Category Archives: Games Night

9th January 2024

Blue and Pink were just finishing their supper when Pine arrived, soon followed by Cobalt. There was a lot of discussion about the road closure to the A420 (due to an accident) and whether this would delay those coming from the west, but Jade, Plum, Sapphire and Byzantium soon arrived with their tales of countryside detours in the dark. Inevitably, that led to more stories of road closures due to accidents and flooding, and the horror-show that driving anywhere has been over the last week or so. With almost everyone present, with more proactivity than usual, the group split into three, with two tables playing the “Feature Game“, the Landmarks expansion to the 2022 Spiel de Jahres winner, Cascadia.

– Image by boardGOATS

Cascadia is one of the group’s most popular tile laying games. The mechanisms of the base game are simple enough: on their turn, players take a Habitat Tile/Animal pair from the market and add them to their territory. The Habitat Tile can be placed anywhere, but the Animal Token must be placed on a Habitat Tile which depicts that Animal. The market is then replenished back to four pairs until the Tile pile is depleted and the game ends. The Tiles and Animals are drawn and paired at random, and players have to take the prearranged pair, they cannot freely mix and match unless they have a Nature Token, which they can spend to either change all the Animals, or to take an Animal from a different pair.

– Image by boardGOATS

Nature tokens are rewards for adding animals to Keystone Habitat Tiles, which, in general, are more difficult to fill because they can only hold one animal type (other tiles can take two or three). While the mechanism is quite simple, the guts of the game is in the scoring. Players score for each of the five Animals, Bears, Elk, Foxes, Salmon and Eagles, but the clever part is that the way each of these scores depends on which card is drawn at random from each of the five Animal decks. Thus, the game plays very differently depending on the combination of Animal scoring cards drawn.

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In addition to animal scoring, players also score one point for each tile in their largest corridor of each of the five Terrain types, as well as earning bonuses if their largest area is the largest overall. The Landmarks expansion consists of three new modules, one which increases the the potential player count, one which adds more variety to the scoring (more Animal scoring cards) and finally, the titular Landmarks. The first of these adds a Personal Market of five Habitat Tile/Animal pairs for each player to give them something to think about (and potentially play) between turns. This can be played at lower player counts, but is essential in larger numbers as it reduces perceived downtime.

– Image by boardGOATS

The second module is simply some more scoring cards, which adds more variety, but also a little more complexity as some of these are slightly more challenging to work with. The final module, the Landmarks, changes things a little more. These can be added to a Habitat Tile when the once the area of Terrain is large enough (spreads over five tiles or more). These Landmarks also come with a choice of the available cards (drawn at random) which give bonus points at the end of the game, for example, for every Bear in the player’s Forests. Each player can only build one Landmark on each Terrain type, and because the Landmarks occupy space, players start the game with one additional Keystone Tile.

– Image by boardGOATS

Blue, Pink, Plum, Black and Lime played with all three modules, making a point of choosing scoring cards from the expansion. In contrast, although the Personal Market can be used for any player count, the four on the other table, Jade, Byzantium, Sapphire and Pine, only added the Landmarks module, choosing scoring cards solely from the base game. Jade et al. got going first and were four or five rounds in before Blue’s Crew had even started, as the latter had more rules to cover and were a little later to start as they were too busy gossiping. On the other hand, despite the fact that there were a lot of rules queries, at least they mostly got them right, in contrast, to the little rules malfunction on the other table.

– Image by boardGOATS

The rules for the Landmarks state that players may take a Landmark when they add their fifth or tile to a Terrain, or any subsequent addition, whereas Jade, Byzantium, Sapphire and Pine played that the Landmark had to be taken when the fifth Terrain Tile is added. It was just a very little thing, but actually had quite a large knock-on effect. The problem was, if a Landmark is added to a Keystone Tile, then players don’t get the Nature token. Worse, in some cases, players were taking Landmarks when the cards weren’t in-line with their strategy, just because they had to.

– Image by boardGOATS

As the games progressed, both groups realised that taking Landmarks can really restrict a player’s options, especially towards the end of the game when things can get very tight. And forcing players to take unhelpful Landmarks just exacerbated this effect and meant some Terrains were stuck at four just to avoid some of the issues. The games both progressed quite merrily, however. Blue concentrated on a mixture of Animals and Terrain, going for Landmarks early in the proceedings. Plum, misunderstood and didn’t realise that players scored a point for each tile in their largest Terrain, so she concentrated on Animals, but did very well with her Terrain anyhow, by virtue of trying to get bonus points for having the largest areas.

– Image by boardGOATS

Pink asked a lot of questions and got a bit confused between when he could add Landmarks and when he could take tiles from his Personal Market. So, he ended up concentrating on Foxes instead, “as he was a foxy sort of fellow” (and there aren’t any Pandas in the game). Black meanwhile collected Elk, but all-round concentrated on animals rather than Terrain. Lime commented, “Birds are difficult to understand, so I’m not going to bother with them; if I score at the end of the evening, so be it…” though he probably didn’t mean it to come out quite like that! On the other table, Sapphire was collecting Elk, and Byzantium was focussing on Eagles while Pine concentrated on building his Terrain and Jade capitalised on the Landmarks.

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With or without the Landmarks expansion, Cascadia is a little bit of a “multi-player solitaire” game, that is to say, players can mostly quietly get on with their own thing without upsetting each others’ plans. However, with Blue, Black and Plum all having a full set of five salmon, Pink and Lime struggled to get the last few they needed. In the four-player base game, all the tiles and therefore all the animals are used and Lime hadn’t realised the expansion added more tiles, some of which had been removed and therefore, there was no guarantee that any of the lovely juicy salmon left in the bag were going to come out. And much to Lime’s chagrin, so it proved, as he was left one short of the full set at the end of the game.

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The five-player game, despite starting later and having the extra player, finished at much the same time as the four-player game, demonstrating how the new mechanism in the Landmarks expansion really does speed the game up. Despite the perceived, increased challenge associated with the new Landmark scoring cards, the five-player game was generally more highly scoring, with the Blue and Plum sharing victory, tied on a hundred and seven points (some fifteen more than Black in third) and tied on the tie-breaker too. The other game was much closer, with a spread of just eleven points and with Pine finishing in first place with ninety-nine, only two points ahead of Byzantium who was the runner up.

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All in all, both groups liked the base game and enjoyed the game with the Landmarks expansion. The group playing with all three Landmarks modules felt it was much more of a struggle, though both groups felt the Landmarks didn’t give all that many points unless you knew what you were going for and were able to really make them count. Certainly, adding lots of Landmarks made things very difficult at the end of the game causing players to reject Animal Tokens, so although the rules say add an extra Terrain Tile, there was some discussion regarding the merits of “house ruling” the addition of a second in future, to encourage people to build Landmarks.

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Meanwhile, on the next table, Ivory had enticed Cobalt, Purple and Teal to play his new Christmas acquisition, Lost Ruins of Arnak. It turns out that he wasn’t the only person in the group to receive this game over the holidays—Green had also been given a copy and would no doubt have been keen to play had he been able to come. The game is set on an uninhabited island where explorers have found traces of a great civilization. Players lead an expedition to explore the island, find lost artifacts, and face fearsome guardians in a quest to learn the island’s secrets.

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The game combines deck-building and worker placement with resource management. Players start with six cards in their deck, two Money, two Compasses and two Fear cards, and draw five to play. As in the original deck-builder, Dominion, or in the racing games, Flamme Rouge and Snow Tails, Fear cards clog up players’ decks and more are acquired as the game progresses. But also as in Dominion, there are ways to “exile” cards during the game. So, players can try to keep a tight deck with minimal cards, or try to buy lots of cards that work well together. Players then have two meeples each that can be sent to locations on the map, to either discover or use an action Location. These generally give Resources plus some additions like draw a card, or gain a Fear card etc.. Each new site also has a Creature guarding it, which, if beaten, will give points and a small one-time bonus.

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The Research Track is where players spend three of the resources, Tablets, Arrows and Jewels. Each player has two tokens which move up the same track giving different rewards as it ascends. Thematically, you can’t write stuff in the notebook until you find it with your magnifying glass, so the former can never overtake the latter on the track. And of course, the notebook gives cooler rewards. Players get one action each per turn, until everyone has passed and the game finishes after five rounds. At the end of the game, Points are awarded for Cards, for progress on the Research Track, for discovering Locations and for beating Creatures; the player with the most points at the end is the winner.

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The first round was very slow as there was only limited spaces to go and everyone had weak cards in hand. Purple, Cobalt and Teal all focused on building up resources and buying tool cards for future rounds where Ivory did something a little different and started progressing along the Research Track as well as opening up new Dig sites. The issue with this was that he picked up a Fear card, though fortunately he had already got rid of one of his initial Fear cards through the site he opened so there was no net negative effect. In the second round, things picked up and strategies started to become apparent.

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Cobalt continued to focus on getting Tools, especially ones that allowed him to draw extra cards (and hence allowed additional actions) and he started making headway on the Research Track and was first to unlock an Assistant. He also did a little exploring, but did not overcome the Guardian. Ivory wasn’t far behind on the Research Track and also continued to explore new areas (and this time overcome the Guardian) and make up for lost ground in getting tool cards. Teal went for a very different strategy and started to focus purely on exploring and overcoming Guardians, netting him three points for exploring and gaining the idol and five points for overcoming the Guardian. Purple, on the other hand, continued to focus mainly on building her supply of resources.

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The third round continued in much the same vein with everyone continuing to pick up Tools and starting to gain Artifacts. Ivory focused almost exclusively on the Research Track and was able to catch Cobalt and had picked up all the bonuses, while both unlocked their second assistant. Teal was continuing his exploring strategy to great effect, whilst Purple continued to bide her time building up resources, including a significant amount of Rubies (the most valuable resource). And so it continued into the next round too, except Cobalt began spending his Compasses on Artifacts while Ivory continued to hoard them for the last round.

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And it was in the final round that Ivory’s plan became apparent as, in true Ivory style, he used all his Compasses to explore a level two Dig Site. Hitherto, exploration had been limited to level one sites and Ivory was the first to explore a higher level, thinking this would be a fun thing to do. In the end, this ironically might have been the critical move that influenced the outcome of the game. The level two site gave Ivory valuable resources, helping him complete the Research Track just after Cobalt and also overcome the newly uncovered Guardian. With two idols on a level two site, this gave Ivory eleven points.

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Teal continued with his strategy and also explored a level two site and began moving along the Research Track too. Purple used all her carefully collected resources and make a late dash to the top of the Research Track, gaining valuable points. It should be said the whole work placement element of the game felt very tight with limited spaces at the start and then difficulty knowing whether to take the optimal route planning cards first, but potentially missing out on a valuable space to other players, or taking the sub-optimal route and placing your workers first guaranteeing the activity, but at a cost of efficiency.

