Boardgames in the News: Games Conventions Move Online

This week brought the sad, but largely inevitable news that the 2020 Internationale Spieltage in Essen was “postponed” to 2021.  This has been a bad year for boardgame conventions.  In the last couple of days, Gen Con (Indianapolis at the end of July) has also fallen to Covid-19 and it is now surely only matter of time before Origins (Columbus, Ohio), which was postponed from June to October, follows.  However, as many game-groups are moving online, so now are the conventions.

Virtually Expo
– Image from ukgamesexpo.co.uk

UK Games Expo was one of the first to make the announcement of their “Virtually Expo” to be held in August.  We now also have “SPIEL.digital” “Origins Online“, “BGG.CONline” and “Gen Con Online“. It is still not entirely clear how these will run, though Virtually Expo, will be through a mixture of online platforms over a specific set of dates, and BGG.CONline starts tomorrow, so we will soon have a better idea.

SPIEL.digital 2020
– Image from facebook.com

Online conventions are clearly no real replacement for the face-to-face interactions at the large game fairs, but could allow the publishers to access a wider audience as well as being better for the environment.  As such, it will be interesting to see whether online conventions continue beyond 2020 and whether the seething mass of humanity that descends on the Messe Essen every October will be a thing of the past.

Essen 2019
– Image by boardGOATS

 

Spiel des Jahres Nominations 2020

This year, many things are different: the UK Games Expo was postponed and then cancelled and today it was announced that Essen has gone the same way.  The most prestigious awards in board gaming, the Spiel des Jahres are not unaffected either.  The Jury met online and likely some struggled to play the games; the award parties will probably also be affected.

Spiel des Jahres Committee 2020
– Image from SpieldesJahres on twitter.com

The nominations have been announced as usual though.  There are three categories, the Kinderspiel (children’s game) , the Kennerspiel (“expert’s” game) and the most desirable of all, the family award, the Spiel des Jahres.  The nominees for this year’s awards have been announced as:

  • Spiel des Jahres
    Spiel des Jahres 2019My City by Reiner Knizia
    Nova Luna by Uwe Rosenberg and Corné van Moorsel
    Pictures by Daniela and Christian Stöhr

In previous years the group has picked out the eventual winner well in advance even of the nominations, however, last year the games generally seemed to be light, almost party games.  These are not our usual faire, and in recent years, the Kennerpiel des Jahres has been a better fit.  The Kennerspiel nominees are not especially complex games, but are typically a step up from the light family games that are now being nominated for the “Red Poppel”.

– Image by from spiel-des-jahres.de

Last year the winner of the Kennerspiel award was Wingspan which also picked up our own “Golden GOAT” Award at our Un-Christmas Dinner.  With all that has been going on, however, we are unfamiliar with almost all the nominees this time round and likely won’t get the chance to play any of them until after the winners have been announced (20th July in Berlin for the Kennerpiel and Spiel des Jahres Awards; 15th June in Hamburg for the Kinderspiel des Jahres).

Golden GOAT - 2019
– Image by boardGOATS

 

12th May 2020 (Online)

Having spent the last few meetings playing online using Tabletop Simulator shared through Microsoft Teams, this time we decided to do something a little different.  One of the group’s most popular games is 6 Nimmt!, which also plays lots of people.  It has unavoidable hidden information, but is available through the online platform, Board Game Arena.

6 Nimmt!
– Image by boardGOATS

On our first online game night, a small group had had a difficult time playing Port Royal on Yucata.  Some of the group had also played rather challenging games of Snowdonia and San Juan, and, as a result, had moved to Board Game Arena for three more recent, epic games of Keyflower.  The graphics and playing environment on Board Game Arena are more up to date than those for Yucata, but like most other platforms, the servers have been struggling at peak  times with the load caused by the recent influx of new online gamers.  The folks at Board Game Arena have done a lot of work on that in the last couple of weeks though, and the performance has improved significantly as a result.  So much so, that we felt reasonably confident it would be stable enough to be the focus of games night.

