Next Meeting, 8th April 2025

Our next meeting will be on Tuesday 8^th April 2025. 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 Fire Tower (rules, review, How to Play video), a competitive game where players order air drops of water, and plan the building of firebreaks in order to combat the blaze. Although the base game only plays four, we have the Rising Flames expansion which adds a fifth player.

– Image by boardGOATS

And speaking of fire…

The recent lovely weather mean Jeff had been cooking outside in the garden—he was blazing a trail in the barbecue world, where the steaks are always high.

Next Meeting, 25th March 2025

Our next meeting will be on Tuesday 25^th March 2025. 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 Habesuto (aka ハーベスト or Harvest; rules, review, video review with demonstration), a game from Japan about building a farm, growing vegetables and distributing produce. We have picked this game partly because this week was the official start of the Japanese Cherry Blossom Season.

– Image from youtube.com

And speaking of harvests…

The harvest had been a good one for Farmer Jeff so he decided to buy a barrel of beer to celebrate with his friend Joe. When it arrived, he set it up outside his cottage where he and Joe could sit in the sun and relax.

The next day, Jeff woke to find the barrel was only half full although they’d only had a couple of pints each. Furious about the thievery, Jeff put up a sign saying, “This wine belongs to Farmer Jeff. Thieves will be shot.”

Satisfied, Jeff and Joe continued their celebration that evening, but the next morning, the barrel was down to a quarter full and Jeff was incensed.

Joe said, “You’re going about this all wrong,” and made a new sign that said, “Piss barrel. Do not drink!” Jeff grinned at the cleverness, confident no one in their right mind would steal from the barrel.

The next morning, Jeff went to check the contents and found the barrel full again…

Next Meeting, 18th March 2025

Our next meeting will be on Tuesday 18^th March 2025. 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 Cartographers Heroes (rules, review, how to play video), the standalone sequel to Cartographers. We’ve chosen this game, in part, to mark the fifth anniversary of the start of the global coronavirus pandemic in the UK. While stuck at home, the group kept going and played a lot of roll and write games online—Cartographers was perhaps the best of these.

– Image by boardGOATS

And speaking of the global pandemic…

In March 202, Jeff heard terrible things were happening and was very worried, so he went to the chemist and asked the lady behind the counter, “What kills the Corona Virus?”

She replied, “Ammonia Cleaner.”

“Oh, I am sorry,” answered Jeff, “I thought you were the pharmacist.”

4th March 2025

Once people had finished eating, the group settled down to play. There was quite lot interest in the “Feature Game” which was Finspan, a fish-themed version of one of the group’s favourite games, Wingspan. It is advertised as shorter and lighter than the original, but in the event it was only slightly shorter and not much lighter though it was generally agreed to be a bit smoother and therefore perhaps easier to teach. Like Wingspan. Finspan is card-based, though the cards are fish instead of birds, albeit just a beautifully illustrated. As in Wingspan, players have a hand of cards (in this case open) and on their turn can choose to play one from their hand or activate one area or Dive-site of their player board (blue, purple or green), in this case representing the ocean.

– Image by boardGOATS

In the case of Finspan, the Dive-sites are arranged vertically (instead of horizontally), but rather than placing cards in order (from left to right in the original), the Fish cards have to be placed at the correct depth for the Fish—some live in the shallows, others in the deep sea, while a small number live in the “twilight” region, between the two. As in the original, there is a cost for playing cards—fish eggs, Young,Schools and/or other cards. Unlike the original, however, cards spent in this way are placed into players’ own personal discard pile and there are mechanisms for getting them back later in the game.

– Image by boardGOATS

Another way that Finspan is different to the original, is the way the Dive-sites are activated. As in Wingspan, cards are activated in order, in this case, from the shallow “sunlit” zone to the “midnight” deeps. The Fish cards have “when played”, “when activated” and “end of the game” powers, but there are fewer cards that have a power on activation and many of these affect all players too. In addition to the difference in the balance of the cards, when a Dive-site is activated, the three zones each give a benefit as long as they have at least one Fish card in them. These benefits are capped though, as multiple Fish doesn’t increase the income. The first time each player activates a Dive-site in a round, they also get a bonus benefit.

– Image by boardGOATS

There are a small number of Fish pre-printed on players’ boards, which mean than some areas give benefits from the very start of the game. The effect of all this is to give the game a more friendly feel than Wingspan, without reducing the challenge of the game. There is another major change which significantly adds to the complexity. In Wingspan, a key part of the game is Egg production with Eggs worth a point each at the end of the game. In Finspan, players also produce Eggs which are worth a point at the end of the game, but each Fish card can only be used to store one single Egg. Eggs can be hatched to give young (also worth a point) and three young on the same fish form a “School”.

