2nd October 2018

Blue was the first to arrive with Pink, who had come specially to celebrate our sixth birthday. While they were waiting for food they managed a quick game of NMBR 9. This is a very simple game, almost like Tetris where players try to tessellate tiles, building layers on top of layers, with the higher layers scoring more points. It is almost a year since Blue and Pink picked it up at Essen, and since then it has been played repeatedly, an average almost once a month (or every other games night). Mostly we aren’t so keen on multiplayer solitaire games like this, but NMBR 9 is the exception largely because it is so very fast to set up and games are quick to play too making it a great filler. It is a shame it only plays four, because there is no real reason that it couldn’t play a few more. Food arrived really quickly, and we were still placing the final tiles. It was quite close with similar values for the “first floor”, but Blue edged it with a four and a nine on the next layer compared with Pink, who only managed a six.

– Image by boardGOATS

Burgundy arrived soon after, and attacked his ham, eggs ‘n’ chips, eventually followed by Pine, Ivory, Green, and Cobalt (a friend of Green’s who will be moving into the village in a few weeks time). As it was exactly six years since the first games night, we couldn’t let the night pass without some sort of small celebration. So this year we had chocolate brownie cupcakes adorned with meeples to go with the now traditional, the “Birthday Feature Game”, Crappy Birthday. This is a very silly game that we now play exactly once a year at the beginning of October, with some house rules to make it slightly more palatable as it really isn’t our sort of game at all. Strangely though, everyone seems to really enjoy playing it once a year on our birthday. The idea is very simple: everyone has a hand of gift cards, and everyone takes it in turns to “celebrate their birthday”. On a player’s “birthday” they receive a gift from everyone else. These are shuffled, and the “birthday boy” picks the best and worst – the players who gave these get a point and after one year (i.e. after everyone has had a “birthday”), the player or players with the most points win.

– Image by boardGOATS

It is the cards that “make” the game for us: they are brilliant with fantastic comments. For example, Pink was tickled, well, pink, by the “pet vulture” that he gave to Pine, which was “very friendly, but stares at you while you are sleeping”. Pine was quite taken with it too and picked it to be his favourite gift, to go with the “fresh turkey” which was always going to be unpopular with a vegetarian (though might have given him something to feed to the vulture). Burgundy showed an unexpected desire for a set of fluffy dice (thought that might have been more due to the nature of the other gifts than their actual desirability), and Ivory returned the “thoughtful gift” of a set of “camera scales”, which he felt would have been off-putting. Despite his love of Star Wars, Green decided he’d rather have “a suit of armour” than a complete collection of memorabilia . Star wars wasn’t in favour with Cobalt either as he unceremoniously returned the gift of “a Star Wars themed wedding” (though it wasn’t completely clear whether it was the Star Wars theme or the wedding that he was rejecting).

– Image by boardGOATS

There was a brief hiatus while Ivory entertained everyone with a complete rendition of Rod Campbell’s “Dear Zoo” story. Despite being written over thirty-five year ago, nobody else seemed very familiar with the story and everyone was spell-bound as Ivory explained, “I wrote to the zoo to send me a pet. They sent me an elephant, but he was too big, so I sent it back.” A very long list of animals later, we established that the puppy was just perfect and Crappy Birthday continued. The game finished with Pink who fittingly received a real birthday card (it really IS his birthday soon). Blue then tried to persuade him that Chernobyl was now a safe place to visit and full of lots of interesting wildlife, but he wasn’t convinced and much to everyone’s surprise, rejected a visit (and possible nuclear suntan) in favour of “twenty tanning sessions”. With Crappy Birthday done and people just licking the last of the icing off the meeples from the cupcakes, it was time to decide what to play next.

– Image by boardGOATS

Pink was very keen to play either Altiplano or Clans of Caledonia and Ivory and Burgundy were very keen to join them. Time was short and the games are similar lengths, however, Blue, Pink and Burgundy had all played Altiplano, and with it’s similarity to Orléans, it was felt that it would be easier for Ivory to pick up quickly. On the next table, everyone else was trying to decide what to play. With Cobalt new to the group and not able to stay late, they needed a short game that was quick and easy to explain that might be a good introduction to gaming, so in the end, the group settled on Coloretto. The game is very simple, with players drawing a card and adding to one of the available “trucks”; each truck can take a maximum of three cards. Instead of drawing a card players can take a truck and the round is over when everyone has taken a truck. The aim of the game is to collect sets of cards, but while the three largest sets score positive points, everything else gives negative points. The really clever part is the score which is based on the triangular number series, so sets score increasingly well as they get larger (or badly if they score negative points of course) .