Board Game Arena Logo
– Image by boardgamearena
on twitter.com

So, this week, the “Feature Game” was to be 6 Nimmt! played on Board Game Arena.  This is a game that everyone knows well, though there are a couple of minor tweaks to the rules.  The idea is that everyone starts with a hand of cards, ten on Board Game Arena (we usually play with the hand size that is dependent on the number of players).  Simultaneously, everyone chooses a card, and then, starting with the lowest numbered card, these are added to the four rows in the display.  Each card is added to the row that ends with the card with the highest number that is lower than the card played.

6 Nimmt!
– Image by boardGOATS

Placing the sixth card in the row causes the active player to take all the cards in the row, replacing them with their played card.  The clever part is that the score is the not the face value of the cards, but the number of “bull’s heads” shown on the cards.  The aim of the game is to finish with the lowest score.  When the group usually play, we split the deck into two halves and play just two rounds.  On Board Game Arena, however, everyone starts with sixty-six points and the game end is triggered when someone’s score falls to zero.

6 Nimmt!
– Image by boardGOATS

From 7pm, players began logging onto Board Game Arena and joined the MS Teams meeting.  Lime was one of the first and his chat with Blue and Pink was interrupted by a phone call from one of Blue’s relatives trying to source a set of drain rods.  Blue and Pink were quite convinced they didn’t have any, but that didn’t stop Pink having to spend the next hour hunting for some without success (so Lime kindly offered to lend his if required).  While Pink rummaged in the garage, everyone else joined the meeting and chatted.  Mulberry unfortunately wasn’t able to join us, but she was replaced by Ivory on his first online meeting.  It was great to “see” him again after so long, and good to hear that Mrs. Ivory, Little Ivory and Littler Ivory were all doing well and might be interested in OKIDO.

6 Nimmt!
– Image by boardGOATS

Eventually, Pink finished ferreting and returned to the chair kept warm by his panda and everyone settled down to play.  The Board Game Arena implementation worked nicely and everyone was able to chat in the background using MS Teams, but also through the game’s “chat” channel.  There was the usual moaning about the quality of cards and comments about how badly things were going:  it was almost like playing together in the pub, though not quite.

6 Nimmt! on Board Game Arena
– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com

Green and Purple managed to avoid picking up any cards for the first round or two, but it wasn’t long before their natural collecting mania began.  The disease spread and soon Pine, Ivory and Black were picking up lots of cards too.  It wasn’t long before Lime triggered the end of the game, and Burgundy managed to avoid picking up anything in the final round to win, ten points clear of the rest of the field.

6 Nimmt! on Board Game Arena
– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com

There is a lot of luck in the game, especially with so many players, but everyone was happy to play again and it is very easy to engage in a re-match, or so we all thought.  It wasn’t until the second game had started that we realised we’d “lost” Lime somewhere along the way.  He seemed to be playing a game, but then it dawned on him, that he’d somehow got himself involved in somebody else’s game by mistake.  He was very embarrassed and was keen to extricate himself, but Blue worked out where he’d gone and shared the link.  So, to the complete mystification of the four French gamers involved, the Brits all joined their game as excitable spectators.

6 Nimmt! on Board Game Arena
– Image by boardGOATS

Everyone boisterously cheered on our British Representative, to the blissful ignorance of the French and huge embarrassment of poor Lime.  Meanwhile, Black worked out how to abandon the incomplete game and Blue started a new one which everyone joined while still following Lime’s progress against the French.  Lime played really well and was in the lead for much of the game, but sadly, one of the French finished strongly and just beat him.  Still, we all felt he’d done an excellent job keeping the British end up, and he finished a very creditable second (especially since he was somehow also playing the group’s game and working!).

6 Nimmt! on Board Game Arena
– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com

After all that excitement, our game was something of an anticlimax.  Nobody was really paying much attention for the first part as they were distracted by Lime’s stellar performance.  But when everyone focussed on the game again, Pine, Blue, Ivory and Green were fighting it out to at the top while Pink was doing his best to end the game nice and quickly.  There were the usual smutty comments (Green: “Ivory’s got a big one there…!”) and other banter (Pine: “I had the lead for all of two seconds…!”), but eventually, Pink put everyone out of their misery, somehow leaving Blue just ahead of Pine.

