled. The game on the next table was considerably less close, however.

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Teaching had taken quite a bit longer and the group also played more slowly, so as a result, as round three came to a close with no end in sight, the group chose to finish the game after four rounds instead of five. For some, this was not a huge problem as they were able to modify their game plan so they could complete their Lessons. For example, Plum wouldn’t have fulfilled more of her Lessons with more time, but successfully completed her five-by-five grid of purely green Cats (though she had one too many touching the central one for her “five Cats touching one” Lesson to score. In the final scoring, the difference between first and last was a massive sixty-five points, probably not helped by shortening the game, though that wasn’t the only cause.

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Jade had concentrated on teaching and trying to keep the game on track while Purple had struggled reading the cards without her glasses. Plum who singularly failed in her duty of of providing residents for the box lids took third some way behind Pink in second. The runniest of runaway winners, despite never having played before, was Lime thanks to a huge number of successfully completed Private Lessons. These considerably more than offset his negative points from Rats and unfilled rooms on his Ship. It was a slow game that led to some to comment that there was a lot to be said for the lighter, more streamlined, roll and write version of the game, Isle of Cats: Explore & Draw.

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Meanwhile, Teal had found three people who were prepared to give the epic game, Root, a go—something he’d been keen to play with the group for a long time, but had not happened due to its reputation as a long game. With Cobalt being familiar with the game too and Byzantium and Black keep to play as well, the group decided to give it a try. Root is a board game of competitive area control in a fictional woodland setting. Players adopt the role of one of four asymmetric factions (increased to ten in expansions) – roughly split between area control and insurgency play-styles. In our game we used the four factions from the base set.

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The Eyrie Dynasties are aristocratic Birds of the old regime (think Greece in decline following Roman expansion), the faction of the Marquise de Cat control the whole board with an empire of Cats at the start but are thinly spread (like the height of the Roman Empire on the brink of collapse). The Woodland Alliance are like a Peasant’s revolt faction, reacting to mistreatment by their rulers with outrage and sometimes acts of extreme violence. The Vagabond is a solo actor represented by a single piece, out for themselves—a mix of Robin Hood, folk hero, mercenary for hire and outlaw just doing their own thing.

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The basic rules of movement, combat (and gaining points for destroying opponent tokens and buildings), use of cards for crafting items for points and bonuses and ruling the twelve settlements connected by paths are common to all. The game immediately ends when one player achieves thirty victory points. Each faction has a unique play-style, breaks the standard rules in their own way and has their unique process of gaining victory points. One of the challenges of playing asymmetric games is that players need to not only learn their own unique rules, but also have to understand their opponents’ strategies and abilities to effectively counter them. Cobalt and Teal jointly taught the game to Black and Byzantium, which was helped by the clear player boards which take a step-by-step approach to what a player can do on their turn.

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The Marquise de Cat gains points each time they construct a building even if these are re-builds after they have been destroyed. In the early stages of the game, Byzantium with the Cats shored up his defenses by retreating to a front-line which he could hold against bird incursion. The Cats then focused on a steady building programme, starting with Sawmills to generate timber tokens to enable even more building. Each time a Workshop, Recruiting Post and Sawmill is built on the map board and removed from the player board it reveals a point value of increasing value. With the production engine in place Byzantium steadily increased the Cats’ building construction rate and the points flowed in.

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The Eyrie gain their points by the number or Nests which they have on the board at the end of each round. The Birds of the Eyrie, under guidance of Black steamrollered around the board with a massed horde, dominating clearings and building Nests. At one point this ended up in a massive ongoing siege with the Cats into which both players poured Warriors. The Eyrie have to add cards to it’s decree each turn locking it into committing to a certain number of moves, battles, recruitments and builds in the allocated clearings. Failure to complete any of these orders each turn immediately results in the Eyrie government going into Turmoil and concomitant loss of points and a new flavour of Leader (with unique abilities) being selected.

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The Eyrie eventually suffered one great Turmoil, like a playing card pyramid toppling after becoming too unstable. But Black quickly managed to use the refresh of the decree cards to their advantage by choosing cards which provided greater flexibility of actions and was nearly able to catch the Cat’s tail. The Woodland Alliance gain points by uprisings of popular support across the board expressed by placing of Sympathy tokens. The Alliance under the control of Cobalt steadily built up support in a corner of the board gradually establishing rebel bases for more control—these grant wipe-out of all other pieces in a clearing when established and unlock new abilities for the faction including recruiting Warriors, battling and converting Warriors into Sympathy tokens.

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The more Sympathy tokens placed in clearings, the more points they generate. The Woodland Alliance eventually managed to build all three bases and also to place eight Sympathy tokens (the eighth now generating four victory points). To move into areas with Sympathy tokens the Cats and Eyrie had to pay a card tax (Outrage) to Cobalt, who could then use these cards as “Followers” to produce more Sympathy for points. This snowballing engine of points was just getting into gear promising to pay dividends when the Cats building rate pushed into the lead.

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The Vagabond earns points by exploring ruins for items, fulfilling mini-missions (by exhausting items tokens in their Satchel) and trading with other players. Teal as The Vagabond, spent the early game exploring ruins to locate useful items and trading cards for crafted items from other players—being a friend to all and posing no threat. Vagabond trading gradually upped their status with the Eyrie so that they had become an ally meaning that each time a card trade resulted in two points. All was set to for a strategy of fulfilling missions to generate cards, to gift to the Eyre and gain points, when the Cats won!

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Byzantium, The Marquis de Cat achieved the thirty points he needed to win with Black as the Eryie taking second with twenty-seven and Cobalt and the Woodland Alliance pipping The Vagabond, Teal to third by one point. In spite of the game being new to two people, the turns passed fairly quickly and momentum gathered with point-scoring as the game progressed. When the game concluded all were happy to have completed the game with time to spare before the pub closing bell. It had been a successful teach and timely play of a game which has a reputation for being difficult to introduce to new players for a one-off session without prior preparation. Hats off to the quick learners and to the group as a whole for resisting analysis paralysis in the interests of game-play.

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Learning Outcome: Every game should come with “Cat Setup” instructions.