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

Cobalt quickly got to grips with the game, but played it safe by taking the bonus score cards. Pine went for a specific set of colours and Green ended up with several that he could build on. As the game progressed, Cobalt continued to play cautiously and kept the number of colours he had small. Green had several colours, but a few sets were building to a significant number. Meanwhile Pine’s attempt to keep to specific colours was failing and although had lots of one colour, just couldn’t get the others he wanted. The final round featured a golden joker which took a little while to work out the rules for. Despite being very pretty, it turned out that it wasn’t such such a good thing after all, especially at the end of the game. Pine ended up with it and took another random card, which didn’t help him, but didn’t hurt him either. It was very close, but in the final scoring, Cobalt’s cautious approach kept his negative points down to just one, but his positive score had also suffered. It was Green that topped the podium though, with five points more than Pine.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

Cobalt and Green were chatting while Pine was side-tracked by the eye-catching alpaca on the neighbouring table. Eventually Cobalt called it a night, and Green and Pine contemplated playing something and had just decided to play a quick game, when Black and Purple arrived. They were delighted to find that cakes had been saved for them (with suitably coloured meeples), and the foursome settled down to a game of Splendor. This is another light, set collecting game that we’ve played a lot. With simple choices, we find it a relatively relaxing game to play and perfect in the circumstances. The idea is that players use gem tokens to buy cards, which in turn provide permanent gems that can be used to buy other cards. Some of the high value cards also give points and players who collect enough of the right gems may earn a visit from a Noble giving them more points – first player to fifteen points is the winner.

– Image by BGG contributor zapata131

Everyone followed their own strategy, but it looked like opal (black) and diamond (white) gem cards were the ones that everyone would need due to the Nobles and very few blue sapphires and green emeralds. Purple managed to corner the market for diamonds causing everyone difficulties. Green was building up red rubies and opals and also going for high scoring cards and Black was managing to gain lots of opals and was quietly beavering away. Pine seemed to find himself in all sorts of trouble as he just couldn’t get the cards he needed with everyone else nabbing them just before him. It was beginning to look like Black was going to win, but suddenly Purple’s hoarding of diamond gems paid dividends as she was able to grab nobles one after the other and reached the magic fifteen points before anyone else, and exactly one turn ahead of Black as it turned out.

– Image used with permission of boardgamephotos

Meanwhile, on the neighbouring table, Altiplano had been going for some time. It had been the “Feature Game” a few weeks back and everyone had really enjoyed it as it gave a new spin on the “bag building” mechanism used in another game we are very familiar with, Orléans. The games are similar in that each player has their own player board, draws “workers” out of their bag and then plays them onto their board before everyone takes in it in turns to carry out the associated actions (one at a time). The biggest fundamental difference between the two games is that in Altiplano, when tokens are used, they don’t go straight back in the bag as in Orléans, instead, they go into a separate box. The tokens then only go back into the bag once everything has been used and the bag is empty. This reduces the lottery element and as a result the game is a lot less forgiving to a poorly controlled bag, but players have much more control if they can find a way of using it.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor JackyTheRipper

The games are visually very different too, with everything set out on a central player board in Orléans, which also features a map which players are trying to navigate and build on. There is no map, in Altiplano, but there is still a spacial element to the game: the central play area is made of locations arranged in a circle and only certain actions can be carried out in each one. For example, if players want to sell goods, they must be at the Market, and must have the relevant goods placed in the Market spaces on their player board. Before or after their action, players can move, but movement is very restricted. Players begin with one card that can move up to three spaces in either direction, but they can also “buy” additional moves. And this is where we got the rules wrong. The correct rules are that players can place a food token onto one of the movement spaces allowing the player to travel just one space (recycling the food into their box). When these spaces are upgraded with carts, there is still a cost of one food, but now players can move up to three spaces. The rules error was that players couldn’t use the extra movement spaces until they had got a cart, and then they could only travel one space.

– Image used with permission of boardgamephotos

Blue was sure something wasn’t right, but was too busy checking other things and answering questions that she didn’t get to find what the problem was until the game was nearly finished. At this point, Pink informed everyone that he hadn’t been listening to the rules outline and had just been “playing correctly”. The problem with this is that in a game as tight as Altiplano, even the smallest of changes can have unpredictable consequences. Last time, Green had been taking a token when he bought Cottage Cards (in effect using them as Canoe Cards); although he had only benefited from a couple of extra tokens, he would have been able to use them several times, and as one of them was Stone it would have helped him to get extra tokens out of his bag, and taking the last Glass token ended the game prematurely etc. Thus, in this game in particular it is impossible to unravel mistakes and try to work out what effect it might have had, though both Blue and Burgundy felt they would have benefited hugely had they been able to take those extra moves.

– Image used with permission of boardgamephotos

Aside from that, the game was mostly played according to the rules. Pink went for a warehouse strategy concentrating on trying to obtain high value goods, in particular Silver and Wool. Burgundy really struggled at the start and in the end just tried to get hold of any resources he could, and then send them off to his warehouse. Blue started off really well, but her game stalled in the second half when she ended up with a lot of stuff in her bag that ended up blocking spaces she wanted to use and slowed down the rate she was drawing the tokens she wanted. While trying to sort out the mess she commented, “I’m going to stuff my whorehouse,” which gained a lot of sniggers from the neighbouring table. The game was a bit of a mystery to Ivory and he kept saying that he could see how the game worked, but not where he was going to get any points from. That said, he managed to get nearly a hundred of them giving him a very creditable score for a first try especially given the rules error and the haste they had been explained in. He probably raised the biggest laugh of the night as well when he sighed deeply and announced, “I think I’m just going to have to get my wood out!”

