Category Archives: Games Night

22nd August 2023

It was an unusually quiet night—indeed we haven’t been this low on numbers since the dark days of 2020. On a bleak night in mid March of that year, there were also just four, and that presaged eighteen months of playing games online. On that occasion, everyone knew something bad was coming and it was a very sombre evening as a result. This time was much more positive though, as almost all the absentees were away because they were having a good time. That left just Black, Purple and Plum to meet Cobalt on his first meeting.

– Image by boardGOATS

The group started with the “Feature Game” which was Ticket to Ride: Northern Lights. This is the latest version of one of the group’s most popular games, Ticket to Ride, and one that is currently only available in Scandinavia. Like all the other versions, the rules are quite simple: on their turn, players either take train cards from the face-up market (or the blind draw deck), or spend cards to place trains on the map for points. Once or twice during the game, players may instead choose to draw Tickets, which give players points at the end of the game if they are completed, that is to say, the owner has connected the two locations with their trains. Woe betide any player with incomplete tickets however, as they score negatively.

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Northern Lights is similar to the Nordic Countries stand-alone game that we often play at Christmas, except that more people can play and the artwork is a little less festive (though still very, very beautiful). There are the usual “rule tweaks” that come with a new version of the game and which are in Finish, Danish, Swedish and Norwegian only. In this case, a translation says that the biggest differences are 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, (for example to the person with the most left over trains, longest continuous route, most completed ferries etc.). Additionally, there are some triple routes (which only take effect with five players) and some routes have a “+X” next to them and when trains are laid on these the player takes X train cards from the face down pile.

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The rules surrounding Locomotive (wild) cards are slightly different too: for all routes they can replace any other card and for ferry routes Locomotive cards can be replaced with a pair of the same colour (that doesn’t have to be the same as the rest of the cards used). 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 (a point of discussion some weeks back). With just four players, the triple routes were not used and the bonus cards drawn were the Small Step Strategist (D), the Nordic Express (E), the International Tycoon (G) and the Snowplough Reward (I).

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These rewarded players for the most single space tracks claimed, the longest continuous route, connecting the most countries and the most routes connecting pairs of cities in the arctic. The group also forgot to remove the spare trains, making the game slightly longer than it would have been with the rules as written. Black built a long route all the way down the west coast of Norway, which he shared with Plum in the north and Cobalt further south. Purple kept to the East side of the map, with a significant amount of her tracks above the arctic circle.

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When it came to the bonuses, Plum took the Snowplough award and Black was the International Tycoon. Plum and Black tied for the Longest Route (Nordic express) and Cobalt missed out on joining them by just two two trains. Instead, he just pipped Purple to the reward for having the most single track sections. Aside from this, it was a hard-fought game as usual. Black and Cobalt both completed three Tickets, while Plum finished four and Purple managed a massive seven. Size matters though, and Purple’s Tickets were all short routes, so didn’t score as highly as the others’. The bonuses were critical though in such a close fought game, and there were just three points in it, with Black just taking victory ahead of Plum with Cobalt in third.

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It had been quite a long game and time was marching on, so the group opted for another old favourite, Splendor. This had been a favourite game of Burgundy‘s who’s birthday it would have been at the end of the month. This year it has not been possible to plan something to mark the occasion (as we did last year), but we will try to do something in September. In the meantime, as always, everyone will continue to remember him in the games we play. And Splendor was definitely one of those games—at one point Burgundy had a fourteen game winning streak. Although Burgundy liked complex games, he also really appreciated simple elegance, and this is definitely one of those games.

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The game is a simple engine builder: players take chips from the market (three different ones or two the same if there are four or more available), or spend chips to buy cards. The cards are permanent gems and those that cost more additionally give points. At the end of the game, the player with the most points is the winner. Cards aren’t the only way of scoring points though, players can also get points for enticing a Noble to support their cause by collecting the correct gems. The rules say the game end is triggered when one player reaches fifteen points, however, this time, due the group played to just ten.

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There are several consequences of playing a shorter version of the game, including changing the effect of the more expensive cards, but it also changes the importance of the Nobles. It also makes reserved cards more difficult to fulfill. This time, Cobalt had one card that he reserved, but failed to complete. Everyone had lots of cards and the game was just getting going when Black swooped to secure the support of Elisabeth of Austria with his three Onyx, Sapphires and Diamonds and triggered the end of the game. Plum had looked like she might just take her revenge for Black pipping her in Ticket to Ride, but it was to be a second runner up place for her behind Black’s unsurpassed twelve points.

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Learning Outcome: Board games are in my mind, they guide me back to you…

8th August 2023

Blue and Pink were first to arrive, and, as they finished their pizza, others began to turn up too. It was a slow start on a relatively quiet night, but eventually Blue Ivory, Black and Jade were settling down to play the “Feature Game“, Ginkopolis. This is a medium weight tile-laying game with an area control element. Blue explained that it was one of those games that had been through a phase of being very out of print and therefore inevitably in high demand, though now was much more available. The game is set in 2212 where players are urban planners trying to building the eco-city, Ginkgopolis, though the theme is quite loose and in reality, it is much more more abstract that that.

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The game is card-driven, with players simultaneously choosing a card and any tiles they are going to play with it, and then, starting with the first player, taking it in turns to carry out one of three possible actions: Urbanise, Construct or Exploit. There are two different sorts of cards in the game, Urbanisation cards which feature a letter, and Construction cards which come in three different colour suits, red, blue and orange, and are numbered one to twenty. When choosing either an Urbanise action or a Construct action, players additionally choose a Tile to play from their personal stash. Urbanising involves placing a tile in the space matching the letter on their Urbanise card, adding a wooden Resource block in their colour to claim it.

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There is a little upkeep, in that they move the Urbanisation letter marker to a space orthogonally adjacent to the Tile they placed and mark it with a grey cylinder. As a reward for urbanising, players get to Activate all orthogonally adjacent buildings. This is claiming a number of Tiles, Resources or Ginkgo Points (a sort of currency used in the game), with the item dependent on the colour and the number received equal to the height of the Building activated. Constructing is similar, except the Tile chosen is placed on top of another Tile, returning any Resources on the tile to their owner and claiming Ginkgo Points from the bank for each one.

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In addition to this immediate reward, there are also costs: if the Constructed Tile has a lower number than the tile it is built on, they must pay the difference in Ginkgo Points and if the colour is different, they must also pay one Resource to the general supply. In addition to these potential costs, the active player must also place Resources from their stash on top of the newly expanded building to claim it (with the number equal to the height). This can make Constructing expensive, though as the game progresses, they get Resources back as other players build on buildings they have Urbanised or Constructed. Still, particularly early in the game, players can find themselves running out of supplies, in which case, they can Exploit.

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Exploiting involves playing cards (without a tile) to gain Tiles, Resources, or Ginkgo Points. How they Exploit depends on whether the card they are Exploiting is an Urbanisation card or a Construction card. For Urbanisation cards, players just take either a Resource or a Tile from the supply, whereas for Construction cards, players Activate the building on the card to receive Tiles, Resources or Ginkgo Points equal to the height of the building. This is not the only way to get resources, however. Once a player has carried out their chosen action, they either recycle the card (if they Urbanised or Exploited) or, if they Constructed, they keep it in front of them. Each Construction card has an action as well as a number and a colour, and these are activated during the game, most after carrying out actions, with some providing end-game Points.

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And scoring is where the game gets tricky. The winner is the player with the most Ginkgo Points at the end of the game, but in addition to chips acquired during the game and end-game points from Construction cards, the majority of the points come from the area control element of the game. The city is divided into districts with districts defined as areas containing at least two buildings of the same colour. The player with the most Resources in the district wins control and takes Ginkgo Points equal to the total number of Resources in the district. The player to take second gets Ginkgo Points equal to the number of their Resources in the district. Ties are broken in favour of the player with the highest building.

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There is quite a lot of critical upkeep in the game, but the most important it to remember to put a grey construction cylinder on buildings during Urbanisation and Construction. This is because at the end of each turn, players top their hand back up to four cards drawn at random—when the draw deck is empty, however, the discard deck is recycled and topped up with cards that correspond to the newly constructed buildings. Since cards that correspond to buildings are kept when the building is over-built, and everything else is recycled, the draw deck (and the cards in hand) comprise all the buildings currently visible, together with all the Urbanisation cards, and nothing else.

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Getting this wrong, breaks the game spectacularly, as Blue and Ivory had found out on the one other occasion they played it (with Pink, during one of the sporadic meetings in the pub late in the Summer of 2020). This time, they were aware of the importance of placing the grey markers and mostly managed to stay on top of that so everything went a bit smoother, allowing players to concentrate on the nuances of the game. And there are lots of nuances. For example, over-building can help a player to take control of a district, or, if they change its colour, break one up, but it also gives Resources to the previous owner. Similarly, Urbanising expands the city, but provides a cheap way for other players to expand districts and perhaps muscle in.

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The game started with everyone feeling their way, trying to make the most of the Character cards they were dealt at the start of the game. These give bonuses to players to get them going in the early stages of the game. It is possible to draft these character cards, but the group began with the preconstructed sets: Ivory got set one, Black got set six, Jade got set two and Blue got set five. These give players a strategy steer in the early part of the game, for example, Blue and Black’s cards gave them two bonuses for Exploiting while Jade and Ivory both benefited twice for Constructing. Quite early in the game, it became clear that there was one building towards the middle that was going to be quite critical in the area control battle and Blue, Black and then Ivory all over-built and tried to claim it for their own.

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The game has the ability to feel very swingy, and lacking in control, and yet it is actually an extremely smart, tactical game—one clever tile placement can completely change the game by breaking up a district or joining two districts together and totally change the balance of power. This game was no different in that regard, though it took a little time for everyone to really start to see its potential. There were other elements of the game that players gradually came to appreciate. For example, Black ran into the unexpected difficulty of running out of Resource markers, because he had a lot in the city. This gave the others a problem—building over his buildings relieved that pressure, but because he had so many on the board, it was hard to avoid doing it.

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Jade also had difficulties getting the tiles he wanted to match his cards, while Ivory had difficulties getting the cards he wanted (and was the only one to spend one of his refresh hand tokens, which cost him two points in the end-game scoring). The game ebbed and flowed, and although it vastly exceeded its advertised forty-five minutes, it wasn’t long before the stack of tiles dwindled and triggered the end of the game. At this point, players could choose whether to add tiles from their hand back into the game. Jade was aghast at the idea having struggled to get tiles throughout, but Ivory had an enormous stack and put a few back into the supply to keep things going for another couple of rounds.

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As the game drew to a close, the question was whether anyone would be able to make a move on the largest districts. The highest building that had been long fought over now belonged to Ivory, but had been cut off, leaving it pointless, which left two large red and one large blue district as well as some smaller efforts. Key was the number of Ginkgo points picked up during the game—everyone thought Ivory had a lot, but it turned out Black was the king of the Ginkgo tokens with a massive thirty-six. Blue was a little way behind him, but made up for this with her city scoring, which ultimately gave her victory with sixty-six points, nine more than Black in second who was well clear of Jade and Ivory who tied for third.

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Meanwhile, on the next table, Purple, Green and Pink were deciding what to play while they waited for Pine who was running late. Green commented that he didn’t want to play something new, so in the end the group settled on Splendor. This is an old favourite, though one with poignant memories for most in the group as it was a favourite of Burgundy who sadly passed away eighteen months ago—it would have been his sixty-fifth birthday at the end of the month. As always, with Burgundy in mind, the trio set the game up. It is a very simple, tactical engine builder, where players take it in turns to either take chips from the supply, use chips to buy a face up card from the market or, occasionally, reserve a card.

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Players win points for the higher value cards, or for collecting enough cards of specified colours to claim a Noble. This time, Pink tried a strategy that concentrated on going for cheap cards with the primary aim of scoring for Nobles. This had the benefit of giving him lots of cards which builds the engine quickly making other cards cheaper. The strategy worked well, but not as well as Pink needed it to for him to beat Green who ended the game, with a lead of three points. As Splendor came to a close, Pine rocked up, so the newly expanded, now quartet looked for something fairly light to play, and Pink suggested one of his favourites, For Sale.

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As Pink described it, like football, For Sale is a game of two halves. In the first half, players bid for properties which they then sell in the second half of the game. This time, Purple became a bit of a tent specialist (with tents of various quality), which turned out not to work so well for her. Pine ended up with the outside netty (one of the lowest value cards), but one that you are almost guaranteed not to loose money on. Once again, however, the winner was Green with Pink taking his second second place. So the question was, could anything upset that pattern?