– Image by boardGOATS

Schools of fish are worth six points at the end of the game. And this is where the game gets a little “head-hurty” as Young and Schools can be moved around, but while Young can share a Fish space, once they have formed a School, they can’t share a space with another School—one School can’t even pass through a space containing another School. The game is played over four rounds (or Weeks) with points for achieving objectives at the end of each one. These are added points gained for each Fish card, Eggs, Young, Schools and any end game actions to give a final total—the player with the most points is the winner.

– Image by boardGOATS

As there was a lot of interest in the game, the group set up two tables. Jade, Sapphire, Plum and Byzantium had played it at a convention over the weekend, so Jade led one game with Blue, Ivory and Sapphire, while Plum led the second with Byzantium, Black and Pine. Jade’s group was the first to complete the rules explanation and got going. Ivory was quite excited by the idea of collecting sharks, and while Blue found Nemo, Sapphire found Dorry. The points from the end of the Week objectives were pretty even for the first three weeks, though only Ivory got much at the end of the final week taking twenty points for his end game bonuses, largely due to having a lot of sharks.

– Image by boardGOATS

Blue top-scored for her fish while Jade scored the most for his Schools. In the end, Blue’s hundred and fifty-five took victory with Ivory in second eleven points behind, three points ahead of Jade. Over the other side of the room, Plum’s game was slower to start, but finished at much the same time. This game was lower scoring and closer too; almost everyone picked up some end game bonuses, but not as many as Ivory, and there were fewer Schools. The winner was Byzantium, with one hundred and thirty-one, just two points ahead of Plum who was just a nose in front of Black. All in all, everyone had enjoyed the game as a nice variant on the well known original.

– Image by boardGOATS

Meanwhile, on the next table, Pink, Cobalt, Lime and Purple had begun by playing Tokaido. This is a sort of time-track game where the player at the back takes their turn moveing forward to an empty space of their choice taking turns until they are no-longer the one at the back at which point the new “Lantern Rouge” takes their turn. Each space allows players to collect panoramas, chance it with a random draw for points, buy souvenirs, donate at a temple or work on a farm to gain cash. At intervals, players have to stop for food which costs money, but the last player to arrive at the restaurant last gets the least choice which can be a catastrophe as these meals are usually more expensive with the risk that they are the same as those eaten on previous stops, which means they can’t eat and therefore don’t score.

– Image by boardGOATS

Although it is quite popular within the group, Cobalt was new to the game and commented that it was quite mean when he realised that once a space had been taken it was gone. The group played with the choice of two character cards at the start—Pink felt that his Traveler, Hiroshige, was a poor choice as, although he got a free panorama card at each food stop, it didn’t give him much money at the start. On reflection, he felt Purple had made a better decision in choosing Yoshiyasu, who gave her nine Yen. Lime was the runaway winner with ninety-one, some fifteen more than Purple who just sneaked into second ahead of Pink.

– Image by boardGOATS

As the games of Finspan were still going, Cobalt introduced the group to After Us, aka “The Monkey Game”. This had an outing within the group about eighteen months ago, but was new to Pink and Lime. It is a deck-building, resource management, engine building game featuring an original card-combo mechanism. The story is that mankind has died out leaving only apes which have kept evolving. As the leader of a tribe, players add new Primate Cards to their starting deck of tamarins. Primate Cards have three rows of “Effects”—the top row will award resources, the middle row will give points (often at the cost of resources) and the the bottom row will have abilities related to the primate type. At the start of a round, players draw four Primate Cards from their deck to be laid out in a row making “Connections”.

– Image by boardGOATS

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

– Image by boardGOATS

One of the good things about the game is that if a player gets a bit “hosed” by the card draw, the frames mechanism allows them to make the best of a bad job. The Frames have been resolved, the players simultaneously chose one of their Action Discs denoting which primate type they want to recruit. The game starts slowly with players building their tribe, but it can end in a sudden rush when one player breaks into a gallop and charges past eighty points triggering the end of the round and this game was no exception. Lime was again the victor, with sixty-nine points, with Pink second, some nine-points behind.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: Jaws was not the only shark.

Next Meeting, 4th March 2025

Our next meeting will be on Tuesday 4^th March 2025. 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 Finspan (rules, review, how to play video), a fish-themed, slightly lighter version of one of the group’s favourite games, Wingspan.

– Image from stonemaiergames.com

And speaking of fish…

Two fish, in a tank, one says to the other, “You drive, I’ll man the gun.”

18th February 2025

Blue and Pink began the evening, while they waited for their supper to arrive, messing about with a little card game called Rollecate which is about a historic steam locomotive built in 1967 by a famous Dutch engineer. The idea of this little game is that players take it in turns to play Track cards to extend Rollecate’s line by placing cards. They can play as many cards as they want, as long as they all have the same number. When laying new track, the difference between the numbers on the last card and the first new card placed must not have a difference of two (thus one cannot be followed by three and four cannot be followed by two etc.). Cards must not overlap when played and cannot force impossible play.