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Everyone got blocked at some point (except perhaps Teal who was opening up new sites), and certainly towards the end of the game everyone wished they had more than two workers! Teal with his explore/overcome Guardian strategy led to him defeating a very impressive impressive six Guardians and gave him a total of sixty-eight points. In the end, however, the fact Ivory completed the Research Track and was also able to explore and overcome Guardians gave him the victory by just three points with a winning total of seventy-one. It was a very good game though, one greatly enjoyed by all involved.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: Now we know what Bears do in the Woods!

31st December 2023

First to arrive, on the dot of 7pm, were Purple and Black together with Black’s mum, Sable. So they got the dubious honour of setting up the PitchCar track for the “Feature Game”. They chose one of the standard tracks from the second Extension (number five, which includes the tunnel from the first extension), and re-christened it, “Purple’s Hatch”. They hadn’t finished setting up when Jade arrived as a scout on behalf of the party from Swindon, checking they’d got the right house. In due course, Sapphire, Plum and Byzantium found their way round the back, eventually followed by Pine making a total of ten, and leaving so many shoes by the back door that it looked like a millipede was visiting.

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Over picky bits (Devils-on-Horseback, Pigs-in-Blankets, crisps, crudites and dips), the group began playing PitchCar. A simple race game, starting with the player at the front, players take it in turns to flick their wooden puck-car. The first player to cross the finish line after a set number of laps (in this case, two), is the winner. If a player “offs it” or finishes wheel-side up, they go back to where they were (losing stroke and distance), however, if they knock someone else, the victim gains the distance, regardless of where they land or whether they are rolled. To decide the order on the grid, there was a flick off, which was won by Sable on her debut.

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Unfortunately, although Sable started really well with a super-flick to give her pole position, she was soon over-taken as her inexperience told. In fact, starting at the front of the grid seemed to be a bit of a poison chalice this time, and Purple who started second and Plum who started third were also quickly overtaken by the rest of the field. Amid the mayhem, Byzantium started fourth and somehow remained in fourth place for pretty much the whole race. Similarly, Jade started in sixth and gained a single place finishing just behind him. The battle for the lead was therefore between Pine, Black and Sapphire the latter two starting from the very back of the grid.

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At the half-way point, Sapphire had the lead with Black in second and Pine in third, but by the end of the second lap, Black had caught and passed Sapphire to take the chequered flag, soon followed by Sapphire and Pine. The rest of the pack eventually all crossed the line, with Purple, some way behind who suddenly started playing brilliantly after everyone else had finished, ending the game with the longest and best distance past the finish line. By then, food was pretty much ready, so everyone engaged in the close-packing problem of re-packing PitchCar into its flight cases before settling down for Moroccan themed stews served with couscous, millet, roast cauliflower, meatballs and bread.

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After tea there was a bit of chatter, but with an hour or so to midnight, Pink was keen to play one of his favourite party games, Ca$h ‘n Guns. This is a silly game where players are a mafia gang dividing up their ill-gotten gains by playing a variant on “Chicken“. After loading their guns with either blanks or live bullets, on a count-down from the Godfather, players simultaneously point their foam guns at each other. The Godfather then gives another countdown, after which, people can back out, avoiding any bullets, but also withdrawing their claim to the loot for the round. The remaining players reveal their bullet cards and anyone still standing after the shoot-out takes their share of the loot. The player with the most after eight rounds is the winner.

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Pink started off as the Godfather, but soon lost that advantage and discovered that although people don’t gang up on the Mafia Leader, it’s shocking how they turn on you once you are no longer in power. Black began building his art collection, until people spotted that was what he was trying to do, and then targeted him as well. He was the first to be knocked out, taking his third and final hit in the penultimate round, round seven. Sapphire soon followed and was taken out in the final round—it later became apparent that was not something he was going to forget quickly! Purple and Pink amassed substantial totals, enough to give them second and third respectively.

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It was Pine, however, who won by a bit of a landslide, though. He was helped along by the Gem Dealer bonus of $60,000, however, which made the majority of the difference between him and Purple, though he would have just pipped her to mafia-stardom without it. By this time, it was just ten minutes to midnight, so Pink went to find the champagne (generously supplied by Jade), while everyone else packed away the foam firearms. The GOATS countdown to midnight was slightly off compared to Jools Holland (who was on iPlayer and therefore lagging behind somewhat) and everyone toasted the new year and remembered those who were not able to be with us (in particular Green, Lilac, Lime and Burgundy). Plum marked new year by fighting her way into the chocolate piñata with a ladle.

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Blue and Plum stood outside on the step watching for fireworks, but although they heard some, there was a disappointing lack spectacle. At the time, they thought they had just missed them, but it later turned out that this was at least in part due to anonymous, slightly threatening letters, from someone worried about their pooch. Eventually, Plum and Blue gave up and came in from the cold and everyone played a mad and quite random game of 6 Nimmt! together as the first game of 2024. In this game, everyone simultaneously chooses and then reveals a card from their hand. In order from lowest to highest, these cards are then added to the four rows in the centre of the table.

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Each card is added to the row that ends in the highest value card that is still lower than the card played. The addition of this card makes the row longer—if it is the sixth card added, the owner takes the first five into their scoring pile. Each card has a number of Bulls Heads (or “Nimmts”) on it, and the aim of the game is to be the player with the fewest. Normally we play two rounds, but with so many players, we played one round with everyone starting with ten cards. This turned out to be a strange combination of very random and slightly predictable as players could count cards, and it would probably have been better to start with hands of nine instead.

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Jade and Purple competed for the highest score, but both lost out when the wooden spoon went to Black. Blue and Pink did well only picking up five Nimmts apiece, while Pine did slightly better with four. The clear winner was Plume, however, who somehow managed to avoid picking up any Nimmts at all, and on her first try too. As the evening wound up, there was a lot of gentle chatter, nibbling of chocolate and sweets, and finishing off drinks, before everyone eventually headed off to their beds having given 2024 a very warm welcome.

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Learning Outcome: GOATS can party like it’s 1999 every year.

12th December 2023

Blue and Pink were just finishing their supper when Plum and Byzantium arrived, soon followed by Pine, Black and Purple, Teal, Ivory, and finally Lime. With ten then, the first question was whether to play two games with five each, or three games with fewer. And then it was who would play the “Feature Game“, Namiji, and who would play something else. The decision was pretty much made when Ivory said he’d brought Roll for the Galaxy and lots of people looked interested. Roll for the Galaxy is somehow a game a lot of people struggle with, so who played what almost sorted itself out, with the outstanding question being whether there would be a third game.

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In the end, it was easier to play two games than try to come up with a third, so Ivory took Plum, Teal, and Byzantium to the other side of the room to recap the rules for Roll for the Galaxy, while Blue taught the others Namiji. Although this was new to everyone, it is extremely to the group favourite, Tokaido. Both games are based on a time-track, that is to say, players are traveling along a path playing a kind of “leap-frog” where the player at the back jumps forward into an empty space and then carries out the action associated with it. The player can move forward as far as they like, but the desire to jump into a chosen space is tensioned against the fact that the further forward a player moves, the longer it will likely be until their next turn.

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Both Namiji and Tokaido have with elements of set collecting, indeed the different actions are very, very similar between the two games, and although players are Japanese fishermen, sailing south of the Japanese archipelago in Namiji, the rubric says they are just “a few miles away from the famous Tokaido road” and that games are barely that far apart. The “Stations” in Namiji are: Angling, Net Casting, the Crustacean Trap, the Whirlpool, the Sacred Rock, the three Panoramas and the Dock. The last four are roughly analogous to the Temple, the Hot Springs, the Panoramas and the Inn in Tokaido. The Angling, Net Casting and Crustacean Trap stations are a little bit different.

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Like the Village and the Encounters, these have set-collecting elements, but fish caught when Angling or Casting are laid out in the player’s boat with points scored for rows where the colours or types are the same. The Crustacean Trap is a push-your-luck draw from a bag where players score a point for each Crustacean drawn (up to a maximum of five), but if two crabs are drawn in the same haul, the whole lot are lost. The biggest difference between the two games is that there is no money, which has the effect of knocking some of the slightly rougher corners off. For example, the Inn is much harsher in Tokaido than the Dock in Namiji.

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Because Food cards have to bought at the Inn and these have different costs and duplicates cannot be bought, sometimes players have to go without which costs them six points. This is enough to effectively put a player out of the running. In contrast, in Namiji, they are a bit of a non-event. There are two types of card drawn at the Dock: Food and Upgrades. As in Tokaido, Food gives points—fewer than in Tokaido, and variable without the cost or the limit of one type per player. Upgrades grant players permanent abilities for the rest of the game (triggered when landing on their corresponding Station. The game ends when everyone returns to port—as in Tokaido, there are bonus points for lots of things, and that includes being early back at port (with decreasing numbers of points as players arrive later).

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Although the rules were simple and the game was mostly known, the debate started when Blue had barely left the table. The discussion centred on whether the player chosen to be first should go at the front of the track (and thus actually “go” last) or whether they should take the first turn (and therefore actually start at the back). Black opined that the that the turn order (randomly picked) was the order players should be placed on the track, while Pine felt the person picked should be the one start. In the end, after studying the rules (which failed to answer the question), the group went with Pine’s view, and finally started sailing.

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Pink was the first to complete the first Panorama (the Squid), soon followed by Lime who out-competed Purple and Pine to complete the lucrative Whale Panorama taking the bonus points for it too. Black concentrated on setting his paper hats sailing into the Whirlpool to jettison negative points and top-scored for his catch (though there aren’t any bonus points for that). Pine concentrated on collecting Cards and then was the first to get back to port. Ultimately, Namiji is a game that rewards players for concentrating on one thing, and in this case that was Lime, who’s twenty-five points for his Panoramas made all the difference giving him clear victory ahead of Pine in second and Black and Pink jointly in third.

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Meanwhile, on the other side of the room, Ivory had just about finished explaining the rules for Roll for the Galaxy when Blue arrived. In principle, the rules are quite simple, but playing the game well is much more difficult. The game is based on the card game, Race for the Galaxy. In both games, there are five phases, and players choose one each to activate. This is important, because with more players more phases are likely to happen. That is to say, while it is possible that everyone chooses the same phase which is the only one to happen, it is much more likely that two, three or four will be picked giving people more things to do in each round.

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In Roll for the Galaxy, at the start of the round, players simultaneously “shaky-shaky” their dice in their Cup and roll in secret. Then, behind their screen they secretly assign them to the different phases. Most are assigned according to the face that was rolled, but any one can be used to decide which phase the player wants to happen. Additionally, any one die can be used to “Dictate” the behaviour of one other die. Once everyone has assigned their dice, everyone reveals their choices and the phases for the round are finalised. Each player then gets to carry-out the actions indicated by their dice, returning unused dice to their Cup.

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There are five phases in each round: Explore, Develop, Settle, Produce and Consume. Explore allows players to choose tiles that they build in either the Develop or Settle phases, while Produce places goods on Production Worlds that can be turned into points or Credits in the Consume phase. Used dice (those consumed or used to build) are then placed in a player’s Citizenry and only return to their Cup on payment of one Credit per die. Thus, the game is very smooth with dice being assigned simultaneously, then moving to either of the player’s stacks of tiles to be used to pay for building, or onto one of their Production Worlds where it stay until it is Consumed.

