Next Meeting – 23rd July 2019

Our next meeting will be on Tuesday, 23^rd July, at the Horse and Jockey pub in Stanford-in-the-Vale. As usual, we will be playing shorter games from 7.30pm as people arrive, until 8pm when we will start something a little longer.

This week the “Feature Game” will be Wingspan. This is a beautiful game where players are bird enthusiasts seeking to discover and attract the best birds to their network of wildlife preserves. The game was nominated for the Kennerspiel des Jahres and is our pick for the winner (to be announced tomorrow).

– Image by boardGOATS

And speaking of birds…

Jeff was at the cinema watching The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey when he noticed what looked like an Eagle sitting next to him.

“Are you an eagle?” asked the Jeff, surprised.

“Yes,” replied the Eagle.

“But… What are you doing at the movies?” asked Jeff.

“Well,” answered the eagle, “I liked the book…”

9th July 2019

The pub was madly busy thanks to a boisterous party and a couple of large groups in the bar area, so we decided to start with a game while we waited for food. The “Feature Game” was to be Forbidden Desert, but as most people were waiting for food, we decided to start with something we could play as a group. 6 Nimmt! was the first suggestion, but in keeping with the cooperative game theme of the Feature, we decided to start with Saboteur. In this game, players are either Dwarves or Saboteurs, where Dwarves are collectively trying to dig a tunnel to find the Gold, while the Saboteurs are trying to stop them.

– Image by boardGOATS

On their turn players can play a tunnel card to extend the network, play an action card or discard a card and pass. Action cards come in several flavours. There are red and green tool cards, with red broken tool cards stopping others from digging and green “fixed” tool cards that repair broken tools. There are map cards that allow players to peek at one of the three target cards to see if it holds the gold, and rock-fall cards that enable players to remove a single card from the tunnel network. All the action cards can be used by Dwarves and Saboteurs alike to impede the other team.

– Image by boardGOATS

Black was the first to play and began ditching all his rubbish blocking tunnel cards while Pine started off by explaining how Burgundy was always a Saboteur and generally made Burgundy’s life a misery by besetting him with broken tools and reminding everyone how last time we played Burgundy was a Saboteur three times running. This time, we had more players, but it wasn’t long before it became clear that Burgundy was indeed a Saboteur, along with Lime, who was playing it for the first time and was not at all secretive of his position. Eventually, Red found the Gold on behalf of the Saboteurs, and Black was outed as the third and final Saboteur and had apparently all the cards he had been discarding had been good tunnel cards not bad ones.

– Image by boardGOATS

The rules as written state that there should be three rounds and players pass gold cards around in an effort to determine who will be the overall winner. We don’t think the game needs a winner in this way, so we play with a “house-rule” that treats each round as a game in its own right. This way, we can stop at two games if it is beginning to outstay its welcome, or carry on and play three or even four rounds, giving more people to join Burgundy as Saboteurs. Everyone had really enjoyed the first round and was keen to go again, so cards were handed out and Pine once again accused Burgundy of a “Saboteury” first move. Blue had loads of blocking cards, but after Black had spent almost all the previous round dumping cards, didn’t dare pass for fear that she would be accused of being a Saboteur.

– Image by boardGOATS

Blue asked everyone else for advice and Red suggested that the one thing she could do to convince her that she was a Good Little Dwarf was play a blocking card on Burgundy, which she obligingly did. It didn’t work, however, and it wasn’t long before Red declared Blue a Saboteur. In frustration Blue showed Red all the blocking cards she had and that seemed to stem the tide of accusations, at least for a few turns. With Burgundy buried under a pile of broken tool cards, his delight was evident when Blue revealed her true colours and played a disruptive blocking card. It was just a smidge too late though and Black brought the round to an end by finding the Gold.

– Image by boardGOATS

By this time food had been ordered, but was not looking like it was going to arrive immediately, so we decided to see if Burgundy could make it three in a row again. Inevitably, we were only a couple of turns in, therefore, when food turned up and the tunnel network was obstructed by Purple’s enormous bowl of mushroom tagliatelle. Pine confused everyone by indicating his position early, playing a blocking card right in the middle of the map. Perhaps it was the difficulty of playing round a plate of pasta, or perhaps her mind was just elsewhere, but a very curious card placement quickly led to Purple being labeled as a Saboteur joining Burgundy and Pine. Flying well under the radar, if only the real Saboteurs had had helpful cards to play then they might have won, however, it was not to be.

– Image by boardGOATS

It turned out that Blue and Black were once again the real Saboteurs (along with the more obvious Pine), but frustratingly there was nothing they could do and Red once again finished the round by finding the Gold for the Dwarf team. By this time everyone was very hungry, so food mostly disappeared quite rapidly and while Black, Purple and Burgundy dealt with their last few mouthfuls, Blue, Lime, Pine and Mulberry took themselves off to the table by the door (ostensibly to get space to play, but partly to take advantage of the respite the cooling draught offered from the humidity), to play the “Feature Game”, Forbidden Desert.

– Image by boardGOATS

Where Saboteur is a “semi-cooperative” game because it has a traitor mechanic, Forbidden Desert is a fully cooperative game. This means everyone plays together against the game, with the same goal. The story is that a helicopter has crash-landed in the desert, and the survivors, in our case, an Archaeologist, a Climber, an Explorer and a very well behaved, cooperative, er, camel (“Water Carrier”), must try to find the buried, missing pieces of a historic air-ship, in order to escape. This, with minimal water, the sun beating down and the growing sand-storm, means that players have to be quick in their hunt, and smart in keeping the keeping the storm from getting out of hand.

– Image by boardGOATS

The game is played on a five by five grid made of twenty-four tiles and one gap. The tiles all start face down and must be excavated to reveal their other side. Some tiles will yield clues as to where the missing air ship parts are, others hide potentially useful equipment, while excavating others will yield a launch pad or the entrance to a tunnel. Everything is useful, but all four pieces of the ship must be found together with the launch pad, before the players can escape. On their turn players have four action points per turn which they can use freely to move, remove sand from the tile they are on (or an adjacent one), excavate a cleared tile, or pick up a piece of airship.

– Image by boardGOATS

Once all four actions have been completed cards from the storm deck are turned over and tiles are moved in the direction indicated into the eye of the storm reflecting the shifting dunes. As they are moved, sand tiles are placed on each one, building up the dunes and burying the antiquities in sand. There is a finite number of sand tiles and running out triggers the end of the game with the team losing. Running out of sand is only one way to lose however. If any player runs out of water, the whole team loses, and the storm level increasing to its maximum also spells doom. On the other hand, if the team manage to find all the parts and the launch pad, they will be able to escape from the desert.

– Image by boardGOATS

One of the problems with cooperative games is “quarter-backing” also known as the “alpha gamer problem”, where one player takes control and tells everyone else what to do. With Blue the only player to have played it before (though Lime had played Forbidden Island some time ago), it would have been easy for her assume the role of Colonel, but that sucks all the fun out of the game. So there was a little discussion as to how we should approach the game (primarily trying to make the best use of our characters’ special abilities and trying to work quickly to excavate tiles) and then we started, with the storm level on “normal”.

