Next Meeting – 5th February 2013

The next meeting is on Tuesday 5^th February playing shorter games from 7.30pm as people arrive, until 8pm when we will start something a little longer.

The “Feature Game” will be For Sale, which is a quick, fun game about buying and selling real estate, players first bid for several buildings then, after all buildings have been bought, sell the buildings for the greatest profit possible. We chose this game as we would like to play something a little more substantial that would depend heavily on who comes along (possible games include, Village, Niagara, Mystery of the Abbey, Vasco da Gama, Keyflower and Snowdonia).

And talking about selling property…

Jeff was selling his house, and went to the estate agent left the matter in his hands.

Over the next two days the agent took photographs of the house and wrote a description that made wonderful reading.

After Jeff had read it, he turned to the agent and asked, “Is that everything there?”

The agent responded, “Well, I think so, what do you think I’ve missed?”

Jeff replied, “Why nothing, but you can cancel the sale… the house is much too good to part with!”

22nd January 2013

This week was an all time low in terms of numbers with illness, snow and work all conspiring to reduce attendance. We knew we were going to be low on numbers, so we started out with a game of Tutto, to give anyone who might have been delayed by the weather time to arrive. Tutto is a very short game with people drawing cards and rolling dice to score points. If all six dice score, that’s “tutto” and you get a bonus as detailed on the card; if only some dice score, you can re-roll non-scoring dice, or stick and forfeit the bonus; if none of the dice rolled score, you lose everything from that round. The game was amazingly tight, with the all players within a few hundred points of the 6000 target at the end.

With so few of us, we took the opportunity to play something very new and quite complex: Vasco da Gama. This is a resource management game with an element of risk where players have to buy projects, recruit sailors, build, captain and launch ships and finally use them to open new commercial routes. Points were slow coming in the early rounds and players’ scores remained close. However, as time went on, it became clear that the position of ships in the navigation area was key and the player with the best positioned ships romped away to a clear victory.

Learning Outcome: Sailing is all about positioning your ship to make the best of the prevailing conditions.

OxCon and Big DoG

This weekend is OxCon. OxCon is a weekend of gaming held every January in The Mitre pub in Oxford. It has almost mythical status within since publicity is almost entirely by word of mouth and often quite last minute.

This year, in addition to the usual thread on BoardGameGeek, there is also a mention in the latest Queen’s Lane Advertiser (QLA-42, page 8) and a FaceBook page. Not sure how many of the GOATS will make it, that will depend on weather (currently snow-chance) and family commitments, but it should be a good event with Puerto Rico and Settlers of Catan tournaments for the more competitive.

In a couple of weekends time (2^nd February to be exact – check out the calendar), is the Big DoG – a Day of Games hosted by the Oxford Meeples at Wolvercote Village Hall. Just to the north of Oxford situated close to the A40 and A34, this looks to be a well cited event, and the list of proposed games looks enticing. However, whether or not (m)any GOATS are there, will again depend on other commitments.

Next Meeting – 22nd January 2013

The next meeting is on Tuesday 22^nd January playing shorter games from 7.30pm as people arrive, until 8pm when we will start something a little longer.

The “Feature Game” will be Tutto, which is a quick press your luck game with dice rolling and cards. We chose this as we would like to play something a little more substantial that would depend heavily on the number of players that come along (possible games include, Vasco da Gama, Village, Niagara, Mystery of the Abbey and Snowdonia).

And talking of dice…

An A-Level student called Joe was sitting his General Studies multiple choice paper.

The invigilator told the students they could start and Joe opened the paper and started throwing the dice to select his answers. The invigilator gave Joe a long look, but he could see nothing in the rules to forbid it: it is not uncommon for students to try their luck and, he supposed, this was an extreme example.

Very soon Joe had finished his paper and put his head on his arms on the desk and fell asleep.

About half an hour before the end of the exam, Joe sat up suddenly, and started throwing his dice again. This time the invigilator was unable suppress his curiosity, and approached the Joe.

“Why are you rolling the dice again – you finished the questions in the first few minutes!” he said.