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor JackyTheRipper

Blue had fulfilled more contracts than anyone else and had the vast majority of the glass, but it wasn’t enough. It was very tight between Pink and Burgundy in first and second place though—Burgundy had more goods in his warehouse, but Pink’s were generally of a higher value. In fact it was so close that it called for a recount, just in case. It turned out that the scores had been correct though and Burgundy’s hundred and fifty-two, just edged out Pink who finished three points behind. Comparing the totals to those achieved last time showed how much everyone has improved since the winning score for that game was a hundred and three. The reason for that is probably largely the fact that everyone is getting better at controlling the contents of their bag. As Pink pointed out, it really is critical to get rid of things that aren’t wanted, otherwise you end up in the mess Blue got herself into.

– Image used with permission of boardgamephotos

Learning Outcome: Don’t put wooden meeples on cakes, they are too chewy…

Next Meeting – 2nd October 2018

Our next meeting will be on Tuesday 2^nd October, 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.

It will be our sixth birthday, so as is now traditional, the “Feature Game” will be Crappy Birthday. This is a silly little filler/party game that we can mess about with while people are eating cake allowing us to play something longer once everyone has arrived and finished food and the inevitable Essen discussions.

– Image by boardGOATS

And speaking of birthdays…

It was Jeff’s birthday and, as it was a special birthday, his brother had bought him a special present. Before opening the gift, Jeff shook it slightly, and noticed that it was wet in the corner. Touching his finger to the wet spot and tasting it, he asked, “Is it a bottle of wine?”

His brother shook his head, “No…” So, again, Jeff touched his finger to the box and tasted the liquid.

“A bottle of Scotch then?” he asked, beginning to get all excited – this was way better than he’d expected. Again his brother shook his head though, “No, not a bottle of Scotch…”

Eventually, Jeff said, “OK, I give in, what is it?”

His brother paused for effect, before answering, “A puppy!”

Now We Are Six – Happy Birthday to Us!

BoardGOATS is Six Years Old Today!

Yes, unbelievably boardGOATS is still here after six years, still meeting fortnightly in the Horse and Jockey in Stanford-in-the-Vale. Of the six people who were present at the first meeting so long ago, five are still coming; the group has grown, but still has the lovely, friendly, social feeling we cherish. We would like to thank to everyone who has come along in the past and in particular, all those travel regularly from further afield. Without you, boardGOATS wouldn’t be the success it is, so we really appreciate it. We’d also like to thank the folks at the Jockey who have always been so supportive, and let us have so much fun in their back room.

18th September 2018

While Blue and Burgundy finished their tea, Pine, Black and Purple squeezed in a quick game of Coloretto. This is a simple little game and inspiration for the more popular (though arguably not better), Zooloretto. A set collecting game, the idea is that on their turn, the active player either takes a truck, or turns over the top card of the deck and places it on one of the trucks. Each truck has three spaces and players are trying to stack the trucks so that when it is their they can get what they want. In practice, the game doesn’t work like this at all, and players spend most of the time trying to avoid giving everyone else a combination they want. At the end of the game, players choose three sets to score positively, while all the others score negatively.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor of punkin312

The clever part is that the score (positive or negative) depends on the number of cards, according to the Triangular series. This means that one card only scores one point (positive or negative), but a set of six will score twenty-one points. This players generally don’t mind lots of cards that aren’t part of their three top sets, so long as they are all different colours; the problem comes when they have sets of a significant size… Purple started off best as Black ended up with too many negatively scoring cards. Pine put up quite a fight, but in the end Purple was too strong and won the game with forty-seven points, ten more than Pine in second place.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor SergioMR

Once food had been dealt with, the usual debate as to who wanted to play what began. Aside from Pine and Purple, everyone was keen to play the “Feature Game”, Endeavor: Age of Sail, the new, deluxe edition of Endeavor, a game we’ve enjoyed a few times. The new edition is particularly shiny with lots of KickStarter exclusives, including a new game element, “Exploits”. Pine and Purple were a bit reluctant as they thought it would be very “thinky”, but everyone who had played it before tried to reassure them that it although it was a little challenging, it wasn’t a long game and was usually over in an hour or so. Things were complicated by the fact that it was a quiet night and with only six people, we didn’t want to leave the “two Ps” in a pod by themselves as that’s a bit unfriendly. We had two copies of the game, so Blue, who was a little under the weather volunteered to teach them the basic game (i.e. without the “Exploits”).