– Image by boardGOATS

The game began badly, when two of the first tiles we excavated were tunnel tiles. These are very useful because players can use them to shelter from the sun and thus preserve water when a Sun Beats Down card is revealed. They also enable players to travel from one part of the board to another in a single move. Unfortunately, the tiles were adjacent which meant they were much less helpful than usual. Prioritising, digging in order to find parts of the airship, the team found a lot potentially useful equipment, but it seemed ages before the first clue came up, a hint to where the propeller was buried.

– Image by boardGOATS

The team soon found the second clue to the location of the propeller which turned out to be relatively conveniently located so Pine, the Climber, quickly picked it up. It was then that Lime pointed out that the number of sand tiles available was getting critical, and something had to be done. A couple of turns and concentrating on the sand problem and use of Mulberry’s Dune Blaster, helped, but a couple of Sun Beats Down cards in the meantime meant there was now a water shortage. so Pine and Blue (the Water Carrier), set out to rectify the situation. Unfortunately, the first of the possible springs turned out to be a mirage. While it didn’t lead to anyone running out of water immediately, valuable time and moves had to be used to excavate another tiles.

– Image by boardGOATS

Once a spring had been found, Blue was able to top up her water supply and share water with Pine, before taking some back to the Lime and Magenta (who by this time was hiding in a tunnel to conserve her dwindling water supply). With everyone settling into their roles and assuming the duties associated with their special abilities, it wasn’t long before the second part of the airship had been located. Everyone had water and the sand situation was more or less under control, but it was all taking too long. The storm had picked up and with it, the Sun Beats Down cards were coming round at an increasing speed.

– Image by boardGOATS

Worse, the rate of sand deposition was also increasing. and it wasn’t long before the situation was getting desperate again, and clues to the location of the missing parts of the airship were proving impossible to find. Forced into making difficult decisions, Pine and Lime started to take risks. To begin with they seemed to pay off, but it wasn’t long before there was a succession of bad cards, culminating in two Sun Beats Down cards, and Pine and Lime who were left out in the sun ran out of water and sadly perished. It had been good fun though and everyone had enjoyed playing, even though the team had ultimately failed to escape.

– Image by boardGOATS

Meanwhile, the other group had been playing Villagers. This is a new card drafting and tableau building game that first got an outing a few weeks ago and was so successful that Lime immediately bought himself a copy. The idea is that players take it in turns to take villager cards from the “road”, then add them to their village tableau. Different villager cards have different advantages; some give money at the end of the game, while others enable players to draw more cards from the road per round or place more cards in their village per round. The clever part of the game is the interplay between the cards caused by the conditions required before they can be played.

– Image by boardGOATS

For example, a Blacksmith cannot be added to a village unless there is a Miner already present. The cards are then played in a tree structure such that the Blacksmith is placed over the Miner card, superseding any icons depicted on it. Many villager cards, especially the more valuable ones, also require a payment of two gold to another specific villager. The money then sits on that villager card until a scoring round. Ideally, the payment would be made to a villagers in the player’s own village, so that the money ultimately remains theirs, but if the active player does not have the necessary villager and someone else does then the money is paid to the opponent.

– Image by boardGOATS

Like a lot of card games, there is a lot of luck in the game and there is a knack to surfing it. Although many of the the group have played it before, Black had missed out, and he struggled waiting for a Grazier to become available. In general, everyone went for a range of different types of villagers, everyone except Burgundy who went mad for Mining, because it “seemed like a good idea at the time”. He started with a Seeker and then when he added an Ore Muler his income increased spectacularly and he looked like he was going to romp away with it. Red and Black eventually managed to play Monks which helped to grease the wheels for them, but it was too late. Burgundy had the edge over Red in almost every department beating her into second place by twenty gold.

– Image by boardGOATS

Villagers and Forbidden Desert finished at about the same time, and as time was getting on, Mulberry took Red home, and Pine and Lime didn’t want a late night so went their separate ways too. That just left Blue, Burgundy, Black and Purple; Purple fancied a game of Bosk, and, as there wasn’t time to debate it, everyone else went along with her suggestion without debate. This is a really pretty game, and although Black and Purple have played it quite a bit since they picked it up at the UK Games Expo, Blue and Burgundy were new to it.

– Image by boardGOATS

The game is played in two parts: first players place their trees in the forest on a grid, then each tree sheds its leaves and players try to control where the leaves fall to give them the most leaves in each of the areas of the forest. The first phase is really just an hors d’oeuvre; the second phase is the guts of the game. At the end of the first phase, players score for having the majority in each row or column. Purple was at the back, so went first in the second phase, and more importantly, the direction the wind goes in. This is important because if the wind is in the wrong direction, any player with trees of the same number wedged up against the same edge will find their options severely restricted.

– Image by boardGOATS

An awful lot of time was spent by all staring at the board, but this is no hardship as it really is a very picturesque game. Blue and Burgundy were feeling their way, but it was always advantage to Black with his greater experience. In the end, it was surprisingly close, though that was possibly due to Blue confused by the “S-shaped” score board, screwing up the scoring. The margin of victory was still significant though as Black finished with thirty-five points while Blue and Burgundy tussled for second place with thirty-one and thirty respectively. It was then that the group realised the half hour game had taken twice that and everyone quickly left before they out-stayed their welcome and the landlord threw them out.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: Working together is fun, though it helps to know who is on your side.

Next Meeting – 9th July 2019

Our next meeting will be on Tuesday, 9^th July, at the Horse and Jockey pub in Stanford-in-the-Vale. As usual, we will be playing shorter games from 7.30pm as people arrive, until 8pm when we will start something a little longer.

This week the “Feature Game” will be Forbidden Desert. This is a cooperative game where players are working together to find parts to build an airship and escape from the desert fighting the sandstorms and the ever-shifting dunes.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor ronster0

And speaking of deserts…

Jeff was driving through the desert, when he saw a sign saying “SPEED LIMIT 40”. Jeff was well known for driving at the speed limit rather than below it, so slowed down to exactly 40 mph and carried on.

About half an hour later, Jeff saw another sign, this time with the words “SPEED LIMIT 20” on it, so again he dutifully slowed down, and carried on at 20 mph.

Another half an hour passed, and Jeff saw yet another sign, this one saying “SPEED LIMIT 10”. By this time, he was getting quite fed up, but still, he slowed down to 10 mph and continued on his way.

After an hour of “cruising” along in second gear, Jeff passed a sign saying, “WELCOME TO SPEED LIMIT”…

25th June 2019

It was lovely to see Burgundy back after his long lay-off, and the staff at The Jockey were thrilled to provide him with his ham, egg and chips once more. While people finished eating there was a bit of chit chat, which extended into lots and lots of chit chat after people had finished eating. Green explained that this was likely his last visit until September, while Lime commented that he had enjoyed Villagers so much last time that he’d bought a copy for himself. He hadn’t realised that it had only just been released, and this led into a discussion about KickStarter and why people might be prepared to support a project months, possibly years in advance of its arrival. This encouraged Ivory to show off his latest acquisition, Tiny Epic Mechs, a cool little game with meeples that can hold weapons or wear mech suits, and came with some KickStarter exclusive content.

– Image by boardGOATS

Eventually, after several attempts to get people playing games, Blue made an executive decision. She split the group into a three and a four, with the four playing the “Feature Game”, Hook! and left the remaining three to sort themselves out. Hook! is a very, very silly game where players are trying to place square cards over other cards, orienting them so that the holes pick out certain features and not others. The game is played simultaneously, with each player first drawing a “target” card, taking a look at it and placing it in the middle. Each player then chooses one of their three “aim” cards, each with a different arrangement of three holes, and places it over one of the target cards.