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The group moved on to Botswana, a sort of set collection stock-holding card game that it is really hard to get your head round despite actually being very simple. The five animal suites each have six cards, which are shuffled together and dealt out. Players then play a card from their hand, and take any one of the animals on the table. The round is over when any one of the five animals has the sixth card played, at which point players score points for each animal they have, equal to the final card played. After three rounds, the player with the most points is the winner.

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This time, all three rounds were remarkably even. Purple was just one point behind green going into the final round, though Pink had some ground to make up if he was going to continue his run of second places. In the end, Green made it three from three, and relatively poor final rounds from both Pink and Purple left Pine to take second with Purple just behind. Green decided three was enough, and didn’t fancy tarnishing his winning streak, so headed off while Purple and Pink waited for their other halves to finish Ginkopolis, and looked round for a suitable filler.

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Coloretto is another old favourite, and one that plays really well with three. A really simple set collecting game, on their turn, players either turn over a coloured chameleon card and place it on a truck, or take a truck. At the end of the game (when the draw deck has been mostly depleted), players score points for each coloured set of cards. In general, the larger sets score more, but only the largest three score positively, everything else gives negative scores. For a bit of variety, the group used the scoring card from the Limit Cards/Extra Cards mini expansion (but without any of the other rules and cards). This gives low scores for the small groups, but very high scores for the large sets.

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boardGOATS

Aside from a query about the Golden Joker (which like the normal multi-coloured Joker can be added to any set at the end of the game, but additionally gives an extra card drawn at random from the deck), there was no real need to revise the rules. It was a good game, though Pink blotted his copy book with quite a lot of negative points and wasn’t able to improve on his two second places as a result. The run-away winner was Purple though, who finished with forty-eight points, eight more than Pine in second place. And with Ginkopolis coming to an end too, that was it for another week.

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Learning Outcome: In some games, you have to start building right from the gink-go…

25th July 2023

After Blue and Pink had sampled the new pizza menu at The Jockey, people started to roll up and join them for the usual chatter. There were a total of nine, which was one more than required for the “Feature Game“, the recently announced Kennerspiel des Jahres winner, Challengers!. This is a deck-building, dueling “capture the flag” game where players battle head-to-head to find the winner. It is a very light game, with a largely random element, at least on the face of it, so it was always going to be a bit of a “Marmite” game. Green commented that he wasn’t very interested in it, but as everyone else was quite keen to give something novel a go, he sportingly joined in.

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The game is very simple, and seems, at first glance to be quite random. Players start with a hand of cards, and then draw five more and choose a set number to add to their hand. The clever part is that (with eight players) the game is played over seven rounds, and each round the decks players draw from and/or the number of cards they can keep changes. There are three decks, A, B and C, and the cards become increasingly powerful as the game progresses. Once players have fettled their deck, they duel against their designated opponent by drawing the cards from their deck. In this, one player starts by playing a card and taking the Flag, then the other plays cards until their total equals or exceeds that of their opponent.

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This initially seems quite random in that players have no agency in this element of the game. There is a suggested variant that can change this by allowing players to draw two cards and choose one to play—this was an option for later in the game, but in the end, the group stuck to the rules as written. The game focuses on this duel aspect, but really it is more about building card combinations during the first part of the game and deciding what cards to shed and how many. Shedding cards is just as important as acquiring cards as, as the winner of a duel is the last player with the flag, so running out of cards can lose a match.

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Having too many cards can be a problem as well though—when they take the Flag, players move all their cards except the last played to the “Bench”. The Bench has six seats, and when a card needs a seat and there isn’t one, that player loses. The winner of the match, the last player with the Flag, then takes a winner’s token which is worth points at the end of the game. The game is all about the cards which make it less random than it seems at first; some cards have special powers, while others give points. Additionally, identical cards can share a seat on the Bench, so effectively allow players to have more cards, however, those tend to be weaker cards from the A deck.

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As such, Challengers! should perhaps be thought of more as a programming game, more in the mold of games like Colt Express, rather than a dueling “capture the flag” game. After each match, players play musical chairs and after seven rounds (with eight players), the players with the most points duel for overall honours. Although the idea is very simple, it took a little while for people to get to grips with the procedure. Blue, who was suffering with the after-effects of a bad cold, acted as much needed umpire and guide, explained the rules and demonstrated how the duel worked using Pink’s hand of cards.

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Possibly thanks to her fuzzy head, but Pink despite the fact that he was sat in front of her, was onto the second round before Blue realised that something wasn’t right. Instead of taking his starting hand back after the demo, he had just drawn five blind cards from the A deck, making his hand immensely over-powered. There were the usual tongue-in-cheek cries of “Cheat!”, but it was a genuine error, albeit one that wasn’t easy to fix by this time. As a result, the quickest and easiest solution was for him to forfeit the first round and fix his hand before re-starting the second round.

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One of the nicest aspects of the game was the way everyone played against everyone else. The GOATS are a nice, friendly group, and although some people end up playing together more often, the group always makes a point of trying to avoid cliques caused by the same people playing together all the time. The Musical Chairs element of the game meant everyone played against everyone else which gave it a fun, party feel that we usually only experience in October (when we play Crappy Birthday). It was clear that some people enjoyed it more than others though. Ivory, Teal and Black, really got to grips with the deck-building element and found the game exceeded their expectations, Ivory in particular really enjoyed it.

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Lime, Pink, Pine and Purple were a little less enthusiastic, while Green felt it was a clever little game enjoyable for a short while, but that it out-stayed it’s welcome—too long for the game-play within it, he couldn’t wait for it to finish. It wasn’t much of a surprise, therefore, that Ivory, Teal and Black were the winners of the “Round Robin” tournament phase, finishing with thirty-five, thirty-three and thirty-one points respectively (some way ahead of Lime in fourth with twenty-three). The play off between Ivory and Teal, therefore, was quite close and tense, but Ivory ran out the eventual winner, largely thanks to his handful of yellow Vendor cards.

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From there, everyone was keen to play something they were familiar with, but it had to be something quite quick. Teal suggested SCOUT, which Blue was keen to give another try (having played appallingly last time) and Ivory and Purple were very happy to join them. This is a very simple, but clever hand management game that was nominated for the Spiel des Jahres award last year. The theme is almost non-existant (something to do with circus performers), and isn’t even reflected in the card art, which is not unpleasant, but very functional (and therefore useful). The idea is that players have a hand of cards which, like in Bohnanza, they cannot rearrange.

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Unlike Bohnanza, on their turn players may play any set of adjacent cards from their hand as long as they beat the current winning set, taking any cards they beat into their scoring pile. Cards can be a a run of cards with consecutive numbers, or a meld of the same number. Sets are ranked by size and value and a meld always beats a run of the same size. Players take it in turns to play, and if they can’t or choose not to “Show” a set of cards that beats the current winning set, they instead “Scout”, taking one of the two cards from either end of the set on the table, adding it to their hand (paying the former owner a point from the supply).

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And this is where the game gets clever: all the cards have two values, one for each end, so players can add any cards to their hand anywhere they like and either way up (i.e. making either value active). In this way, players can manipulate their hand making larger melds or longer runs. The round ends when either every body “Scouted” in succession, or where one player has run out of cards. Players then score points for each card in their scoring pile and for each chip for cards taken by “Scouting” with negative points for any cards left in hand. The first time we played this with the group, it had all been a bit of a voyage of discovery, and last time, Ivory gave everyone a bit of a spanking, so Teal and Blue were keen to prevent that from happening again.

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Things started off well, with Blue beating Ivory in the first round, though Teal and Purple did less well ending up with a hand of cards. The second and third rounds went better with everyone taking positive points and it was very close going into the final round leaving it all to play for. Sadly for everyone else, Ivory brought his A-game to the last round ending the round swiftly leaving Purple and Teal with a hand that more or less off-set their takings and Blue with a positive score, though one with fewer points than Ivory. The end result wasn’t really very close, though it felt less of a stomping than last time: Ivory finished with fifty-five points and Blue took second with forty-one, ahead of Purple and Teal who tied for third.

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On the next table, Green, Pink, Pine and Black played a close fought enjoyable game of Les Aventuriers du Rail Express, a variant of the Spiel des Jahres winning Ticket to Ride series, but one that is a sort of half-way house between the original full versions of the game and the mini “city” games (like Ticket to Ride: London). The game only plays four and takes less time, but is quite a nice variant and has a couple of differences to the original, being shorter without losing too much of the main game’s challenge. As in the original, players can either take two cards from the market (face up cards, or the draw deck), or pay cards to place trains on the board. Unusually, however, the Locomotive “wild” cards are kept in a single pile and therefore are always available. This is quite a nice variation, as it means that players never feel forced to take blind cards because what they need isn’t available.

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This effectively means players are guaranteed to get at least one train card they want. The other major difference is the presence of the long route ticket. This is one route that everyone can claim, however the highest scores go to the first to claim it. It additionally means that failing to complete it does not lead to negative points, so players can ignore it and concentrate on normal short route tickets if they prefer. There was a moment when the group had three identical coloured cards in the face up market which made them whether they should be scrubbed (as with three Locomotive cards in the base game). It couldn’t be found in the rules and it was pointed out that in the original games it is possible to have five cards of the same colour, so they stayed and someone eventually found a use for them.

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Pine took an early point lead which he maintained for quite a while until Green and Pink caught up, and not long after, Black too. However, as the game neared its conclusion Pine pulled ahead again. Pink had completed the long route already and, at the cost of not being able lay his last two trains, Green decided to get the game finished before anyone else managed it. That long route helped Pink finish in front with sixty-four points, while Black’s slow start demonstrated that getting trains down early is no guarantee of success. That said, he managed to pull into the station in second place with sixty-one points. Green and Pine fought to not be last and ended up tied just a couple points behind with fifty-nine points.

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Learning Outcome: Winning the Spiel des Jahres award means a game is good, but doesn’t mean it will suit everyone.

11th July 2023

Blue and Pink were really late arriving, and were much amused by the cheers and applause when they came through the door. Slightly embarrassed, and after a quick explanation, everyone started splitting into groups. First was the “Feature Game“, the Fantasies & Futures expansion for one of our more popular, heavier games, Tapestry. On the surface, Tapestry has simple mechanisms, but they combine to make a complex game. Basically, on their turn, players move one step along one of the four Civilisation tracks around the board: Science, Exploration, Military, Technology and carry out the action (or actions associated with it). Each space requires payment of resources, and the further along the track, the more expensive the spaces become.

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If a player cannot afford to pay (or chooses not to), then they instead take income, which gives them more resources. They also gain points and play a tapestry card, which usually provides a power for the next round. So, at its heart, Tapestry is an engine building and resource management game: players carry out actions and get resources so they can get more resources and ultimately, points. We have played the first two expansions, Plans and Ploys and Arts & Architecture, but this time the “Feature Game” was the Fantasies & Futures expansion, which is the smallest, adding new Fantasy Civilizations, advanced Capital City mats, new Tapestry and Tech cards.

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Ivory was joined by Green, Plum and Byzantium. Along with the Fantasies & Futures expansion, the group decided to add the “Plans” from the Plans and Ploys expansion as a sort of mini expansion, a private goal, where players get their own, special building they can build. They also left the Tapestry cards and Civilisations in the mix from the first two expansions and really only left out Arts Advancement track from the Arts & Architecture expansion as they thought it would add too much complexity to the game overall.

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Tapestry is one of those games that sometimes comes in for criticism for being multiplayer solitaire. Although that’s not true, there is a strong element of players “getting on with their own thing”. Although they were each very much playing their own game, there was still quite a bit of interaction which definitely gave the game teeth. Green’s Civilisation (“Spies”), had him perusing over his neighbours positions and cards each income turn. Luckily for him Ivory’s Civilisation (“Aliens”) gave him four starting space tiles, and one bonus he could choose was the benefit on an unused tile in a neighbours supply which gave a nice healthy early bonus.

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Plum’s “Islanders” Civilisation was focused on collecting area tiles and placing them on her Civilisation mat. So she started out prioritising collecting landscape tiles, looking for ones with water on more edges as these would give her more points in the final income phase. She got a bit lucky right from the start getting two out of three. From there she went for an expansionists strategy as did Byzantium (with his “Riverfolk” Civilisation), and from there, throughout the game they found themselves trying to conquer each others territories on the central island.

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Plum started the game with two Tapestry cards, so chose to use the standard one for her first era. The second was from one of the expansions and “charmed”, so much to Byzantium’s annoyance when he tried to topple Plum’s Tower in the middle of the map, his attempt was thwarted by Plum’s Trap card which also gave her an extra benefit. When Plum later attempted to Conquer Byzantium’s tile, he was delighted to be able to repay the earlier battle with his own Trap card. That satisfaction didn’t last, however, as Plum proceeded to play her charmed Anti-trap card which not only stopped the trap dead, but also gave her yet another bonus.

