Next Meeting, 30th April 2024

Our next meeting will be on Tuesday 30^th April 2024. As usual, we will start playing shorter games from 7.30pm as people arrive, until 8pm when we will start something a little longer. The pub is doing food, and the table is booked from 6.30pm for those that would like to eat first.

This week, the “Feature Game” will be Canvas (review, rules, “How to Play” video). This is a game where players take on the role of artists and draft clear cards to make new composite artwork to score points. A relatively short and light game, this should give lots of opportunity to play other games regardless of who comes.

– Image from kickstarter.com

And speaking of art and artists…

Jeff and Joe were visiting an art exhibition at the Ashmolean Museum. They were both really impressed with some of the works, but Jeff was more fascinated by the artists themselves.

He explained why to Joe, “Take Leonardo da Vinci for example, it’s remarkable that he could paint such fantastic pictures and also invent things like the helicopter.” Jeff went on, “And what’s really amazing is that he could still find time to be a crime-fighting turtle…”

16th April 2024

Everyone seemed more keen on standing around and chatting that playing, but eventually, once everyone had arrived, people started dividing up into groups. Ivory began by leading Jade, Sapphire and Cobalt to the other side of the room to play the “Feature Game“, which was the new “hotness” Let’s Go! To Japan. In this game, players are travelers planning, then experiencing their own dream holiday in Japan. Played over thirteen rounds, players draw activity cards place them in different days in their week-long itinerary. These can’t-miss tourist attractions have players traveling between Tokyo and Kyoto as they try to maximize their experience by optimising their activities while balancing resources.

– Image by boardGOATS

In each of the thirteen rounds, players draw cards according to the pre-organised sequence. For example, there are two decks of cards (Tokyo and Kyoto), and for the first four rounds, players take one card from each deck, keep one and add it to their tableau assigning it to one of the days of their dream, then pass the second card to their neighbour. In the fifth round, players take the four cards they’ve been given and then they place two in their tableau and pass two on, and so on. Once eighteen cards have been played (three on each of the six days), the game is over and players take their planned trip, activating each of their cards in order, starting on Monday and work their way through to Saturday.

– Image by boardGOATS

There is a catch: where there is a swap between the two decks, players have to move between the cities of Tokyo and Kyoto by playing a Luxury Train Ticket which they can acquire during the game. Each of these is worth two points. If players do not have enough tokens to cover each change, they play a Regular Train Ticket from the supply which costs them two points. Activating cards involves moving the players’ five Experience tokens along a track, increasing or decreasing their Mood, Stress and Happiness, gaining points and then evaluating the requirements for the Highlight of the Day depicted on the final card of the day. If these requirements have been fulfilled, the player gets bonus points and the player with the most points at the end of the game is the winner.

– Image by boardGOATS

The game rattled along very quickly with swift turns and the added bonus that setup was quite rapid too. As a result, it was easily under forty-five minutes before everyone was explaining their plan and scoring it. That said it was hard to keep track of what everyone was doing. Ivory was the first to fill a day and managed to get everything aligned to get the top bonus of a Luxury Train ticket. Although this was very nice, it in no way indicated Ivory was going to get a big score. Jade and Cobalt quickly followed suit, Cobalt also gaining Luxury Train Tickets (which he got quite a few of throughout the game), and Jade got quite a lot of the second best reward, choosing Wild Tokens that would be really useful at the end of game to ensure meeting Highlight of the Day/End of Game objectives.

– Image by boardGOATS

Sapphire was spreading his activities out a little bit more, but as the game went on he also managed to build a large store of wild tokens. At the start of the game, Jade and Sapphire (who were not sitting next to each other) focused more on Kyoto, whereas Ivory and Cobalt were playing a lot more Tokyo cards. Inevitably, however, everyone ended up going to both cities and need Train Tickets as a result. Cobalt and Jade were the only people who choose to grab research tokens; Cobalt used one of these mid-game and managed to manipulate his hand so he ensured he passed nothing of use to Jade, much to his annoyance. Otherwise, everyone worked on their mental health and managed to keep their stress down scoring positive points for the trip.

– Image by boardGOATS

At the end of the game, Sapphire, Jade and Ivory had minimized their travel between the two cities though, whereas Cobalt required a lot of trains: as he had lots of Luxury Train Tickets he actually increased his score significantly with these. Jade had not picked up enough Luxury Train Tickets, so was stuck on commuter trains causing him to lose a lot of points. Sapphire ended up with a quick return trip between Kyoto and Tokyo on his last day, but that was acceptable because you should always go out your way for Sake!