– Image by boardGOATS

Once the Track cards have been played, the active player rolls dice equal to the sum of all numbers on the cards they played, and Rollecate moves forward one step for each Wheel rolled on the dice. Thus, if a player places two threes, they roll six dice. If Rollecate reaches the end of the track, she hits the brakes. For every step she’s short, the player take one card from behind the train places them on their penalty pile one by one in any order they want. Any time the card placed matches the number of the top card on the pile, both are removed from the deck. At the end of the game the everyone adds up the face value of their cards and the player with the lowest total wins.

– Image by boardGOATS

By the time Blue had explained the rules to Pink, their food had arrived, and by the time they had finished their supper, Cobalt had joined them. Blue was just finishing explaining the rules when Pine joined them and eventually they all finally managed to play the game. There were a few “teething issues”, but before long the delightful little metal miniature was progressing along the track. Blue and Pink got unlucky and picked up a lot of cards, some high scoring, and weren’t able to remove them. Cobalt and Pin did rather better with Pine finishing with five penalty points and Cobalt with four.

– Image by boardGOATS

By this time, almost everyone had arrived, and Pink began to set up the “Feature Game” which was to be Viticulture World, the cooperative expansion to the popular wine-producing worker placement game, Viticulture. This is one of Pink’s and Teal’s favourite games, but also very popular with other members of the group. No-one had played the cooperative expansion, however, but despite some apprehension that the changes might spoil a favourite, there were a lot of interested parties. In the end, Pink was joined by Teal, Ivory, Plum and Cobalt, all of whom were very familiar with the base game.

– Image by boardGOATS

There isn’t really anything particularly special about the base game, it is just a worker-placement game where players are growing grapes and making and selling wine. However, it is just done very, very well. In general, there are two types of worker spaces—restricted, that only a limited number of workers can use per round, and open spaces which can be used by as many workers as players want. Each player also has one Grande worker who can be placed anywhere, even on fully occupied spaces. The cooperative game is essentially much the same as the original Viticulture, with some small rules changes and a different target: players have six years to goal: each player must reach twenty-five victory points and the shared influence token must reach the end of the influence track.

Viticulture World: Cooperative Expansion

– Image by boardGOATS

There are seven different packs of cards and the group began this time with the easiest, Green Gully, which as advertised, is a very good introduction to Viticulture World. This is designed to make sure everyone is successful on their first time out (though it may be easier with more players). Each player has four workers plus one Grande and unlike the original, there is no mechanism to get more. Two of these workers have yellow hats to indicate they are summer workers and two have blue hats and these can only operate in winter, training however, allows them to remove their hat and play in other seasons. There was a little concern prior to play that as only certain types of workers are able to claim certain bonuses it might make the game a touch fiddly, but this was not the case.

– Image by boardGOATS

As the game progresses, there are Event cards which give special action and also increase the number of workers that can be placed on some locations. There was some confusion at the start of the game as to whether the Grande worker could be used to claim the special actions. It was felt this would make the game way too easy though, because if everyone was able to take advantage of the bonus with their Grande this would make the game too easy; a quick online check confirmed that this was not allowed. The group found the game fairly straight-forward, though everyone was quit experienced and therefore knew where the areas of tension were, in particular making wine, harvesting grapes and fulfilling orders, so made a point of upgrading these early.

– Image by boardGOATS

The group had a lot of fun, and as is not uncommon with this game, there were lots of “getting my cock out now” comments (especially from Ivory), when it came to claiming the turn-order. Ivory was the first to achieve his required twenty-five points, but he went on to get thirty in order to claim an extra influence point for the team. Cobalt was next to make his target and everyone else followed the next round. Despite the initial reservations, everyone enjoyed the game and would be keen to try some of the more challenging regions on another occasion in the not too distant future.

– Image by boardGOATS

While the oenophiles were playing Viticulture, the other four were revisiting Kavango. This is a medium weight card drafting and tableau building game which has something of the feel of Wingspan. This was the “Feature Game” last September, when it went down well with those that played it, one of whom was Pine. It had a second outing two weeks ago, when Blue promised Pine and others it would come back. Pine was keen to give it another go, and this time they were joined by Purple and Black. The game is fairly straightforward to play, though a monumental table-hog, so the group started by moving to a larger table on the other side of the room. Blue outlined the rules: Players start with a hand of twelve cards and choose one before putting the rest to one side.

– Image by boardGOATS

This card is then either added to the player’s tableau if it is an animal card, or activated if it is an action card. Once the card has been played, players have the opportunity to invest in protection or claim rewards (money and points) for completing targets. In the early part of the game, the cards that are dealt are mostly from the bottom of the food chain, what the game refers to as “Producers”, rodents and the like. As the game progresses, the creatures get bigger and require the presence of other animal types or terrain as food and protection (Habitat, Poaching and Climate). This time, Blue (who was playing the game for the third time) stole a bit of a march, picking up more points during the game than anyone else.