– Image used with permission of boardgamephotos

There are seven rounds, each with four phases which roughly correspond to the four progress tracks on each individual player’s board. In the first phase, Building, each player chooses a building from one of five levels, depending on their position on their industry (Building) attributes track. Everyone starts at zero, so everyone has to pick level one buildings in the first round. The buildings give players abilities and/or actions as well as helping them along the other attribute tracks, In the first game, Blue went first and started by picking a Workshop, which gives two extra industry points (and she hoped might let he build more exciting buildings earlier); Purple followed and also took a Workshop. Pine decided to go for something different and picked a Shipyard which gave him one step on the Culture (Population) track and additionally gave him a shipping action.

– Image used with permission of boardgamephotos

The second phase can be carried out simultaneously and each player moves population tokens form their supply into their Harbour space where they need to be so they can use them later. At the start of the game, everyone could take two population disks, even Pine with his Shipyard as it only added one step along the Culture track and it needed two before he could take an extra. That was to change quickly though, as Pine concentrated on building up his Culture and the number of population tokens he could take as he felt this would give him extra actions. In order to make best use of it though, he would also need the buildings and the ability to vacate them so he could use them again. Buildings are vacated in the third phase, where the player’s Wealth is used to pay the population and move markers off the buildings back to the Harbour. Again all players can do this simultaneously and obviously nobody could do anything on the first round though this aspect becomes increasingly important as the game progresses.

– Image used with permission of boardgamephotos

The final phase is the Actions. This is the guts of the game, and is also the most complicated part. The idea is players take it in turns to carry out actions by either placing Population discs onto their buildings or playing action tokens they have picked up during a previous round. There are five basic actions: Ship, Occupy, Attack, Pay workers and Draw a card from one of the colonies. At the start of the game the only action available was really Occupy, through the Colonial House that everyone started with. This enabled Purple, Blue and Pine to place a second population disk in one of the cities and take the Asset disk that was placed there at the start of the game. In the first round, there really doesn’t seem to be much in the way of decision making in this game, but those few decisions are really critical as everything builds on them. For example, each city has an Asset disk placed at random during set up. These enable players to progress along the Asset tracks and the associated abilities enable them to build and carryout more actions.

– Image used with permission of boardgamephotos

Shipping for example, involves placing more population disks, this time on shipping routes to the colonies. These also give Asset disks, but the real benefit comes when they are completed and the region is “open”. At this point, players can Occupy cities in the region, and also Draw cards from the associated deck, giving more Asset points as well as Glory (Victory) points. At the end of the game each city is worth one (or in some cases two) points, but if a player controls two connected cities, they also control the link between them, each of which is worth another point. For this reason, players might want to Attack a city occupied by another player. This is expensive (war always causes collateral damage) and both players lose a population disk as a result, but fighting can be worth while. Both Blue and Pine had the wherewithal for attacking, but thanks to mutually assured destruction, they just sat and watched each other for a round or so until Blue decided she really wanted one of Pine’s cities and used her Fortress to pounce.

– Image used with permission of boardgamephotos

Pine got his revenge shortly after, with his Barracks, but the battles had been costly (even to Pine with his large population), and the protagonists retreated and licked their wounds. While the others were playing “Tit for Tat”, Purple had been making progress on the shipping track in the Far East and had started in South America. The fighting wasn’t over yet though, and Purple had a go at Pine who promptly got his own back. Before the game Blue, Green and Burgundy had all agreed that Endeavor was a surprisingly short game, but it was clear that Purple and Pine weren’t really convinced. Before they knew it though, it was time to add up the final scores. Points were available for progress on the Asset tracks, for occupying cities, for occupying linked cities, and on some of the cards. The catch though is that at the end of every round, players have to check they are far enough along the Influence track to be able to keep all their cards. The problem is, that for every card that is returned, all the assets it provides are lost as well. As Blue and Pine had cards to return, there was a bit of Maths to be done to work out which was the best card to lose. Given that Pine and Purple had never played before (and Blue had been a bit under the weather so her explanation wasn’t the greatest), it was a remarkably close game. Experience told, however, and Blue finished in first place a little ahead of Pine who was just very pleased that nobody had taken advantage of the slavery option.

– Image used with permission of
boardgamephotos

Meanwhile on the next table they were still playing, though the final round was just coming to an end. Everyone in this game had played it before (though Black needed a reminder of the rules), so they chose to play with the new Exploits. By random selection the “Imperialism” (some routes “blocked” and give bonuses points if they are opened); “The Haitian Rebellion” (enables cards to be removed from the deck either to stop others getting them, or to clear the way for a better card; points are awarded if enough cards are removed), and “The Jesuit Missionary” (in exchange for attributes players can build churches in cities for extra points, or even in empty cities and then immediately occupy them, with extra points for each church built). Burgundy chose to start the game with the new Merchant Dock building on the other reverse of the Colonial House starting tile. This gave him an extra coin and a shipping action, while Black and Green opted to stick with the traditional building which gives an occupy action. Burgundy used his alternate strategy to steal a march on shipping into Africa, while the others began building a presence in Europe. Both Black and Burgundy quickly went for the extra bricks from the buildings to move up the Building track while Green tried to expand his Shipping options.