– Image by boardGOATS

Cat-like, each player starts with nine lives, and, for every picture of their character that someone picks out with their aim card, they lose a life. If they manage to hide behind a barrel or a crate, that protects them from cannon fire, but not from a grenade, which destroys all barrels and crates and causes everyone to lose a life. Catching a “black pirate” in their sights allows the player to choose which of their opponents suffers. Rum, on the other hand, helps to deaden the pain and restores a life, even bringing a pirate back from the brink of death if they lose their last life, but manage to take a swig of grog in the same round. There are two aims to the game: firstly, a player needs to survive till the end, and secondly finish with the most parrots—any target card where a parrot was visible through the sights is kept and the parrots added up at the end of the game.

– Image by boardGOATS

The pirates come in three colours, red, blue and yellow, and two types (“sailors” and “captains”), with the colour distinction being much, much more obvious than the difference between sailors. Thus, with the stress induced by the time pressure of the game, the potential for picking out a captain instead of a sailor is much larger than picking red instead of yellow for example. This means that with more than three players, it is better to play with pairs of colours and team play is recommended. Therefore, Blue and Lime played as one team, and Mulberry and Pine played as the other. Pine commented, “I thought we didn’t do cooperative games,” which led to a discussion of what these were and the promise that one would be the “Feature Game” next time (probably Forbidden Island or maybe Flash Point: Fire Rescue).

– Image by BGG contributor aldoojeda

As the group played the first few rounds of Hook!, it quickly became apparent that Blue was more of a hazard to herself and her team-mate than the opposition, dropping several cannon balls on her foot and accidentally catching Lime a couple of times too. Lime, it turned out, was quite good at catching parrots, while Mulberry and Pine had a bit of a thing for making Mojitos. As it was the game’s first outing, it took a bit to get the hang of game play. The idea that everyone looks at their card first and then plays meant that everyone ended up playing on their own cards. We tried to fix this with a simultaneous count of three: “Draw, One, Two, Three, Place!” but while that was more successful, it wasn’t perfect.

– Image by boardGOATS

Playing again, we’d probably just skip the “preview target cards” phase and simultaneously place them in the middle without looking. The vagaries of the game didn’t stop us having a ball though, as everyone attacked everyone in mad chaos. Then Blue suddenly looked in real danger as her number of lives tumbled (mostly due to self-inflicted wounds). Realising that she was at serious risk of an unscheduled visit to Davy Crockett and that Parrots aren’t known for hanging around corpses, she prioritised staying alive over parrots. Before long, Pine was in a similarly precarious state, and he was not so lucky as Lime unceremoniously stabbed him in the back and dumped his body overboard. As Pine’s parrots flew away, that left Mulberry with a titanic battle, the more-so as she was now also getting low on lives.

– Image by boardGOATS

Although both Blue and Mulberry survived till the end, the winner was undoubtedly Lime who not only had more lives left than anyone else, but also had almost as many parrots as the other two put together, giving his team glorious victory. With all the fight taken out of her and citing jet-lag, Mulberry was making noises about finding her bed, but Blue twisted her arm a little and she agreed to give Ticket to Ride: London a go before she left. This is a cut-down version of the Spiel des Jahres winning, train game, Ticket to Ride. This game has spawned a whole family of games and expansions, including maps of Europe, Asia, India and Africa, but the most recent are the two city specials, New York and London.

– Image by boardGOATS

The game is very simple: on their turn, players can do one of three things, draw coloured travel cards, spend travel cards to place pieces on the board, or pick up tickets. Points are scored for placing pieces (usually scored during the game) and for connecting the two places shown on the ticket cards (scored at the end of the game). Any unfulfilled tickets score negative points. Each of the variants has some other little feature, for example, Pennsylvania includes a stocks and shares element, Märklin includes passengers and Nederland includes bridge tolls that players have to pay. The new city titles, have fewer trains (less than half), players draw two tickets instead of three, and, in the case of London, bonus points for connecting all the places in a district.

Ticket to Ride Map Collection: Volume 4 – Nederland

– Image by boardGOATS

Only Blue had played this new version of the game before, but Pine had played other versions many times and Lime had also played one of them before, though it was a while ago and he wasn’t sure which it was. The London game is really cute though and has a lot of UK references. For example, for those of a certain vintage the box features John Steed and Mrs Peel, and the travel cards include yellow submarines and black cabs. Perhaps the best though are the pieces where trains have been replaced with really high quality miniature Routemaster buses. As ever, there have been lots of online criticisms, but we just liked spotting the obvious references and trying to guess what the orange car was meant to be (a Lamborghini Miura?).

– Image by boardGOATS

Pine went first and started quickly by placing a couple of Routemasters. Blue, Mulberry and Lime were a bit slower, building up their collection of cards. With some versions of Ticket to Ride, the game is all about planning routes, gathering the necessary cards and then playing all these cards in quick succession so others don’t have a chance to block. In other versions, this strategy doesn’t work so well as the key parts of the network are taken early in the game. The shorter games, especially those with short routes tend to fall more into the latter camp, so Mulberry looked to be playing a dangerous game as she fell behind with the number of pieces she’d placed and amassed a huge pile of cards.

– Image by boardGOATS

Pine, always one to play this game close to the wire, was the first to chance it with some tickets, drawing two and keeping one. Then, he drew another two and kept one. Lime and Mulberry were still working on their existing routes, but Blue decided to follow Pine’s example and drew two tickets, but kept both. As Pine, pushed his luck once more, it turned out he’d pushed it too far this time, drawing two tickets that were almost impossible to complete. Blue learning from Pine’s mistake (rather like last time she had played Ticket to Ride with Pine), decided not to draw any more tickets and instead, brought the game to a swift end by placing all but one of her remaining Routemasters to connect Piccadilly Circus to Baker Street.

– Image by boardGOATS

Checking the scores proved that most people had managed to more or less keep on top of their scoring during the game and it was just tickets and district bonuses. Inevitably, the bonuses were minimal, so as is common in this game, it was all about tickets. Lime and Mulberry had both completed their tickets, so the question was whether drawing more had been a good bet for Blue and Pine. Pine had more than Blue, but unfortunately, he’d failed to complete the last one, leaving Blue some way in front with forty-one points. In the battle for second place, Pine had come off best demonstrating that drawing more tickets can be a good move, but only if you can complete them.

– Image by boardGOATS

Meanwhile, on the next table, the trio of Burgundy, Green and Ivory had decided to give Endeavor: Age of Sail another outing. Perhaps it was because Green wanted revenge for last time, or maybe Burgundy had missed out, or possibly it was just because Green wanted to play the game again while considering whether or not to commit to getting the new Age of Expansion buildings, but whatever the reason, out it came for the second time on the bounce. The game is a simple game of exploration in the age of Captain Cook, played over eight rounds. Players first build, then populate and remove workers from their buildings, all according to how far they have progressed along the associated technology track.