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That bonus was a random Tapestry card from Byzantium’s hand—he had two, and the one she picked just happened to be the one he had been working towards maximising the effect of (moving up each track once and getting the bonus action for free). Plum felt pretty bad about picking it, but it was too late by then. So, all round, it was quite a frustrating game for Byzantium, who started the game with a large forty-eight point bonus from his landscape board (“Forest”), and his first conquering dice rolls, time after time, gave him the choice between a resource or seven points—quite a dilemma in the early part of the game. Initially he took the seven points (the highest that dice could give him), but found he wasn’t getting as many turns as the others, so later switched to taking the resource.

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Ivory, meanwhile, managed to make good use of the charmed Tapestry cards, keeping himself well stocked with resources throughout the game. The rest of the group barely saw any charmed Tapestry cards (aside from Plum’s Trap and Anti-trap cards), but did find the new Civilisations and Landscape boards quite an interesting addition. As the endgame approached, Green was last man standing, and for his last few turns he was able to grab an extra Civilisation (“Urban Planner”) which was to reward him handsomely.

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The game which had been a quite sedate affair, started speeding up a little towards the end. Pretty much everyone did something that if they had thought just a little a bit more would have gained them another point or so—Green put a cube on another player’s map, Plum put a building somewhere where it could have completed a row if she’d considered a little longer. As the game came to a close, Ivory and Plum counted their remaining income scores to amazingly find themselves both on two-hundred and thirty-five points.

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Then Green counted his final points, giving him the lead by a solitary point. That was until he realised that he’d added thirty-six to one hundred and ninety-nine and discovered he was part of a three-way tie with Ivory and Plum! Nobody was quite sure how they all managed to have an identical score in such a high scoring game. If the tie-break had been resources remaining, then Green would have won and if it was Tapestry cards remaining, then Plum would have been the victor. However, a quick check of the rules suggested the tie-break was in favour of the player with the tallest building (which everyone agreed that was a rubbish tie break), and although Ivory narrowly had a taller building that Green, he graciously agreed that everyone should just share victory.

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While Tapestry was setting up, on the next table Jade was introducing Black, Purple and Pine (who chose to spectate) to Fantastic Factories. This is a game where players compete against each other trying to build the most efficient set of factories as quickly as possible. Players have to carefully manage their blueprints, train their workers, and manufacture as many goods as possible in order to achieve industrial dominance. Each round consists of two phases: the market phase and the work phase. In the market phase each player in turn order can either gain a blueprint card from the four available in the market or hire a contractor.

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To hire a contractor players must pay one card (that matches the tool symbol associated with the contractor’s location on the board) and any additional costs listed. Contractors have various benefits mostly related to gaining extra resources or extra dice workers for the work phase later in the round. In the work phase, all players perform actions in their play area simultaneously starting by rolling their four coloured dice (and any additional ones gained from contractors). Players can use their actions to build cards (which cost various resources matching the building type); while players can build as many cards as they wish in a turn, they may one of each type of building.

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Dice can be used to take actions on a player’s main Headquarter board or on building cards you have constructed. A player’s Headquarter board allows them to generate metal and energy. Players can also activate their buildings once per round. If any player has built ten buildings or produced twelve goods that triggers the end of the game and one final round takes place before end game scoring. Players add up the prestige value of their buildings to their produced goods and the winner is the player with the highest total. The game was a fairly typical learning game, but was quite close. Both Purple and Black took thirteen points for their buildings, and while Purple was yet to get her engine going, Black took nine points for his goods.

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Jade, on the other hand, had fewer points for his buildings (nine), but they were functioning more efficiently. His total of twenty-three was just one point more than Black who took second. While they were packing up, the group chatted and Jade showed off Vaalbara, another of his acquisitions from UK Games Expo, which he described this as a nice little set collection, and semi-interactive card game. Then they chatted while they waited for Tapestry to finish. And waited some more as the clock ticked and it turned out that Tapestry was no-where as near to finishing as everyone had thought…

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Meanwhile, Teal was introducing Blue, Pink and Lime to a much older game, Condottiere. This is a sort of trick taking, battle game. Set in 13^th century Italy, where the wealthy city-states had weak armies. The Condottiere were veteran English soldiers returned from the Crusades who were contracted to fight for individual city-states by an agreement known as a condotta, the most elite fighters were the mercenary leaders known as the Condottiere. During each round, control of a State is put up for auction, and players bid the number of troops they are willing to lose in order to win the province. Players bid with cards that represent Mercenaries, Seasons, Scarecrows, and Political Figures, in an effort to try to take control of four adjacent States.

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Each player starts with a hand of cards, and one player starts the bidding by choosing a State and a starting bid, playing the card or cards from their hand, face up on the table. Other players follow, playing cards each round. When a player either cannot play another card (or chooses not to), they “stick”, but unlike many other auctions, in which only the highest bidder loses their bid, at the end, everyone loses all the cards they played, whether they finish with the highest value hand or not. Mercenary cards have values one to six or ten, while the other cards have special powers that take effect when they are played, but it is how the cards work together that is key.

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For example, the Drums double’s the value of all that player’s Mercenary cards, but this effect can be offset by another player placing a Winter card reduce every Mercenary card played to a value of one, while a Scarecrow can be used to return a card to its owner’s hand, making it available to play later. There is also the Heroine, which is untouched by either the Drums or Winter, but also cannot be returned by the Scarecrow. Perhaps the cleverest cards, however, are the Surrender and Bishop cards; the Surrender ends the battle immediately (with the current leader winning the battle), and the Bishop ends the battle in peace with no-one winning.

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While there are some clear uses for some cards (the Bishop is only likely to be played by someone who is losing badly, and the Surrender card is usually played when the active player holds the lead), the meta-game is also important. Although winning is obviously the aim of the game, as battles become head-to-head, players sometimes end up playing with emotion rather than strategy. Once a battle has been won, the winner chooses the next city-state to be auctioned and starts the bidding. Unlike other games, however, play continues with the cards they have left until all players but one have run out of cards, and only then do players get more cards (before they start the next battle).

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Teal explained the game, and that, although he understood the rules, he had no idea how to win. Indeed, despite having played Condottiere a lot in the weeks since he acquired it at UK Games Expo, he had never won, a situation that was destined not to change this time. Teal and Lime won a couple of States, giving them extra cards in the refresh. Blue and Pink realised they were at a disadvantage, so set out to rectify things. They took a couple of States and redressed the balance. Then Pink stole a march when he forced Lime to lead out in a battle he could not win. With this giving him three adjacent states, the writing was on the wall. Lime, Teal and Blue tried to work together to prevent Pink from taking the last one, but without success.

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It had been a very enjoyable game, and given its success, the group went on to play another of Teal’s UK Games Expo acquisitions—Burgle Bros.. This is a cooperative game, a style the group traditionally eschew, though recently have played more often (including Scotland Yard last year, The Lost Expedition about six months ago, Zoo Break twice in quick succession, and Forbidden Dessert a couple of weeks ago). Burgle Bros. works in a similar way to the other games of this type. Players are a team of robbers, attempting to enter a building from the ground floor, raiding the safes on each floor before escaping by helicopter from the roof. In addition to finding and cracking the safes, players also have to avoid the Security Guards that patrol the building.

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In the game, players each have three Stealth tokens. Whenever they are on the same tile with a Guard, they lose one and if any player is caught without a stealth token, the game is over. On their turn, players have four actions (move, preparing a safe for cracking by putting some dice on its tile, rolling dice to attempt to crack the code etc.). Once the player has taken their turn, the Guard takes their turn, moving towards their target room (assigned by the route deck and marked with an orange die). So to win, players first have to find the safe and then crack the code and all without triggering the motion detectors, heat sensors, fingerprint scanners, laser fields, open walkways, deadbolt rooms, and of course avoiding the guards…

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The group decided to play on the beginner’s level which meant they only had two floors to explore before they could escape the building. They got lucky right at the start as they popped up from the ground floor right next to the safe. That meant they only had to reveal all the orthogonal tiles and then roll dice to match the code. They were luckier still as the security guard was on the other side of the building and there were very few walls obstructing their way. As a general rule, cooperative games of this type give each player unique special powers and using these effectively is usually critical to success.

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So, Pink (who was “The Hacker” and didn’t trigger alarms) was sent off to reveal tiles while Blue (“The Spotter”) started setting up the safe for Lime, who was “The Peterman” and got to roll an additional die when trying to crack the safe. Before long, things on the first floor looked pretty much under control with just the last few numbers left to crack the safe, so Teal (“The Juicer”) took himself off to the second floor to start hunting for the safe there. This was a risky strategy as it triggered the Guard moving on the second floor. However, with fewer people on both floors, the Guards effectively moved slower and gave players more chance to avoid them.

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Things were slightly more challenging on the second floor—the Security Guard was a little more proactive, stepping it out more and, of course, the group didn’t find the safe at the top of the stairs this time. It didn’t take him long to find it though, and with nothing better to do, Pink joined Teal on the second floor, ducking under the risky laser trap at the top of the stairs. Meanwhile, Lime had finally managed to crack the safe, so Blue headed up the stairs only to find the second floor security guard heading her way, so she escaped to the roof toting their loot (a very annoying large and heavy bust and a particularly yappy dog) .

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There was a bit of shenanigans as Lime joined Teal and Pink and also dodged the Security Guard (and lost a couple of Stealth tokens), but although there were a couple of near misses, it wasn’t long before all four were on the roof awaiting their lift to safety. It was another fun game, but with time marching, Lime and Teal headed for home, leaving Blue and Pink to join Jade, Purple and Black who were still waiting for Tapestry to finish. It was nice to chat though, and eventually Tapestry did finish and everyone who needed one got their lift home (without having to climb on to the roof…).

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Learning Outcome: New games are fun, but there are lots of good, slightly older games to be had as well at places like Expo.

27th June 2023

Lime was the first to arrive, soon followed by Blue, Pink with Purple, then Pine, Jade, Plum, Ivory, and Teal. Jade and Teal were armed with some of their toys from UK Games Expo, so the first two games were the “Feature Game“, the Aerial expansion to Draftosaurus and the 2022 Spiel des Jahres nominated SCOUT. There was the usual chatter at the start while Blue and Plum tried to work out some of the details of the Draftosaurus expansion where the rules were unclear. Then there was the usual hiatus to sort out who was playing what, but eventually Plum led Purple, Jade, Pine and Pink passing Pterodactyls round the table.

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Draftosaurus is a lot like Sushi Go!, but with wooden dinosaurs. It’s one of our most popular games that we first played online in 2021 and have since played lots of times in person, drafting real, cute, miniature, wooden dinosaurs. Instead of sushi cards, players start each round with a handful of wooden dino-meeples, choose one to keep and add to their dino-park, and pass the rest on to the next player. The active player rolls a location die, which applies a restriction to where dinosaurs can be placed that everyone except the active player has to observe. There are various pens, each of which score players points in different ways. For example, the Meadow of Differences can only hold one of each type/colour and scores for each different type.

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In contrast, the Forest of Sameness can only hold one type/colour of dinosaur, but also scores more the higher the occupancy. The Prairie of Love needs pairs of dinosaurs of the same type, each of which score five points, while the Woody Trio will score seven points if it contains precisely three dinosaurs at the end of the game (otherwise it scores nothing). The King of the Jungle and the Solitary Island only hold one dinosaur each, but the King of the Jungle scores if nobody else has more of that type of dinosaur, while the Solitary Island only scores if it contains the only dinosaur of that type in the Park.

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At any time, players can place dinosaurs in the River that runs through the middle of their Park instead of placing them in an enclosure. There, they will only score a single point, except for any that are the red tyranosaurus Rex which increase the score of any pen they are in by one. Played over two rounds (passing clockwise and then anti-clockwise, scores are calculated at the end of the game and the player with the most points is the winner. There is a bit of variety in the base game with double-sided Park boards, though we’ve rarely if ever played the winter side. There are also two expansions; a month ago, we played the Marina expansion which adds an extension to the river and plesiosaurs, but this time we wanted to try the Aerial expansion which adds nests on Mountain extension boards and pterodactyls.

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Pterodactyls can only be placed in the nests on the Mountain expansion board, but when they are placed the player gets some sort of bonus. The nests are all numbered, one, two or three. The rules say that before a pterodactyl can be placed in a nest numbered two, one must be placed in nest numbered one. It was not clear, however, whether players could place dinosaurs in multiple nests numbered one, or whether a second pterodactyl had to be placed into nest numbered two (and by extension, a third should be placed in a nest numbered three). After much searching online, Plum concluded players had to start with a nest numbered one, before they had the option to use a nest numbered two—an interpretation that was later found to be correct.