– Image used with permission of boardgamephotos

With his Merchant Dock, Burgundy was able to quickly build some of the bigger buildings and take a controlling stake in Africa, although both Black and Green managed to sneak in and maintain a presence. Green concentrated on linking European cities gaining a lot of population bonuses and so always had enough people to do all his actions, especially when he built a Bank giving him an “coin” so could always pay his workers. Burgundy was the first to be nasty by attacking Black in taking the linking token. By the middle of the game Black and Burgundy were able to build level three and level four buildings, while Green was still stuck level two buildings only. His population was soaring though and and the on/off war between Black and Burgundy was keeping their holding back their populations somewhat. Burgundy and Green went on to open two new regions (Caribbean and South America), followed shortly by Black trying for North America.

– Image used with permission of boardgamephotos

During the latter part of the game, Green was the only player in South America, while everyone had a presence in all the other regions. Burgundy dominated in the Caribbean though and Black had a strangle-hold on North America and India, and soon followed them with Asia. As a result of these regions being opened, the Exploits became “open” as well. Burgundy and Green were first up with the “Hiatian Revolution”, but initially only Burgundy took the opportunity to utilise it. Later Green opened “The Jesuit Missionary” and then used that to great effect and suddenly he had cities and connections all over the board. Although he could not get a particular link he wanted as someone else was occupying the city, he suddenly realised that he did have a spare cannon token and could actually make use of his (by now) vast population and claim the city for himself. Black was the only one who was able to use the ‘Imperialism’ exploit and managed to clear a couple of blockages in the last couple of rounds.

– Image used with permission of boardgamephotos

And then suddenly the game was over. It looked like a Green was home and dry as his board presence was very high, but Black had a large number of points from his cards and Burgundy had progressed well along his Asset tracks. In the end, however, it was Green that scored the most by a reasonable margin (even after removing the four extra Wealth points he had forgotten to discard in the last round, due to card losses). But what about the exploits? They had not come into play until the last couple of rounds and seemed to be of varying impact. The “Jesuit Missionary” had clearly been used to great effect by Green, not so much for the points for the churches (a maximum five), but for the ability to claim cities and their respective tokens and the link tokens, which of course enabled even more scoring. Maybe if someone else had been able to get a presence in South America and also use it, it might not have felt quite so powerful.

– Image used with permission of boardgamephotos

The “Haitian Rebellion” was sometimes helpful to remove unwanted lower point cards, but it was worth nothing when it came to end game scoring. Only Black was able to make use of the “Imperialism”, but it was so late in the game it only gave him a couple of extra points and not really enough extra tokens, though it may have had a more positive effect had it been earlier in the game. Overall though, the Exploits were a nice addition that did not detract from the feel and essence of the base game, but changed it enough (in the end) to notice their presence and draw them into the game. With fifteen in total and only three used per game, there are a lot to try (and there is also the extra mini expansion with some extra useful buildings as well). In conclusion, with nice pieces and something new, this KickStarter edition has really breathed new life into a old great game, and we are likely to be playing it for a little while longer yet.

– Image by boardGOATS

With Endeavor over, Green wanted an early night, but there was still time for one more game. As Blue had picked up Pink’s new Spanish copy of Bohnanza from last time, there was really only one game to play. The first challenge was getting the setup right for five – it turns out that the Spanish edition is a little different and the question was whether Blue’s Spanish was up to the job. She muddled through and everyone was only slightly confused by the different bean names. Nobody needed reminding of the rules once we’d got going (plant one bean, and another if you like before turning over two cards from the deck and planting or trading them, make any extra trades you can from your hand and draw cards from the deck, but DON’T rearrange your hand!). Unusually, it wasn’t as tight as this game often is; Burgundy and Pine did well and made the podium, but in the absence of Red, Blue finished in front with twenty two.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: boardGOATS don’t approve of Slavery.

Boardgames in the News: Stop that Goat!

Yesterday, a young female West Caucasian tur, a kind of mountain goat, made her Great Escape from Paignton Zoo in Devon. Just like Steve McQueen (but without the aid of a motorcycle), she jumped a fence and disappeared into a nearby dense wooded area. Staff and police have so far failed to catch her, but despite her horns she is a naturally timid goat and is not thought to be dangerous. Apparently she is not making her way to Oxfordshire to join us for out 6th birthday party on Tuesday as she has been seen and “herd” in the local area and zoo staff are trying to entice her back with a few tasty morsels. Maybe they should just try smiling at her…?