Joe replied, “Well sir, you always say we have to double check our answers…”

8th January 2013

Normally, we are very reliant on support from people coming from outside Stanford – Stanford is a village and we are very grateful to the people who travel from the surrounding villages and towns. However, this week we had a visitor who set a new record coming over 8,000 miles – although it is possible she might not have come just to play games…!

Since the early arrivals were eating, we didn’t start playing until 8pm by which time we had six people, so the first game was Pick Picknic. This is a fun little game where players play chicken cards to claim corn in one of six coloured fields. If two or more chickens claim the same field, then they can choose to share or they can roll to see who gets it. But watch out for the foxes: They are not interested the large tempting pile of corn, and eat chickens instead. Initially, it seemed that a handful of fox cards was an advantage (well, wouldn’t you prefer to be a fox?), but the winner was the person with the most corn…

The next game was the “Feature Game” which was Ticket to Ride, a train game where players compete to make routes connecting cities. Since there were six of us we decided to play the “Team Asia” map which adds the twist that players play in teams of two and have shared information and hidden information. The first thing we discovered was that it plays a lot better if you include the white, blue and yellow cards, but once we had got that sussed, the game progressed in the usual way with players picking up cards and mispronouncing place names as they laid trains to fulfil their routes. After a short tussle for Hong Kong, Blue took an early lead with Red and Black squabbling over second place. However, in the final scoring Black had many more tickets (and higher scoring ones too), and shot ahead running out easy winners.

There had been a lot of discussion and the game took much longer than expected, so we finished up with three rounds of an old favourite, No Thanks!, with the added luxury of real poker chips. All the winning scores were less than ten, but the final was -1. We thought that was a good place to end the evening.

Learning Outcome: Sometimes it is better to be a chicken than a fox!

Boardgames in the News

According to BBC Breakfast, retailers have reported a rise in game sales over the Christmas period with John Lewis quoted as reporting a 12% increase. Jaques of London, who claim to be the oldest games manufacturer in the world (they were established in 1795), say sales are rising much faster than that with traditional and boardgame sales rising by 32% for November this year compared with the same period in 2011.

Next Meeting – 8th January 2013

The next meeting is on Tuesday 8^th January playing shorter games from 7.30pm as people arrive, until 8pm when we will start something a little longer.

The “Feature Game” will be Ticket to Ride, which is a train game where players compete to make routes connecting cities. There are lots of different variations of this game, so we can choose which one we fancy on the night, depending on who comes.

And talking of trains…

Barek Obama, George Bush Jr., an elderly lady, and a well-endowed, young woman were travelling together on a train.

The train goes into a dark tunnel and a few seconds later there is the sound of a loud slap. When the train emerges from the tunnel, Barek Obama has a bright red hand print on his cheek.

No one speaks.

The old lady thinks, “Obama must have groped the young lady in the dark, and she slapped him.”

The young lady thinks, “Obama must have tried to grope me in the dark, but missed and fondled the old lady instead and she slapped him.”

Obama thinks, “Bush must have groped the young lady in the dark. She tried to slap him but missed and got me instead.”

George Bush thinks, “I can’t wait for another tunnel, so I can slap Obama again.”

27th December 2012

With Christmas day and New Years day both falling on a Tuesday (and players valuing playing games with their family more than with other GOATS – can’t imagine why!) we decided to have an extraordinary meeting on the Thursday.

This week there were six of us, including two new people. However, although we didn’t start until 8pm (as burgers and chips had to be dealt with), we still managed to squeeze in four games.

With Christmas so recent, everyone had new games to play, and the first one up was a Santa Special – Mundus Novus. This is a card game where players are seventeenth century Spanish ship owners, travelling to the New World and making their fortune. It took us a while to get started, but once we got the hang of it, everyone started to rack up dubloons at a steady rate. We were pretty much neck-a-neck when the game came to a bit of a shuddering halt because one of us played the equivalent of a Royal Flush, which wins the game outright.

Next we played the “Feature Game” which was PitchCar, a gorgeous, dexterity car-racing game. This game was also a Christmas Special and included the first expansion which has shicanes and jumps/bridges. For this game we used one of the standard layouts making full use of the special features.