– Image by boardGOATS

The guts of the game are the actions, however, which allow players to colonise cities on the central map board, engage in shipping, attack occupied cities, plunder and become slave masters. Last time, it was the “Feature Game”, specifically including the Exploits expansion. The really change the game, giving players a different aspect to work on. This time Exploits were included again, though different ones to last time: “The Sun Never Sets”, “Globalization”, and “Underground Railroad”. Between them they covered most of the continents, requiring India & the Caribbean; the Far East & the Caribbean, and Africa & North America to be opened (respectively) for the three Exploits to take effect.

– Image by boardGOATS

As before, Ivory started building a robust network of connected cities while Green once again used tried to use the Exploits as a target. In contrast, Burgundy largely ignored the Exploits and played a traditional game concentrating on building up his technology tracks giving him a strong foundation from which to build in the colonies. Playing with the new three-player map meant that all regions were opened up by the end of the game, though it was a bit late for Green to capitalise on the Exploits as he’d hoped. Worse, Ivory’s city network meant he was able to sneak a hat-full of points from the “Sun Never Sets” and “Globalization” Exploits as well.

– Image by boardGOATS

Ivory and Burgundy managed to build one of the Charter Company buildings from the mini expansion and, like Blue last time, both ended up with too many cards and had to choose what to cull. This problem was exacerbated by the number of Governor cards they picked up. As the game drew to a close, the last of the continents were opened up activating the final Exploit, but it was too late for anyone to occupy any of the stations on the Underground Railroad. With the last round coming to an end, all that was left to count up the points. Although it wasn’t actually a tie like last time, it was still a very close game. This time, honours went to Burgundy who finished with seventy points, just three more than Ivory who, in turn, was three ahead of Green.

– Image by boardGOATS

As Endeavor was just coming to an end, so Blue, Pine and Lime looked round for something quick to play. Ivory excitedly suggested that when they were finished everyone could play Bohnanza, but Pine vetoed that and in the meantime, Blue’s beady eye moved from Biblios to settle instead on No Thanks!. This is an old favourite, but one that Lime had not been introduced to yet. As a really quick game, both to teach and play, this was ideal. Everyone starts with eleven red chips, and the first player turns over the top card in the deck (which runs from three to thirty-five). They can then either take the card or pay one chip to pass the problem on to the next player who then has the same choice.

– Image by boardGOATS

The clever part is the scoring—the winner is the player with the lowest total face value once the deck has been exhausted (offset by any remaining chips). There is a catch though, if a player has continuous sequence of cards (e.g. seven, eight, nine, ten), they only count the first card (i.e. they score seven not thirty-four). The real gamble comes because some of the cards are removed from the pile at the start of the game. Lime started by collecting lots and lots chips, while Blue helped by pointing out some of the things to look out for. Although having chips is a must, and having most chips gives control of the game, once one player runs out, that control is largely lost. This is because any player with no chips is forced to take whatever comes along. Lime finished with a massive ninety points with Pine some way behind, with Blue cruising to victory with forty-one.

– Image by boardGOATS

Although Endeavor was now finished, they were still packing up, Lime was keen to give it another go while Pine insisted he wasn’t coached this time, so the trio squeezed in another quick round. Lime tried the same trick, and hoarded lots of chips, again putting Pine under a lot of pressure as he ran out of chips. He managed to keep his total down though by making a very fortuitous run, and ended with two points less than Lime. This time, Blue concentrated more on her own game and was able to just hold on to enough chips to see out the deck, while avoiding picking up too many cards, giving her a second victory. It was much closer in the battle for second place though, with Pine taking it by just two points.

– Image by boardGOATS

With Endeavor finally over and packed away, Ivory (perhaps more boisterous than usual as it was exactly six months to Christmas), once again suggested Bohnanza. Pine once again vetoed it, this time even more grumpily following the suggestion that we should all sing some festive hits to get us in the mood. Blue diplomatically suggested 6 Nimmt! as an alternative as everyone loves it and Lime had not yet played that either. 6 Nimmt! is a great game that gives players the illusion of control right up until the point when it all goes horribly wrong. The idea is that everyone has a hand of cards and simultaneously chooses one to play.

– Image by boardGOATS

Starting with the card with the lowest face value, these cards are added to one of four rows, specifically the row with the highest value that is lower than the card played. When a sixth card is added to the row, the five cards already on the table are taken and the new card restarts the row. As well as a face value, each card has a number of Bulls’ Heads, most only one, but some as high as seven. At the end of the game, the player with the fewest “nimmts” is the winner, with a special “wooden spoon” shout-out for the person whose plans went most awry landing them with a huge pile of bull. As a group we usually play in two rounds, each with approximately half the deck (numbered one to a hundred and four).

– Image by boardGOATS

Blue top-scored in the first round, with twenty-four nimmts, but everyone else had a far more respectable total and Green led the way with just two. This is a game where everything can fall apart spectacularly in the second round, so there was everything to play for. The second time round time, Lime beat Blue’s score from the first round taking twenty-five nimmts, giving him a total of thirty-two. This was nothing compared to Pine though, who took thirty-five in the second round alone, giving him a a sizeable forty-eight. Blue made a clear round, but for her the damage had already been done, so the honours fell to Green who was consistency itself, taking just three in the second round giving a total of five – the only one to finish in single figures. Lime was keen to play again, but as others were leaving, it was time to pack up. There was still time for a long gossip though before we sadly said goodbye to Green after what was likely to be his last meeting until September.

– Image by boardGOATS

Leaning Outcome: You don’t have to play a game correctly to have fun.

Boardgames in the News: Cooperation and the “Alpha Gamer Problem”

Competition is one of the main characteristics people associate with board games, however, in the modern world of Euro games, this is no longer true. Firstly, one of the primary qualities of Euro games is the lack of “direct interaction”. This means that although there is competition, it is difficult for players to be “nasty” to each other. This is an important aspect of modern gaming as it takes away the aggressive element and makes them more inclusive, particularly for families. These games still have winners and losers though, and while everyone likes winning, nobody likes losing and some people really, really hate it. This is where “cooperative games” come in: instead of players competing against each other, everyone works as a team, trying to beat the game.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor kilroy_locke

There are now hundreds of cooperative games available, but although the first of these date back to the 1960s, the explosion really happened about ten years ago following the release of Pandemic. Designed by Matt Leacock, Pandemic is a very accessible game where players are disease-fighting specialists whose mission is to treat disease hot-spots while researching cures for the four plagues before they get out of hand. The game board features the major global population centres and on their turn, each player can travel between cities, treat infection, discover a cure, or build a research facility. The clever part of the game is the two decks of cards that drive it. The first of these enables players to travel and treat infection, but also contains Epidemic cards that accelerate and intensify the diseases’ activity. The second deck controls the “normal” spread of the infections, with players drawing a set number of these, that increases when Epidemic cards are drawn.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor kilroy_locke

Since Pandemic, a large number of cooperative games have been published, including Forbidden Island, Forbidden Desert and Forbidden Sky, all of which use cards in a similar way to Pandemic to increase the threat. All of these have been designed by Matt Leacock and have a very similar feel, though a different theme. There have also been a number of variations on the Pandemic game which retain the original theme, including the well-regarded Pandemic Legacy titles which change the feel a lot. Other similar games by different designers include Ghost Stories, Freedom: The Underground Railroad and Flash Point: Fire Rescue, each with a different theme, but with changes to the mechanism (Flash Point for example uses dice instead of cards) and varying degrees of difficulty (Ghost stories played with four is supposed to be one of the most challenging games of its type to win).