6 Nimmt! on Board Game Arena
– Image by boardGOATS
from boardgamearena.com

Nobody was desperate for an early night, so everyone chose the rematch option again, and this time, everyone ended up in the same game.  It started quite close, but Black soon found the cards irresistible and quickly amassed an unassailable pile of brightly coloured cards.  At the other end, Pink went from “zero” to “hero”, going from last place to first place, with Pine and Lime tying for second place.  Nobody seemed keen to play another round and the evening degenerated into chatter.  Pink shared how to customise backgrounds on MS Teams including a selection he had downloaded from the BBC, with one from Blake’s 7 and another from Multi-coloured Swap Shop.

The Goodies Album Cover
– Image from youtube.com

This led to a discussion as to which was better: Swap Shop or ITV‘s offering, TISWAS.  From there, Pine shared some of his album collection with a quick blast of The Goodies’ Funky Gibbon and everyone started sharing weird things on YouTube including sheep playing on roundabouts; a fluffy sheep with no facial features, and the world’s biggest dogs. Pine offered Pink a copy of the soundtrack to The Sound of Music on orange vinyl, a generous offer that was politely declined.

For Sale
– Image by boardGOATS

With Lime, Ivory and Green gone, and everyone else clearly not ready for bed yet, but running out of chat, someone suggested another quick game.  Once Blue’s maths had been corrected several times (ruling out all the five-player games), the group started a game of For Sale.  This is a simple auction game of two halves.  First, there is the property sale, where players take it in turn to bid for a building or pass and take the least valuable available.  Then, players choose which properties to sell when the “buyers” reveal their offers (cheques).

For Sale
– Image by boardGOATS

The clever part of this game is that the property cards are numbered (one to thirty), so they have a relative value with those numbered close to thirty more valuable than those around one.  Everyone starts with $14,000 and bids are in $1,000 increments, but anyone passing takes the lowest value property available, but takes a rebate equal to half the value of the bid (rounded down).  This adds an interesting level of decision making towards the end of each bidding round.  In the second phase, cheques are revealed with values between zero (void) and $15,000.  The player with the highest value of cheques and any left over money once all properties have been bought and sold, is the winner.

For Sale
– Image by boardGOATS

Board Game Arena have a very nice implementation of For Sale, faithfully reproducing the original, quirky card art.  There were a lot of controversially high bids, not least from Burgundy who paid $9,000 for the space station, the highest value property.  It worked though, as Burgundy just pipped Pine to win by a mere $1,000, in what was a very tight game.  It is a game where valuing property is key, both for buying and selling, and as it plays quickly, the group decided to give it a second try.

For Sale on Board Game Arena
– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com

This time, aside from Pink propping up the table again, everyone who had done well, did badly, and everyone who had done badly did well.  So, Blue, Black and Pink were at the top this time, with Blue pushing Black into second place by $5,000.  With that, Pine left the others to decide what long and drawn-out game they were going to play over the next fortnight, and everyone else eventually settled on Tokaido and set up the table to start the next day.

Tokaido on Board Game Arena
– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com

Learning Outcome:  6 Nimmt! est imprévisible dans toutes les langues.

Next Meeting, 12th May 2020 – Online!

It is at times of stress that people need social contact more than ever, and board games are a great medium for that.  Despite the limitations of “remote gaming”, the overwhelming impression is that it is important to stay in touch, so we are persisting with online meetings.  Therefore, our next meeting will be on Tuesday 12th May 2020; we will gather from around 7.30pm, and start playing at 8pm.

This week, the “Feature Game” will be one of our favourite games, the game of bulls’ heads, 6 Nimmt!.  We have chosen this game because lots of people can play, and this is intended to be a social event so it is important that everyone can be involved and we’ve had an awful lot of fun with the game in the past on games nights.  It is a very simple game and everyone knows the rules, so it should be a relatively gentle introduction for those not used to the environment.

6 Nimmt!
– Image by boardGOATS

And speaking of bulls…

Farmer Jeff was inspecting his herd of cattle, when a large, sudden, gust of wind knocked all the cows to the ground. The bulls, on the other hand, just swayed as the wind buffeted them, and continued eating.