– Image by boardGOATS

Scoring took longer than usual as everyone gave a detailed description of their trip. Both Cobalt and Sapphire scored well on every day of their trip, with Cobalt slightly ahead thanks to his Luxury Train Tickets. Sapphire managed to complete all his Highlight of the Day objectives though without using his wild tokens, so he cashed these in at the end of the game to push all his tokens into the next scoring zone and subsequently won the game by two points from Cobalt. It had been a highly enjoyable experience though, enhanced by the beautiful components, especially the extremely pretty, but totally over the top ceramic component bowls!

– Image by boardGOATS

From there, the group then played a game of Faraway, a light game set on the mysterious continent of Alula with its ever-changing geography, shaped after the rhythm of the seasons. On each turn, players play a card from a hand of three. As play is simultaneous, players must take into account the priority system in all their choices—being last to pick a card leaves fewer options and often less profitable choices for later turns. During the game, players will play a row of eight cards in front of them, from left to right. These cards represent the regions they will come across while exploring the lands. Characters on these cards will give victory points if the player later fulfills the conditions they demand. At the end of the game, players walk back along the same route, scoring cards in the opposite order to that they were played in—and therein lies the heart of the game-play.

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Throughout the game, the cards played serve both to set new objectives, and to meet ones played previously. This time, Ivory started quickly out of the traps playing the highest card and subsequently getting the last pick in the following round, which was a minor hindrance. As the game went on, the order of picking the cards changed each time and everyone managed to pick first at some point, although it did seem like Sapphire and Ivory had the greatest varieties, mostly either being first or last! Jade was very quick off the mark getting lots of maps which gave him a significant card advantage throughout the game as he could look at four or five cards and pick the best one. Ivory also didn’t do too badly with maps.

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It eventually became clear that Jade had managed to play his cards in such a way he was always playing a higher card than his last card giving him an additional secondary card, but he was also able to fulfill the requirements to score the objective on that card even though it would need fulfilling earlier in the journey. Come the end of game scoring and going on their journey, both Cobalt and Ivory had slightly take their eye of the ball and missed fulfilling the requirements of some of their cards and thus missed out on points they though we were going to get. In the end, it was very close for second place Sapphire just taking it, while everyone was thrashed by Jade.

– Image by boardGOATS

On the next table, Green was keen to play Lost Ruins of Arnak, and was eventually joined by Black and Plum. This game combines deck-building and worker placement with resource management. Players start with six cards in their deck, two Money, two Compasses and two Fear cards, and draw five of these to play. As in the original deck-builder, Dominion, or in the racing games, Flamme Rouge and Snow Tails, Fear cards clog up players’ decks and more are acquired as the game progresses. But also as in Dominion, there are ways to “exile” cards during the game. So, players can try to keep a tight deck with minimal cards, or try to buy lots of cards that work well together.

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Players then have two meeples each that can be sent to locations on the map, to either discover or use an action Location. These generally give Resources plus some additions like draw a card, or gain a Fear card etc.. Each new site also has a Creature guarding it, which, if beaten, will give points and a small one-time bonus. The Research Track is where players spend three of the resources, Tablets, Arrows and Jewels. Each player has two tokens which move up the same track giving different rewards as it ascends. Thematically, you can’t write stuff in the notebook until you find it with your magnifying glass, so the former can never overtake the latter on the track. And of course, the notebook gives cooler rewards.

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Players get one action each per turn, until everyone has passed signalling the end of the round, and the game finishes after five rounds. At the end of the game, Points are awarded for Cards, for progress on the Research Track, for discovering Locations and for beating Creatures; the player with the most points at the end is the winner. This time, early in the game, Green pointed out to Plum that she could use an Idol gained by defeating a Guardian to give her the resources she needed to go up the Research Track. That gave Plum an Assistant and she picked one that turned a Boot into an Arrowhead.

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Green bought the card Plum had been eying up, which let players rid themselves of Fear cards (worth minus one point), and therefore seemed like a good use for a Boot/Fear. It was pointed out later, however, that any card could be used in place of the Boot as all other transport types work for Boot icons. Plum then got an Assistant that could upgrade a resource, which in practice she used turn Arrowheads into a Rubies as that was all she had by the end of the rounds. She also managed to get ahead with her Explore magnifying glass token and was the first to a new level on a couple of occasions, which gave her valuable bonuses.