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Since what players can do depends on the roll of the dice, at first glance, it seems like the decisions are made by chance. However, that just makes the decisions more key, if nuanced. Which Worlds to build, which phase to choose, whether to Dictate to reassign a die, whether to consume to give points or cash, and overall, which strategy to choose. And although the roll of the dice plays a big part, there are lots of dice and plenty of rolls, so the luck averages out, though players have to surf their luck. The game ends at the end of the round when a player builds their twelfth World, or when the pile of Victory points runs dry, and in this sense, although the game is about rolling dice, it is still a race, a race to build an engine, score points and finish the game.

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The game began with the rattle of the simultaneous “shaky-shaky” as dice rattled in everyone’s Cups. At the start of the game everyone wanted to Explore and build, but what depended on strategy. Blue started with a military strategy dictated by her first Development which gave points for red dice at the end. Ivory also planned his game around his Developments and their bonus points, but built his engine based on reduced costs to build and to Dictate. Teal and Sapphire chose to follow a conventional “Produce-Consume” victory point strategy, while Plum tried a bit of everything.

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Roll for the Galaxy is a little bit “multi-player solitaire”, with everyone concentrating on their own engine and deciding what they want to do. However, the winner has to take advantage of the fine margins and that means watching what other players are doing and anticipating and then taking advantage of their choice of phase when they can. This time, the end was triggered by Ivory, who accelerated quickly out of the traps thanks to his early choice of Development Worlds, and ultimately finished with thirty-six points for his buildings and ten bonus points giving him a runaway victory. A very creditable second place went to Byzantium, the only player who had never played either Roll or Race for the Galaxy before, with Blue completing the podium.

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Learning Outcome: Sometimes when you win you have a Whale of a time!

28th Movember 2023

What started out threatening to be a quiet night with the absence of Green, Lilac, Purple and Black, turned out to be quite lively in the end. As Blue and Pink finished their supper, Pine, then Jade, Sapphire, Plum and Byzantium arrived, soon followed by Teal, Ivory and Lime. Ivory was armed with his new, shiny copy of Apiary, which was to be the “Feature Game“. This is a worker-placement, hive-building game where players explore planets, gather resources, develop technologies, and create carvings to demonstrate their faction’s strengths before the end of the year when it is time to hibernate.

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At first glance, Apiary seems to be a fairly simple Worker Placement game, where players have the Tzolk’in choice: place a Worker or retrieve Workers. Unlike in Tzolk’in where Workers carry out their action when they are retrieved, in Apiary, players take the action and gain the associated benefits when placing a Worker, while retrieving Workers enables players to run any engine they have that relies on those recalled workers. Unlike many other worker placement games, there is no blocking and players can add workers to any space as long as they have the power and required resources. If a space is already occupied the existing occupant is “bumped” either to the next space (for certain areas) or sent back to the owner (with a choice to increase strength and make available straight away, or hold on to make use of income abilities).

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Players start with asymmetric factions and basic resources (Pollen, Water, and Fiber) according to their faction. The Action spaces are mostly about getting or trading Resources and Cards, or adding Tiles to improve their base. There are five available to players at the start of the game: Explore, Advance, Grow, Research and Convert. Explore allows players to visit planets, gaining bonuses for being the first to visit a planet, and also resources from the planets they discover while Advance allows players access tiles they can build if they have the resources to do so. Grow enables players to gain their fourth worker (or gain a worker back from the pool once it hibernates) and allows players to build ship frames while Research gives players access to the Seed Card deck, some of which are incredibly powerful.

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Wax and Honey are more advanced resources that can be created during the game using the Convert Action. Honey, in particular, is required for the final Action, Carve (which also needs a Level Four worker). When Workers return to the Active Pool (either by being bumped or because they have been recalled), their value increases by one. Level Four Workers trigger special bonuses when played, but instead of returning to the Active Pool when bumped or retrieved, they hibernate. In this way, the player loses that worker, but gains a bonus. The game ends when all the hibernate spots are taken or when a player uses all seven of their hibernate tokens.

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The game is beautifully produced with great art and lovely wooden resource pieces. The QueenShip is arguably the best, looking a bit like Starbug from Red Dwarf. With that and the theme (which had those traveling from Swindon crying, “Bees… In… Space!” à la The Muppets “Pigs in Space!” at intervals), the game was off to a good start. The not-blocked worker space mechanism is similar to that in Euphoria: Build a Better Dystopia, which Plum, Byzantium and Jade had played at HandyCon. Everyone starts off with a unique player “Hive Mat” and starting Faction Tile. Ivory began with “The Log” and “The Sini” which gave points for filing the Hive Mat and for each Development Tiles surrounding the Faction Tile (respectively), so he prioritised getting Development Tiles.

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Cobalt’s Faction, “The Cypri”, gave him four points for each Carving adjacent to his Faction Tile, but found that hard to achieve needing a lot of Honey, so concentrated elsewhere instead. Plum’s focus was on her Hive Mat, “The Warre”, which had spaces that progressed her along the Queen’s Favour track when she covered them, so she decided early to try and focus on that. She had some Farm Tiles that also would have helped her gain more Favour when she triggered the income for taking workers back, but she didn’t use that until later as, although her workers were bumped a lot, she kept choosing to increase their strength and have them available straight away instead.

– Image by boardGOATS

Byzantium started with “The Lama” for his faction that gave him a point for each tile he added to his Hive which grew quite rapidly. He also nabbed a Farm Tile from under Plum’s nose which gave him the Edge on the Queen’s Favour Track. As the game came to a close, everyone scrabbled to try to finish things off—like filling their Hive Mat (Plum’s last space was filled for free when she covered the adjacent hex). The lead at the end of the game was held by Plum, but that isn’t really where the points are in Apiary. In contrast to everyone else, Ivory almost completely eschewed the Queen’s Favour, focusing on Planted Cards and Honey Pots, which gave him over thirty points alone, and as a result he charged from the back of the pack to take victory.

– Image by boardGOATS

Meanwhile on the other side of the room, Pink, who had been fondly remembering his visit to the see the pandas “Down Under”, sucked Pine and Blue into a game of Zoo Break. This is a cooperative game where players are zoo keepers trying to prevent the marauding animals escaping the zoo. This has had a couple of outings this year the first was a disaster ended when a cobra got out, but the second was a hard-fought victory. This time, with just three keepers, turns would come round more frequently, so to make things a little more interesting, Pink (Lucky Duck), Pine (Gardener) and Blue (Angler) decided to play with the Faulty Lock Variant, personally recommended by the designer.

– Image by boardGOATS

The idea of the game is that players take it in turns to roll the Action Die to found out how many actions they get, then after carrying out the actions, players first draw an Escape card and then a Move card, to see what animals escape and move. In the original game, once animals are locked up, however, they can’t escape, which means the game gets progressively easier. Further, some players potentially end up lurking about with nothing much to do waiting for someone else to deal with the last couple of mischievous meerkats. In the Faulty Lock Variant, however, when an Escape card is drawn for an enclosure that has already been locked, a die is rolled to see if the lock is faulty and whether the animal escapes or not.

– Image by boardGOATS

The problem with the Faulty Lock Variant is that it can extend the game quite a bit. That said, it didn’t look like that was going to be a problem as Pink chucked first Pine and then Blue under the Charging Rhinoceros. Then Pink got trampled too, before Pine paid a couple more visits thanks to a mad Elephant and a venomous snake. Eventually, the team got their act together and locked up the Rhino, and then the Capuchins, Pandas, and Elephants. Every now and then, a lock failed and an Elephant got out, but gradually, the animals were being locked up, and eventually the last of the Meerkats was evicted from the part in the fountain locked up (aside from the two that escaped).

– Image by boardGOATS

It had been a lot of fun, even though Pink was sad that he’d not been hugged by a lonely Panda, and jealous of Pine who had. It had taken all evening though, and on the next table, Jade, Sapphire, Lime and Teal had managed two leisurely games and a bit of chit-chat. The first game was Isle of Cats: Explore & Draw, a role and write version of the much more substantial card-drafting, polyomino cat-tile-placing game, Isle of Cats. In Explore & Draw, instead of drafting cards before choosing tiles, players choose a set of cards each turn and then draw their “discoveries” on their boats.

– Image by boardGOATS

This time it was relatively close for second place, but Sapphire won by something of a landslide, his seventy-nine points was some twenty-five points ahead of Lime who took second with his neatly coloured in boat. Once the wipe-clean boards had all been cleaned, Teal took an early night before the remaining trio played moved on to the card drafting and path building game, Trailblazers. In this game, players start with eight Trail cards and draft two cards three times, adding them to their tableau. The cards must either be placed adjacent to or overlapping other cards as players try to construct long and elaborate trails in three different colours.

– Image by boardGOATS

Only closed loops in a single colour, that start and end at a matching campsite will score points and players also compete to fulfill “First To” and “End Game” goals. The game ends after four rounds, when the player with the most points from closed loops and goals achieved is the winner. This was much closer than the previous game, though the outcome was, ultimately, much the same. The goal cards in play were “Hikers’ Quartet”, “Trail Hugs”, “Forever Float” and ” Wanderlust”, though the players only scored for the last two (giving points for the longest single blue “Kayak” route and the longest total brown “Hiking” routes.

– Image by
boardGOATS

Lime and Jade tried to build trails of all three types, Hiking, Kayaking and Biking evenly, making the best of the cards they had. However, Sapphire focused exclusively on the two that featured in the “Forever Float” and ” Wanderlust” goals, finishing with twenty-eight points for his Kayaking routes alone. While it was very close when the trail lengths were taken into account, Sapphire took first place for both end game bonuses and Lime came second in both, which also reflected the final placing. There was some chatter, while “Bees… In… Space!” finished and then it was time for everyone to go home to hibernate until next time.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: Golden Honey is valuable.

14th Movember 2023

With Black, Teal, Pink, Green and Lime all away, it was looking like it was going to be a very quiet night. In the event, however, the numbers remained good with the slightly unexpected arrival of Plum, Byzantium, Jade and Sapphire. When Green dropped off Purple and stayed for a while, it became clear that we’d need something short to play alongside Kites, the “Feature Game“. Kites is a real-time, cooperative game where players are playing cards and flipping egg-timers to keep the air display going. A single play-through doesn’t take very long, but it is the sort of game that tends to get played through a couple of times in succession.

– Image by boardGOATS

The idea is that that the Team have to launch six Kites, each represented by sand timers, and keep them flying by preventing the timers from running out. Game play is very simple: Players start with a hand of cards and must play one on their turn before replenishing their hand from the draw deck. The cards all show either one or two coloured symbols on the corner, which correspond to the six coloured egg-timers in red, orange, yellow, blue, purple and white/rainbow colours that represent the different Kites. When a card with two symbols on it is played, both egg-timers in those colours must be turned, however, a card with one just one symbol allows the active player to choose whether to turn the timer in that colour or to flip the white/rainbow coloured timer instead.