– Image by boardGOATS

Pine who was on his second play, did a god job of collecting valuable animals and finished with a massive one hundred and twenty-six points, but failed to pick up the bonuses for the protection. Purple didn’t do so well with her animals, but had every type and picked up all the bonus points available for protection too, while Black didn’t take any points for that, but did well on his personal objectives. The winner, (unsurprisingly given her extra experience) was Blue followed by Pine with Purple in third. The consensus from Purple and Black was that the game (like Wingspan) felt a too random, though Blue and Pine commented that it felt less so after multiple plays.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning outcome: Making wine is just as much fun as a team.

Next Meeting, 18th February 2025

Our next meeting will be on Tuesday 18^th February 2025. 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 Viticulture World (rules, review, how to play video), the cooperative expansion to the popular wine-producing worker placement game, Viticulture (rules, review, how to play video).

– Image by boardGOATS

And speaking of wine…

Jeff walked into a wine bar and ordered a bottle of wine. After he had downed most of the bottle he tried to get the barman’s attention.

“I used to be grapes!” he announced loudly.

“What?” the confused bartender asked.

“I’m sorry,” Jeff apologised. “That must have been the wine talking…”

4th February 2025

Blue and Pink were just finishing their supper when not one, but three copies of Ark Nova walked in, escorted by Ivory, Cobalt and Green. This was because the “Feature Game” was to be its Marine Worlds expansion and, as Ark Nova is a substantial game that doesn’t get as many outings as it deserves, everyone was keen to give their copy a bit of an airing. The game is much longer than those we usually play on a Tuesday so everyone who was keen to play was early and started setting up promptly. Given the length, we also erred on the lower end of the player count, with just Ivory, Cobalt and Green playing. The game is all about planning and designing a modern, scientifically managed zoo, but the game-play is more like Terraforming Mars with animals, than Zoo Break or Zooloretto.

– Image by boardGOATS

Although it is quite a complex game, functionally it is not difficult to play on a turn by turn basis, though there is quite a lot to manage and keep a track of. On their turn, players take one of six possible actions: activating one of the five action cards (Cards, Build, Animals, Association and Sponsor) with a strength equal to the number above the card. When activating a card players perform the action based on its power level which is dictated by its position in the row. During the game, players can upgrade and turn over the action cards to a more powerful second side using various Bonuses. The Marine Worlds expansion introduces several new elements to the game.

– Image by boardGOATS

Firstly, there are sea animals that have to be played in new special enclosures that must be built adjacent to water. Roughly half the sea animals are reef dwellers, and whenever a player adds a reef dweller to their zoo, they trigger the ability of all reef dwellers in that zoo. To deal with the dilution of the deck (caused by adding more cards), all sea cards feature a wave icon, and whenever it is revealed in the display, you discard the first card in the row, then replace it. For each of the five Action cards there are four alternate versions with a little twist. Players draft these action cards at the start of play, replacing two of their standard action cards with these new ones, increasing the asymmetry in the game.

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A new fourth University option is also available on the Association board. If a player takes it, they claim one of six special Universities from the Reserve that feature one Research icon and one of six animal icons. When a player takes this, they reveal Cards from the top of the deck and keep the first revealed card with an animal icon that matches their chosen University. There are also new bonus tiles and other little bits and pieces to smooth out the game play. Although the Marine Worlds expansion comes is modular, the group chose to play with all the components (Marine animals, asymmetric maps and drafted action cards).

– Image by boardGOATS

Ivory took a Sponsor Card that gave him extra money for breaks and an Association Card that gave him the ability to hire workers. This coupled with the lake map which gave extra money for building around the lake meant Ivory had access to lots of cash as the game developed. Both Cobalt and Green took a Sponsor and an Animal Card, with Cobalt taking a map that allowed him to discard cards for money while Green had the map with the park restaurant. While Cobalt was also able to build up a lot of cash, Green spent most of the game playing the poor relation, just scraping by. The game started slowly, with initial conservation projects devoted to Australian animals, Birds, and African Animals.

– Image by boardGOATS

Both Green and Ivory wound up spending all their early money, trying to get Animals out, whereas Cobalt focused on the Association board and playing Sponsor cards. After struggling with money for the first couple of rounds, Ivory managed to get two Australian animals, allowing him to put a token on the conservation card, giving an additional Zoo Dollars at each break/income step and from then on, money wasn’t too much of an issue for him. Green however, struggled for money for most of the game, where Cobalt continued to focus on Sponsor Cards and Association Actions, and as a result, he took an early lead on the Research track which gave him a much greater card choice. Cobalt did build an early aquarium, however, and started filling it up with fish.