Once everyone had completed their qualifying lap, we were off. Yellow, who won the qualifying, stalled on the grid, so Pink led into the first corner and got in everyone else’s way. Meanwhile, Black went for a pitstop and came out Orange. After about half a lap, Green had got his nose in front and despite the best efforts of Blue and White (who came from the back of the grid to finish second), this proved an unassailable lead.

Next up was The Resistance: Avalon. This game is a little different with players dividing into two teams, the Loyal Servants of Arthur and the Minions of Mordred, to go on a series of quests. Arthur’s team want the quests to be successful, whereas Mordred’s team want them to fail. The catch is, the Loyal Servants of Arthur don’t know who Mordred’s men are and players vote for teams to go on each quest. The first two quests were successful, before the Minions managed to sneak in a failure. After winning the fourth quest, the Loyal servants snatched defeat from the jaws of victory when Merlin was named correctly and assassinated.

The last game of the evening was an old favourite, Dobble and we played several chaotic rounds in different styles before we went home.

Learning Outcome: A little research before preparing your Christmas list goes a long way!

billyGOAT’s Birthday Boardgame Bash

It was billyGOAT’s birthday and he decided that what he really fancied was a day playing games with his mates. So, on a slightly damp afternoon in December, friends from far & wide converged on Challow Village Hall.

The first game up was a six player game of Pillars of the Earth. This turned out to be a rather long game and took most of the afternoon. However, since it was one of billyGOAT’s choice games, it was fitting that he ran out the worthy winner. Meanwhile, games of Discworld: Ankh-Morpork, Riff Raff, Apples to Apples Kids, Dixit, Hamsterrolle, The Great Balloon Race, Ramses Pyramid, Bohnanza, Incan Gold and Shopping List all went on as the masons slowly built their cathedral and the children played with the Scalextric and decorated biscuits.

Shortly after 6pm, everyone sat down together for a meal of Chinese takeaway (including dumplings) which was followed by a marvellous Jamaica Cake for those who had any space left. Then, the games recommenced with parallel games of Lord of the Rings and Formula D while games of Billy Biber (aka Log Jam), Dobble (aka Spot It!) and Loupin’ Louie kept the children occupied until it was time for them to go home to bed. Unfortunately, Lord of the Rings had to be terminated prematurely and the Fellowship failed to make it to Mordor.

Despite its apparently poor reputation to the contrary, the six player game of Formula D on the other hand finished in timely fashion and players moved on to a quick nine player game of The Resistance: Avalon. With a lot of new players everyone was a little quiet and Mordred’s Minions won easily.

By this time, the numbers were beginning to dwindle a little, but there was still time for a quick six player game of Roman chariot racing with Ave Caesar where everyone competed to show due respect to the Emperor. billyGOAT’s horse, “Dobbin”, made a very slow start, however, it managed a late charge for the line eventually coming second behind “Glue-pot Boy”, who had led from the off.

The last game of the night was another game of Avalon, this time with only seven players and victory went to Merlin and the Loyal Servants of Arthur. Then we had to tidy up the kitchen, sweep the hall and hand the keys back. A good time was had by all and everyone went home tired, but happy.

Finally, many thanks to everyone who helped out in the kitchen during the event, and kept food and drink flowing, while others played; it would not have been possible without them.

Next Meeting – 27th December 2012

With Christmas day and New Years day both falling on a Tuesday (and players valuing playing games with their family more than with other GOATS – can’t imagine why!) we have decided to have an extrordinary meeting on THURSDAY 27^th December. As usual, we will be playing shorter games from 7.30pm as people arrive, until 8pm when we will start something a little longer.

The “Feature Game” will be PitchCar, which is a gorgeous, dexterity car-racing game.

And talking of cars…

A policeman sees an elderly woman driving incredibly slowly on the motorway, so he pulls along side and notices her knitting in the driver’s seat. She remains focussed on the road and keeps knitting and driving.

He beeps his horn to get her attention, but she is oblivious and carries on.

Getting more frustrated, he turns his siren on and, as she finally notices him, he signals for her to wind the window down.

After a time she finds the button and down goes the window.

Incensed, the cop yells, “PULL OVER!”

“Oh, no sweetie,” she replies. “It’s a scarf, see?”

boardGOATS

boardGames On Alternate Tuesdays in Stanford