– Image by boardGOATS

The game ends when either all the cards are played out (the Team win), or when one of the timers runs out of sand (the Team loses). There are a couple of additional “features”. Firstly, the different coloured timers each have different amounts of sand in them—the purple lasts the longest at ninety seconds with red running fastest lasting just thirty seconds. This catches out the unwary, and indeed it caught out the group composed of Jade, Plum, Blue, Purple, Pine and Byzantium on their first try when they succeeded in playing just four out of the fifty-three cards in the deck. The second attempt wasn’t much better, ending with just six cards played.

– Image by boardGOATS

The game has an “easy start” mode where players start with just three coloured Kites (plus the white/rainbow one), but nobody was keen to take cards out of the deck. So, to make things a little easier, instead of starting with three cards in hand as per the rules, the group started with a hand of four cards, giving them a little more in the way of choice on their turn. With this “House Rule” they were a little more successful, but it was at the fourth attempt, that things clicked, and the group finished with only twelve unplayed cards. And it was then that the second “feature” caught out the group—when the draw deck has been exhausted, players can no-longer turn the white/rainbow timer.

– Image by boardGOATS

Having done well with four cards in hand, it was then that the group decided to revert to the rules “as written” and play with three cards in hand. This made things more difficult during the early part of the game, but had the advantage of leaving players with fewer cards to play once the draw deck had been exhausted. At that fifth attempt, the players were left with just six cards unplayed, and on the sixth try, they had eight left. They were so close, they could feel it, and everyone in the group was determined not to stop before they’d won, which turned out to be on the seventh play.

– Image by boardGOATS

Kites is not the usual sort of fare for many in the group, being both cooperative and featureing real-time play. It had been interesting and fun, however, with players learning how to work together and what information they needed to share. Two people took responsibility for turning the timers and everyone else made sure they let people know when they spotted a timer running low. Perhaps the biggest impact was the realisation that waiting was sometimes more powerful than playing quickly, and certainly more haste often brought less speed. With the successful game, everyone felt they’d had enough, and while the other table finished their game, the group moved on to another party-style game, the simple little memory game, That’s Not a Hat.

– Image by boardGOATS

Each player starts with a single card and shows it to all the other players before turning it face down. One player then draws an extra card shows it to all the other players and passes their original card to the left or right (as per the arrow on the back of the card), announcing what they think it is. The receiving player can either accept the card as it is, or challenge the declaration. If a challenge is incorrect, the recipient keeps the card as a penalty point, whereas a correct challenge leaves the card/penalty point with the gifter. It seems very simple, and doesn’t sound promising when described, however, after a couple of turns, when someone realises they can’t remember the card they’ve got in front of them and is forced to guess, the tension mounts and everyone suddenly appreciates the game.

– Image by boardGOATS

Byzantium, Plum and Jade had played the game before and knew what to expect, but it was new to everyone else. Most people thought they knew what card everyone had, only to discover that wasn’t the case after a couple of swaps. Blue and Purple picked up just the one penalty, while Plum and Jade picked up a couple each. After the game, there was some discussion about challenges needed to be accompanied with the correct card identity (which is how Plum had played it it HandyCon). With this, it actually paid to try to bluff/confuse people who couldn’t identify the correct gift. Inspired by this, there was some discussion about a possible “House Rule” to introduce a bit more jeopardy: the challenger could optionally attempt to name the gift with the carrot of forcing another point on their gifter, and an incorrect guess reversing the effect of the challenge.

– Image by boardGOATS

That was for another day. This time, the winners, were Pine and Byzantium who avoided any penalties, though whether that was by luck or judgement wasn’t entirely clear and indeed, was unimportant. That was especially true as the game was brought to an abrupt end by the game ending on the next table. That was 7 Wonders—Green only wanted to play something short that he was familiar with and this fitted the bill. 7 Wonders is a card-drafting game, but has a bit of a “Marmite Factor” and is very unpopular with a significant number in the group, so rarely gets played. This time though, Cobalt, Ivory and Sapphire were all happy to join Green and give 7 Wonders an outing.

– Image by boardGOATS

In 7 Wonders, players take the role of leader of one of the seven great cities of the Ancient World (Alexandria, Babylon, Ephesus, Giza, Halicarnassus, Olympia and Rhodes), gathering Resources, developing commercial routes, and developing their Military, build their City and erecting an architectural Wonder. In each round or age, players receive seven cards and draft them, that is choose one card, then pass the remainder to their neighbour (much like Sushi Go! or Draftosaurus). Players then reveal their cards simultaneously, paying Resources if required, collecting Resources or interacting with other players according to the cards played ant their player board (which gives special powers).

– Image by boardGOATS

7 Wonders is essentially a card development game: Some cards have immediate effects, while others provide bonuses or upgrades later in the game. Some cards provide discounts on future purchases while others provide Military strength to overpower neighbors and some cards give nothing but victory points. Each card is played immediately after being drafted, so everyone knows which cards their neighbor is receiving and how their choices might affect what they’ve already built. Players continue to draft cards until everyone has six cards (discarding the seventh). The game ends after three rounds or ages.

– Image by boardGOATS

7 Wonders is quite a famous game that Cobalt had heard about it and wanted to try, though he was the only one from the group who was unfamiliar with it. It is one of those games where it seems like there is a lot to take in, but actually it is really quite simple and easy to pick up (though players do tend to require a round to see how it all plays, and there are only three in the whole game). Everyone chose their respective Sides of Wonder. Ivory who had Giza, elected to go for Side B, which has a four-piece Wonder and would give lots of points if he could complete it; Cobalt (Halicarnassus) chose to go for the simpler Side A, which would give him points and a chance to rifle through the discard deck for a card if he managed the second stage.

– Image by boardGOATS

Sapphire (Ephesus) felt both sides were the same, money & points, just in different ways, while Green (Olympia) went for his Side B where he could have the option of copying a neighbour’s end game purple scoring card and the ability to buy Resources for only one coin each instead of two. As expected the first round was a little slow as Cobalt felt his way around the cards and options, with help from the rest of the group, particularly from Ivory who was sat next to him and was initially passing his cards to Sapphire (so he could show Ivory the deck for some explanations without giving anything away).

– Image by boardGOATS

The first round was gentle. Ivory and Sapphire lost out in the fight to Cobalt and Green. In the second round Cobalt had to use his “Muppet Allowance” and swap a card he had kept when others pointed out he should have taken the other one. Green was building up his army and building his Wonder with a lot of his own Resource (even though he had the Wonder benefit). Cobalt and Sapphire were beginning to specialise in the green Science cards. Ivory was not really sure where he was going as he was beginning to lose out by not having access to the vast amount of Resources he needed to build his epic Wonder.

– Image by boardGOATS

By the third and final round we everyone had the problems associated with trying to choose the best of a good bunch of cards. Green and Cobalt ended up in an army fight, with six points at stake and already a reasonable army, it wasn’t a battle either of them wanted to give up on. The result was that they both let other good cards pass by. By the end there were not many purple cards left, as it seemed a few had been used to build the Wonders, so Green’s “Copy” did not score heavily, although he did win the battle with Ivory (and subsequently with Sapphire too). Sapphire managed to get a full set of Science and a couple of single type multipliers, thus learning the power of Science in 7 Wonders (which is often hard to achieve).

– Image by boardGOATS

By the end scoring, it seemed that Ivory, unusually for him, had indeed been boxed into a corner and ended up some way adrift of the rest of the group. That aside, it was a very close contest between Cobalt, Green and Sapphire, with only a couple of points between each of them, but it was new player Cobalt who took the Laurels of victory. Everyone enjoyed the game, so it might get another outing soon for which Green would be particularly grateful as it had always been a firm favourite of his. With all the early games over at the same time, it was possible to swap the groups about as Green took an early night. Jade was keen to introduce people to After Us, a game he had picked up at the UK Games Expo and hadn’t yet had the opportunity to introduce the group.

– Image by boardGOATS

After Us is a deck-building, Resource management, engine building game featuring an original card-combo mechanism. The story is set in 2083 and mankind has died out leaving only apes which have kept evolving. As the leader of a tribe, players try to guide it towards collective intelligence, by adding new Primate Cards to their starting deck of tamarins. Primate Cards have three rows of “Effects”—the top row will award resources, the middle row will give points (often at the cost of resources) and the the bottom row will have abilities related to the primate type. At the start of a round, players draw four Primate Cards from their deck to be laid out in a row making “Connections”.

– Image by BGG contributor The Innocent

The aim is to get the most out of the Connections by closing the open ended “Frames” along the sides of the cards by butting them up against adjacent cards that also have open ended Frames. Players then resolve the now closed Frames following the order of top left to bottom right, trying to gain as many bonuses as they can. Once everyone has simultaneously collected their Resources they can then use them to buy Primate Cards which are added to the top of the draw deck (and thus they come into use on the very next turn). In this way, they are improving the quality of their deck. The Frames have been resolved, the players simultaneously chose one of their Action Discs denoting which primate type they want to recruit.

– Image by boardGOATS

The Action Disc chosen will also gives the player a bonus. When recruiting, players have an option to pay three or six Resource (fruit, flowers or grain) to gain a Card. Players can additionally spend two Resource during this phase to copy one of their neighbours’ Action Disc bonus. Once everyone has resolved their Action Disks and bonuses, players discard their cards and draw four new ones and start again. The game starts slowly with players building their tribe, but it can end in a sudden rush when one player breaks into a gallop and charges past eighty points triggering the end of the round. In the shuffle, Cobalt joined Byzantium, Jade, Blue and Purple playing After Us. Jade and Byzantium led the way (both being familiar with the game), while the others felt their way.

– Image by boardGOATS

Arranging the cards to make the Connections proved the biggest challenge initially, especially when frustratingly, it wasn’t possible to make use of a really good half Frame. Blue, Purple and Cobalt just started collecting cards as well as they could, but Jade showed everyone an alternative, shedding all his starting cards until he had no tamarins at all. It was then that Byzantium suddenly started surging forward on the points track—having picked up a small number of good quality primate cards and shed a few tamarins he just turned the handle on his engine and it was too late for anyone else to do anything about it. And he was the first to cross the eighty point finish line, with Blue (who had put on a bit of a spurt) in second.

– Image by boardGOATS

Meanwhile, Ivory, Plum, Pine and Sapphire settled down to to play the new Scandinavian edition of Ticket to Ride, Northern Lights. Like all the other editions, players take it in turns to either take two coloured cards from the market, pay cards to place trains or take more ticket cards. Like all the different versions, Norther Lights has a small number of special rules, but unfortunately, the rules in the box are in Danish, Swedish, Finish and Norwegian, and nobody in the group is a speaker, worse, although we played it about three months ago, nobody could remember the rules, so it was out with the phones to get translations. The biggest difference boiled down to the addition of bonus cards, four of which are drawn at random at the start of the game and give extra points at the end.