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The Aerial extension boards are double-sided, so things were further complicated by the fact that the board chosen had two nests marked 2a and one marked 2b. It was suggested that perhaps players had to do both the 2a nests before progressing on to the third nest, but Plum thought that was not the case and that was the choice. After the event, it was found that the third nest could only be used once one of the 2a nests had been filled (but was not accessible via nest 2b). Plum did best finishing with a massive thirty-eight, but as everyone was still getting to grips with the new rules and the game is not a long one, the group decided to give it another go with the reverse side of the Mountain board.

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This time it went better for everyone except Plum and Pink (who had come second in the first game, with thirty-four). Plum had prioritised placing three pterodactyls so she would be able to ignore the restriction imposed by the placement die, perhaps at the expense of all else. Lime (who always likes to play games twice in quick succession) and Pine had got the hang of the game and took first and second respectively with thirty-six and thirty-two points. Although everyone had played Draftosaurus quite a bit during 2020/2021, nobody had been familiar with the expansions. While they certainly add something new, the Marina expansion is probably the better of the two, though it would be interesting to see how the game would play with both expansions in use too.

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From there, the group went on to play Mamma Mia!, which is a hand-management card game from Uwe Rosenberg, the designer of the king of all hand-management games, Bohnanza. Mamma Mia! is quite an old game and we played it quite a bit some years back, but the last time was nearly six years ago and those that knew how to play it had forgotten, and others hadn’t played it then or since. Purple did her best to explain the rules from memory, but was somewhat hampered by Plum and Lime who kept interjecting, trying to guess how the game might play. Meanwhile, Pink spent the time trying to read the rules and make sense of them, that said, the game is not all that complex, though really very clever, like all of Uwe Rosenberg’s games.

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The idea is that each player starts with a hand of pizza topping cards and a deck of order cards. On their turn, the active player puts pizzas in the oven by placing ingredients cards on top of the central pizza deck and then, optionally, follows it with an order card (which are colour coded for each player) before replenishing their hand from the supply deck. Unfortunately, in the rushed rules reading, there were a couple of, er, malfunctions: the group omitted to include the restriction that only one type of ingredient could be played per turn and only one order could be placed, and after placing the toppings cards. Further, when drawing cards, a player may take them from either the central ingredient deck or from their personal order stack, but not both in the same turn—another rule that, er, malfunctioned.

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Once the ingredients supply deck is empty, the pizzas are thematically taken out of the oven, by flipping the pile of cards over and placing the cards face up in separate piles for each ingredient i.e. in the order they were played. When an order is reached the ingredients piles are examined to see if there are sufficient to fill the order. If so, the cards are removed from the piles, if not, the owner of the order card may add any missing ingredients from their hand to ensure the order is fulfilled. If they choose not to do so, the incomplete order card is discarded. After three rounds, the player with the most fulfilled orders is the winner.

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It was all a bit mad, and with players (incorrectly as it turned out) placing assortments of ingredients cards in the oven, they called out what cards they were adding to the deck. The cry of “Four chilies and an olive,” was met with the comment from the next table, “That sounds like a mariachi band—who’s the olive?” It was clear that a lot of fun was had. Plum succeeded in completing an order of requiring fifteen ingredients that everyone else thought was very risky, but that was pretty much all she managed in the whole game. Pink, who finished with six clearly thought he should have won, as he commented that Lime was “apparently” the winner with seven and Pine responded, that Pink was “apparently” second, “apparently” followed by Purple in third…

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Pine commented that before the game started they’d had three different variations and he wasn’t sure which they were going to play, and as it turned out, the one they chose wasn’t quite right! Despite all the rules issues, however, it had been a lot of fun. The card-counting memory play worked well, though without a bit of luck in the ingredients department, players could keep playing cards hoping to replenish the hand with better once, without success. Still, it is clearly fun little card game that we should play again and see if the game is better with the rules played as written.

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On the next table, Ivory, Teal, Jade and Blue started with SCOUT. This is a ladder-climbing game with a very nominal theme of circus owners collecting acts for their show. This theme isn’t really reflected in the art or the game leading Blue to comment that it was the most theme-less game she had ever seen and she wondered why they had bothered. Not that this made it a bad game, by any means—indeed, when the group played it last year both she and Teal had really enjoyed it. The game is quite simple, the first player leads with either a run of consecutively numbered cards or a meld of cards of the same number. The next player can play either a larger set of cards or has cards, or one of the same size but of a higher value (melds always beat runs of the same size).

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If they beat the cards on the table, the active player takes the beaten cards into their score pile and leads with a new set. Alternatively, the next player can “Scout” i.e. take a card from either end of the set on the table and add it to their hand. And this is where the game gets really clever—like Bohnanza, players can only play consecutive cards from their hand, but when they add a card to their hand, they can add it anywhere. Further, the cards are double-headed, that is to say, they have different values depending on which way up they are. At the start of the game, players are dealt a hand and, as in Bohnanza must not rearrange their cards, though they can choose which way up the whole hand is, and thus the quality of the hand as a whole.

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When Scouting, the player can choose which way up it goes into their hand as well as where, and it retains that value in their hand and when played. Once per round, players can “Scout and Play”, taking a card from the display and immediately playing a set of cards for the cost of a single point. Playing this at the right time can be critical to winning the game. The round ends when either a player plays their last card or when play gets back to the player who last played a set and everyone else in between Scouted. Players score for each card they have taken, but any remaining cards in their hand give negative points, often the decisive factor.

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This time, the first round was quite close. Ivory finished the round and also took the most points. This was the case for much of the rest of the game, and it was soon clear that everyone else was playing for second place. In that, it was actually quite close. Blue did particularly badly in the penultimate round, and looked to be cruising for a bruising. However, she ended the final round very quickly with a very long run leaving both Jade and Teal with negative points (though Ivory still top-scored). These negative point proved critical, and Blue took second with twenty-seven points, two more than both Teal and Jade. They were all miles behind Ivory though, who finished with nearly twice that with forty-nine.

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From there, the foursome moved onto an equally theme-less card game that Jade had come back from UK Games Expo, but one that is also very good, Cat in the Box. The game that was preceded by a quick game of Snap when Ivory pulled the same game out of his bag. The game is essentially Hearts, but with the twist that the cards exist in all suits until they are played (analogous with Schrodinger’s cat where the it is both alive and dead until the box it is in is opened—hence the name of the game). The cards are all black and there are five cards of each value. As in Hearts, the first player leads with a card of there choice declaring its suit. The players have a pile of tokens and, when they play a card they mark that card on a tally board so nobody else can play the same card.

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At a time of their choosing, players can declare they no-longer have cards of a suit by marking that on their cat card, but although that enables them to play a red trump card, it also limits what cards they are left with in their hand. The round ends either when a player creates a Paradox because they cannot play any of the remaining cards in their hand, or when the last player plays their final card. At the end of the game, players score one point for each trick they took during the round. However, in a sort of solo-Bridge fashion, players make a contract at the start of each round, declaring how many tricks they think they will take. If they successfully take exactly this number, they get bonus points equal to the largest contiguous group on the tally board, introducing an area control element.

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The catch is that if the round ends with a Paradox (and it usually does), then the player that caused the Paradox does not score any bonus points and additionally scores minus one for each trick they won. This is particularly savage as a player can go from doing very well to doing very badly in a heartbeat, as Blue discovered in the first round. Not appreciating the risk, she made a contract for three tricks, which she achieved and with the bonus points would have taken seven or eight in the round until she went bust and ended up with minus three! So, the risk of Paradoxes introduces a lot of tension, but there is also an element of tactics in forcing players to take tricks they don’t want to

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Teal was more circumspect and played very cautiously, so although he caused two paradoxes, they only cost him a total of two points. Unfortunately for him, he only picked up one point in each of the other two rounds leaving him with a round fat zero. Jade started cautiously, but then went for bonus points, successfully taking seven points twice, but unfortunately, for him his paradox in the third round was costly, losing him three points, he still finished with ten points, one more than Blue. Ivory just managed to avoid triggering a Paradox, which is a key part of the game of course. So with his moderately high, consistent scoring in the second, third and final rounds he finished with fifteen points and his second victory of the night in what was a fun, if quite nasty game.

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Learning Outcome: Little card games can be an awful lot of fun.

13th June 2023

Lime was first to arrive, soon followed by Blue and Pink, and then Pine who were all delighted to see the return of our favourite bar staff. There was a lot of chat about the recent changes at The Jockey (which is currently managed by the Healy Group who also run the Punch Bowl in Abingdon), and as everyone else arrived, people seemed more interested in gossiping than playing games. It was a relatively quiet night with quite a few people away. Black and Purple sent a message to say they were thinking of us, but when Green received a photo from Black and Purple of their current view, it just made everyone else jealous.

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Jade arrived with his shiny new copy of Earth which he’d picked up from UK Games Expo. It is a game where players are building themselves an ecosystem and was to be the “Feature Game“. Earth is a sumptuously illustrated, card-driven engine-builder that is often compared to Wingspan. We played that Last time after a bit of a break, and remembered how much we liked it, so had decided to give Earth a go this time. The heat was getting to some people, but Ivory was quite keen to give Earth a go, and they were soon followed to the next table by Green (who had played it online) and then Teal. Everyone was pretty new to the game: Ivory and Teal had not played it before and Green and Jade had only played a couple of times.

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Although there is a lot to explain before starting, Earth itself is not actually all that complicated. Players are building a four by four grid of Flora and Terrain cards which represents their island and during the game they will plant flora, water it and allow it to grow. On their turn, players do one of four things: Planting (paying the cost in Soil tokens), Composting (gaining Soil and placing cards from the deck in their discard pile), Watering (place Sprouts and gain Soil) & Growing (draw new cards and place growth tokens). A bit like Puerto Rico, once the active player has chosen which action they are taking, everyone else gets to do a subsidiary, slightly weaker version of the same action. For example, when Planting, the active player plants two cards, draws four and keeps one, while the other players plant one and draw one.

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Once everyone has completed the action for the turn, everyone activates all the cards in their island that match the colour of the action chosen, starting with the card in the top left and working across each row in turn. This means, not only is it important which cards are played, but also where they are located in the player’s island. At the end of the game (triggered when one player has completed their island), players score points for each flora card, any Trunks and Canopies they have grown, their Sprouts and their pile of “Composted” or discarded cards. Players also score points for achieving objectives on the Fauna cards revealed at the start of the game and for completing their island first.

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As in Wingspan, Flora cards have actions that take effect when they are planted and when activated, many of the Terrain cards have ongoing effects and/or end-game scoring opportunities. When Planting, players must place the cards either orthogonally or diagonally adjacent to an existing card, and although they can never exceed a four by four grid, like in Kingdomino, players can extend on either side of their island until the maximum size is reached. Each Flora card has a maximum growth and when this is achieved the final wooden Growth token placed on it is a Canopy showing it will score extra points at the end of the game.

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The challenge in Earth is really in deciding what actions to do and which cards to play into your tableaux. Teal found that simply building his tableaux was enough to think about without considering the extra goal cards and end game scoring. Jade and Green both agreed that was the same for their first game too. Ivory started and played his first few turns, selecting the green Plant action, so his tableaux filled up quickly. The rest of the group needed to choose other actions in order to get the soil and cards to play, so by the time it came back to ivory he was able to plant again. He had already had his eye on the bonus cards and was quickly planting as many cards as he could, successfully—he was the first to claim a bonus.

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Green started with a high scoring climate card which gave him fewer cards at the start, but better in game bonuses, an approach to the game that nearly paid off. He went for the brown scoring cards, but Ivory just pipped him at the post for that particular shared bonus, which helped up his score as well. Teal spent the first half of the game, learning and began to fall behind. It wasn’t until Ivory claimed the first shared bonus that he remembered those cards. Early on he gained lots of Sprouts which are worth points, however, it is possible to gain a whole lot of Sprouts in the latter stage of the game and use those early actions for other more beneficial things.

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Jade was quietly working away to build a tableaux engine that worked for him, but was falling behind Ivory and Green on the shared bonuses. Jade managed to pick up some of the Fauna bonuses later, but mostly after the others so they weren’t as highly scoring. Green went for brown scoring cards because he kept picking them up from his nearest pile (there were two draw piles), and eventually reverted to the other pile to find green Flora cards. Unfortunately, he just couldn’t find the double powers he needed for the shared bonus. On the opposite side of the table, Teal didn’t come across any brown scoring cards, only realising why at the end of the game—it seams the shuffling had left something to be desired. The Event cards also seemed to be clustered towards the bottom of the draw pile.