– Image from twitter.com

Deutscher Spiele Preis – 2018

This week the The Deutscher Spiele Preis, or German Game Prize list was announced with first prize going to Azul. Typically the Deutsche Spiele Preis rewards a slightly heavier game than the the Spiel des Jahres awards, but for the first time since Dominion in 2009, one game took both awards. This year we haven’t played many of the games on either list, but our first game of Azul was shortly after it’s release at Essen last year and our local groups have played the spots off it since. So, it is no surprise to us that it has been recognised by both the Spiel des Jahres Jury and the voters from the industry’s stores, magazines, professionals and game clubs, as well as taking the French award at Cannes, the As d’Or and the Origins “Best Family Game of the Year”.

– Image used with permission of boardgamephotos

Other games that featured on the top ten list included the winner of the Kennerspiel des Jahres award, Die Quacksalber von Quedlinburg (currently only available in German) and one of the runners-up, Heaven & Ale. The Mind, which received a nomination for the Spiel des Jahres Award, also featured in the top ten, as did the inevitable Pandemic Legacy: Season 2. Other than Azul, the only game we’ve played is Altiplano, and that squeaked in at number ten, but Rajas of the Ganges and Clans of Caledonia may feature in the not too far distant future. The Deutscher Spiele Preis for Best Children’s game went to Memoarrr!. The prizes will be awarded at the Internationale Spieltage, Essen.

– Image used with permission of
BGG contributor Vacabck

Next Meeting – 18th September 2018

Our next meeting will be on Tuesday, 18^th September, 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 Endeavor: Age of Sail, the new, deluxe edition of one of our favourite games, Endeavor. Each player represents a growing empire engaged in a glorious endeavor 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. Although it is quite “thinky”, it usually doesn’t take all that long to play so there should be time for a few other games too.

– 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.”

4th September 2018

Blue, Red, Burgundy and newcomer, Mulberry, were finishing their food when Pink arrived after a long drive from the north-east. While he was waiting for his food he opened a very special present Red had brought back from Spain for him. Pink and Blue have quite a few games and for various reasons there are one or two that they have multiple copies of. However, there is one game that they have many, many copies of. Ironically it is a game Pink doesn’t even like playing very much, and yet, it has become a bit of “a thing” that every time Pink goes to Essen he comes back with yet another copy (ideally in a different language, but often just another German copy). Red has strong opinions about this particular game though, and believes that by far the best language to play it in is Spanish, so kindly brought Pink a copy back from Spain to add to his burgeoning collection. As he began to unwrap it, Pink took a few moments to realise what it was, but was really touched by this very special gift of Bohnanza.

– Image by boardGOATS

There wasn’t time to play it before food arrived, then everyone else was turning up and the “who’s going to play what” debate began. The “Feature Game”, Keyflower with the Farmers expansion had been Pink’s request and Keyflower is one of Blue’s favourite games, so they were a bit of a foregone conclusion. They were quickly joined by Burgundy who is also very fond of the game, and Ivory who was keen to see if the expansion changed the balance and the strategies available. Since that was likely to be the long game, they got on with it while everyone else sorted themselves out. Keyflower itself is not a complicated game mechanistically, though it has an awful lot of depth. Over four seasons, players are simply taking it in turns to bid for tiles to add to their village or use tiles available in the villages or the central display. The clever part is that bidding and using tiles are both done with meeples as currency and players must “follow suite”, that is to say, use the same colour if the tile has already been activated.

– Image by boardGOATS

In Keyflower, the depth is generated by the actions available on from the tiles and their interaction, added to the fact that except when playing with a full compliment of six, only a subset are used, and these are drawn at random. This means that one of the most important aspects of game play is to keep as many options open as possible since everything is likely to change in the final round. This is not only because some tiles don’t appear, but also the fact that there is always someone who will make it their business obstruct even the best laid plans. Thus it is vital to have at least two ways ways out. Adding The Farmers expansion exacerbates this as it introduces lots more tiles so each one is less likely to be revealed. This is a potential problem when trying to “play with the expansion” as it is perfectly possible that none of the Farmer tiles are introduced into the game. To prevent this, some tiles were drawn explicitly from the Farmers set.

– Image by boardGOATS

The Farmers expansion doesn’t change game play much, it just adds depth by the addition of farm animals as another means to score points. The idea is that animals are kept in the fields that are formed by the roads in a village. Each field that is occupied scores points depending on the type of animal or animals in it. Thus each field with sheep in it scores one point, each field with pigs scores two and each with with cows scores three points. These scores are increased for villages with special tiles, like the Weaver, which increases the sheep score to three per field. Animals in a field another of the same type breed at the end of each season and can be moved in a similar way to resources. The expansion also introduces Corn to the game, which allows players to enhance their movement actions. Otherwise, the game with the expansion plays in much the same way as the basic Keyflower game, takes a similar amount of time and requires a similar blend of tactical decision making and strategic planning.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor garyjames

Meanwhile, everyone else had divided themselves into two groups of three and had begun to play. Pine joined Red and Mulberry in a game of Finca. Pine had played it before, but a long time ago so Blue took time out from setting up Keyflower to explain how to it worked. It’s a very simple game of set collection with beautiful wooden fruit that’s now nearly ten years old. At its heart is an interesting rondel mechanism. On their turn, players choose one of three possible actions: move around the rondel and collect fruit; use a donkey cart to deliver fruit; or carry out an action with one of the special, single use tokens that each player starts the game with. There are some lovely features about the game. For example, players move as many spaces round the rondel as there are workers on the space they started on and the number of fruit they get depends on the number of workers on the space they finish on. As players have four workers each, there are lots of factors to consider when choosing which worker to move.