– Image by boardGOATS

Additionally, there are some triple routes (which only take effect with five players) and some routes have a “+X” next to them which give players who build them X train cards from the face down pile. Finally, for all routes Locomotive cards can replace any other card and for ferry routes Locomotive cards can be replaced with a pair of the same colour (and as a result, unlike most of the other versions, if there are three or more face-up Locomotive cards in the market, the market is not refreshed). This time, the bonus cards drawn at random gave points for the most stations in Norway, the most stations in the arctic circle, the most successfully completed small Tickets, and the longest continuous connected train route.

– Image by boardGOATS

While everyone else seemed to be taking more and more tickets, Plum focused on completing her three starting Tickets, two fairly long ones running north-south, and a short one across the top. It was a tight game for the podium places, though with Ivory, Pine and Plum vying for the lead. Ticket to ride is often a high-risk, big-reward game though and if Plum had taken Tickets on her final turn instead of placing a single train for one point, she would have gained two more tickets and an additional twenty point which would likely have given her victory. As it was, she finished in third, behind Ivory in second and Pine the worthy winner with a hundred and twenty-five points.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: Keeping kites flying takes teamwork.

31st October 2023

With it being Halloween, there were lots of treats and some very fine spooky-themed attire to go along with the “Feature Game“, Betrayal at Mystery Mansion. This is a Scooby-Doo themed re-implementation of Betrayal at House on the Hill, a semi-cooperative game, where players work together until there is a haunting and one player takes on the role of the bad guy. So, the first task for the evening was to decide who was going to take on the roles of Mystery Inc., which precipitated lots of discussion about which was the best character. Scrappy got short-shift from Pink, though others were less dismissive. In any case, Scrappy was not an option, and before long, Sapphire, Pink and Pine joined Jade to solve the mystery.

– Image by boardGOATS

Jade, as the group leader, took the role of Fred, while Pink and Pine enthusiastically engaged in the game as Scooby Doo and Shaggy. That left Sapphire to choose from Velma or Daphne and he went for brains over bimbette. The group spent quite a bit of time exploring the mansion collecting clues and the like, before the haunt finally started. As Sapphire was the one to trigger the haunt, Velma was “temporarily lost in the woods” as he took on the roles of the bad guys, a Spectre and a female character called Sharon who was being possessed and controlled by the Spectre. As the game progressed, it became apparent that the Spectre was her great uncle who was trying to control her to gain access to documents that would enable him to take control of the family fortune.

– Image by boardGOATS

The Scooby Gang (minus Scrappy Doo, Daphne and the now lost Velma) had to track down and battle the Spectre and try break the spell controlling Sharon. As the villain, Sapphire rolled very well and it was very hard for the Gang to pin him down. Fred ended up stunned at one point, but thankfully revived after missing a turn. Shaggy scoffed piles of Scooby Snacks in order to re-roll, but the dice weren’t with him. Scooby himself, however, did very well and survived his battle with the Spectre then was able to recharge in one of the special rooms of the mansion. In the end the Mystery Inc. won the day and the great uncle was unmasked and announced that he “would’ve gotten away with it if it weren’t for you pesky kids”!

– Image by boardGOATS

Meanwhile, there were two other games underway on the neighbouring tables. Blue, Plum and Byzantium eschewed Witch’s Brew (which plays better with more people) and opted for the slightly bigger, beefier, boardgame version of the same game, Broom Service. Both games rely on the players having a personal deck of Character cards and a lead and follow mechanism. Each player starts by choosing a set number of Characters from their deck, each with different actions. The first player then chooses one to lead with and announces that they are either “Brave” or “Cowardly”. If they choose Cowardly, they can take the action straight away, whereas, if they choose Brave, they must wait until everyone has played to see if they can take the more powerful action.

– Image by boardGOATS

The next player must follow if they have the card in hand, and has the same decision to make—be a Coward and take the weaker action, or be Brave, and risk being gazumped by a later player, as there can only be one Brave player taking the powerful action. The Brave player (or the most recent Brave player) then leads with another card. In the card game, Witch’s Brew, players are collecting tokens to give them points, however, in Broom Service, there is an additional “Travelling Salesman” pick-up and deliver type of mechanism. Players have two Witch-meeples which travel the land collecting potions and delivering them locations to get points. This time, it was a really, really close game, despite everyone doing different things.

– Image by boardGOATS

Byzantium prioritised collecting Lightening Bolts and Blue concentrated on collecting potions and delivering them. While they both headed south and contrived to get in each-other’s way, Plum headed north and fell foul of one of the events which left her stuck with no good move in the final round. Blue kept forgetting about the “Bewitched Roles” which can be used but with a hefty three point penalty and lost six points as a result. Byzantium assumed he would be the only one to consciously choose to take the hit and thus guarantee he could be Brave, but happened to do that exactly when Blue picked them as well and lost the advantage when he led with those roles.

– Image by boardGOATS

As the game came to a close, it was clear it was going to be close with Blue ahead by a single point with sixty points scored during the game. She lots of resources left while Byzantium had none but lots of Lightening Bolts, and Plum had some of both. Initially, Blue and Byzantium tied with seventy-three, just two points ahead of Plum. That gave Blue victory with the tie break (the most left over resources), but that was only until the miss-count was spotted and Blue lost one point and with it her Winning Witch Medal, instead taking second place by a single point.

– Image by boardGOATS

While the first two tables were playing spooky-themed games, Black and Purple led Teal and Cobalt in the monster-mad Finstere Flure (aka Fearsome Floors). This is a game where players are trying to escape from Fürst Fieso before the castle collapses and without getting eaten. The idea is very simple: first players move all their pieces the number of spaces shown on their visible side, then the Monster moves. The Monster moves according to a stack of tiles, either moving a set number or moving until he eats. The Monster moves one step forwards then looks straight ahead, left and then right. If he sees a player, he turns and moves towards them.

– Image by boardGOATS

Thus, the Monster looks, moves, looks, moves until he either runs out of spaces to move, or eats someone. The game ends after fifteen rounds. It is simple enough, but there are a few little elements that add to the fun. Firstly, each player piece moves a total of seven spaces over two turns, but while some alternate three and four space moves, others are more variable, with the most extreme moving six spaces and then one space on the next turn; these different pieces require different tactics. Players can’t land on another player, if they walk into a rock they push it and if you step in a pool of blood, they slide across it.

– Image by boardGOATS

Finally, if the Monster walks into a wall he appears elsewhere on the board adding a further layer of unpredictability. The game opened with a bang when the first Monster tile revealed was a “Two Kill”, that is to say, the monster keeps moving until he’s eaten twice. From there, it was carnage. Everyone had someone eaten, with some multiple times. There were people who managed to escape from Fürst Fieso, though it wasn’t easy of course. Everyone managed to get at least one piece out of the castle, with Purple and Cobalt managing to get two pieces out. The winner, however, was Black who liberated three of his people.

– Image by boardGOATS

They were the first to finish, so moved on to play the recent release, Ticket to Ride: Ghost Train. This is really just a variant of First Journey, a simpler version of the group favourite, Ticket to Ride, aimed at children and non-gamers with super-sized pieces. Like the original game, players take it in turns to either take “two parade float” cards (in this case blind), or pay cards to place trains on the map. However, instead of scoring points for placing trains, the game is essentially a race game. Players start with three Tickets and every time they complete one, they draw a replacement. The winner is the player who completes the most Tickets.

– Image by boardGOATS

This time, Teal took an early night, but Black, Purple and Cobalt went at it with spooky enthusiasm. As a different take on the original, they found this a very enjoyable alternative. As well as Tickets, players can also win “Trick or Treat” bonuses for connecting the Dark Forest region to the Seashore region. Black and Purple both took a “Trick or Treat” bonus, but the winner was Cobalt who finished with six Tickets, one more than Purple who would have taken another if she’d had just a little more time. That wasn’t the only Ticket to Ride game of the night however, as the Scooby Gang played a quick game of Ticket to Ride: Berlin once they had solved their mystery.

– Image by boardGOATS

Ticket to Ride: Berlin is one of the mini versions, and there was a little chat about these and which ones people had played. The first mini version was a “demo” game the publisher used to introduce people to the game at conventions. Since then, there have been a series of City versions, with New York, London, Amsterdam and San Francisco all featuring and Berlin being the most recent (with Paris to come next year). These all feature the same basic mechanism as the original game (including the scoring of points for placing trains unlike the First Journey type games), but they have fewer train pieces and a smaller map. The Berlin map, is long and thin, but the big difference is that players have mixture of Trams and U-Bahn pieces.

– Image by boardGOATS

Tram and U-Bahn routes are paid for in similar ways, though only one U-Bahn piece is needed to mark them and they score slightly more points. Once the differences had been highlighted by Pine and Pink (who played this together a few weeks back), everyone got down to business. Jade and Sapphire dominated the West while Pink and Pine concentrated on the East, though the geography of the map meant everyone had to include East-West connections in their network. It was a hard-faught close game with both Jade and Sapphire taking negative points due to incomplete Tickets. Pine completed five Tickets and Pink finished six.

– Image by boardGOATS

Pine’s Tickets were more lucrative, however, and he took victory with sixty-one points, while Jade with forty-nine just pipped Pink by two points in the struggle for second place. Everyone had enjoyed the game, and Jade commented that it was one of his favourite renditions of Ticket to Ride so far—indeed, the addition of a second set of transport seems to have been much more successful in this mini version than it was in the full-sized Rail & Sails where it made it longer and more fiddly without making it significantly better. While everyone else was playing and then discussing the merits of different versions of Ticket to Ride, the Crafty Trio, Plum, Blue and Byzantium had finished Broom Service and squeezed in a quick game of Dinosaur Drafting with Draftosaurus.

– Image by boardGOATS

This is a fun little game that we play quite a bit, where players choose one Dinosaur from a handful, add it to their Park and then pass the rest on. Dino-placement is slightly restricted by the roll of a die, with everyone getting points for how they occupy their pens. Usually, the group plays with the Summer board, but with the cold weather, the group decided to play with the alternate, Winter board which introduces new and different pens. These include the Well-Ordered Wood (Dinosaur types must alternate); Lovers’ Bridge (giving six points for each pair of Dinosaurs separated by the bridge); the Lookout (contains one Dinosaur and scores two points for each one of that type in their right neighbour’s pen).

– Image by boardGOATS

The most challenging, however is the Pyramid, which holds up to six Dinosaurs in a layered structure, but dinosaurs of the same species may not be placed adjacent to each other (horizontally or vertically). Blue got into a mess with this, and was stuck with a Dinosaur she could not place at the end as a result. Plum and Byzantium did slightly better and were able to capitalise more on the Quarantine Zone, which allows players to move the single occupant at the end of the game. In the end, it was a tight game (though not as tight as Broom Service), in which Plum ran out the victor, three points ahead of Byzantium.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning outcome: They’d have got away with it if it weren’t for those pesky kids!

17th October 2023

Being the first meeting after SPIEL, there was a lot of chatter about Essen and how things had changed since the last time anyone from the group went, some four or five years ago. Lots of people from the group have been over the years, and others have been to other conventions like UKGE or HandyCon, so have something to compare it to. Eventually, the group settled down to play games and five very quickly volunteered to play the “Feature Game“, which was Forest Shuffle, a new Essen release. This is a card game where players are trying to build combinations of animals around trees to score points.