– Image by boardGOATS

After a quick start, both on the conservation track and appeal track, Ivory’s game slowed down significantly—he was too focused on animals, compared to Green and Cobalt. They had both spent time taking Association actions, leading them to Upgrade cards and progress up the Reputation track. Cobalt was able to significantly move up the Conservation track in the middle game using his Sponsor Cards, whereas Green focused on one big move by having lots of birds in his zoo. Much to Pink’s disgust, although the panda was an option at one point in the game, the “wave” added by expansion pushed it on, so nobody got the Panda. Instead, by the end of the game, Ivory had quite a collection of monkeys, Green had a few some birds and Cobalt had a lot of fish.

– Image by boardGOATS

Going into the end game, Cobalt some way ahead on the Conservation track, followed by Green, while Green and Ivory were fairly similar in Appeal. Cobalt then started playing lots of animals in his zoo and managed to completely fill it moving rapidly along the Appeal track. It was clear he was soon going to bring the game to a close, due in part to both his (and Green’s) ability to make donations by upgrading the Association card. Green was also moving forwards on both tracks while Ivory was lagging behind albeit with three conservation cards in hand. Fortunately, Ivory had lots of “x tokens”, allowing him to play all his conservation cards (and gain the additional worker he needed, shooting up the conservation track, though sadly, it was too little too late. From there, It wasn’t long before Cobalt’s Tokens to crossed, ending the game.

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Everyone had made some mistakes reading their cards and/or abilities which cost a little bit, but was probably fairly balanced out. Everyone managed to get the full four Conservation points on their personal scoring cards, but Green picked up quite a few extra points from the Sponsorship cards leaving him level with Cobalt. Inevitably, this led to a hunt for tie-breakers—the rules state that the tied player who supported the most Conservation Projects wins the game. As Green and Cobalt had also supported the same number of Conservation projects the rules dictated they should share the victory. That said, Green magnanimously said he felt Cobalt had the edge by virtue of having way more coin at the end of the game.

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On the next table, Blue, Pink and Mint had finally got underway playing Kavango. This is a conservation, card-drafting game. A bit like games like Sushi Go! and 7 Wonders, players draft cards to build their Reserve. Like games like Terraforming Mars, however, cards can only be added to a player’s Reserve if they have its requirements. These might be the food supply, or enough protection (environmental, poaching or climate). Climate protection is unique because, as in real life, players have to work on that together. At the end of the game, after three rounds, players add up the value of their animals, and any bonuses together with any points scored during the game for Research, and the player with the most points is the winner.

– Image by boardGOATS

Pine joined them briefly and expressed an interest in playing another time, but decided this week he would take himself home to better acquaint himself with his C-vitamins and avoid unnecessarily sharing his bugs. Mint was the nominal first player, though mostly the game is played simultaneously. Blue started hard and fast building up lots of income, however, she was forced to invest heavily in Climate protection—honourable, but not necessarily lucrative. Pink and Mint were a little slower to start, but made good progress. Both got caught out by a very minor rules malfunction that had a significant impact: Cards not used at the end of the round are supposed to go into a discard pile, but instead were returned to their decks.

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Towards the end of the game, this suddenly became significant as some types of card are not available in the final rounds. So, those that needed, for example, termites (like Mint), were unable to get them. Pink and Mint were most obviously affected, though everyone got caught in some way or another. The card draw hindered Blue as she struggled to find any migratory animals at all and had to abandon her personal objective as unachievable. In contrast, Mint and Pink both did really well with theirs (birds and toxic creatures respectively), making the result much closer than it would otherwise have been with Blue the victor with a hundred and seventy-one, a single point more than Mint.

– Image by boardGOATS

Meanwhile, Plum and Byzantium had kindly agreed to take Lime to the other side of the room to play the Golden GOAT Award 2024 Winner, Stamp Swap. Somehow, despite the flurry of outings it received towards the end of last year, Lime had missed out on playing it. This is also a drafting-type game, but this time with stamps (mostly). The game takes place over three rounds, each split into two parts: Firstly players take it in turns to choose from a central pool, then players divide their pile into two and the first player chooses one pile from another player to take, who keeps their other pile and chooses one from another play—and thus the piles of stamps are swapped.

– Image by boardGOATS

On previous outings, Byzantium had managed to annoy Blue by just beating her. It had been his birthday at the weekend, so the question was whether he would get another, albeit slightly belated, birthday gift in the form of another victory. Sadly for Byzantium, it was not to be though. Plum took ten more points than him during the game and another ten more in the end game scoring between them, giving poor Lime quite a trampling on his first game. Stamp Swap wasn’t the only popular new game to get an outing this evening. On the next table, Jade and Sapphire were introducing Purple and Black to Fromage, a sort of cheesy worker placement game with simultaneous play and a time component, not completely unlike Tzolk’in.