Jeff was very surprised by this, so went up to one of the bulls and asked,”How come you bulls are all still standing when all the heifers were blown over?”

The bull looked at him for a moment before replying, “Because we bulls wobble, but we don’t fall down…”

28th April 2020 (Online)

People started to arrive online from about 7pm with Mulberry briefly joining the party to say that she was going to have to work and sadly couldn’t join in the game.  It wasn’t long before everyone was once again sharing their stuffed toys, including Burgundy who’s new friend “Bunny” was watching over him from on high.  While Blue and Burgundy set up the game, Lime proudly showed off his new haircut that Mrs. Lime had done for him, only for someone to comment that it made him look like a bit like Tin Tin…

Bunny
– Image by Burgundy

The “Feature Game” was to be Tsuro, a very simple game of tile laying.  The idea is that on their turn, the active player placed a tile in the space next to their stone and moves their stone along the path.  The last player left on the board is the winner.  The game plays lots of people, so was thought to be ideally suited to these online game sessions, but unfortunately, has hidden information in that each player has a secret hand of tiles that they play from.  In order to accommodate this playing online (using Tabletop Simulator to visualise, shared through Microsoft Teams), we simply displayed two tiles and on their turn each player picked one.

Tsuro
– Image by boardGOATS

This reduces the amount of planning possible, making the game less strategic, more tactical and, potentially, more random.  So to compensate a little and make it fairer, when any tiles with four-fold symmetry were drawn, they were put to one side as an extra option, a third tile, available until someone picked it.  As there were a lot of players, we also decided to use the slightly larger board from Tsuro of the Seas, and modify the pieces to suit our purposes.  Aside from this, the rules were the same as the original:  players can rotate the pieces (or ask someone to do it for them), but they must place them in the space next to their piece.

Tsuro
– Image by boardGOATS

Once a tile has been placed on the board, all stones must be moved along any paths extended, and any that collide or go off the board will be eliminated.  Burgundy started in the bottom left corner followed by Black, Purple and Lime, who was joined in the early stages by Little Lime who was keen to help.  Pine with his special friend, Beige assisting, followed by Pink, Blue and Green with Lilac and his “pet” sloth in support.  Everyone was fairly well spaced out around the edge of the board, so the game began quite slowly.  That was OK though as everyone had to get a feel for the graphics and what they were doing.

Tsuro on Tabletop Simulator
– Image by boardGOATS from Tabletop Simulator on Steam

As the game progressed, people started to get entangled with each other.  The first to come a cropper was Black with Pink not too far behind.  Burgundy and Blue got stuck and went off together followed by Green who ran out options and then ran out of road.  When Lime was eventually forced off the board by a lack of space, there were just two left.  As Purple had to move into the space around Pine (playing on behalf of Beige), giving him the opportunity to push her off the board and claim the first victory for his little Gremlin.

Tsuro on Tabletop Simulator
– Image by boardGOATS from Tabletop Simulator on Steam

That had gone quite well and hadn’t taken very long, so as setting up has some overhead, we decided it would be quickest to just play it again.  Blue and Burgundy re-stacked all the tiles and everyone chose their start positions.  For some reason, this time Green ended up surrounded by lots of empty space while everyone else was bunched together.  Green quickly put up a barrier and then went off to play with Lilac to play together alone in the corner, leaving everyone else to fight for space.

Tsuro on Tabletop Simulator
– Image by boardGOATS from Tabletop Simulator on Steam

Pine commented that Blue hadn’t moved far, but when she commented that she’d just been round in a circle, Pine objected inciting Pink to call him a “Boardgame Pedant”.  Pine took this mantle with pride and said he might add it to his CV as it already said he was a “Bird-watching Pedant”.  Blue queried this with “Bird-watching Pheasant?” and Pink upped the ante with “Bird-watching Peasant?”  Pine concurred, “Yeah, that too…”

Tsuro on Tabletop Simulator
– Image by boardGOATS from Tabletop Simulator on Steam

As the game plodded on, Pink was the first to go off, soon followed by Lime and Black.  Then there was a bit of a hiatus though as players got tangled up.  Pine was the first who kindly eschewed the opportunity to expel Blue from the game (or maybe he had no choice); and then Blue returned the favour (also with no other option).  Somehow, the paths kept getting entwined bring everyone to the same place, while Pine played with himself in the top corner, ominously.