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Game play is quite simple: players start with a hand of cards and, on their turn draw two cards from the market (or “Clearing”) or play one to their tableau. 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, Fungi and Amphibians are played at the bottom of the tree 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 therefore where, tucking the other side under the tree, making the unplayed half invisible.

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Players have to pay the cost of playing a card into the fact up Clearing, making those cards available to other players (and even sometimes themselves). Most cards have an effect associated with them, usually this is a one-off special action, but in the case of Fungi, they are special powers that last for the rest of the game. If the card played matches the colour of the cards used to pay for it, sometimes there is an additional bonus (e.g. take an extra turn, or extra cards, play a card for free etc.). These can be extremely powerful as they allow players to, for example, pay with cards they can then pick back up, or play a sequence of cards together.

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The game ends abruptly when the third “Winter is Coming” card is drawn from the deck and the player with the most points is the winner. Players score points for Trees and for Critters, but it is how players get their cards combining together that really makes the difference. Thus it is a game of strategy and tactics, but also of timing, which relies on very simple rules. Blue outlined the rules and explained how some of the cards work together, then ??? started by choosing a card from the market. There was a little confusion when the Dürer-Fledermaus/Feldhase card came out with the text all in German, but otherwise, everyone got the hang of the basics quite quickly, though playing well can take a little longer.

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Pine got into a bit of a tussle with Blue and Black for Linden Trees, while Blue spent a long time setting up a “super-move” to play a Brown Bear and place lots of cards from the Clearing into her cave. Ivory started collecting bats, more bats and even more bats, which coupled with a few gnats gave him lots of points. His Fungi also gave him a extra cards as he built his forest, making him look like the player to beat. Meanwhile, Teal was collecting hares (including the Dürer-Feldhase) and before long had down of them. Then he switched his tactics somewhat after picking up a Roe deer. This was a critical moment, because from there her started adding lynxes, which give ten points each if there is a Roe deer in the forest.

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With five, Forest Shuffle drags a little, particularly when everyone is new to the game as they have to read all the cards and try to work out which combinations work well together. It was an enjoyable game in spite of that, though most people played it in a very multi-player solitaire way, concentrating on their own game rather then keeping an eye on what others want and avoiding gifting people points. That said, everyone became more aware of what was going on in their neighbour’s forest as the game progressed. Nobody really had a feel for how well everyone was doing though because of the way the cards combined. So it was a little bit of a surprise how disparate the scores were.

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In the end, it was “The Lynx Effect” that made the difference, with Teal taking victory with a hundred and nine points, nearly twenty ahead of Ivory and his bats, with Pine a distant third. Teal had an early start the next day, so flushed with success, he headed off leaving Ivory to consider leaving as well. However, when presented with the possibility of playing Draftosaurus, he was tempted into staying—despite it being one of the most popular games in the group, Ivory had only played once before. He felt he hadn’t really got to grips with it that time, so was keen to give it a quick try now.

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Pine was interested in playing with the Marina Expansion again, but given Ivory had only played it once before, the group decided to save that for anther time. Without that, Draftosaurus is a simple enough game of drafting wooden dino-meeples with players starting with a hand of six, choosing one and passing the rest on. Players also take it in turns to roll a die and that dictates where players can place their chosen dino-meeple in their Dinosaur Park. The parks have pens that score points under certain conditions (e.g. the “Woody Trio” scores seven point if if contains exactly three dino-meeples) and the player with the most points after two rounds of drafting is the winner.

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In contrast to Forest Shuffle, Draftosaurus was an extremely close game—everyone picked up seven points for the “King of the Jungle” and fifteen points for their “Meadow of Differences”. Everywhere else, where one player had an advantage, others picked up points elsewhere. Purple and Blue picked up points for their “Woody Trio”, Pine for his “Solitary Island” and Ivory had an extra loved up couple. In the end, Purple and Pine tied for third with thirty-five points, and Blue just pipped them to second place by a single point. It was Ivory who was the victor, just two points ahead, perhaps thanks to his extra tyrannosaurs giving him an extra point each; it is safe to say, that he’s definitely got to grips with the game now…

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Meanwhile, on the next table, Green’s suggestion of Terraforming Mars (with the Prelude Expansion) was turned down since the group didn’t want to play a complex and potentially longer game. For the same reason, the group eschewed Village although it has been a long time since the group played it (Green commented on how the original artwork is very pretty, but the new version is horrible!). In the end, since last time Green had agreed to play one of Cobalt’s games, the group ended up playing Barcelona, a game that is both complex and quite long. With hindsight, perhaps looking for something else entirely might have been sensible as everyone except Cobalt needed to learn it, and even with experienced players it can take a while.

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Barcelona is a game where players take on the role of builders in nineteenth century Barcelona who are working on the new expansion to the city following the destruction of old city walls. Each round, each player takes a single turn consisting of two or more actions, a building phase, and then preparation for their next turn. Players start with two random Citizen tokens which are placed in a stack onto a chosen unoccupied intersection. Unusually, players can place anywhere they want (no adjacency restrictions as seen in other games).

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Choosing an intersection is the guts of the game that has significant consequences, initially the type of actions the player can carry out in that round, which are indicated by the streets selected. At the end of their turn, players must construct a single building if they can which depends on the Citizens adjacent to the building spot selected. There are four types of buildings: corners and normal shaped Level One buildings require any two adjacent citizens while Level Two building require at least one of them to belong to the middle class and Level Three buildings require three adjacent citizens, one of which must be a member of the upper class.

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As well as moving players along the Cerdà track, Level Two buildings also allow them to progress on their own Sagrada track giving Sagrada bonus tiles with rewards increasing the more they progress. Level Three buildings move players two steps on their Sagrada track and give them seven pooints, but will also move players down two steps on the Cerdà track. All the citizens required for buildings have to come from intersections adjacent to the building spots and are removed from the board and placed on their respective progress tracks according to their colour. Once the first citizen is placed on the end segment of a track, that segment’s Cerdà scoring is triggered and players gain points based on the criteria shown on the tile.

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This value is then multiplied by players’ positions on the Cerdà track, which represents whether or not players build according to the original intentions of Ildefons Cerdà (now considered the inventor of urbanism). The game is then played over a variable number of rounds interrupted by three scoring phases before a final scoring phase, after which, the player with the most points wins. Cobalt started first and went straight in, knowing exactly what the best thing to do was, but being first he couldn’t buy a building with only one stack of citizens. Everyone else was much more uncertain of what to do.

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At the outset Black chose to follow a policy of not buying buildings if he could get away with it (the rules are you must buy after your turn if you can), while Green had decided to work to getting the best result for each stage scoring, and Lime for a while was really confused and did not really know what he was doing at all. Lime managed to trigger the first stage scoring, meaning that while he, Cobalt and Black had two turns before scoring, Green had only one turn—so much for his game plan and he soon found himself falling behind the others. Going last seemed to be a significant disadvantage, something Cobalt said has been mentioned before in forums, especially for four player game.

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And so the game continued. Cobalt knew what he was doing, while Black was trying not to buy buildings, but to get as many points along the way from other means as he could—as he put it, the game was a bit of a “points salad”. Green fared a little better at the second round scoring, but he was still a turn behind the rest (as was Lime for the second stage). By this time he had decided to get his tram moving as much as possible as well, which was helping him to catch up on the score board. Lime was still struggling, and gaining a lot of help and advice from Cobalt. It seemed to be working though as he was scoring nearly as well as Cobalt himself.

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The final stage of the game took a bit longer to complete, but was mostly just more of the same. By the final scoring, Lime took the lead to win the game while Cobalt’s experience had helped him compete and take second place, just three points behind. Green had caught up a bit and took third, while Black’s strategy of not buying really hampered him as he dropped further and further behind. He admitted that it probably wasn’t a good strategy as the later building buys really brought home a lot of points due to the points that also came with each purchase. It had been an interesting game though, not so much about building a points engine, but looking for a good haul of points on each turn. Having played once though, next time it might feel more like players are scoring from the game rather than the game scoring for them.

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Learning Outcome: Nobody can resist the Lynx Effect.

3rd October 2023

Black, Purple, Byzantium, Plum, Blue and Pink all arrived early for food, and were soon joined by Pine, Lime and finally Ivory. The “Feature Game“, was to be Crappy Birthday, a party game where players give each other comedy birthday presents and the recipient has to decide who gave them the best and worst gifts. A bit like the better known game, Dixit, the idea is to be the master of non-mediocrity, with the best and worst gifts netting points for the person who gave them. It was our birthday party, so as is now traditional, everyone shared cake (this year, meeple topped carrot cup cakes), before Plum started off the year of GOATS crappy birthdays, receiving her first gift from Byzantium.

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This year we discovered that Plum fancied a custom chopper, Byzantium liked the idea of visiting a radioactive swamp (so long as it wasn’t too active) and Lime would gratefully accept a gift Monster Truck weekend. Unusually, Pine didn’t get horses and a pile of meat, and picked skiing in Alaska (finding the Alaska bit more appealing than the skiing), and Black chose a Safari as his favourite gift. Plum picked a chick-flick marathon over a litter of puppies and Ivory opted for a catapult over several space-based options. Finally, much to everyone’s surprise, Blue picked a garden chess set and Pink chose a set of cuddly penguins over a pet vulture (who is very friendly, but stares at you while you are sleeping).

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Less popular were singing the national anthem a the baseball, extreme bungee jumping, face piercing, a flexible trainer, and perkiness training. The horrific baby sculpture was pretty much guaranteed to be rejected (and Lime had the opportunity for a second time), but others were more specific. For example, Purple eschewed the drive across the Sahara because she dislikes the heat while others felt they would quite like a visit to the desert. Similarly, Pink couldn’t imagine anything worse than mime camp, although most of the others couldn’t really see his problem. Most people managed at least one or two loved or loathed gifts, nobody came close to matching Plum, who took a massive six points—a remarkable seventy-five percent of her potential maximum, quite a record for a worthy winner.

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With our birthday suitably marked, the question was whether to continue to play light, large-group games or to break the group up and play something slightly more serious. Pink suggested Niagara, and although Blue, Black and Purple warned against it, Plum showed an interest and that suckered in Byzantium, Lime and Pine. The idea of Niagara is that players are rowing their canoes along the river to collect gems and then safely row them back to shore. Players do this by simultaneously choosing a Paddle tile to play, then taking it in turns to activate their chosen Paddle to move their canoe (or canoes), trying to avoid losing them over the cataract and turning them into match-wood. The winner is the player who manages to get seven different coloured gems or five gems of the same colour safely to shore.

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The reason for the warnings and large amount of reticence form some of the group was after an online game some two years ago when Pink had the temerity to steal gems from everyone else and collective punishment failed to correct his appalling behaviour, winning the game in spite of it all. This time, fore-warned and fore-armed the game started mean and got meaner, with the gem stealing starting in the very first round. As a result, three out of the five finished the game with nothing. Although Pink ended the game with two red gems, at least he didn’t win—that honour went to Byzantium, who by hook or by crook (mostly crook to be honest), managed to get five purple gems and ended the game.