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Green picked up a couple of Fear cards from leaving Guardians undefeated; Black got at least one as well, but Plum managed to dodge them. Both Black and Green got useful Artifact Cards where they could get lots of resources. It was a little way in that the group noticed the slight Rules Malfunction: although players were putting their new cards at the bottom of their Draw pile, players were then shuffling the Draw and Discard piles together before drawing new cards. This gave an extra bit of randomness that this time, worked in Plum’s favour. For example, she had an item card that gave a Compass per worker when it was played, and it seemed to put in a lot of appearances. In contrast, all the cards Green had bought didn’t come out until the final round—he got the balance of the bad luck.

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Black picked up an Assistant which helped him cycle through his cards which helped mitigate the randomness a little, though there were a couple of occasions when someone took the location he had been working towards. Right at the end of the game, when Plum had managed to reach the top of the Explore/Research Track with her magnifying glass, she was able to use the Icons on her board to get the resources needed to pick up one of the most valuable Temple Tiles—worth eleven points. Green, however, scored almost twice that of the others for his Idols and Black top-scored for his item and artifact cards.

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It was the Temple points, together with the extra points Plum got for getting to the top of the Explore/Research Track that ultimately made the difference, giving her a total of sixty-nine points, thirteen more than Green who took second place. Both Plum and Green had played before, though most of their previous games had been online where the administration of the card shuffling was done for them, hence the Rules Malfunction. It was Black’s first game, and despite the rules issue and not scoring as well as the other two, he still really enjoyed the game, so there is a good chance it will get another outing in the not too distant future.

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Meanwhile, that left six players; Pink was keen to give his favourite panda game another outing, so Pine and Lime joined him in a game of Zoo Break. This is a cooperative game, where players work together to try to prevent animals escaping from Bedlam Zoo. On their turn, players roll the die to decide how many Action Points they get, then, after carrying out their turn, flip a Escape Card and a then a Move Card to determine what gets out of its cage and what moves. Players have to avoid getting trampled on or bitten by the animals, while catching them and then locking them in their cages.

– Image by boardGOATS

The group started well, or at least it started well from Pink’s perspective when he was cuddled by a Panda (one of his real-life wishes). However, the game did not go so well. There are a number of optional variants, and the group had chosen to use the “Faulty Lock” Variant which means that if an escape card is drawn for animals who have already been locked up, the die is rolled to determine whether there are escapees. This turned out to make things just a bit too difficult and a Coral snake quickly made a bid for freedom, and as it’s a dangerous animal, that was that. One snake might not seem like much, but there were another five lining up in front of the gate and three tigers too, so it really did not go well.

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Reluctant to leave it like that, the trio decided to give it another try, this time without the “Faulty Lock” Variant. This second try went better, though at one point two elephants got very close to the exit. The situation was rescued by peanuts which enticed them to the Snack Stall where they were eventually captured. There was some extensive rules reading to decide whether Pandas were considered “Dangerous” so only one escaping would trigger failure. The group concluded that Pandas were not Dangerous animals after all though, and four Pandas roaming the streets would not lead to closure of the Zoo (though perhaps the Chinese government would not be appreciative).

– Image by boardGOATS

In the end, the distinction wasn’t necessary, none of the Pandas got out, though one Capuchin did manage to escape. That was all, however, and once the group finally rounded up the last of the mad Meercat escapees, the writing was on the wall and the Zoo was saved. The other games were still underway, so once the charming wooden animals had been tucked away, the trio opted for a couple of rounds of Coloretto. This is a charming little card game which is the core of the, arguably better known board game, Zooloretto.

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The game is very simple: Players either draw a Chameleon card from the deck and add it to one of the Carts, or take the cards on one of the Carts and add them to their tableau, stepping out until everyone else has taken a Cart. Each Cart has three spaces and players core points for their three largest sets of cards and negative points for any others. The player with the most points at the end of the round after the trigger card is revealed is the winner. The clever part is the scoring for sets, which uses the Triangular Number sequence and means that later cards are worth a lot more than the early ones.

– Image by boardGOATS

When the Golden Chameleon card came out, there was some discussion about the difference between it and the multi-coloured Chameleon. Blue, on the next table was consulted, and explained that it meant the person who takes it gets an extra card drawn from the top of the deck. With that sorted, the game continued. The group played two games and both were close, especially between Pine and Pink with Pink just edging it for the first game by two points and Pine just beating Pink by a single point in the second. Both games were won by Lime, however, and by a larger margin, taking the first by four points and the second by six.