– Image by boardGOATS

The actions are tied up in four “mini-games” which players take it in turns to participate in. It has proven quite a popular little game because once everyone knows how to play, there is relatively little down time and despite playing different areas at different times, quite a lot of interaction. Players simultaneously choose where to place their workers, in their quadrant of the board, and once everyone is done, the board is turned and then players retrieve any workers they can and then place workers on their next quadrant. Players score points for occupying tables in the Bistro quadrant, holding the majority in regions in the Villes quadrant, filling different tables in the Fromagerie quadrant, occupying contiguous areas in the Festival quadrant, and for fulfilling Orders.

– Image by boardGOATS

This time, Purple and Jade made a bit of a killing in the bistro taking nearly thirty points each, while Sapphire took twenty-two points in the Villes. Black’s strategy was somewhat different, picking up points more evenly across the board and focusing particularly on fruit. In the end, despite the differences in approaches, the scores were very similar, with only three points covering second to fourth. The winner was Jade, however, some twenty points clear of Sapphire, who just nicked second, but a single point. The game had been well received, and the group ended up “Doing a Lime” and playing it a second time.

– Image by boardGOATS

The second game was also tight, although everyone was much more even in where they scored their points. Sapphire just edged it though, again by a single point, again from Black, pushing Jade into third. There was still time after the second game for something else, something new, something quick—Flip 7. This is a really simple “Push your Luck” game reminiscent of Port Royal, where players simply turn over cards and gamble on not revealing the same number twice. The catch is that each numbered card appears in the deck that number of times (i.e there is one one, two twos and so on). Flipping over seven in a row gives fifteen bonus points.

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There are also some action cards in the deck, “Flip Three”, “Freeze”, “Second Chance” and modifier cards which give extra points. Players take it in turns to decide whether they want to “flip” or ” stick”. The game ends when players have reached the pre-agreed total (two hundred, according to the rules, though games can easily be made longer or shorter as desired). In the first round, three players scored well, but the rest of the game did not go so well. In fact, the only player who managed to score in every round was Black with a fairly consistent total around thirty. It was no surprise that he was the first to pass two hundred and was therefore the winner, ahead of Sapphire and Purple, who were joint second with a hundred and seventy-six.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: Zoos are even more fun with sea creatures.

Next Meeting, 4th February 2025

Our next meeting will be on Tuesday 4^th February 2025. As the “Feature Game” is on the long side, we will be starting that at 7.30pm with others playing shorter games as people arrive with slightly longer games from 8pm. 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 the Marine Worlds expansion (rules, review, how to play video) to the zoo building game, Ark Nova (rules, review, how to play video). This introduces multiple new elements to the game, such as sea animals that each have to be played in new special enclosures that must be built adjacent to water.

– Image used with permission of boardgamephotos

And speaking of water…

Joe and Jeff were sitting on the beach pondering life when Joe, looking at the birds circling over the sea, mused, “I wonder why seagulls fly over the sea?”

Jeff replied, “Well, I suppose if they flew over the bay they would be called bagels.”

21st January 2025

Blue and Pink were still eating as everyone else rolled up. But as they did, like last time, there was an unusual amount of interest in the “Feature Game“, which, in a change to previous plans, was to be Heat: Pedal to the Metal. This is a car racing game, in a similar vein to other games popular within the group like Flamme Rouge, Snow Tails, and Downforce. Like Flamme Rouge and Snow Tails, as well as a racing game, Heat is also a hand management game. The idea is that players simultaneously choose cards to play and then these are activated from the front of the pack (much like PitchCar).

– Image by boardGOATS

Players have a hand of seven cards drawn from their personal deck. During the game, certain actions that are bad for their engine cause it to heat up meaning they pick up cards that block their hand. Initially, Heat cards go into players discard pile, simulating the delayed effect engine damage can have, blocking their hand later in the game as the deck is recycled. There are ways to cool the engine down, but these Heat cards cannot be discarded or played in the normal way. What makes Heat slightly different to some of the other hand-management-racing games is that there is formally simultaneous play to choose cards and then players take it in turns to activate their cards and take a series of optional mini-actions.

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Players start by simultaneously adjusting their gear, staying put or shifting up or down one without penalty, or shifting two and picking up a Heat card. The gear dictates how many cards a player must play – second gear means they have to play two cards for example. Players then take it in turns to reveal their cards and move their car. There are then five “situational” options: Adrenaline, React, Slipstream, Corner Check, and Discard, before the player replenishes their hand back to seven cards. Adrenaline is a catch-up mechanism, where the player at the back can move one extra Space while adding one to their Speed value and/or gain one extra “Cool down”.

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“Cool down” is an important aspect of the game because it allows players to remove a Heat card from their hand and return it to their engine deck. In React, players activate any additional symbols on the cards they have played or from the gear they are currently in or from the Adrenaline. These include picking up cards because of Stress—players start the game with three Stress cards in the deck which represent lapses of concentration. When a player plays these, they then have to draw cards from their deck to add an essentially random amount to their speed. Of course it is not random, and a player who has an idea of what cards are still in their deck will be able to mitigate this.