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Meanwhile, on the next table, Black and Purple were introducing Blue and Ivory to Little Town. Despite the similarity in names (and inevitable resulting confusion), this is nothing to do with Tiny Towns. In this game, players acquire resources like wood, stone, fish, and wheat from the surrounding squares by placing workers on the board. When a worker is placed, the owner acquires the resources available from all eight surrounding spaces. They can then build buildings by using these resources, and the owner (or indeed any other player), can gain the effect of the building when they place a worker next to it, although when claiming a resource from a building owned by another player, they must pay a them a coin.

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The game is deliciously tight—each player gets one action per turn, three turns per round and the game lasts just four rounds. Players collect victory points by using the powers of buildings, by constructing buildings taken from the market (which is not refilled), and by achieving goals dealt to them at the beginning of the game. After the fourth and final round, whoever has the most victory points wins. Ivory started building an engine based on turning money into points, but then he realised the flaw in his plan: there was no additional source of money in the game, so once he’d spent his cash, he was reliant on others paying to use his facilities, a source that rapidly diminished. So he moved on to collecting wheat instead.

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Blue built an engine to turn fish and wheat into points. Black also built a wheat into points engine and pinched the last wheat field that both Blue and Ivory had their eye on. Purple on the other hand did something completely different, converting resources into other resources to satisfy her goal card. Ultimately though, none of it really mattered as the game was really, really tight and all four players finished within three points of each other. Black’s experience with the game told and his thirty-two points just edged him one point clear of Blue who took second and she in turn finished one point ahead of Ivory. It had been an enjoyable game though, definitely deserving of another outing, especially as the variety in the buildings would make it play very differently every time.

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While the Little Town was being explored, Niagara had already finished and Lime, Plum and Byzantium rowed their respective ways home, leaving Pine and Pink to play a quick game of the new mini-version of Ticket to Ride, Berlin. This is the latest in the “City Series”, smaller versions of the game that play more quickly, but still keep the essence of the original game. Each game (full-sized or smaller), has some unique “hook” as well as a new map and features designed to bring a flavour of the new location. Like all the other game, players have a choice on their turn to either take coloured cards from the market, or pay cards to place pieces on the map.

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In the Berlin version, players have both subway trains and trams to place. Tram routes are claimed in the usual way, but only one underground carriage is placed to claim a Subway or U-bahn route. When a player has one or none of their pieces left in their supply (either Tram or U-bahn carriages), each player, including that player, gets one last turn, then tickets are scored as usual. One of the differences between this game and the other variants is the shape of the map, with it being very elongated in the east/west direction. Pine built his routes along the north side and into the centre while Pink stretched his network along the south bank and into the centre.

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It was a very enjoyable game, and both Pink and Pine said they would definitely play this one again. Perhaps part of the reason was that it was very close, but neither player realised how close until the final scoring. In fact, it was so close that they double checked the score and confirmed that it was a tie with both players finishing with fifty-four points. After a bit of chat, they had a rummage through the rules to find out what the tie breaker was, only to discover that it was the number of completed tickets, and both had finished with five. So remarkably, it was a real tie, but while they shared victory this time, there will almost certainly be a rematch in the not too distant future.

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Learning Outcome: Everyone loves a nice birthday gift.

19th September 2023

Blue and Pink were the first to arrive, making up for their recent absence on the other side of the world. They had finished their supper and were just discussing the upcoming Essen, when Purple and Black arrived, quickly followed by Pine, to be regaled of tales of koalas, pandas and roos. Green, Teal, Cobalt and Lime weren’t that far behind and then the group split into two to play. The “Feature Game” was Alea Iacta Est, a fairly simple dice chucking game with a Roman theme. Although it has a lot of similarity to one of our old favourites, Las Vegas, it is more of a “gamers’ game” as it has a bit more planning and slightly more complex scoring.

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Like Las Vegas, players have a handful of dice, which they roll on their turn and then place a some or all in one of the locations. In Las Vegas, the locations are different gambling joints and the dice placed are all the same number. However, in Alea Iacta Est, the dice placed depend on the location, there are five, and the all behave differently. For example, in the Templum, the first player adds one die and takes a face down Fortunum token. The next player to place dice in the Templum adds one more die than the first player making sure the total number of pips is larger, and also takes a token. If a player is returning to the Templum, they can reuse the dice they placed previously, making sure their number of dice is one more than the previous person to play there.

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The Fortunum tokens are points, ranging at random from one to three. At the end of the round (triggered by one player running out of dice), the player with the most Fortunum tokens keeps two of their tokens, while everyone else keeps one of their choice. In the Senatus, players have to place “runs”, that is sequences of dice with consecutive values. Players who place dice later must add one more die than the previous player and the run must be different to any that already exist. Players can only have one run in the Senatus, but as for the Templum, players can ad dice to their previous entry.

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At the end of the round, the player with the longest sequence of dice takes three Senate cards, keeps one and passes the rest on to the player with the second longest sequence of dice. The Senate cards provide players with end game scoring opportunities. The Castrum is similar to the Slot Machine from the Las Vegas Boulevard expansion, in that players add sets of dice of the same value. Like the Slot Machine, players can have more than one group, but unlike Las Vegas, there may be any number of groups in the Castrum, but never two groups with the same pips and same number of dice.

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The player with the largest group in the Castrum at the end of the round takes their choice from the face up selection of Province tiles. These score points at the end of the game, as long as they have at least one assigned Patrician. Players get Patricians from the Forum Romanum. The Forum Romanum is perhaps the most complex to control. Player can place either a single die with any number of pips or exactly two dice, which show together the total five pips (i.e. a one and a four, or a two and a three). The dice are placed at the base of pillars in value order with the lowest value added to the left displacing everything to the right by one space.

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The clever part is the order the dice are placed when there is the inevitable tie: the most newly added, also goes in the space to the left the group with the same number (again shifting everything to the right by one space). At the base of each pillar there is also Patrician tile and these go to the owner of the die next to the pillar at the end of the round. The fifth and final space is the Latrina, which is where players place dice if they can’t place them anywhere else, getting a re-roll token in return. These can be cashed in during the game, or are worth a point for each pair at the end of the game. The Patrician tiles and the Provinces are coloured. Patricians are worth their face value, but only if allocated to a Province with a matching colour.

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Each Province can support two Patricians, one male and one female. Each Province also scores its face value, though there is a point deduction if it has no Patricians. These are the main source of points, though Senate tiles can provide a lot as well, with additional points from the re-roll chips and Fortuna tiles (taken from the Templum). The game is played over five rounds with players taking it in turns to allocate dice until one player runs out (play continues until everyone has had the same number of turns). As expected, it took a couple of rounds for everyone to get the hang of the locations, and in particular how the Forum Romanum worked and the implications for the scoring.

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Initially, everyone, but Pine in particular collected some Senate cards, to try to give them a steer on what to aim for. They were a bit more complicated than people realised, so while they helped to an extent, in some cases, things became more opaque rather than less. Pink, Pine and Blue made a real effort to get what they wanted from the Forum Romanum, which became increasingly difficult as the game progress—in the final round, the only dice left there had the value of one. Teal focused on the getting lots of Provinces, realising that they still scored most of the points even when they were unoccupied.

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Given how people struggled to get to grips with the scoring, it was a really close game. Pink just pipped Blue by a single point and Teal was only a couple of points behind in third. Ultimately, despite the similarities with Las Vegas, it was very definitely a “learning game”. Indeed, the similarities are quite superficial as the guts of the game are in the way the different locations interact. This takes the game from being a light betting game to a much more complex game, though one that is still a lot of fun, with special moments when someone shifts someone else’s carefully positioned dice right out of the Forum.

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Meanwhile, on the next table, Green led Black, Purple and Cobalt in a game of Endeavor: Age of Sail. This is a game that is very popular with the group, and although it seems quite complex, really comprises of point-by-point decisions, so although strategy is very important, tactics are critical too. The game is played over eight rounds, each consisting of four basic phases: Build, Populate, Payment and Action. There are four technology tracks roughly corresponding to each phase, which dictate what a player can do during that phase. For example, how far along the building track a player is dictates what they can build: the further along they are, the more buildings they have to choose from.

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Thus it is one of those games where small decisions made early can have a big impact later in the game. The first phase consists of passing round the tray of buildings rather like a box of chocolates, but after that, the second and third phases are more or less carried out simultaneously. The guts of the game, however, is the Action phase. In this round, players can place population markers on their buildings to activate them and carry out one of the five actions: Colonise, Ship, Attack, Plunder Assets, and Pay Workers, actions that are generally focused on the central map.

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Cobalt had not played Endeavor before so the group opted for the standard buildings and played using the standard, four/five player side of the board. They did add three exploits from the Age of Expansion, however, the last three that had not yet been played with this copy of the game. They would not come into play until later and by then everyone should have a good idea of how to play. While Cobalt and Black went with the Occupy action for their first building followed by the Workshop for extra bricks for their second building, Green and Purple both chose Shipping as their first building. Green then took a Shipyard for a second shipping action and Purple went for a Market (gaining cards), “just to to be different”.

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In that first round, Black and Cobalt only took a single occupy action with a plan to get better actions for their third building. Purple could only manage a single shipping, while Green also only managed one ship, but combined it with gaining a Culture to push him into the next category to get more citizens in the second round. In that next round, Purple and Cobalt continued their similar strategy, gaining slaves for their bricks, while Green was forced into a workshop to stop himself getting hamstrung on buildings later and Purple was struggling to get enough citizens to use all the actions she had available to her.

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That was pretty much how the game continued. Black and Cobalt placing people into Europe and building up their cards; Green was shipping around the world (although mostly in the Caribbean and South America) and Purple was taking the shipping routes in Europe, but always without enough citizens. As the game progressed, regions started to open. Green inevitably gained the first Governor card. Cobalt and Puple fought for who had the most cards in total.

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Once three and then four regions became open, only Green and Cobalt had people in both regions of the two opened exploits, so only they were able to make use of them. They did use the South Sea Company exploit and Green took the extra brick as a ongoing benefit. This was not a normal brick, but a whole extra brick level, which allowed him to gain a level five building in the final round (the only one to do so). Cobald had tried to get a level five building, but then realised he had failed to reduce his brick level after he’d lost a couple of cards, and so was restricted to another level four building. Although the Letters of Marque was the other opened exploit, no one actually made use of it.

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About three rounds in, Green suddenly realised he had forgotten to explain the “Abolition of Slavery” rule to Cobalt. It didn’t look likely to happen as no-one had yet taken any European cards, however, Cobalt made his mind up then that this was what he was going to aim for—even though he had his own slaves, it felt morally right to him to make it happen! Which he duly did, however, the only players to lose out as a result were himself and Black. Both of them needed to reduce their card count anyhow, and the slaves were the ones likely to be for the chop, so it didn’t cause too much damage. The minus points they both received were only a small price to pay for their freedom.