– Image by BGG contributor DLCrie

Not all cooperative games are family friendly and accessible. Arkham Horror is set in the H.P. Lovecraft‘s Cthulu mythos. Each player is a resident of or visitor to the fictional town of Arkham, Massachusets during the 1920s and takes the roll of a character ranging from a gangster to a college professor. The players discover a nefarious cult attempting to awaken a great evil, and, to prevent an invasion from other realms, they must seal off access to Arkham. To survive, players must equip themselves with all manner of weapons, and spells, while searching for clues to aid them in their mission. The game has a substantial rule set and the games are epic experiences which take four to five hours to complete (and are therefore not for the faint-hearted).

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor kilroy_locke

While there is plenty of variety available with cooperative games, there are two often cited problems. Firstly, many players find that cooperative games lack “something”. In reality, this is largely just a matter of taste, in the same way that some gamers feel that “Euro Games” lack something when compared with highly random dice-heavy games with player elimination. Perhaps a more fundamental issue is that of the so-called “alpha gamer”. This is where one player effectively becomes the general, and tells everyone else what to do. This problem arises because most cooperative games are essentially puzzles that can be solved by one player. Some games designers have tried to fix this issue by adding hidden information, usually in the form of cards, and a rule that players cannot share such knowledge. Simply instructing players not to share knowledge is much easier said than done, however, as even a slight inflection in the voice or a change of expression can give away a lot of information.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor aleacarv

In 2013, a very simple, yet clever card game called Hanabi won the Spiel des Jahres. The idea is that instead of every player looking at the front of their hand of cards and showing the backs to all the other players, hands are held the other way so that each player can’t see their own cards, but can see everyone else’s. In principle this means players can discuss what a player should do, but a lot of information can be given away accidentally. For this reason, the best, most intense games of Hanabi are played in near total silence and stony faced. This is actually extremely hard to do, which is why for many, The Game, a similar cooperative card game nominated for the Spiel des Jares in 2015 has proved to have more longevity. This is because players can discuss anything they like as long as they never give away specific number information.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor kilroy_locke

One of the early cooperative games was Shadows over Camelot, which is a hand-management and deduction-based board game where players are knights of the Round Table collaborating to overcome quests like the search for the Holy Grail. In order to get round the “alpha gamer” problem Shadows over Camelot introduced a traitor mechanic. At the start of the game, players are given a Loyalty Card, one of which says “Traitor”. The player that draws the Traitor card then tries to sabotage the efforts of the Loyal Company. Initially the Traitor hides within the Company, so players have to be very careful about what information they disclose as the Traitor could use it against them. Worse, players have to be very careful about what information they believe as it could be given by the Traitor in an effort to mislead.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor kilroy_locke

Initially, the Traitor acts as one of the loyal knights, but as suspicions mount, players can accuse others of being a traitor. If outed, the Traitor’s actions become more limited, but potentially more devastating. Stacking the deck in different ways can be used to introduce different levels of doubt. For example, four players drawing from eight Loyalty Cards including one traitor, are unlikely to to have a traitor, but the possibility is just enough to keep people on their toes; at the other extreme, if there are no excess cards a traitor is guaranteed. One of the problems with the hidden traitor in Shadows over Camelot though, is that it doesn’t scale well with the number of players: seven knights playing against one traitor are still likely to win, whereas three knights are always going to struggle.

– Image by BGG contributor fubar awol

In Shadows over Camelot, the scaling problem was fixed with the Merlin’s Company expansion, which introduced a possible second traitor. Expansions also arguably improved one of the most intense, cooperative games, Lord of the Rings. This twenty year old game follows the journey of the Fellowship of the Ring, with players taking on the roles of the hobbits. It is also a card driven game, which players lose if the ring-bearer is overcome by Sauron, or win if the Ring is destroyed by throwing it into the volcanic fires of Mount Doom. The Friends & Foes and Battlefields expansions add complexity and variety, while the Sauron expansion introduces a semi-cooperative element with someone actively playing the Dark Lord.

– Image by BGG contributor takras

The semi-cooperative, “one versus many” style of game is not new, indeed it was the core mechanism of the winner of the 1983 Spiel des Jahres Award, Scotland Yard. A staple of many charity shops, this is still a popular family game that still holds up more than thirty years later. Although modifying the cooperative nature solves the “alpha gamer” problem, it doesn’t fix the other problem: if one player is significantly weaker than others, everyone suffers. This is issue inherent in any team game: the team is only as strong as its weakest link, however, it is a particular problem when the weak player is the Traitor. This is actually a problem in any game where one player has a pivotal role though; Codenames, for example, can be a truly awful experience if the wrong person gets the job of “Spy Master”.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor aleacarv

Despite the issues associated with cooperative and semi-cooperative games, they continue to be very popular. In the recent years, The Game and Hanabi have featured strongly in the Spiel des Jahres awards and nominees, while the top two games in the BoardGameGeek ranking, Gloomhaven and Pandemic Legacy: Season 1, both feature cooperative play as well. With epic campaign games like Kingdom: Death Monster and The 7th Continent continuing to build on and develop the mechanism, cooperative games are clearly here to stay, even if they aren’t suitable for every group.

– Image by BGG contributor haslo

Deutscher Spiele Preis 2019 – Time to Vote

Like every other sphere, boardgames also receive awards, the best known of which is probably the Spiel des Jahres. The Deutscher Spiele Preis, or German Game Prize, is slightly less well known, but arguably better reflects the slightly more advanced, “Gamers Games”. There is usually quite a lot of overlap with the recommendations, nominees and winners of the Spiel des Jahres Awards, but the Deutscher Spiele Preis typically rewards a slightly heavier game, often more in line with Kennerspiel des Jahres category. This is especially likely to be true this year as the family Spiel des Jahres award, or “Red Pöppel” nominees, are particularly light. The most recent winners of the Deutscher Spiele Preis include, Azul, Terraforming Mars, Mombasa, The Voyages of Marco Polo, Russian Railroads and Terra Mystica, with only Azul, last year’s winner, featuring strongly in the Spiel des Jahres awards (the first game to win both awards since Dominion in 2009).

– Image by boardGOATS

Game weight is not the only difference between the two awards: The Spiel des Jahres nominees and winners are selected by a committee with a clearly defined list of criteria, whereas the Deutscher Spiele Preis (which is awarded at the Internationale Spieltage, in Essen), is selected by a general vote which is open to anyone, players, journalists and dealers alike. The incoming votes are evaluated by an independent institute and only votes with details of the full name and address are valid (any duplicates are removed). All votes are treated the same with games placed first receiving five points, those placed second receiving four and so on.

– Image by boardGOATS

Only new games from the previous year are included in the ranking, so this year that’s games released since May 2018. Thus anything new at Essen last year or the Spielwarenmesse (Nürnberg) this year, is eligible. This includes Architects of the West Kingdom, Azul: Stained Glass of Sintra (the sequel to last year’s winner Azul), Dice Settlers, Endeavor: Age of Sail, Everdell, Key Flow, Newton, Reykholt, Solenia, and Teotihuacan: City of Gods, as well all the nominees and recommendations for the Spiel des Jahres award, like L.A.M.A., Wingspan and Carpe Diem.

– Image from spiel-messe.com

Voting is open until 31^st July and there are hundreds of free games and tickets for the International Gamedays at Essen to win. It’s not necessary to submit a full list, so why not take the opportunity to vote for your favourite release of the year?