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Ivory came out on top with a very high score of two hundred and thirty-six with Green just eighteen points behind and Jade in third. There was much discussion about similarities between Earth and other games. Green felt it was similar to Terraforming Mars, the others thought it was more like Wingspan. After some thought, Green came round to this idea as it is about playing cards which then provide more actions and bonuses that can be played on those cards (eggs in Wingspan, Sprouts in Earth; tucked cards & cached food in Wingspan, Growth in Earth). The others could also see Green’s thoughts about Terraforming Mars though as the game has lots of pretty and individual cards that can be played or rejected, with some providing actions, some bonuses and the all important Events. Everyone really liked it and definitely wanted to play it again, though better shuffling would be a good idea.

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Meanwhile, the rest of the group carried on chatting all agreeing they should play something, but nobody terribly keen to commit to anything. Eventually, Blue suggested Bohnanza, and as Pine agreed, Pink had to go along with it. This is an old favourite, though Pink had gone off it a bit as he felt he always did badly—unfortunate really given the number of copies of the game that he owns. The game is very simple: keeping their cards in the order they are drawn, players must plant the first bean card from their hand and may plant the second if they have space. They then turn over the top two cards from the deck and can play these or trade them as they prefer.

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Finally, once both of these have been planted, the active player may trade cards from their hand before drawing three replacement cards. Players can harvest their Bean Fields whenever they like, but the amount of money they get depends on how many Bean cards it has in it and what the beans are—scarce ones give a better return, but are harder to get. Everyone knows the game quite well, though Lime had recently acquired and been playing a new anniversary edition and it seems some of the rules are slightly different for that.

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This time, everyone bought a third Bean Field (which makes it easier to hang on to the rarer beans a little longer). Indeed, Lime was so determined to use his, he ended up not trading, just so that he had something to plant! As usual it was quite a close game with fine margins. So little things like Blue harvesting her Red Beans only to immediately draw another and Pine gifting Pink a Wax Bean or Lime trading with Pine instead of Blue made a difference in the final score, though nobody knew it at the time. Ultimately, Pink was the victor, beating Blue by just two Bean Thalers with Lime a couple behind her in third. On the plus-side, Pink can’t complain that he never wins any more.

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Earth was still underway, and for once in a way, Bohnanza had played relatively quickly, so there was plenty of time for something else. Nobody was very focused, and eventually the group settled on the cooperative game, Forbidden Desert. This is a sort of sequel to Forbidden Island, which itself is a simplified version of the popular gateway game, Pandemic. All three of these games use the same mechanism as Zoo Break, which we played recently. Essentially, the active player carries out actions and then they reveal cards from a deck which generally make life difficult: releasing wild animals, causing the island to gradually sink, spreading disease, or in the case of Forbidden Desert, burying the play area with sand.

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The premise of Forbidden Desert is that the team have crash-landed in the desert and need to find the components of a flying machine and take them to the launch pad to escape. The game is played on a five by five grid of square Tiles, with a gap in the centre representing the sand storm. Each player has a character with special powers. This time, Lime was the Climber, Pink was the Navigator, Pine was the Explorer, and Blue was the Water Carrier. On their turn, players can take up to four actions: Move (one action per Desert Tile), Remove Sand from the Desert Tile they are on or an adjacent one, Excavate a Desert Tile (i.e. turn it over), or Pick up one of the four component parts of the flying machine.

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Lime started. Once he had cleared some sand and turned over a couple of Desert Tiles, he started turning over Sand Storm Cards. These indicate which direction Tiles should move to fill the hole, and how many Tiles should be moved, one, two or three. Each of the Desert Tiles moved then have a Sand Tile placed on them—a single Sand Tile needs to be cleared before the Desert Tile can be Excavated, but two or more additionally obstruct players preventing them from passing (except for Lime who, as the Climber, can cross Sand Dunes of any height).

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Pine went next and used his special ability—everyone else could clear orthogonally adjacent Tiles, but he could to work diagonally as well. It wasn’t long before the first “Sun Beats Down” card appeared. These cause everyone to use water, so as the water carrier (and the only one who could make multiple visits to the Oases and collect water, Blue topped up Lime, who had started with less water than everyone else. The group gradually started revealing tiles, finding a Duneblaster, a Solar Shield and a Time Throttle, but the Storm picked up and before long the group were turning over more Sand Storm Cards. Pink located the Propeller for the flying machine and then the engine, the group were making progress, but it was all too slow.

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Before long it became apparent that the Sand Storm was getting the better of the group and the hiding in the Tunnels wasn’t helping. Determinedly, the group fought against the rising tide of Sand making good use of their Duneblaster, but it only delayed the inevitable. Blue, Pine and Lime were discussing a plan to play a Storm Tracker, but when they were briefly side-tracked, Pink played on without it and everyone suffered as a result. So Pine labelled him as a Saboteur as a consequence. In such a finely balanced game at such a critical point, it could have made a difference, but in all probability it only hastened the inevitable demise as the group were sadly buried under the ever growing sand dunes and ran out of Sand Tiles (one of the end game conditions). It was a deflating end to the evening, but given the heat, probably appropriate.

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Learning outcome: Shuffling is an important skill.

30th May 2023

Pink and Blue were late arriving thanks to a debate as to whether the actor Gary Lewis was in the Roland Emmerich film The Day After Tomorrow. Eventually Blue and IMDb were proved right when Pink found the guy who WAS in the film (Richard McMillan, who bore no resemblance to Gary Lewis whatsoever), but that meant they were late arriving and Plum and Byzantium were already there. Unfortunately, due to a mix up, the Jockey wasn’t serving food, so Blue headed off to get chips for everyone from Darren at The Happy Plaice. As the chips were consumed, everyone else arrived and it was just a question of who would play the “Feature Game“, the Wild Ride expansion to our go-to motor racing game, Downforce, and what everyone else would play.

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Eventually Pink and Green committed to Downforce, and were joined by Pine (who claimed that after doing well the first time he played, he’d come last ever since), Black and Lime (as long as the other group weren’t playing Wingspan). Pink and Green reminded people of the rules of the base game, which are simple enough: after being dealt their hand of cards, players bid for cars, with the player who pays the most deducting the cost from their final score. Once the bidding is over, the race takes place. Players take it in turns to play one card from their hand, and then move all the cars depicted on it in turn.

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When the first car crosses a betting line, the race is paused while everyone bets on which car will win the race. There are three betting lines, but the winnings for betting decrease the closer they are to the finish line. At the end of the game, players total their winnings from the race with those from the betting, deducting the cost of their car and the player with the most cash is the winner. The Wild Ride expansion adds two new tracks: Aloha Sands and Savanna Stretch. Aloha Sands adds water jumps which cars can use if they are moving fast enough. The jumps allow players to pass other cars and get round the track more efficiently, but timing is everything.

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In contrast, Savanna Stretch features wild animals that block the track. Once the first car has passed an animal, they are moved to another part of the track, as such, they help to prevent the “runaway leader” problem that can sometimes be an issue in the base game. It was this track that players chose to use this time. The inclusion of extra animals on the track caused a little confusion initially, but the group soon worked out two of the important features of this track. Firstly, the animal tile only moves after the first car is fully past it and all other the cars have finished their movements for that card, which means that the animal is really only an impediment for the first few cars.

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The other the slightly unusual aspect of this track is that the pole position car starts at the rear of the pack. With five players and six cars, there was always a chance that someone would get two, and that someone was Lime. While this can be a huge advantage, especially if the cars are cheap, it can also be a risky strategy as it can be difficult to manipulate two cars and they can also become a target for other players. Unfortunately for Lime, his cars were among the most expensive, leaving him with a deficit of $11M before the racing began, compared with Pink and Green for example, who paid just $2M for theirs. Once everyone had got to grips with the rules and the cars had been allocated, the race was underway.

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For a track with so many tight sections it was not surprising that there was a lot of blocking going on—most of it, to be fair, totally deliberate… Pink (in the red car) found his early push to the front to be a mistake, as he was instantly the target for blocking maneuvers from turn two until the final straight. Green (in orange) used his online experience from Board Game Arena to keep himself in the pack, but not at the front. Luckily for him several other players selected his car to win the race at the first two check points, which helped keep him out of trouble and pushed forwards.

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However after the halfway mark, Black (driving the blue car) and Pink both surged forward causing Green and Pine to lose their nerve and bet on Black (instead of Green) at the last checkpoint. However, they should not have worried, as very soon after that, Green’s car surged forward weaving between the cars in front to race for the line and victory. Pine was close behind, followed by the first of Lime’s cars (the other brought up the rear). With the race done, there were just the winnings to claim from the bookies. Because Green had got away with paying little for his car and won the race, he had a significant prize pot even before betting was paid out.

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There wasn’t a huge difference in the results from the betting, but it was enough for Green to extend his lead. Pine also raked in millions as his betting pattern was the same as Green’s (perhaps someone should investigate them for race fixing). As a result, Pine come in clear second with Black completing the podium. Since there was still some time left for a “proper” game, the group hunted around for something that wasn’t too long and could play five. In the end, they settled on the simple little “push your luck” game, Port Royal, as much because no one could find anything better for five players, than because anyone really wanted it specifically.

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It had been a little while since most of the group had played, though the rules are simple enough. On their turn, the active player chooses to “twist” and turn over the top card of the deck, or “stick” and keep the current card set. The deck of cards consist of coloured ship cards and character cards. The first decision is to decide whether to risk a “twist” because if second ship card of a colour is drawn the player goes bust and their turn ends. If a player “sticks” they can take a ship and add its treasure to their stash, or they can use their gold to buy the support of characters. These give players victory points and special powers, but also can be used to claim contracts and give more points.

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Once the active player has taken a card, players round the table can take a card too. The cards are double-sided like those in San Juan or Bohnanza, so in the same way, keeping an eye on the discard pile and the money in players’ hoard is also key. Although Black and Green did their best to quickly explain the rules, Pine and Lime were still both a little unsure, and perhaps with good reason. Part way through the second round Black and Green realised something was amiss and re-read the rules and spotted a “rules malfunction”: they had forgotten that when a player takes a card on another player’s turn, they pay the active player one coin, thus encouraging players to push their luck further to give more players more choice.

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So from the second round on-wards they group started playing correctly. Pink’s strategy involved ignoring the Sailors and trusting to luck with turning the cards while spending his money on symbols to make up Expedition cards. That gained him the first Expedition card, but ultimately, this single minded approach wasn’t very successful, at least in this game. Green went for a strategy of collecting fighting cards, in order to fight off the pirate ships. This worked initially, but by the time he had five fighters (and seven points), he kept going bust on his turn as he turned up skull bearing Pirate Ships against which there is no defence!

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This meant that everyone else was able to gradually build their wealth and cards to catch him up. Green then collected two more fighters and in preparation for one final attack, but would he get the chance? Black had managed to accumulate a lot of points, not least because he collected money for both a large array of cards and for when it went bust thanks to the Admiral and the Jester. If Black could collect another special symbol he could claim an expedition and win the game before Green could make his mega move with a full fighting force. Unfortunately for Pine, he wasn’t able to collect the symbol he needed to claim a expedition as he went bust.

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So it was Green’s turn again and he started to pull out cards, with a huge line of cards. After defeating every lower value Pirate Ship he came across, he managed a full five different coloured ships. From there he was able to collect another five coins and purchase the two crosses on display, which gave him an expedition card and enough points for victory. At the conclusion of the game, Pine confirmed his early feelings that he did not really like this game, and Lime felt it was all a bit too confusing, never really sure what he was doing. This was an older game that we used to play a lot of at the club, but it seems to have lost its lustre now and will probably forever remain an occasional play game.

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Meanwhile, on the next table there was a lot of debate as to what they’d play. With five, the options were quite restricted, Burgle Bros. almost made it, until Teal realised it only played four, which left Tiny Towns. Plum wasn’t so keen, so in the end, the group went for the old favourite Wingspan (having said to Lime that they weren’t going to play it… Sorry Lime!). There was some debate as to whether there was time for the game with five players, and options of playing three rounds instead of four were briefly discussed, but since everyone knew what they were doing, the group decided to give it a go and see if they could squeeze in a full-length game.

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The game is an engine builder that is quite simple in theory, but quite difficult to play well. Players are collecting birds for their sanctuary, scoring points for exciting birds, eggs, cached food and cards tucked under birds (representing flocks of birds or prey caught), as well as bonus points for achieving particular goals during the game and at the end of the game. The idea is that, on their turn, players either play a bird card from their hand into their tableau, or carry out the action associated with one of the three habitats (Woodland, Grassland or Wetland) and then activate each bird in that habitat. While that is all there is to it, it’s all in the cards and getting them to work together.