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Balancing everything is critical in this game and unfortunately Purple had always been on the back foot without enough citizens to do the actions she had available. In the end Green ran out the winner as he had managed to get most of his attribute tracks up and gained a fair presence on the board. The Letters of Marque, although unused, did provide for extra scoring on the shipping tracks, where Green had rather a lot of due to his early double shipping strategy. He and Cobalt also gained some points for using the South Sea Company Exploit. This pushed Cobalt into second, marginally ahead of Black (who had managed a fair few points on cards and buildings).

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It was still early and Endeavor was on-going, so when Teal left, the group looked for something little and light to play, and quickly settled on No Thanks!. This is a favourite with the group because it is super-quick to set up and play: players start with eleven red chips, and on their turn either take the card shown or pay a chip to pass the problem on to the next player. At the end of the game, when the deck has been depleted, players score for the lowest value card in each continuous “run”, offset by any remaining chips and the winner is the player with the lowest total. This is made more difficult by the fact that around thirty percent of the cards have been removed.

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This time, the group played a total of three games. In the first one, Pink took all the chips leaving everyone else with nowhere to go but pick up cards, which Blue did in spectacular fashion, finishing with one hundred and forty points. The other three were very close together, with Pink just edging it by a single point from Lime. The second game was much better balanced. Although Pine won, there were clues as to Lime’s strategy for the next game as he picked up lots of cards and would have won by a large margin if two of the cards he wanted hadn’t been removed from the deck, but that’s the point of the game of course.

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The third and final game was very unusual. Lime rode his luck like a bucking bronco and kept taking cards. Blue picked up a couple, but that was all he let her have, and Pine and Pink who just kept passing, eventually ran out of chips. As they were playing open handed, Lime saw this and just collected the rest of the cards leaving him with forty chips and fifty-two points from his cards—a very good final score of twelve. Unfortunately for him, as both Pine and Pink had no cards or chips, they both finished with a round, fat zero, and therefore shared victory in one of the strangest No Thanks! games anyone had ever played.

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With Endeavor coming to a close, there was just time to squeeze in something quick. The fancied a change though and, as it had been a while since it’s last outing, Love letter was picked. Everyone knew the game well , so the rules didn’t really need to be explained: start with a hand of one card, draw a second and choose one to play, effectively dueling to have the highest value card once the deck was exhausted. Blue and Pine won the first two rounds, and as the others were finishing packing up, rather than play more, the group decided Blue and Pink should have a play-off. Blue quickly acquired the Princess, which can be risky, but it was soon over when Pine played the Baron and compared hands, do his detriment. With that, it was time to go home.

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Learning Outcome: Although two games may seem similar, they may not suit people equally well.

5th September 2023

The evening began with Green and Purple arriving to find Plum and Cobalt sitting outside the pub chatting. This was partly because the weather was warm, but also because someone else was sitting at our usual table and we had been relegated to another long table on the other side of the room. Pine arrived soon after and once introductions between Cobalt and those who had not been about last time were concluded, the group decided to play a short intro game while they waited for everyone else to arrive. The game settled on was Coloretto, which had only just begun when Ivory arrived, but he was happy to watch.

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Coloretto is a quick and simple game that is very popular with the group. Players either turn over the top card and add it to a “Truck”, or take a Truck and add it’s contents to their collection, sitting out until everyone else has taken a Truck. Players are collecting coloured sets of Chameleon cards, but the key is that only three sets score positive points, with the others scoring negatively. Thus players are trying to get as many cards in three colour suits, and as few as possible in each of the rest. This time, everyone started with a different colour, so there were no obvious clashes. As is usual for this game, it took a few turns for each players position to become clearer.

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By this time Plum was keeping the number of colour sets she had low with only two, but also had a couple of +2 bonus point cards and a Rainbow Chameleon (a wild) . Purple’s set was similar but with three colours. Green was making steady progress and Cobalt was low on any particular colour, but only had four sets and a Rainbow Chameleon, so was poised for a good score if the cards fell in his favour. Pine meanwhile seemed to be in the process of collecting at least one of each colour! By the end of the game, Plum had managed to collect Chameleons in just three colours and so scored no negatives, while Pine just seemed to have sets of everything. Purple had three extra colours, but with only one of each; her Rainbow Chameleon and +2 cards helped to give her a good score.

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Green managed only one negative point, but had no bonuses, while Cobalt had his cards fall right and ended with a couple of good colour sets and with it, victory. By the conclusion of Coloretto, Jade and Sapphire had arrived bringing with them the feature game, Vaalbara. In this game, each player is a clan leader trying to take over some territories with game-play which is vaguely reminiscent of Libertalia/Winds of Galecrest. Players all have the same deck of twelve cards representing the members of their tribe. Each turn, players choose secretly one card, then in the order of initiative of the revealed Characters, players activate their powers and take over one of the available Territories. Each type of Territory has its own way of scoring points (Collection, Pair, Diversity, Risk etc.).

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Thus the game is about timing and playing the best powers and the high initiatives at the most opportune moments. After nine rounds, the player with the most points wins. Jade and Sapphire had played Vaalbara about a dozen times together, and Green had played a similar number of games on Board Game Arena with reasonable success. Pine was entirely new to it the game and joined the other three. Jade and Pine took the Mountains in the first round, and then Jade managed to snatch the only one on offer in the second round. Green ended up with the final card in the first round—the All Rounder, so scored poorly with it.

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By the middle of the game Sapphire was going all out for Fields, Jade was on to his third Mountain and Pine was beginning to get the hang of things. Green was struggling with his all rounder strategy: all he could get was a River and several Forests and even after he’d swapped one of those for something else (he’d mixed up the cards and instead of swapping a card between first and second row, it was any card with the top card of the deck) it didn’t work out. Pine managed to complete his second Mountain, but Jade amazingly managed all four which catapulted his score. It was only then that Pine and Green realised that the fourth Mountain was twenty points on top of the ten for the first three (i.e. a very thirty in total from four cards).

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By the end of the game the Poppy Fields were coming out in profusion and started to really score a lot of points. Unfortunately for Green, Jade managed to nab the Field card ahead of him for a five type bonus and Green was still only on four terrain types. Once the dust had settled and the final scores were compiled, it was quite close with Jade and Pine were tied for first on seventy points, and Green only three points behind and just ahead of Sapphire. Pine joked that maybe the tie-break would be the player position on the last card back, thinking that would about as arbitrary as some of the other tie breaks had been recently. A quick check of the rules confirmed it and ultimately gave victory to Jade.

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From there, the quartet moved on to play an old favorite, Azul. In this game, players are tile-laying artists challenged to embellish the walls of the Royal Palace of Evora. On their turn, players draft colored tiles from the marketplace onto their player board. At the end of the round, players score points based on how they’ve placed their tiles to decorate the palace with wasted tiles scoring negative points. Bonuses are awarded at the end of the game for completing rows and columns and sets of the same colour, and then player with the most points is the winner. A pretty game, the group started with a short discussion about what colour one of the tiles really was.

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People wanted to call it blue, but there is already a fully blue tile, and this one was a little more turquoise with a white pattern—they did not come up with answer to the problem. The game played much as it always does with complaints about the tiles that were not coming out of the bag when needed and at one point there was one Marketplace with four tiles all the same colour (that colour that we could not quite pin a name on). Mid-way through the game no-one seemed to want the orange tiles, and it ended up with about eight of them in the middle of the table. It finally fell to Pine to take them, but he could not place any of them and they all had to go on his negative score line!

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The game was reluctantly brought to a conclusion by Sapphire, at the urging of everyone else. He did not want to complete his row, wanting to hold out and complete a different colour later, but if he hadn’t taken the tile he would have ended up with a larger negative score and it had already not been possible to fully populate market. After final scoring, Jade and Sapphire shared the lead with ninety-five points with Green, who’d had a much better game than he usually has in third. Tie break time again, but this time Sapphire won it because he was the only player to have completed a full row (the tile he hadn’t wanted to take).

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There was still time for something else, and the group settled on Nimalia, a new, interesting card-laying game where players are designing the best Animal Sanctuary. Each card has four “Biome” squares on it of potentially different terrain, and different animals. Players start each round with three cards and draft them, placing the chosen card partly (or wholly) on top the already laid cards in a simlar way to Sprawlopolis or Honshū. The Sanctuary must remain within a six by six grid made of the squares (not the cards). The game is played over a series of five rounds, where two or three different conditions are scored at the end of each drafting round. This time, the first round would score for the largest area of Savannah and for connected Polar Bears and in the second round the scoring switched to Polar Bears and Gorillas next to Water.

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In the third round it returned to the largest Savannah, but with the complication of scoring maximum for no Giraffes down to scoring nothing with three or more giraffes—of course giraffes live in the Savannah! Rounds four and five used both the Giraffes and the Gorillas to score while adding in the Savannahs in the fourth round and polar bears in the fifth. The nature of the scoring meant that any cards with Giraffes were quickly passed on leaving some players with a double giraffe card to lay as the last card on a giraffe scoring round. Since it wasn’t possible to lay a new card underneath an old one, those giraffes caused scores to tumble!

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In the first round Pine roared into the lead while everyone else stayed within a point or two of each other. After the second round, Sapphire was the one who lost out, with Pine retaining his significant advantage. During the third and fourth rounds Jade and Green managed to catch Pine, with Jade pulling into the lead. Sapphire managed a good score in the fourth round, but he had a lot of ground to make up and he’d left his charge to the finish a little too late. In the final scoring, Jade and Green pulled ahead in a tight battle, which Jade won by just two points with his total of eighty. Pine was third after flailing around in the final round and having been left with a double giraffe.

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While all that was on-going, the rest of the group, Plum, Ivory, Purple and Cobalt, opted for a club favourite, Wingspan, enhanced by the European Expansion. This is a card-driven engine-building game where players choose one of four possible actions (activating their Woodland, Grassland or Wetland areas or placing a bird card in one of those locations). Points come from each individual card end of round goals, and eggs left at the end. The game is all about building combinations of cards that work together efficiently, so the it took all night as everyone wanted to do their absolute best.

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Ivory as always was very good at this, but was also quite generous giving everyone food each time he activated his Woodland area. Cobalt was the first to get three bird cards in his Reserve, though Ivory ended up with the most valuable birds on his board, with Plum’s next highest. One of Plums birds moved at the end of each round though, which was very useful for saving costs and improving yields. It was Ivory and Cobalt who tended to come out best with the end of round goals. As is often the case Ivory continued to score well with a good haul of bonus card points too.

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Purple failed to complete any of her bonus cards, but did make sure all her birds laid purple eggs. Cobalt finished the game with the most eggs, however, inevitably followed by Ivory. As for cached food and cards, Plum got the most food, but Purple had the most Tucked cards. With all the scores added up, Ivory was the almost inevitable winner on ninety-three with Cobalt not far behind with eighty-three and Plum taking the battle for third by just three points in what was a hard-fought game.

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Learning outcome: Goats love playing with colours.