Next Meeting – 25th June 2019

Our next meeting will be on Tuesday, 25^th June, at the Horse and Jockey pub in Stanford-in-the-Vale. As usual, we will be playing shorter games from 7.30pm as people arrive, until 8pm when we will start something a little longer.

This week the “Feature Game” will be Hook!. This is a very quick, silly little game where players are pirates under attack and who are trying to retaliate by catching other pirates, parrots and bottles of rum in the sights of their cannon without injuring themselves. We’ve chosen this game because it is likely to be a quiet night and this gives lots of versatility while allowing plenty of time to play something else.

– Image by boardGOATS

And speaking of pirates and their hooks…

Two pirates, Jeff and Joe, were exchanging salty sea-dog stories when Joe pointed to the hook where Jeff’s hand should have been and asked, “How d’ye get that then me ‘arty?”

Jeff replied conversationally, “Arrrrr, well, I fought Red Beard’s crew and lost me hand in the battle.” He went on, pointing at Joe’s peg-leg, “What about you? What ‘appened to yer leg?”

Joe answered, “Weeeeell, ah was wrestlin’ wi’ a shark and although I got ‘im in the end, ‘ee got me leg first.” There was a pause, then he pointed at Jeff’s patch and asked, “What about yer eye?”

Jeff responded, “Aye, well it was bonny Sundee afteenoon when a ruddy big seagull came by and left ‘is droppings in me eye.”

There was a long silence, but eventually Joe commented, “That’s not as impressive as the others.”

“Aye, ah know,” Jeff answered. “It was me first day with the ‘ook.”

11th June 2019

It was clear from the off that there were going to be two games, the “Feature Game” (the Exploits Expansion from Endeavor: Age of Sail) and something else. That meant there were two things to establish, what the second game was going to be and who was going to play what. Red, on her first visit for ages, had brought the product of a recent successful KickStarter project. Villagers is a card game that has proven quite popular since fulfilment and Red thought the others would enjoy playing it. Most people had played Endeavor and, although it is not usually a very long game, with the expansion there were a few people who ruled themselves out, ultimately making the groups relatively self-selecting.

– Image by boardGOATS

There were two candidate games for the “alternative” table, but as Black pointed out, it was quite possible they would have time to play both if they got on with it, so they did. The first game therefore was Villagers, a card-drafting and tableau building card game. The idea is that players take it in turns to take villager cards from the “road”, then add them to their village tableau. Different villager cards have different advantages; some give money at the end of the game, while others enable players to draw more cards from the road per round or place more cards in their village per round.

– Image by boardGOATS

The clever part of the game are the conditions required before cards can be played. For example, a Blacksmith cannot be added to a village unless there is a miner already present. The cards are then played in a tree structure such that the Blacksmith is placed over the Miner card, superseding any icons depicted on it. There are four types of card, basic villagers (the start of a tree), standard villagers (can only be played on other villager cards), solitary villagers (cards that are not played on other cards and do not support other cards, but are useful in their own right), and special cards that allow players to do special things and break all the rules.

– Image by boardGOATS

The tree structure isn’t the only dependency players have to watch for when placing cards in their village; many villager cards, especially the more valuable ones, require a payment of two gold to another specific villager. The required villager depends on the card, but it could, for example, be a Cooper. The money then sits on that villager card until a scoring round. Ideally, the Cooper would be in the player’s own village, so that the money ultimately remains theirs. If nobody has a Cooper in their village though, the money goes to the bank. The worst situation is where the active player does not have the necessary Cooper and someone else has one in their village, as then the money is given to the opponent,

– Image by boardGOATS

There are two scoring rounds, one at the end, and one a third of the way through – only the simple “gold” scores in the latter, while the final scoring is more comprehensive and includes conditional scoring cards leading to potentially high scores. So, some cards just give gold, while others give an amount of gold for, say, the number of food or cottage icons in the village. The game started quite slowly as people struggled to get their heads round the requirements for playing villager cards. It gradually became clear that increasing the number of cards drawn from the road per round by getting food is critical, an aspect Pine and Lime, failed to appreciate early on in the game. Players can also get a bit stymied if they have high value cards, as they generally don’t then have anything else. Thus, Pine’s village with with a jeweller and nothing much else was pretty useless as the Jeweller gives money (and quite a lot of it too), but only twice during the game.

– Image by boardGOATS

The tree structure seemed to cause some frustration too, as it’s not helpful if one player has a Milkmaid and needs a Grazier (Pine, say) and the person next to them has a Grazier and needs a Milkmaid (not Pine, obviously…). While everyone seemed to struggle, Purple just collected lots and lots of villager cards which she ultimately managed to add to her village giving her lots and lots of money totalling a score of seventy-one. Pine, despite all his moaning about the poor quality of his village, came second with sixty-four.

– Image by boardGOATS

As Endeavor was still underway, the group moved on to the alternative game, Bosk. This was an “Expo Special”, picked up a couple of weeks back at the UK Games Expo at the NEC in Birmingham. Bosk is an archaic term for a small wood or thicket and in the game, players spend the spring, carefully growing their trees, scoring points as hikers enjoy travelling the trails during the summer months. When autumn comes, leaves fall in the ever-changing direction of the wind, guided to cover the terrain and other players’ leaves. Points are awarded in winter for the most coverage of each area in the park. So the game is played in two parts, the first involves placing trees on the game board at the intersections of the grid (spring).

– Image by boardGOATS

Each player has eight trees, each numbered one to four. At the end of spring, each row and column on the board is scored with the player with the highest total in each row or column scoring two points and the player in second place in each case gets one point. The player in last place at this point (in our case, Pine as everyone else was joint first), chooses where to place the wind guide and then chooses one of their number one tree to start shedding its leaves. As it does so, the player chooses one of their “leaf cards” (numbered one to eight) to decide how many leaves it drops. Little wooden leaf-eeples are then placed to form a path from one of the squares next to the tree in the direction wind is blowing, dropping as many leaves as given on the tile, after which, the tree is removed.

– Image by boardGOATS

The wind blows eight times (twice in each of the four different directions), and in each case, the player who went last last time, goes first next time. When paths cross, a leaf is placed on top of previously placed leaves, with a penalty of one leaf paid to the “bank”. Players can also place a squirrel which means players cannot place anything on top, so much hilarity ensued when Pine commented, “I think I’m going to have to put my squirrel down,” to which someone on the next table asked, “Why? Is it ill?!?!” When all the trees are gone, players count up the number of leaves in each of the scoring areas, with five points going to the player with the most leaves in a region, three points to the player with the second largest number of leaves in an area, and if a player is the only one with leaves in an area they get all eight points.

– Image by boardGOATS

Bosk is really beautiful little game and plays quickly with a nice feel. For a really very simple idea there is an awful lot of strategy to consider making it a really solid little game. This was its first outing on a Tuesday, but it is certain it will get more. This time round, Pine won with thirty-eight points, but he was only just ahead of Lime who finished with thirty-six. As they packed up Pine commented that he might have screwed up the scoring or maybe he just did much better on his leaf strewing… Meanwhile on the next table, Endeavor was just coming to an end as well. Playing with the recent Commodore edition, this is another beautifully produced game, that has actually had a few outings in this version and the original edition.