– Image by BGG contributor kneumann

Investing wisely is the key to the game, and Pine went for variety while Mulberry specialised more, particularly in figs and oranges. It was the figs and oranges that won the day with Mulberry finishing with fifty-one points, just four ahead of Red who’d had lots of fruity fun with Finca. With that finished, Red spotted Yardmaster in a bag, one of her favourite games, and decided to introduce Mulberry to it. It is quite a simple game and was described by Mulberry as “UNO with trains”. Players are building a locomotive by drawing cargo cards and using them to buy railcar cards from the four face up cards in the middle. The game was very close, but it was Red’s experience that was key, giving her a two-point winning margin over Mulberry in second place. With that done, they moved onto another old favourite, 6 Nimmt!.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor moonblogger

6 Nimmt! gets played a lot, but it’s unusual that we play it with so few players. The idea is that everyone chooses a card and then players add them to one of the rows, in ascending order adding them to the row ending in the highest card that is below the card they are playing. The catch is that when a sixth card is added to a row, that player picks up the first five cards. The game really is at its best with more players where the simultaneous card selection adds mayhem. They just played the one round; perhaps Mulberry misunderstood and thought the idea was to collect “nimmts”, but either way, she top scored with twenty-one – quite an achievement with only three players and only one round! Red did rather better and finished the winner with just two “nimmts”.

– Image by boardGOATS

On the neighbouring table, Green had joined Black and Purple and they started out with this year’s Spiel des Jahres winner, Azul. This is a really an abstract game with only a loose theme of tiling a palace, but unusually, nobody seems to mind and we’ve played the game a lot with multiple copies in the group. The game is really just a set collection game, similar to Finca and Yardmaster, but with an added spacial factor as tiles have to be placed to score points. Tiles are chosen from “factories” with those that aren’t taken going into a central pool. Since players can only take one colour at a time and must always take all the tiles of that colour in that location, they can easily end up with not quite enough, or even too many scoring negative points. Although it is not really an aggressive game, it is remarkable how much damage players can do to each other. Landing too many tiles is bad, but it is arguably worse to get “not quite enough” as it inhibits options in the next round too and therefore can affect the whole game. As we’ve played it a lot, we all have a good understanding of how to play, so unless someone gets things very wrong, games are often close, making them quite tense affairs. This was no exception, with Purple just taking the honours with sixty-three points.

– Image used with permission of boardgamephotos

To alleviate the stress of Azul, the trio moved on to play Om Nom Nom, a light “dice-chucker” This needs a similar sort of double think to 6 Nimmt!. The idea is that the board is seeded with dice populating the lower levels of three separate food chains. Then players simultaneously select an animal card to play, populating the higher levels of the food chains. The idea is that cards played at the top of a food chain will eat those immediately beneath it. So if there is a juicy bunch of carrots rolled, is it best to play the rabbit and risk getting eaten by a fox, or is it better to play a fox and gamble on everyone else being tempted to play rabbit cards? Often the wisest move is not to get involved, but if everyone adopts that approach, the carrots get left and everyone is now playing in the more confined space of two food chains. Sometimes the game is very tight, but this was not one of those times. Black took five cheeses in one round and finished some twenty points ahead of everyone else.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor msaari

The other games were still going and nobody fancied anything particularly taxing, so after a brief hiatus, Splendor got the nod. Yet another set collecting game, it is also very simple and surprisingly popular in our group. There is a remarkable amount of thought necessary for the apparently simple choose three different tokens or buy a card. Many people seem to think it is a trivial game, but for us, it has the right balance of strategy and tactical thinking to make it the perfect game when people are tired but still want something that provides a little bit of interest. We’ve played it a lot, and almost inevitably, Burgundy wins. One of the factors in choosing the game was the guarantee that he wouldn’t win this time as he was engaged elsewhere. In the event, it was another close game, with Green and Black very close to finishing, but Purple just getting to fifteen points first and ending the game before they could catch her – her second win of the night.

– Image used with permission of boardgamephotos

We were about an hour into our respective games and Blue was concentrating deeply on her next turn in Keyflower, when her village was suddenly and unexpectedly improved by the addition of a very fine chocolate cake complete with candles. Much to her embarrassment, it was also accompanied by singing. There was a brief interlude while Blue blew out her candles and cut up the cake, admired her quite a-llama-ing card, everyone consumed the really rather delicious cake (Waitrose finest no less), and Burgundy made sure there wasn’t even a pattern left on his plate. And with all that done, the games continued.