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The last table included three players, Blue, Purple and Byzantium. They were the last to start, and were somewhat torn between two of the current hot games in the group, Wyrmspan and Meadow. After some discussion, the group went for what was probably the easier of the two, and gave Meadow its their outing in three consecutive meetings. A light to medium card collection game, it was new to both Purple and Byzantium, so Blue explained the rules. Most of the game is built round a Card Market with players placing an Action Token and taking a card into their hand, before playing a card from their hand.

– Image by boardGOATS

This aspect of the game has led to some reviewers comparing the game to Splendor, though there is a lot more to the game than that. In addition to the Market, there is a second Campfire board, which allows players to carry out special actions, and also claim Bonus points. for cards in their tableau. The first time the game was played, there was a token included erroneously from the Envelope U mini-expansion, and last time the game got an outing, there was a minor rules malfunction where the four players ended up playing on the three-player board. So although the game has been played three times in fairly quick succession, this time was the first time the game was played by the rules as written, probably.

– Image by boardGOATS

Players start with a hand of cards, including one from the North deck (which is only introduced halfway through the game)—this last card is typically more worth more but is difficult to play, so is a good way to get a steer in the early stages of the game. As well as the other cards in their starting hand, another key strategy lead is the Bonus points obtained from the Campfire board. These are obtained by placing a Bonus point token between two Icons, but in order to do so, the player must have those icons in their tableau. Since each bonus place can only be claimed once, this element of the game is something of a race between those who want to compete for these points.

– Image by boardGOATS

This time, the Icons drawn at random and placed round the Campfire included the relatively scarce Cottage, Fence and Garden Bird as well as the Wolf and Hawk which only come out in the second half of the game, when the North deck is introduced. This made the Bonus points hard to claim. Although neither Blue nor Byzantium appreciated it at the time, although most Wolf cards are in the North deck, this copy of the game included the Seal promo card, which is a Wolf card that hides in the South Deck. As it was key to getting bonus points, when it came out, both Blue and Byzantium spotted it, but Blue got to it first, and that turned out to be critical to her Bonus point objectives as Byzantium pinched the other spots early.

– Image by boardGOATS

Meanwhile, Purple was busy collecting frogs and very effectively daisy-chaining cards to give her points. As the game moved into its final rounds, Byzantium struggled to get a Landscape card that he could play without needing too many difficult prerequisites. In spite of the frustrations when players can’t get cards, the game has a nice gentle roll to it and with three players doesn’t outstay its welcome in the way it does with four (when there are two extra rounds). It was quite a tight game—Purple and Byzanium finished with thirty-seven and thirty-six points respectively from their observations, but Byzantium had more points from his Landscape cards.

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Blue didn’t do as well as them with her observations, but had the most points from her Landscape cards. Although Purple hadn’t managed to get any Bonus points, both Blue and Byzantium had picked up the full nine giving them a bit of a lead. In the end, it was the Observations that were key, and they gave Byzantium victory by four points with a total of sixty. As the Meadows were tidied up, the last of the other games came to a close too and everyone chatted until it was time to go home.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: Every game should come with ceramic component bowls.

Gweeplefest 2024

Gweeplefest is an all day gaming charity event, dedicated to open table gaming held in Didcot, and organised by the Didcot games group, Gweeples. Along with a large number of tables for people to play games on, there will also be games designers showing off their new games, a large lending library with games experts available to teach and help out, a Bring and Buy sale, a family section, and of course, a raffle. The venue has a bar, which sells snacks, drinks etc., and there are a large number of places to eat within walking distance and possibly vendors on site as well.

– Image by Gweeples

This year all profits will be donated to Play2Give, a fantastic fundraising charity based in Didcot, for Oxford and surrounding areas. They support a wide range of causes from local children with disabilities requiring specialist trikes to charities and organisations supporting adults with brain injuries and those living with terminal illnesses.

Gweeplefest 2024 will be held on Sat 11th May, 9.30am-10pm at The Barn on Foxhall Road in Didcot (OX11 7AD). Tickets are now on sale and cost £12.50 for adults and are free for accompanied children under the age of twelve.

Next Meeting, 16th April 2024

Our next meeting will be on Tuesday 16^th April 2024. As usual, we will start playing shorter games from 7.30pm as people arrive, until 8pm when we will start something a little longer. The pub is doing food, and the table is booked from 6.30pm for those that would like to eat first.