Tsuro on Tabletop Simulator
– Image by boardGOATS

It was during this second game that the technology started to struggle a little and Teams kept freezing as the load on the network began to exceed the capacity of the village carrier pigeon.  The game just about kept moving though, with Pink, bored having been the first to leave the game, started intimidating Blue with his large Panda.  Blue and Pine were next off, thanks to Purple, who had to choose who was going to stay in the game with her.  In the end, her choice of Burgundy proved to be unfortunate as he ruthlessly dispatched her on his next turn.  It didn’t make much difference though, and Green with lots of space and no competition was the winner.  Although his second tile had been crucial to his success, it was really the unintentional assistance from Pine when he played a convenient blocking tile in E5 that clinched it.

Tsuro on Tabletop Simulator
– Image by boardGOATS from Tabletop Simulator on Steam

With that over, there was a little bit of chit chat about other game options that would work online:  Finstere Flure was an option on the Simulator, but 6 Nimmt! on Board Game Arena was discussed, as was Take it Easy! with pieces delivered by Blue and Pink.  That didn’t last long though as the evening degenerated into comparing soft toys again (“Is that Kingston Bagpuss?!?!”) accompanied by renditions of songs by The Eagles.  As Green, Lilac and Pine melted away, Blue, Pink, Purple, Black and Burgundy played a few turns to get to the end of Spring in their Keyflower rematch.  But that’s another story…

Keyflower on boardgamearena.com
– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com

Learning Outcome:  With all this “working from home”, the Stanford Carrier Pigeon needs a good feed.

Boardgames in the News: UK Games Expo Cancelled, Essen Still to be Confirmed

Over the last couple of months, the Coronavirus Pandemic has had a huge impact globally, and board gaming has not escaped.  For example, the largest distributor in the USA, Alliance Games, has stopped shipping games and the parent company, Geppi Family Enterprises (GFE) have been with-holding payments to vendors.  Just over a month ago, we reported that many conventions had been cancelled, and the UK Games Expo, usually held at the end of May/start of June was postponed until August.  Since then, Friedhelm Merz Verlag GmbH who run the Essen Spiel in October, have stated that they are monitoring the situation in Germany, where Oktoberfest was recently cancelled.

Essen 2020
– Image from ukgamesexpo.co.uk

Yesterday, sadly, the directors of UK Games Expo announced that they have now reluctantly taken the decision to cancel the event this year; the next UKGE is now scheduled for 4th-6th June 2021.  The 2020 UK Games Expo Award nominees and winners will still be announced in August, however, and the organisers are currently looking at the possibility of a virtual event.  The UK Games Expo does not carry pandemic insurance, so cancellation has serious consequences for their finances, however, in their statement they say have sufficient financial reserves to survive this, although those reserves will be completely depleted.  The overwhelming support on Facebook alone, gives some confidence that the event will survive despite this and will come back even stronger next year.
– From facebook.com

Next Meeting, 28th April 2020 – Online!

It is at times of stress that people need social contact more than ever, and board games are a great medium for that.  Despite the limitations of “remote gaming”, the overwhelming impression is that it is important to stay in touch, so we are persisting with online meetings.  Therefore, our next meeting will be on Tuesday 28th April 2020; we will gather from around 7.30pm, and start playing at 8pm.

This week, the “Feature Game” will be Tsuro, “The Game of the Path”.  We have chosen this game because lots of people can play, and this is intended to be a social event so it is important that everyone can be involved.  The rules as written have hidden information, but we are going to make some modifications to make it work, and play it on the slightly larger, Tsuro of the Seas board.

Tsuro
– Image by boardGOATS

And speaking of paths…

Jeff and his housemate Joe were out for their daily exercise walking down a path near their home, when they spot a deep hole in the ground.  As they stood around the hole together looking in, Jeff asked, “How far down do you reckon that hole goes?”