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Wingspan can be a little “multi-player solitaire”, that is to say, there can be very little interaction between players in some games. For some players this is preferred as it means players don’t have their carefully laid plans destroyed by others, while others feel they might just as well be sitting alone and interaction between players is what makes playing games important. It had been a while since it’s last outing, but the group were quick to get going and were happy to play with the European Expansion which was already mixed in. Plum in particular, got off to a flying start with her opening hand, four of which were coloured birds and matched her chosen Bonus card (the Photographer).

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In contrast, Blue had cards that didn’t match at all. The Rodentologist was her best Bonus card giving her two points for each bird in her sanctuary that ate a rodents, but not one card in her starting hand qualified. Teal started out with a strategy to maximise his egg production and prioritised birds with brown powers and resource conversion to assist that aim. The first card Plum played helped him in this, and everyone else too as it happens as it was a very generous Ruby-throated Hummingbird that gave everyone food every time it was activated. Teal returned the favour as he laid eggs at every opportunity and Plum had a bird that rewarded “once between turns” if anyone laid eggs.

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As the game progressed, players worked on the end of round bonuses. Three of the four birds Plum had kept from the start also happened to have bowl nests which contributed towards the fourth round goals, as long she could ensure they had eggs on them. She didn’t really aim for anything else, but Blue, Byzantium and especially Teal did well in the early rounds. Plum picked up some more birds with colours in their names, but also managed to play the Yellowhammer end of round card which she was able to use to great effect as it enabled her to play an extra bird card if she had used all four actions during the round. Byzantium had issues with the dice which repeatedly wouldn’t give him what he wanted.

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Then to compound Byzantium’s woes, he got himself in a bit of a mess when he played his migrating bird into the wrong habitat meaning he didn’t get the advantage of moving the bird straight away and costing him more eggs into the bargain. Purple had different dice issues when she rolled five berries and called “Yahtzee!” Blue had improved her hand and acquired some more helpful cards, including one that gave her an extra Bonus card, the Behaviourist, which gave her three points for each column with three different power colours. As people sifted through the deck trying to find cards they liked the look of, the California Condor appeared, which everyone agreed looked like a monkey.

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Towards the end of the game, partly as a result of Plum’s Hummingbird, Byzantium ended up with a surfeit of food and nothing to spend it on. So, he switched tactics and took the Condor hoping to get a bonus card that would improve his fortunes. It didn’t. Blue tried the same and didn’t do any better. After the final round Plum activated her Yellowhammer again and was left with the choice of playing a bird that gave her a Bonus card or one that gave two extra points. She also went for the Bonus card, the Fishery Manager, but only one of her birds ate fish. Time was ticking on, but the game was over well within two and a half hours with just the scoring to go as last orders chimed.

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Blue had some high scoring birds, but not as many as Plum who took fifty-five points for them alone. Blue had quite a lot of eggs too, but not as many as Teal who had twenty-three. Everyone else was concentrating on counting, when Purple (aided by Black who had come along to lend a few fingers), gave her score for her bonus cards: thirty-four points, more than twice that of anyone else. Unfortunately for her though, prioritising her Backyard Birder Bonus which gave her points for birds scoring fewer than four points left her with lots of low scoring birds. It was a close scoring game, but first place went to Blue who finished a handful of points ahead of Plum with Teal a little way behind in third.

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Learning Outcome: Forget snakes on a train, what about snakes on a race track?!?!

16th May 2023

Unusually, Blue and Pink were joined early by Lime for pizza, and Pine who wasn’t eating. So, while they were waiting for food to arrive the group squeezed in a very quick game of Coloretto. This is a popular game within the group, but somehow Lime had missed out on it. It is quite simple to play, but one of those games that takes a couple of tries to get the hang of playing well, or as in Blue’s case, lots of tries and still not play it well. The idea is simple enough though: players take it in turns to either take a coloured chameleon card from the deck and add it to one of the “trucks”, or take one of the trucks and add the cards on it to their display.

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Players score points according to the triangular number series where every additional card is worth one more additional point than the previous card. Thus, the fourth card someone gets is worth ten points, four more points than the third card (which itself is worth three more than the second and so on). Collecting chameleons was briefly interrupted by the arrival of Hoi-sin duck pizzas, but that didn’t stop Pink winning with a total of thirty-seven points, well ahead of a tie for second place between Blue and Pine. By this time, Purple, Black and Teal had arrived and it was time to decide who was going to play what.

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Pink and Lime were very keen to give Zoo Break another go, having left the town of Bedlam over-run with escaped animals last time the group played. With it being such a quiet night, there was some debate as to what the other group were going to play, but in the end they opted for the “Feature Game“, the Marina expansion to one of our most popular little games, Draftosaurus. Pine was keen to play with the cute wooden zoo meeples and after the mayhem last time, Blue was also keen not to miss out, which left Purple, Black and Teal to play with dinosaurs. The only problem was, none of them knew how to play it, so while Lime, Pink and Pine set up Bedlam Zoo, Blue quickly explained the rules to Draftosaurus.

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Draftosaurus is a very simple drafting game in the vein of Sushi Go! or 7 Wonders, but instead of drafting cards, players are drafting wooden dino-meeples. The idea is that players start with a handful of dino-meeples and choose one to keep and pass the rest on to the next player. The active player rolls a location die which adds restrictions on which pens players can place their chosen dinosaur in in their dino-park. When everyone has placed their first dino, the die is passed to the next player and everyone chooses their next meeple from the pile passed to them by their neighbour. The round is complete when each player has placed six meeples, and the game is played over two rounds (passing dino-meeples in opposite directions in each round).

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The Marina expansion adds brown Plesiosaurs to the yellow Triceratops, blue Stegosaurus, pink Brachiosaurus, orange Spinosaurus, green Parasaurolophus, and red Tyrannosaurus rex from the base game. Where dinosaurs from the base game can always be placed in the river that runs through the middle of each player’s park (where they only earn a single point), Plesiosaurs all go into the river, which they travel along into an expansion board. Each expansion board is slightly different, but when a player places the non-Plesiosaur dinosaur shown on the bridge, if they have a dinosaur immediately up-stream of the bridge, it can pass under it into the next section of the river where it will score more points.

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It was a close game with everyone following different tactics. Teal concentrated on trying to fill his Meadow of Differences while Black focused on collecting pink Brachiosaurs and Purple stuffed her Forest of Sameness with blue Stegosaurs. Black took one Plesiosaur, Purple collected two and Teal three, though only one of his made it under the first bridge and out of the main river. Purple managed to minimise the number of non-scoring dino-meeples in her park, and that just gave her the edge, and she finished a couple of points ahead of Teal who took second place.

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Although Teal, Purple and Black tried to persuade her to stay (and there was even some suggestion of her playing both games simultaneously), once she had explained the rules, Blue joined the madness in Bedlam, playing Zoo Break. In this game, players are keepers trying to prevent their charges escaping from the zoo, and to win the game, they have to return all escaped critters to their enclosures and lock the doors. Losing is much easier—if five cuddly creatures or one dangerous one escape from the zoo, then it is all over. Last time, only one animal escaped, but it was a cobra, so that was that.

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On their turn, players first roll the action die to find out how many Action Points the player has to work with for that round. Then, after they have carried out their actions, one card from the Escape deck and then one card from the Move deck are revealed. The Escape card liberates one or more animals, while the Move card often moves animals towards the exit, but occasionally causes other things to happen, like waking up sleeping tigers, breaking barricades and generally cause more chaos. After last time, the group decided to start by digging through the Supply deck and make sure everyone went really well equipped, then, prioritise capturing (or at least controlling) the Meerkats, as they had been so problematic last time.

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On that occasion, the group had played with two “Phew” Cards in the Escape deck, and (following a rules malfunction) all the blank cards in in the Move deck. In spite of all the blank cards, they still lost spectacularly. So, this time, the group stuck with the two “Phew” Cards, but removed the blanks from the Move deck and did not add any other rules variants as they really wanted to win, though they stuck with the thematically logical variant where tigers remain tranquilised when returned to their pen. Lime had the Black Belt special power which meant he couldn’t be hurt by animals, so he got the job of dealing with snakes which hide so players have to reveal them, with the risk of being attacked if they are dangerous.

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Pink, as usual wanted to work with the pandas, but the Capuchin monkeys were a more immediate threat, and the group made a point of dealing with the troublesome meerkats early this time, so then he went on to deal with them once the monkeys were locked up. Blue, who had the panda enclosure key, took over trying to control them, but they kept escaping just as Blue was about to lock their cage. Blue was encouraged to capture one panda who was in the rhino’s path, but that meant she was left standing there—”You’ll be fine”, said Pink. And Blue was immediately flattened by a charging rhino and had to spend a turn with the medic removing the hoof-prints from her forehead. One meerkat escaped from the zoo, but was left to run free so Keepers could focus elsewhere and then lock their enclosure.

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With two enclosures locked early, things became slightly more manageable. The group wimped out of using the faulty lock variant however, because nobody wanted to risk failing a second time, and certainly, including it would have made things much more difficult. As it was, one tiger got within sniffing distance of freedom, but was tranked before he could take that one final bound. Pine made excellent use of his running skills (as Track Star he could move twice as fast as anyone else) and bravely helped Lime with snakes and wielded his dart gun—before long, the zoo was littered with big sleeping cats. That was all very well, until they woke up at which point Pine had to do the job all over again.

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After her run-in with the rhino, Blue tried to end her turn on hedge spaces, but that meant she was unable to swap supplies with other players as she couldn’t share her space. Once the Pandas were vaguely under control, Blue was able to get a stretcher and another dart gun and help Pine with the tigers, making use of her Gardener ability, hiding in bushes and taking a pop at the big kitties from a place of safety. While Pine and Blue were working on the tigers, the elephants started rampaging. As the nearest and armed with a leash, Lime took a break from snakes and tried prevent them from causing too much damage. This was all very well until (much to Pink’s disgust as he would have loved a black and white cuddle), Lime rolled the lowest number and got hugged by a panda leaving him unable to do anything until it was prised off him.

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In the dying rounds, Pink’s, and indeed everyone else’s delight was evident, when another panda popped up for a cuddle and everyone cheered when Pink was the one to roll the lowest number and get a hug. As the Lucky Duck, on his turn he was able to roll the Action Die multiple times to get more points, but he checked the rules to see if he was obliged to spend his first three points to escape from the furry cuddle or whether he could just stay there for the rest of the game. In the end, he sent it back to its enclosure, but it probably wouldn’t have mattered. With one last push, Pine and Lime rounded up the last of the snakes, then the group finally sorted out the charging elephants and mischievous pandas, and finally locked up the rhino, giving the group a much deserved victory.

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Draftosaurus is a much quicker game than Zoo Break, so while they Keepers were dealing with the tigers, elephants and disobedient pandas, Teal, Black and Purple moved onto play Splendor. This was one of Burgundy’s favourite games and he was almost unbeatable at it, so we never play it without thinking of him. It is a very simple engine builder card game, but takes great skill to repeatedly win in the way Burgundy did. The idea is that on their turn, players either collect gem tokens (three different colours, or two the same as long as there are at least four left), or spend tokens to buy cards from the market. Cards act as permanent gem tokens (effectively reducing the cost of cards later in the game), but also provide Victory Points—when a player passes fifteen points, that triggers the end of the game.

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In addition to the two basic actions, there is also the relatively rarely used action of reserving cards, where a player gets a wild, gold token and can reserve one card which they can pay for later. This time, both Teal and Purple reserved cards, while Black prioritised taking high value cards. Reserving cards can be a very effective tactic, but the game is all about the cards available in the market and surfing through them as quickly and efficiently as possible and amassing points. As it was, Black romped away with victory, his fifteen points three times that of anyone else. And with that, both Splendor and Zoo Break finished, leaving the group with a little time to play something else. Teal and Lime headed off, so after some discussion, Pine, Black, Purple, Pink and Blue decided to give Draftosaurus with the Marina expansion another go as it was the “Feature Game“.

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It was then that the group realised the errors in the original explanation, in particular how the Solitary Isle enclosure worked. Pine corrected Blue’s errors and the second game began. Pine and Blue both tried to exploit the Plesiosaurs at every opportunity, and Pink tried to claim extra points for reverse parking his solitary Plesiosaur into the dock. It turned out he didn’t need them though, as with forty-seven points he took his third win of the night. Blue and Black tied for second place, while Purple unfortunately had to recount when she realised she had a pink Brachiosaur elsewhere in her park so couldn’t score seven points for her solitary Isle. That left a bit of time for a chat, but everyone was tired and it wasn’t long before the last of the group headed home.

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Learning Outcome: Who needs TV when you’ve got T.Rex?