This week, the “Feature Game” will be Let’s Go! To Japan (review, rules, instructional video). This is a game where players take the role of a traveler planning, then experiencing their own dream vacation to Japan. The game is played over thirteen rounds, after which players draw activity cards and strategically place them in different days in their week-long itinerary.

– Image from kickstarter.com

And speaking of dreams…

Jeff and Joe were sitting in the pub one Saturday lunchtime, but Jeff looked very glum. So Joe asked him what the problem was.

Jeff sighed deeply and answered, “Last night, I had a terrible dream that I ate a giant marshmallow.”

Joe was always easily confused, but this time he had a point. “Why is that so terrible?” he asked.

Jeff, replied, “When I woke up, my pillow was missing.”

2nd April 2024

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

– Image by boardGOATS

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

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

– Image by boardGOATS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: Golden Oldies are golden for a reason.

Boardgames in the News: 20 Years of Some Great Games

This year is the thirtieth anniversary of 6 Nimmt!, but also the twentieth anniversary of two more small-box card games, Saboteur and No Thanks!. All three are light, family-friendly games that play larger numbers, but they are very different in style. While 6 Nimmt! is a game of double-think, No Thanks! is a game of push-your-luck and Saboteur is a hidden traitor game. Looking back, 2004 was a very good year, so these are not the only games celebrating their twentieth anniversary. In addition to Saboteur and No Thanks!, Ticket to Ride, Power Grid, Goa and San Juan were released in the same year. Combined, these games have given over a hundred years of great fun.

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Goats in the News: When the Goats get your Goat

Everyone loves a goat, though perhaps you can sometimes have too much of a Good Thing. Riccardo Gullo, the mayor of the tiny five-square kilometre island in Sicily’s Aeolian archipelago, Alicudi, came to exactly this conclusion when, after a recent census, he found the human inhabitants of the island were outnumbered by their four-legged friends by more than six-to-one. The problem is the caprine chompers move around in packs causing severe damage to the island’s vegetation. The mayor’s solution? Give them away to anyone willing to take one. Rather than culling, the mayor initiated an “Adopt a Goat” initiative, where people have until 10^th April to make their request. So, for anyone who fancies an Italian goat in their garden, this is an opportunity not to be missed, though beware, they are very adept at climbing…

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Next Meeting, 2nd April 2024

Our next meeting will be on Tuesday 2^nd April 2024. As usual, we will start playing shorter games from 7.30pm as people arrive, until 8pm when we will start something a little longer. The pub is doing food, and the table is booked from 6.30pm for those that would like to eat first.

This week, to mark the thirtieth anniversary of 6 Nimmt!, the “Feature Game” will be the new Jumping Cow mini-expansion (rules). This is a single card addition, which is initially added to the row with the lowest face value for the end card. When another card is added, the Cow “jumps” to one of the remaining rows, the one which has the lowest terminal face value, making that row longer and causing even more chaos as the Cow jumps around the play area in an unpredictable way…

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And speaking of jumping cows…

Jeff and Joe were discussing their farming woes, when Joe asked, “Did you hear about my cow Daisy, who tried to jump over a barbed wire fence yesterday?”

“No,” answered Jeff, “You haven’t told me about that. What happened?”

Joe shook his head in dismay and replied, “Well, it was an udder disaster…”

Boardgames in the News: 30 Years of 6 Nimmt!

A little over thirty years ago, Wolfgang Kramer was traveling back across the border from Austria, when he and his wife were delayed because he was picked out by German border security for a luggage search. Although they didn’t find any contraband, they did find Kramer’s export license, so they asked him to pay for their only purchase, a new pair of ski boots bought in Austria. Scarred, or perhaps inspired by the experience, Kramer began developing a new game called “Hot Goods”. In this game, at customs, players realise that someone has planted ten “Hot Goods” on them, so they try to get rid of them by throwing them at their fellow players.

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Happy with the prototype, Kramer took this to Amigo Spiele who were equally enthusiastic about the game, though less inspired by the theme. As a result, smuggling across the border was dropped in favour of a purely abstract game, illustrator Franz Vohwinkel added the now iconic bull’s head artwork (which is still in use today), and thus, the game became 6 Nimmt!. To mark its thirtieth anniversary, Amigo have released a new edition, with standard rules to for ten players, four new cards contributed by the general public, and a new cooperative variant. Although these are guaranteed to add interesting variety to the old favourite, it seems unlikely that they will improve on the perfection of the original, crazy-fun-filled game.

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19th March 2024

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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