– Image by boardGOATS

The game is played over eight rounds, each consisting of four basic phases: Build, Populate, Payment and Action. There are four technology tracks roughly corresponding to each phase, which dictate what a player can do during that phase. For example, how far along the building track a player is dictates what they can build: the further along they are, the more buildings they have to choose from. Similarly, a player who is further along the population (or culture) track, can move more people into their harbour for use in the Action phase. Payment also increases the number of people available as it moves population markers from the action spaces into the harbour. More importantly, however, it makes the action spaces available again for use later in the round.

– Image by boardGOATS

The first phase consists of passing round the tray of buildings rather like a box of chocolates, but after that, the second and third phases are more or less carried out simultaneously. The guts of the game, however, is the Action phase. In this round, players can place population markers on their buildings to activate them and carry out one of the five actions: Colonise, Ship, Attack, Plunder Assets, and Pay Workers. These are generally based round the central board which is divided up into seven regions representing the seven continents. Each continent comprises several cities, a shipping route and a deck of cards. At the start of the game there is a Trade token on each city and each shipping space, but also on many of the connections between cities (these are taken if a player occupies both cities either side).

– Image by boardGOATS

Players cannot Colonise a city until they have a presence in a region, which they can do by Shipping. In this case, they activate their building that provides the shipping action by placing one population marker on it, then place a second population marker on the shipping track. Thus, players need to have two markers available to be able to Ship. The second population marker is placed in the furthest unoccupied space from the deck of Asset cards in the region of their choice, and the player takes the Trade token on that space. Most trade tokens add to one of the four technology tracks, though a small number provide one off actions instead.

– Image by boardGOATS

Players also need two population markers to Colonise (one for the action and one to occupy the city) and three if they are going to attack an already occupied city (one is collateral damage). Once a player has a presence in a region they can take an Asset card, so long as the number of the top card is not higher than the number of population markers that player has in the region. This is one of the few areas where there has been a rule change between this edition and the first edition: it used to be necessary for the shipping track to have been completely occupied (i.e. the region was “open”) before the Assets of a region could be plundered. This rule changed with the new edition, and now players can plunder at will, as long as they have a presence in the region (they still cannot Colonise until the region is “open” however).

– Image by boardGOATS

Essentially, that’s all there is to the game, but the rules are deceptively simple and, for a game with so very little randomness (only the layout of the Trade tokens on the map), there is a surprising amount of variability. However, with the new interest in the game that came with the new edition, a new Expansion primarily comprising a new set of buildings is currently subject to a crowd funding campaign. The new, Commodore edition came with a couple little extras though, Exploits and Charter Companies, and we wanted to try more of these before considering any new buildings. The Exploits are special conditions that only come into force when both of the regions involved are opened. The idea is that three of these are drawn at random at the start of the game, however, we picked three that were not used last time we played on a Tuesday: Spanish Main (North & South America); Manila Galleons (Far East & North America), and Spice Trade (Africa & India).

Endeavor: Age of Sail - Charter Companies

– Image by boardGOATS

This time, we additionally made the Charter Companies available for the first time. These are special, powerful buildings that a player can build (instead of the usual buildings) as long as they have at least six of their population markers in the given region. Green began by going for cards and targetted North America as it appeared on two of the Exploits and he thought everyone else would be keen to help him out. Blue, who normally focusses on getting buildings first decided to try something a little different and instead went for Population in a very big way. This meant she really struggled getting good buildings, but made up for it with lots of Asset cards. In order to keep them, she had to focus on increasing her influence (the blue and white shields), but this meant she neglected both the building track and Colonising. Black also missed the “building boat” and without the more powerful actions that come with the more advanced buildings, really struggled to make any headway.

– Image by boardGOATS

Ivory had been a little sceptical about playing having played the original edition where the maps were not as “tight” making it less of a struggle. This time it was clear that that was not going to be a problem. Accelerating his Build ability meant that Ivory was able to take a Cartographer which gave him a double Ship action which he used to great effect getting a particularly strong presence in Africa, India and the Far East. This was critical because with the exploit activated, players with one marker in the open sea space for Africa would score an extra point for each disk of his on the Africa shipping track. Moreover, this scoring was also applied to India and the Far East, making very lucrative for him indeed.

– Image by boardGOATS

Ivory was quite convinced that Blue had the game in the bag as she had a lot of points from her Asset cards, however, she knew she had a shortage of Colonies compared to everyone else. As things hadn’t been going according to plan for Green, and nobody seemed to be targetting Asset cards in Europe, he resorted to Slavery so it seemed appropriate that he wasn’t quite in the running for the top spot. Blue who was having a bit of a blonde day, recounted her scores three times, to convince herself that it was in fact a draw as she finished level with Ivory on sixty-nine points. Although both Bosk and Endeavor finished at much the same time, it was too late to play anything else, and as the group settled their bills and packed up, someone pointed out that the next meeting is 25^th June – exactly six month till Christmas. And with that cheery thought, everyone went home.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: Some villages are very inbred.

Next Meeting – 11th June 2019

Our next meeting will be on Tuesday, 11^th June, at the Horse and Jockey pub in Stanford-in-the-Vale. As usual, we will be playing shorter games from 7.30pm as people arrive, until 8pm when we will start something a little longer.

This week the “Feature Game” will be the Exploits Expansion from Endeavor: Age of Sail. Each player represents a growing empire engaged in a glorious endeavour to expand their influence and status at home and across the great oceans of the world. Players earn glory by increasing their scores in Industry, Culture, Finance, and Politics, as well as by occupying cities, controlling connections between cities, and by holding certain Asset Cards and Building Tiles. This deluxe edition of one of our favourite games, Endeavor, was released last year with an expansion, the Exploits, which give players another way of getting points. Although some of the group have played it with the Exploits, we would like to give it another try before the KickStarter for the new, Age of Expansion starts later this month.

– Image by boardGOATS

And speaking of Captain Cook…

Jeff was at chic gathering and struggling to make polite conversation. The person he was talking to was a psychiatrist, so, after a minute or two, Jeff asked him, “Would you mind telling me, how you detect a mental deficiency in somebody who appears completely normal?”

“Nothing is easier,” the doctor replied. “I ask him a simple question, which everyone should answer with no trouble at all. If he hesitates, that tells me just what I need to know.”

“What sort of question?” Jeff asked.

“Well,” replied the psychiatrist, “I might ask a question like ‘Captain Cook made three trips around the world and died during one of them. Which one?'”

Jeff paused a minute and thought for a moment before he replied, “You wouldn’t happen to have another example, would you? I must confess I don’t know much about history.”

28th May 2019

While Pink, Blue and Khaki finished their pizzas, the other early arrivals played a quick game of Coloretto. This is a relatively short game of set collecting which is very popular with the group; it was new to Lime though so needed a quick rules explanation. The idea of the game is that on their turn, players can either pick up a chameleon card from the face down deck and add it to a “truck”, or take a truck (passing for the rest of the round). The innovative part of the game is the scoring which uses the triangular number sequence (one point for the first card, three points for two cards, six points for three cards etc.), with positive points for three sets and negative for the rest. Thus, players need large sets in three different colours and small sets in all the rest.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

With five players, it was relatively hard to make trucks particularly unappealing to everyone, so the negative scores were kept to a minimum. It was quite close at the top as a result, with Black, Lime and Mulberry all in the running. Lime finished with the highest score for his sets totalling thirty, with Mulberry a handful of points behind, but Black had four bonus points and no negatives. In the end, Lime pipped Black by a single point with Mulberry just a couple of points behind that.