2nd May 2023

Blue and Pink were the first to arrive and were just finishing their supper when Magenta walked in—sadly not to join in the games as she was there for a Scout meeting. After a quick chat, she left and as Blue recapped the rules for the “Feature Game“, Zoo Break, Teal arrived and then Purple and Black. The group had just decided to play Alles im Eimer (aka The Bucket King), when Ivory rocked up to make the full compliment of six. Purple explained the rules with help from Black. The idea is very simple: each player builds a pyramid of ten bucket tokens with two of each of five colours.

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One player starts, playing a coloured, numbered, animal card and each player has to follow with the same colour and a higher number before picking up a card. Players can play multiple cards to make the total, but they only ever receive a single replacement card. If they can’t, or choose not to follow, they lose a bucket of that colour, and any buckets above it. Worse, if they split their pile of buckets in two, they lose one part as players can only ever have one pile. On the plus-side, if a player can’t play (or chooses not to), they then lead with a free choice of colour and number. The last player with buckets still standing is the winner. With Purple shuffling, Ivory was the first to play.

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It turns out that there are two things that are really critical in this game. Firstly, how players stack their buckets—it is not as simple as playing to their hand strengths; the smart player also spreads the colours out a bit so they aren’t forced to take buckets from low down when the unexpected happens. Secondly, as Ivory pointed out, like 6 Nimmt!, it is all about timing, which is something players may not have control of. A few rounds in, Black spotted that Pink to his left still had a complete stack where bucket piles had been falling all over the place everywhere else. So, Black made it his business to make Pink’s life difficult. From there, it was gloves off and the buckets really started to tumble. Purple was the first player to kick the last of her buckets over which left Blue to do what she could to damage Ivory’s largely unscathed pile.

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Black, then Blue, then Teal, all fell, leaving just Pink and Ivory to fight it out. With Pink’s dwindling pile, it always looked an uphill task, and so it proved, with Ivory taking victory with five buckets still standing. By this time though, Lime and Green had arrived and with eight, the group split into two tables of four, the first for the “Feature Game“, Zoo Break. Pink was nearly lured away at the suggestion that the alternate might be Takenoko, but despite being very torn by his love of pandas, he stuck with his original panda driven choice and was joined by Blue, Lime and Black as Keepers at Bedlam Zoo.

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Zoo Break is an apparently light cooperative game where players are a team of zoo-keepers trying to prevent a mass break-out. The mechanism is quite simple: the active player rolls a die to decide how many Action Points they get, then they carry out actions, before drawing an Escape card and a Move card (to see what animals escape and move). The game ends when either a dangerous animal (tiger, elephant, or dangerous snake) escapes, or when the fifth cute animal (panda, Capuchin monkey, meerkat or harmless snake) exits the zoo, or when there are no animals roaming about and all the cages are locked up.

– Image by boardGOATS

Although the mechanism of Zoo Break is very straight-forward and the art-work implies it is a simple kiddies game, nothing could be further from the truth. The rule book is twenty pages long, and there are a lot of details regarding escaping and recapturing animals. For example, when an animal escapes, it doesn’t just move to the space immediately outside its Enclosure, it moves to the nearest “open” space. Also, different animals are recaptured using different tools which have to be acquired from the supply by the Keepers. For example, a Net can be used to capture meerkats or monkeys, while a Leash is required for pandas and elephants, and tigers need to be Tranquilised and Stretchered home (very carefully, obviously).

– Image by boardGOATS

Each Keeper has a different skill. This time, Blue had the ability to reveal snakes and capture animals from adjacent spaces (especially useful for dealing with snakes); Pink could run faster than anyone else, moving two spaces for each action point (instead of the usual one); Black, the Gardener, could move through and hide in bushes, and Lime could re-roll the die twice to try to get additional actions. From experience with games like Forbidden Island and Forbidden Desert, the key is almost always to make good use of these special powers. So Blue suggested she made it her business to concentrate on dealing with the snakes since she could do so without being bitten.

– Image by boardGOATS

Pink with his Panda obsession, was always going to go after them, and everyone else was happy to let him get on with it. Before any of that could happen though, the Keepers needed Supplies. Pink started, and went straight to the Supply shed and started revealing tools. These are drawn from a face down pile, but Keepers only have space to carry four tools in their backpack, so can choose only to take the ones they want. This was probably the team’s first mistake: instead of the few players just searching the whole Supply pile and making a discerning choice while taking as much as they could carry, players grabbed a couple of items and headed off.

– Image by boardGOATS

This became a problem later in the game when the Keepers realised they didn’t have tools and were now on the other side of the board. Black who had drawn the meerkat enclosure key headed off to the far corner to lock it quickly. Lime captured the only roaming meerkat (which had been playing in the fountain) and Black was just about to lock the cage when another one escaped. As he didn’t have a Net, despite being in the same space as it, he was left chasing about trying to grab it unsuccessfully. And then more meerkats got out. So Lime, Keeper without portfolio (but with both a Net and a Leash), waged war on the disobedient meerkats, while occasionally taking time out to catch an elephant or a monkey.

– Image by boardGOATS

Pink, meanwhile, had his panda enclosure Key and a Leash and was trying to do something about them, but was inconvenienced by a pair of elephants, one of which knocked him flying necessitating a visit to the Medic. Lime captured the last of the Capuchin monkeys and Blue who was close at hand with the enclosure Key managed to slam the door shut before any more got out—just as well, as the snakes were beginning to get out of hand, and as for the meerkats, well, these little blighters were causing mayhem. Twice the Keepers had them under control before more escaped, and as they formed a long queue, the queue kept getting longer and longer as they marched inexorably towards the exit.

– Image by boardGOATS

Pink used the Barricade to delay the escape of a couple of pandas and the pair marauding elephants, but it failed to hold when the Broken Barricade Move card appeared. The rhino’s occasional charges weren’t much of an issue as they were very predictable, but once animals started to get close to the exit the rhino became more of a problem as players stayed out of its path wasting Action Points. By this time, the tigers were becoming a problem, but Pink and Black put their Tranquiliser darts to good effect and soon the zoo was littered with sleeping tigers. Lime had a Stretcher, but never actually used it, briefly loaning it to Blue for the only tiger returned to its enclosure (and left to peacefully sleep off the after-effects, as per one of the new variants).

– Image by boardGOATS

There was a bit of a debate over whether it was more important to work on the rogue pandas or let them and meerkats escape and focus on the dangerous animals (in particular tigers and elephants). Slowly but surely, however, the animals were taking over as there was a little procession of Keepers at the Medic’s tent, with only Lime avoiding injury. Black was the only player to make use of the Train, because it didn’t really go where people wanted it to and players dealt with the issues nearest to them. That was probably a good strategy; like it says in the advice, it is also important to lock stuff up early—the team didn’t. They dealt with the monkeys, but the only other enclosure they managed to lock was the pandas, just before two meerkats and a cobra made a run for it in a single turn.

– Image by boardGOATS

Although the mass escape had caused the zoo to be closed down and Pink hadn’t actually been cuddled by a panda, everyone had really enjoyed themselves. On reflection, working in pairs might have worked better (as with Flash Point and Escape), because then the team can do things much quicker, get on top of things and lock cages making life easier all round. Black was curious about the variants available. The group had played on “Standard” difficulty with two “Phew!” Escape cards (where nothing gets out), but thanks to a rules malfunction, had also included the blank cards in the Move deck which provided quite a bit of respite, so everyone had a good laugh at the idea of making the game harder.

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Despite the fact the group rarely plays cooperative games, everyone was keen to give Zoo Break another outing soon. Zoos were popular elsewhere too—the next table had been playing New York Zoo. This is a tile-laying game that got its first Tuesday outing only a few of weeks ago, but had been enjoyed by all. In this game, players add pens to their zoo, populating them with animals, and building attractions. Like Uwe Rosenberg‘s other similar games (including Cottage Garden, Spring Meadow, Indian Summer and Patchwork), it is Tetris-like but what makes this one unique and interesting is the Market.

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Players move the Marker Elephant one to four spaces round the Market, landing either on an Enclosure tile space (taking the top one and adding it to their zoo) or on an animal space (taking one or both of the animals depicted). Enclosure tiles can be placed anywhere in the player’s Zoo, then one or two identical Animals from elsewhere in their Zoo must be moved to occupy the Enclosure. Each Enclosure can only hold one type of Animal. When there are two or more Animals in an Enclosure together they breed when the Elephant passes the Market’s breeding spaces.

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When an Enclosure is full, all the animals are removed and the player takes an Attraction tile of their choice and adds it to their Zoo. Attraction tiles are useful because they fill additional spaces, and at its heart, New York Zoo is a race game—the winner is the first to fill all the spaces in their Zoo. Purple had played last time, and Green had played elsewhere, however, Ivory and Teal were new to the game and the rules needed explanation. That didn’t take long though, and the Elephant was soon touring the market and everyone was building their zoo and adding animals.

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Purple was quick to get going, as was Green. New York Zoo is really a tactical game, but there are a couple of broad strategies—fill the zoo with large Enclosures that are harder to fill, but occupy more space, or fill it with smaller Enclosures which are easier to fill with animals giving bonus Attraction tiles. Purple went for the latter approach, getting some of the large attractions early in the game. Teal however, opted for the former strategy, which is harder to get to work, but can be extremely effective, as indeed it was this time, making him the first to finish his zoo, and with no Attractions at all. Purple was the best of the rest with for spaces left to fill, with Green a little way behind.

– Image by boardGOATS

The Keepers in Bedlam Zoo on the next table were still trying to get the marauding beasts back in their pens (largely unsuccessfully) so the others had to decide what to play. Green decided to go home, and couldn’t be persuaded to stay by the opportunity to play Nidavellir despite having been very keen to play it previously. That left Purple, Ivory and Teal, who decided to play it anyhow. Nidavellir is a card set-collection and bidding game inspired by Norse myths. The game was created by French designer Serge Laget (who sadly passed away in January this year after a lifetime of producing some great games) and the striking black and white artwork by Jean-Marie Minguez which nicely contrasts with the coloured cardboard components.

– Image by boardGOATS

The story behind the game is that the kingdom of Nidavellir is under threat from the stirrings of the Dragon Fafnir and players are tasked by the King to recruit the best army to defeat it. Appropriately for our venue, the action takes places in three Dwarvish pubs where the players must use their coins to bid for the most skillful Dwarves (in a concealed auction), recruit the most prestigious Heroes, and build the best Battalion they can to defeat the Dragon. Players hire five different professions of Dwarves into their growing army – Warriors, Hunters, Miners, Blacksmiths and Explorers. Each player starts with five coins with the values: zero, two, three, four and five. Players place one of their coins against each pub space on their player mat. The coins are revealed and cards are taken from each pub starting with the highest bidder.

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Ties are broken in favour of the player with the the highest jewel token (randomised at the start) and then these players swap jewels so the losing player has an advantage next time there is a draw. Once the three pubs have been resolved, players take back their coins, and place their cards in their tableaux. At the game end, points are awarded in different ways for each group of Dwarves. For example, Hunters provide points based on the number of cards squared, Blacksmiths score according to the triangular sequence (as used in Coloretto), while the Navigators are simply a total of the number of points printed on the card, and so on. Each round of the game, random face-up dwarf cards are lined up by each pub (equal to the number of players) and players bid for their order of selection.

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If a player plays their “zero” coin, the values of the two unused coins are added together, the highest of the pair is discarded and a new coin of the same total is added to their stash from the Royal Treasure. Thus, players can gradually increase the value of their coins, which is useful for out-bidding others, but also adds value as the total coin hoard is added to their final score. Hero cards, which supply additional points bonuses in a variety of ways are awarded when a player manages to have five cards of different type and then each time a new set of five is achieved. Heroes are selected from, a separate deck which allows for further point scoring combinations. The start was a little slow as Purple and Ivory were both new to the game and had to figure out what to do.

– Image by boardGOATS

Teal and Ivory both started by upgrading their coins. Ivory was the first to get a set of five cards and claimed one of the Dwerg Brothers as his Hero giving him the target of collecting the other brothers which greatly crank up the points the more that are collected. Teal, who had played the game before, chose more complex Heroes. Half way through the game, Purple took the King’s Hand and the King’s Great Armourer Heroes for having the most Warrior and Blacksmith cards, while Teal took the Hunting Master and Crown Jeweler (for the most Hunters and Miners respectively), leaving Ivory just the Pioneer of the Kingdom (for the most Explorers).

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The second age (played with a new deck of cards), was similar to the first, with particular tight battles around getting cards to complete sets. Ivory had a slight advantage in this, having upgraded his coins more aggressively early in the game, and used this to get more of the Dwerg Brothers. In contrast, Purple and Teal focused on collecting Dwarves of one kind with Teal using his Heroes to add to their “count” in particular colours when completing a set. In the end, Purple and Teal scored best for Blacksmiths and Hunters, while Teal also took lots of points for his Miners—something he had focused on from the start.