Joe replied, “I don’t know, let’s chuck something in and find out.”

With that, they looked about and spotted an old radiator in the nearby bushes that someone had fly-tipped (since the Council had closed the tip as a non-essential service).  Jeff pointed to it and started to drag it towards the hole.  Joe gave him a hand and together, the pair half dragged, half carried it and dropped it into the hole.

They started to count and listen for the thud, but before they heard the radiator land, they saw a large goat charging at them from the bushes.  Terrified by it’s huge horns they started to run, but as they did so, the goat leapt into the hole.  Now some distance from the hole and shocked and confused, Jeff and Joe decided to continue their walk along the footpath.

About ten minutes later, they were confronted by an old farmer who asked, “You haven’t seen a goat lately, have you?”

Jeff answered, “We have actually – about a mile back.  It sort of ran at us and then dived into a pit at high speed.”

The farmer gave him a strange look, “But that’s impossible, he was tied to an old radiator…”

Boardgames in the News: The Deadly Double and Pearl Harbor

The Deadly Double is an eighty year old, “put-up and take” dice game with a slightly sinister past.  The game, designed to be played in cramped conditions in while sheltering from air raids, is almost trivially simple.  Each player starts with a pile of chips and contributes a fixed stake or “ante” to the kitty.  Then, players take it in turns to roll the two bespoke dice, one black with yellow numerals and one white with red markings.  The faces of the black die feature the odd numbers from one to nine while the white die has multiples of twelve up to sixty, giving pairs of one and twelve, three and twenty-four etc.  The sixth faces are zero and “double X” (or “XX”) for the black and white dice respectively.

The Deadly Double
– Image from strangefulthings.com

If a pair is rolled, the active player takes the kitty.  In general, players roll once per turn unless they roll a special combination. For example, rolling a zero with a sixty and they contribute to the kitty again; rolling a zero with an even number multiple of twelve, and the player rolls again, and so on.  Rolling the “deadly double”, XX, with a zero means the active player must make a large contribution to the kitty defined by a re-roll – a decision must be made before the re-roll, but neither option is good as both are likely to be large: either the face value of the white die, or the number rolled on the black die multiplied by the number of players.

The Deadly Double
– Image from dicecollector.com

It was perhaps the peculiar numbers featured on the dice that inspired the conspiracy theory that was reported in The New York Times in March 1967.  According to an interview with Lasislas Farago, a former United States intelligence expert and military historian, readers of the New Yorker noticed that the newspaper advert for the game showed the numbers seven and twelve, adverts that were published about two weeks before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on 7th December 1941.  The Germanic eagle logo and images of a bomb shelter led to the idea that these adverts were in fact warning Japanese agents in the US of the date of the impending attack.  It was thought that five and zero shown in the advert might represent the planned time for the attack while the XX, the Roman numeral for twenty, might indicate the latitude for Pearl Harbor in Hawaii.

The Deadly Double
– Image from dicecollector.com

Even the name, “The Deadly Double” could have alluded to the axis powers, Germany and Japan.  According to Lasislas Farago the mystery deepened when the FBI contacted the New Yorker to discover who placed the advertisments, only to find that they didn’t know – the gentleman in question was completely anonymous.  The advert had been placed over the counter and paid for in cash and the clerk had no recollection of who placed them.  Apparently, neither the game that was offered nor the company whose signature was on the advert ever existed.

The Deadly Double
– Image from dicecollector.com

However, The New York Times published a follow-up article the following day featuring an interview with a Mrs. E. Shaw Cole of Montclair, New Jersey.  She claimed that she had helped her late husband and designer of the game, Roger Paul Craig to design the adverts.  Although they were indeed visited by the FBI, she claimed the numbers were all just a coincidence.  Despite this, and earlier comments on the subject from Mr. Craig reported in the Los Angeles Times in 1942, the urban myths and conspiracy theories still refuse to die and the game, The Deadly Double, will forever be associated with the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, that ultimately led to the USA joining World War II.

The Deadly Double
– Image from dicecollector.com