– Image by boardGOATS

Further, Stress cards can also be used to postpone the effects of Heat, as any non-movement cards go straight into the discard pile. Players can also control their engine heat by spending a period of time in a low gear by “Cooling down” their and removing Heat cards from their hand (three for first gear, two for second). In contrast, players that have Heat cards available, may add an extra one to their discard pile to boost their speed by drawing an extra card as for Stress cards. Once all these have been activated, players who end their movement along-side or immediately behind another car can Slipstream, that is move two spaces forward (this does not add to speed, it simply means the car moves further because it is moving more efficiently).

– Image by boardGOATS

If the player has crossed a Speed restriction line typically at a corner, they have to evaluate their Speed by summing the value of their cards and adding one for any Adrenaline bonus if they used it. If this is more than the limit, players add the difference to their discard pile in Heat Cards. Players that do not have enough Heat to pay for their excess Speed, pay all the Heat they have and then immediately spin out—move their car back to the last available space before the Speed limit line, take one or two extra Stress cards and change down to first gear. Once all this is done, players can discard any cards they want that are not Stress or Heat cards before replenishing their hand, shuffling their discard pile if necessary. The first player to cross the finish line triggers the end of the game and the player that travels the furthest is the winner.

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Although Blue and Ivory were keen to play, numbers meant they missed out and instead, Jade, led Teal, Pink and Lime. A slight rules malfunction where the group were trying to play all the steps simultaneously meant the safety car did a lap before a restart, then they were off in earnest. The group were playing on the USA track, which is generally recommended for a first play and is raced over two laps. One thing that seems to be true for all race games is that once someone has got in front, it is very hard to haul them back, making it critical to get a good fast start. This time, the good fast start was had by Jade and before long he had built that up and had gone one corner ahead, everyone else felt they were playing for placings and trying to work out how best to approach the corners.

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Instead of playing the end-game as written, the group decided to play it until everyone had crossed the line, so the game continued for some time after Jade had claimed victory. Lime crossed the line second with Pink in hot pursuit, so much so that although Pink crossed the line in third, he finished his turn ahead of Lime and therefore was awarded runner-up (or first loser) status. Teal just crossed the line, claiming a sympathy vote ensuring that everyone finished the race. It had been a bit of a trial and Blue was still keen to give it a go, so Jade, who had been looking to pass it on, sold it to Blue on the spot, which means it will likely get a few more tries over the coming year.

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Blue and Ivory meanwhile, although keen to play Heat, had also been tempted by Roll for the Galaxy. So, when Byzantium had commented that he hadn’t understood his first and only play, but had enjoyed it, the decision was made. Roll for the galaxy is a dice game based on the card game Race for the Galaxy, which is itself a sort of space themed, card game version of Puerto Rico. The thing all these games have in common is “Role (or Action) Selection”—the games have five or six phases or Roles and each player chooses one which will happen in the round. Thus some things happen, and others do not. A large part of these games is correctly gambling on others picking certain Roles or Actions and making them happen, so they can be piggy-backed.

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The smaller the number of players, the more critical this can be. So with just three players in Roll for the Galaxy, at least two will not be happening, possibly more. The Actions are Explore (acquire world tiles); Develop (progress on building Development worlds); Settle (progress on building Production worlds); Produce (use Production Worlds to produce Goods), and Ship (sell Goods for money, or consume them for victory points). In this game, the actions are all carried out using dice which are rolled in secret and placed behind the players screen to choose where those dice will get used. This placement depends on the face shown, though any one die can be used to choose which Action will happen.

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The dice are then moved to the Development or Settlement piles of tiles in their respective phases to progress building those worlds, or placed on Production worlds as goods. Alternatively, they can be spent to pay for Exploring or Shipping in which case, they (along with any dice from any completed building projects or shipped goods) are placed back in their Citizenry. Dice can be purchased into the player’s cup at a rate of one dollar each, so it is important for players to ensure their finances are healthy or their game will rapidly stagnate. The game ends when, either someone has built their twelfth World, or the the pool of victory point chips has been exhausted.

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The game was slow to get going at the start, but then Ivory raced to an early lead getting a nice array of Worlds in his tableau leaving Blue and Byzantium trailing in his wake. But then, instead of finishing the game by building his final World, he appeared to pull up. This gave Blue and Byzantium the illusion of a chance, but was of course because he had a plan. Ivory had the Galactic Reserves Development World which gave an extra victory point for every Goods item on a World at the end of the game while also allowing each Production World to hold an extra Goods item.

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So, the couple of extra rounds was to enable him to fill his Production Worlds and in the end, the game was brought to a close by Byzantium building his twelfth planet, although the victory point chips were also depleted by the end of that round. Blue had taken a sizeable twenty-four of those victory points through trading goods, but hadn’t been able to build enough. As a result, her planets were worth only eighteen points, barely twice those of Ivory’s and Byzantium’s thirty. Byzantium had five victory point chips and a couple of points from his New Galactic Order, but Ivory was some distance in front, thanks to his thirteen points for his Galactic Reserves and Galactic Bankers Developments together with his eight victory point chips.