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Ivory however, had more Warriors and having the majority of them meant he could add the value of his most valuable coin to his score. Despite that and over a hundred points for his Dwergs, Ivory finished just shy of Teal’s winning total of two-hundred and seventy-seven. The downside of his victory—the winner has to face the Dragon Fafnir! All agreed it was a good game, not overly complex, but with lots of decisions to make; a game that didn’t out stay its welcome finishing within the forty-five minutes advertised (even with two first-time players).

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Learning outcome: Always keep a close eye on your meerkats.

18th April 2023

Blue and Pink were joined for food by Jade, Plum, Byzantium and Sapphire. As they finished, Pine, Green and Purple showed up (leaving Black under the patio, again), followed by Ivory and a team of Sherpas toting his massive Complete Collection of Everdell. There were quite a few possible takers for the Pearlbrook expansion, the night’s “Feature Game“, but eventually, after a lot of discussion, Ivory was joined by Plum and Jade and they took themselves over to the other side of the pub and started setting up, which was no small task, though Everdell is functionally a fairly simple game.

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Everdell is a dynamic tableau building and worker placement. On their turn players can do one of three things: place a Worker and carry out any associated actions; pay any associated cost to play a card from their hand, or prepare for the next Season. The game is played from Winter through to the onset of the following Winter, so each player has four Seasons, though because players can prepare for the next Season whenever they want to, players’ Seasons have different lengths and start their Seasons at different times. This means one player who takes fewer turns could finish their game much sooner than another player. At the end of the game, when everyone has finished, the player with the most points is the winner.

– Image by boardGOATS

The Pearlbrook expansion adds an extension to the board, which displays River Destination cards and the new Pearl resource that give the brook (and thus the expansion) its name. The basic event spaces are covered up as these are not used and are replaced by two new Wonder spaces. Everyone also gets a couple of adornment cards at the start of the game and on their turn can pay a Pearl to play one of these as an action. The don’t take up any space in the player’s city, but give an instant bonus action and points at the end of the game. Players also start with a Frog Ambassador which they use to visit the Pearlbrook either to get Pearls or to activate the River Destinations.

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The River Destination spaces have a requirement printed on the board (e.g. three production cards in the City) and a player’s Frog Ambassador can only visit, if the player has achieved it and it is unoccupied. The River Destination cards start the game face down with a Pearl on top and the first player to visit each one takes the Pearl and turns over the card. Another player can’t visit the Destination until it has been vacated which typically happens at the end of the occupying player’s Season. The Shoal space allows players to exchange two resources and two cards for a Pearl, but this space is unlimited.

– Image by boardGOATS

Ivory charged out of the starting blocks, leaving Plum and Jade for dust. Jade struggled to get his engine going because his starting hand needed three different types of resources. Plum and Jade commented that it was nearly impossible to get a Pearl in the first Season, Winter, so Ivory made it his business to prove them wrong. Once he’d got his Pearl, he used it to play his first adornment card giving him more resources and, as a result he was still in winter when Plum and Jade had moved on and were well into Spring. That meant Ivory didn’t take his Platypus workers back leaving them blocking spaces the others would have liked to use.

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As a result Plum and Jade had progressed their Spring before Ivory played his Frog Ambassador, which they hadn’t been able to use at all during Winter. It was a long time since Jade had played and he was out of practice optimising his seasons, consequently his Spring achieved less than he would have liked. As the game progressed, the River Destinations were opened up and everyone started to use them, giving everyone more Pearls. Plum (obviously playing with Kitty workers) had built up quite a pile, so both Ivory and Jade raided her stash by playing Pirate Ship cards which take up space and don’t score points. That meant she could use one herself in an attempt to wreak her horrific revenge later, though it wasn’t as fruitful.

– Image by boardGOATS

Both Jade and Plum then played Pirate cards, gambling with discarding cards and hoping to draw cards with a sum of value of seven cards to get another Pearl, but both failed. Although Plum and Jade had built up a large pile of Pearls, Ivory took the first, and largest monument, the “Light House”, due to his huge pile of resources. The others weren’t far behind though, taking the “Sunblaze Bridge” and the “Mistrise Fountain” respectively. Ivory also put his enormous wood pile to good use claiming the first event (“An Evening of Fireworks”). That triggered Plum to spot that she had already completed “X Marks the Spot”, so she grabbed that quickly followed by Jade who took “Ministering to Miscreants” shortly after.

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There was quite a bit of congestion and Jade in particular found Plum and Ivory grabbed spaces just before he could get there. Throughout the game, Ivory managed to eek every last ounce out of each Season, but in the end, although Ivory dragged out Winter and Spring, after he’d achieved the event and got his Monument, he ran out of things to do. As a result, everyone finished very close in both time and scores and it was far from the landslide that might have been predicted earlier in the game. Plum’s prosperity gave her an edge, but that was offset by Jade’s left over Pearls and higher scoring event. It was Ivory who was the victor, however, with eighty-two points just six ahead of Plum in second.

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With Ivory, Plum and Jade playing Everdell, that left seven people to decide what they were going to play and how they were going to split the group or even if they were going to divide into two. And then Lime arrived, but while that made splitting into two group more sensible, there still wasn’t any consensus about what to play and nobody seemed to want to commit to a group until they knew what was going to be played. So, in the end Blue made an executive decision and, much to Green’s delight, decreed that one of the games would be Dice Hospital. Purple, Byzantium and Pine joined him and they started setting up.

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Byzantium and Green had both played this before, so together, they explained the rules to Pine and Purple. The idea is that each player is the owner of a hospital and starts with an administrator which gives them a special power, three nurses, and three patients—dice drawn at random from a bag. The colour of the dice represents their illness and the number, its severity: six indicates the patient is healthy, but if the number falls below one, the patient dies. At the start of each round, players take an ambulance with new patients—if there aren’t enough beds available, another patient must make space by moving to the morgue (where each body-bag is a negative point at the end of the game).

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Players can then improve their hospital by adding specialist medics and wards and finally, their medics can visit each patient and improve their health. Different specialisms can only “heal” certain colours or numbers. Any patients not treated are “neglected” and their health deteriorates with any that fall below one moving to the morgue while anyone who exceeded six is discharged. The more that are discharged at the same time, the more points the player scores. The game ends after eight rounds and the player with the most points is the winner. The key to the game is knowing which specialists to get and which ambulance of patients to take.

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There was some confusion about what the symbols on the Specialists and Wards meant. The little help cards seemed to cause more confusion as they did not list all the symbols, so in the end, the rule-book was handed out which fixed the problem. Green had played the game a few times on line, but less often in real life, so needed to keep checking the rules for the set-up and the order of who chose when and did what, but eventually the game got started. The first round was a little slow with a few restarts as people took a little time while to work out how the game worked and what they could actually achieve.

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During the second round after everyone had finished their “Healings”, Pine was still working his out, but had ended up with one less discharged patient than he expected. Unfortunately real life doesn’t have a “reset” button like the game on line and you can’t always remember what the hospital looked like before starting healing people. So in the third round, everyone else kept an eye out for Pine to help him, before sorting out their own hospitals. Unfortunately, the suggestions, though intended to be helpful were distracting, and as a result, Pine struggled to work out what he was trying to do. By this time everyone was really finding it difficult to discharge patients.

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Byzantium was struggling because he had gone heavy on green Doctors and Wards while Green had lots of red Dice and Doctors, but had ended up with Patients which didn’t quite match what they needed. And so, there were the first fatalities—the Hospitals were in crises! Nothing new there, then… By the end of the game, Pine and Purple were getting the hang of things. Despite his struggles, Pine did well and came second with thirty-eight points, only beaten by Byzantium who score forty-three. Even though he did quite well for a first game, Pine did not warm to Dice Hospital and the overall conclusion was that it is a game that plays better on-line as it deals with all those complicated set-up and order issues, as well as having that extremely useful “turn reset” function.

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With everyone else finally sorted out, that just left Blue, Pink, Lime and Sapphire to decide what to play. Pink suggested Azul: Queen’s Garden, but the only problem was that he’d never played it. Sapphire had though, so the group nominated him to teach them because, how hard could it be since everyone was very familiar with the original Azul? Well, as it turned out, quite hard, since in terms of difficulty Queen’s Garden is more on a par with the second and third editions (Stained Glass of Sintra and Summer Pavilion), which are both a very marked step up from the original.

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In the original Azul, take all the pieces of one colour from a market and add the rest to the central pool or take all the pieces of one colour from the central pool. In Queen’s Garden, the Tiles come with different colours and different patterns and the Markets come out gradually through each of the four rounds. So, instead of taking pieces of the same colour from one market, players can take as many different the pieces of the same colour or with the same pattern from anywhere as long as they are are all different (maximum of six). Additionally, when a Market is empty, it is turned over and becomes a Garden Extension which players can also take on their turn.

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Garden Extensions are hold seven tiles—the player mat has space for six Tiles printed on it, but once that is full, players need Extensions to place more. Each Extension has a single tile printed on it, so once a Market has been emptied and turned over, it can be taken by the active player along with any Tiles matching the colour or pattern. Like Summer Pavilion, the Tiles and Extensions are then stored before they are added to their Garden display. Unlike Summer Pavilion however, the amount of storage space is limited, so instead of taking Tiles/Extensions from the market, players can place a Tile or Extension in their player area, or Garden.

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When placing a Tile in their Garden players must pay. The price is dictated by the pattern: trees cost one, eagles cost two, butterflies three and so on. Like Summer Pavilion, the cost is made up of the Tile placed and Tiles that match the colour or the pattern of the Tile placed, which are dropped into a Tower for recycling later in the game. Also like in in Summer Pavilion, when a player surrounds marked spaces they get a bonus, in this case, “Wild Tiles” which can be used to match any colour or pattern when paying to place other tiles. These are essential for some of the higher value patterns, which are very expensive to place and it can be hard to get enough tiles that match, however, Wild Tiles also take up space in storage.

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When tiles are placed, if they are adjacent to a tile, either the colour or the pattern must match. Alternatively, Tiles can be placed so they aren’t next to another tile. At the end of each round, players score all the pieces currently in their Garden, with different colours and patterns scoring points at the end of each round as per the rondel (trees, green and blue tiles scoring at the end of the first round for example). At the end of the game, players score for each Group of three or more tiles where the colour or the pattern match. Colour Groups score for each pattern present in it (trees score one point, eagles two and so on), but each pattern can only be included in each Group once giving a maximum Group size of six.

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Pattern Groups also score for the pattern (so a Group of trees will score one point per tiles), but in these groups each colour can only feature once, so again there is a maximum size of six. If any Group has reached its maximum size of six, the player also gets an extra six bonus points. However, any left-over tiles that have not been placed give negative scores which can be very, very costly indeed. The group were just getting underway when Jade came round with some birthday cake—pieces cut from an absolutely amazing “Lego Cake” made by the amazingly talented Jason Smith. Everyone, on all three tables, was very much distracted by the remarkable, solid chocolate Lego bricks and very fine chocolate cake, but eventually attention returned to the games.

– Image by Jade

With the group feeling their way somewhat, people started without long term plans. A few rules got missed, the group forgot to score a point for each Pavilion and nobody paid much attention to the option of drawing face-down Garden Extensions because of the six point penalty. The biggest rules malfunction, however, was that nobody realised that Lime had a duplicate tile in his large dark purple group of tiles in the centre of his garden, giving him a slightly illegal set of seven. The group let that slide and everyone concentrated trying to find a way of getting points from their gardens.

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Everyone seemed to have slightly different strategies, collecting different colours or different patterns and covering different areas of their gardens. While nobody had thought anyone was going to need their “I’ve been round the track already” token, and obviously, nobody was going to have to touch their two-hundred and forty point token, everyone did make it round once and claimed their sixty point tokens. It was all very, very tight and there were even slight recounts, but in the end, it Blue claimed victory, by just two points (or maybe even one) from Lime who was just two (or maybe three) points ahead of Pink.

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There was a lot of chatter as everyone packed away. Pink commented that he liked Queen’s Garden—not as much as the original Azul, but at least as much as Summer Pavilion (nobody talks about Stained Glass of Sintra, which Sapphire politely described as a bit of a “mis-step”). And then everyone wandered over to spectate the great count up and pack-away of Everdell. It was all a bit rushed and Ivory was definitely going to have some homework to do in terms of sorting it all out, but there was still just enough time to share a few pictures of cake, parties and kitties—it seems they are quite fond of Bitoku…

– Image by Plum

Learning outcome: Goats, like cats, love to play games, and eat cake.