– Image by BGG contributor SergioMR

With Coloretto over, everyone finished with their supper and the stragglers all arrived, there was the usual discussion over who would play what. The “Feature Game”, Viticulture with the Tuscany expansion, was always likely to take most of the night, so the question was really who was going to play that and what else was on offer. One of the options suggested was Ticket to Ride with the India map, which was described by Pine as an game where you “just pile people on top of the trains and pack the inside with goats!” Clearly none of our GOATS fancied the inside of a hot carriage and the discussion continued as Ivory, Pink and Blue started setting out Viticulture and Mulberry (having spent some time as a oenologist) dragged Khaki along for the ride.

– Image by boardGOATS

Viticulture is a worker placement game where players plant and harvest grapes then make and trade wine. Although there is nothing especially innovative about the game itself, it is an exceptionally good example of its type and is considered bit of a modern classic as a result. There are two editions, the original Viticulture, and the “Essential Edition“. We usually play with Essential Edition which includes some of the smaller expansions from the original Tuscany (like the Mama and Papa set up cards), and, as the revised edition, is considered to be the definitive version. In this base game, the actions are split into two seasons, Summer and Winter, with visitor cards arriving in the Autumn and extra cards arriving in the Spring. Visitor cards come in two varieties, yellow Summer and blue Winter cards which are played in the different seasons as a special action.

– Image by boardGOATS

The Tuscany expansion messes about with this arrangement with actions in all four seasons, so players have to eke out their meagre supply of workers to last the whole year. In addition to the larger, “expanded” and restructured board, the Tuscany expansion also adds an extra deck of building cards that players can use to create a personal action space or increase the effectiveness of other actions. These can be very powerful if used effectively. Additionally, there is a “influence” board that depicts the regions which players can place “Star-eeples” on to get an instant bonus. If they have the majority in a given region at the end of the game, they also get a small number of bonus points. Finally, Tuscany also adds workers with a special ability, these cost a little more to train, but if used efficiently can more than pay for that over the course of the game.

– Image by boardGOATS

The other major difference between Viticulture and Tuscany is that the game tends to start slower, with players building their vineyard getting all the pieces of their engine together. The game is not terribly complicated in terms of taking actions, but planning is tough and as people new to the game, Mulberry and Khaki struggled a bit to get going. Blue, on the other hand, was out of the traps like a rabbit and got vines planted and harvested with remarkable speed, but then promptly stalled as she desperately needed money, more contracts, and more space in her wine cellar. In contrast, Ivory and Pink were slower to get going because they were carefully planning their strategies.

– Image by boardGOATS

In the early part of the game, nothing much seemed to happen. Blue’s simple, but fast start, got her well in front, while Khaki began by actually going backwards, sacrificing victory points to try to build up his team of workers. Everything else was pretty quiet though, as Ivory was collecting cards and Mulberry concentrated on building. Pink started with the intention of building an irrigation tower and no trellis (to save money), but that was quickly scuppered when every vine he draw after the first required a visit from “Mrs. Trellis of North Wales“. There were plenty of sarcastic comments from the next table as they felt they were well on the way to finishing, while it looked like nobody had made any positive progress except Blue, despite playing for well over an hour.

– Image by boardGOATS

Then suddenly, things began to happen. Pink had sorted out the vine situation, and had purchased a large cellar (to go with the medium cellar he’d started with) which meant he could fulfil some valuable contracts, increasing his residual payments at the end of the round giving him a substantial income in a game where money is always very tight. Then Ivory began his charge for the finish, setting his Wine Press and Guest House to work. He was particularly adept at leveraging his Guest House for points, finding ways to take Visitor cards from other players and turn them into points, and then playing other Visitor cards that enabled him to repeat the action. Mulberry built an Academy that would give her money whenever another player trained a worker, but it was too late in the game as most people had finished training by that point. Khaki’s Fountain was more effective though giving him money every time someone else gave a tour.

– Image by boardGOATS

As the game approached the end, the question was whether Blue was going to get over the line before Pink and Ivory, really started raking in the points. With her trained Salesman who enabled her to full-fill two contracts as part of one action, but had proved fairly useless for most of the game, it looked like she might just make it. Pink was coming up fast and screwed up Blue’s plans on the influence board just for good measure. Khaki and Mulberry suddenly started to make real progress as well, with Khaki making a rapid shift from negative points to lots of points over just a couple of turns. It was Ivory though, who stormed ahead, full-filling several orders in the final round as well picking up an extra five bonus points from the influence board. He finished with a grand total of forty points, ten more than Blue in second place who, in turn, was a single point ahead of Pink.

– Image by boardGOATS

Meanwhile, the second group were playing Maya, an older game where players are taking part in the construction of pyramids in places like Chichen Itza and Palenque. The game is a combination of semi-blind bidding mechanics, special actions, and building up “influence” by building pyramids in the ancient Mayan civilization. The greater the influence, the more gold players get from the Mayan leaders and the aim of the game is to have the greatest pile of gold. Each player starts with an identical hand of cards, ranging from three to eight, representing workers. Players start by using their worker cards to bid for actions. These actions come with a pile of stones, and this is one of the clever parts of the game – players must have enough workers left to move the stones they win or forfeit some of their prize.

– Image by boardGOATS

Players then take turns placing them on the different pyramid locations, placing one stone at a time and starting on the lowest levels. In general, players can only place a single stone per turn, though they can place a second stone if they discard a third stone back into the supply (quarry). When a player completes a level of a pyramid and has the majority of stones on that level, they get a free stone from their supply to place on the next level of that pyramid, thus, clever players can discard a stone to play two, and then receive that discarded stone back immediately to place it higher.

– Image by boardGOATS

Once all the stones have been placed, the pyramids are evaluated. Each level of a pyramid is scored separately, and only those in first and second place receive gold. Where there is a tie, all players get the gold as if they had placed first. At the end of the round, the pyramids decay, and all players who scored gold on any level of has to return one block from that level back to the supply. If this leaves a player with no blocks on a level, all of that player’s stones on higher levels also go back to the supply. The game ends after three rounds.

– Image by boardGOATS

Everyone started off building in Tikal, while Pine and Lime developed Copan and Black and Purple struggled in Uxmal. Palenque was all but ignored by everyone except Purple until the last round when everyone joined her because they were unable to build in the other areas. It was a very tight game and the nature of it meant nobody knew who was wining until the totals had been calculated. There was just six points between first and last, but it was Pine who came out on top this time, one point ahead of Lime who took second place.

– Image by boardGOATS

Viticulture was still going on, so after enjoying a bit of heckling about how the scoreboard hadn’t changed, the group decided to re-visit Bohnanza, this time with an English deck, to reduce Lime’s confusion. This is one of our most played games, with almost everyone very familiar with it. The key part of the game is that players must plant their bean cards in the order they receive them. The only way this fundamental rule can be violated is by trading bean cards with other players. As everyone knows the game so well, it is often very tight with frequent multi-player ties. This time it was also very close, but there was more spread than there often is. On this occasion, the tie was for first place, and it was Black and Pine who finished top with a total of twenty.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: Sometimes slow and steady wins the race.