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There was time to play something else, but rather than go through rules, as Roll for the Galaxy was already out, the trio decided to give it another go. This time, with an element of time pressure, it was arguable that some of the decisions made weren’t as sharp and the scores were all lower the second time, though that might have been partly because there were notably fewer rounds. Blue kept dipping into the bag to try to get Rare Element (brown) Worlds to go with her Mining League, but failed repeatedly and eventually gave up. Ivory triggered the end game with his twelfth World and this time it was Byzantium who struggled to build enough.

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The scores were a bit closer on the second attempt, though the end result was still much the same, with Ivory again taking victory, though with half the winning margin. By this time, the other games had also finished. The first of these was Forests of Pangaia, in which Mint was joined by Pine and Plum. This is a truly beautiful, tactile game, where players are trying to meet objectives to score Life Points; the player with the most Life Points at the end of the game is the winner. The game has elements of set collection and area control and is played on a central map made of terrain hexagons. Players take turns to perform three phases: Grow Seeds, take a Spirit Action, and finally add Treetops. Once Seeds have grown and been turned into Trees, players carry out one of three possible Spirit actions.

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These are: Plant (moving their Spirit Pawn to a Lake space and planting seeds in adjacent spaces); Gather (moving their Spirit Pawn back to their player board and receiving a resource), and Prey (moving their Spirit Pawn back to their player board and playing their Ritual Card). There are fourteen Rituals the Spirits can perform to collect Gaia’s Life Energy. Once the Ritual card has been scored all the player’s Trees that were involved in the Ritual then partially or fully Decay (depending on the Ritual), either losing a level or rotting back to nothing and leaving a Seed. The player then discards their Ritual card and draws a new one. The game ends when the last Ritual card is taken by any player.

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Plum went first and spent most of the game collecting Sun tokens. In contrast, Pine collected lots of Wind tokens inspiring lots of jokes about using wind to spread his seed. The winner, however, was Mint with a nine point Trail Ritual due to excessive seed spreading giving her a total of twenty-eight points. Pine just pipped Plum for second place by a single point. It had been a really enjoyable game, however, made all the better by the gorgeous pieces. Meanwhile, on the other end of the same, albeit long table, Black, Purple and Sapphire played a game of last year’s winner of the Golden GOAT Award, Stamp Swap.

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This is a really smooth tile placement centred around stamp collecting. There is a lot of simultaneous play, which is nice because it minimises down time. First, players take it in turns to choose items from the central Pool, then simultaneously divide them into two piles of offerings. The player with the first player token, chooses and takes one of the piles offered by their opponents. The opponent keeps their other pile and then chooses a pile from one of their opponents and so on. Once everyone has two piles, players arrange the Stamps in their Album and then choose which of the four available end of round cards to score this time.

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After three rounds, players score the end of game objective card and the player with the most points is the winner. One of the clever parts about this game is how much difference the objective cards make to the way players arrange their Stamps. The end-game scoring gave three points for each enclosed gap two spaces in size (i.e. a one-by-two hole). More points were available during the game for cancelled stamps not on the edge of the page; for large square stamps; for each stamp in a player’s second most abundant theme, and for groups of a chosen colour.

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This time the game was very close. Purple (specialising in Flowers) struggled to get the stamps she needed and Sapphire (specialising Space stamps) kept getting confused which way the turn went. It didn’t seem to inconvenience him too much however as he and Black (Monuments) fought it out for first and second place. Black picked up a lot of his points for Special Stamps—just three accounted for a quarter of his points, which contributed to his total of one hundred and seven points, just four more than Sapphire.

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While everyone else was finishing up, there was some discussion about the continuation of the Ticket to Ride Legacy campaign that Blue, Pink, Black, Purple and Pine embarked on at New Year. The campaign is played over twelve rounds and the group had managed the first two games on the first outing with the next two more recently on Saturday evening. Spoiler alert—hover HERE to see details. The winner of the third round was Black, very closely chased by Pink with Blue taking third. After a break for tea (lamb and vegetable tagines with millet), the group began their fourth game. Spoiler alert—hover HERE to see details.

Ticket to Ride Legacy: Legends of the West

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This was much less close than the third game. The winner was Pine, with Black six dollars behind and Pink a further fourteen points behind him, in third. Spoiler alert—hover HERE to see details. While chatting with the others, out of curiosity, Pine went through The Book and totaled up the scores for the first four rounds, which gave Black a lead of some twenty dollars. Something the rest of the group need to give some thought to next time, before he gets an unassailable advantage although there is a suspicion that as the campaign progresses, the games get longer and more points will be available in each round giving players a chance to catch up. We shall see.

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Learning Outcome: However you roll, when you race you need a fast start.