– Image by boardGOATS

Keyflower continued after cake and the strategies were beginning to become clear. Ivory, Blue and Pink were going for animals, while Burgundy’s plans had been undermined by both Blue and Ivory and was trying to make something from his very, very small village. With the arrival of Winter, players had to put in their choice of the tiles they’d been given at the start. Much to Ivory’s disgust, someone had put in the Dairy which increases the score for fields with cows in them. Since neither the Cow Shed tile nor the Ranch tile had been drawn in Autumn, nobody had any cows so the Dairy was a waste of a Winter tile. This meant there was even more competition for the other tiles, and there weren’t many of those as players can put only one tile into the mix. Burgundy got his Key Market which nobody else had any real interest in, Blue took the Hillside, but lost out on the lucrative Truffle Orchard to Pink.

– Image by boardGOATS

Ivory took the Mercer’s Guild and the Scribes after a brief tussle with Blue. It was quite tight with everyone getting points from different places and it was clear the tiles everyone picked up in the final round made all the difference. Ivory, Blue and Burgundy had spread their points about, while Pink put all his eggs (or rather pigs) in one basket, but it paid off, giving him a massive forty points and seventy-three points overall, four more than Blue in second place. Everyone had enjoyed playing with the expansion, particularly Ivory who felt it had added more depth. Although Ivory had to go, there was just time for a quick game of 6 Nimmt!, so Pine took his place and the foursome played a couple of hands. In the first round Burgundy and Pine competed for the highest score with twenty-five and twenty-seven points respectively. In the second round, Pine picked up what might be a record score of forty-five. At the other extreme, Blue managed to keep her score down to eleven, and added to the three in the first round that gave her a clear victory—just in time for her birthday at the end of the week.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: Sometimes a pig strategy brings home the bacon!

Next Meeting – 4th September 2018

Our next meeting will be on Tuesday, 4^th September, 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 Farmers expansion to one of our favourite games, Keyflower. The expansion introduces sheep, cows and pigs which players keep in the space between the roads in their village, as well as wheat to feed them with.

– Image by boardGOATS

And talking of farmers…

A Jeff was driving down a country road, when he spotted a farmer standing in the middle of a huge pasture. He pulled over to the side of the road and watched: the farmer was just standing there, doing nothing, looking at nothing. A little concerned that he there might be something wrong, Jeff got out of the car, walked all the way out to the farmer and asked him, “Are you OK?”

The farmer replied, “Of course, I’m fine.”

Jeff could see that although the farmer was behaving oddly, there was clearly nothing wrong. His concern had just given way to curiosity though. He hesitated, but he couldn’t just leave it and walk away. “So, if you don’t mind, what are you doing?”

“I’m trying to win a Nobel Prize,” answered the farmer.

Jeff was non-the-wiser, so continued, “But how?”

The Farmer grinned, “Well, I heard they give the Nobel Prize to people who are out standing in their field…”

21st August 2018

Amid fears of a shortage of people, Burgundy dined alone until he was joined by Green who (unusually) also ordered some food. While discussing likely numbers Pine appeared, shortly followed by Green’s food and then Ivory. Once Burgundy had finished his meal he joined Pine and Ivory in a short game of Love Letter. This is the archetypal micro game where players draw a card to give them a hand of two and then choose which one to play, with the aim of knocking everyone else out and/or being the last player remaining or the one with the highest card. With only sixteen cards in the deck and each round taking only a couple of minutes, it provides an excellent little filler that can be stopped at almost any time.

– Image by boardGOATS

In the first round Pine was knocked out early, but Ivory caught Burgundy holding the Princess. In the second round, Burgundy was knocked out early leaving Pine and Ivory to try to outwit each other. It all went to pot for Ivory though when he got confused as to which cards were played and thought he had to reveal his hand showing everyone that that he had been caught with the Princess. He didn’t have to discard his hand, but what’s been seen, can’t be unseen, so when Pine drew a Guard, it was inevitable that he would “guess” correctly that Ivory had the Princess. There was just time for one last round (which Pine won) before Green disposed of his empty platter and Black and Purple arrived. So Love Letter ended with Pine the winner.

– Image used with permission of boardgamephotos

With six players and the “Feature Game”, Lancaster, playing a maximum of five, the group split into two, with Ivory and Burgundy joining Green for a little medieval fun. Although Burgundy and Green had played it quite a lot over the last two and a half years, Ivory was new to the game so rules run-down was needed. The idea is that players take it in turns to place their knights in one of three places: in the shires; in their castle, or in the wars in France. Once the knights have been placed, players then vote on and evaluate “the Laws” which give players a benefit just before they get their their rewards for knight placement. After five rounds, the player with the most points wins.

– Image used with permission of boardgamephotos

Once the game was set up and rules explanation was over, we started – the first time we have played it with three, and it did play slightly differently. With only two Nobles per County it was going to be a real scrap to get them. Ivory went for a castle improvement strategy, Green tried to bag those few Nobles and Burgundy went for conflicts in France. Overall there was not a huge amount of conflict in the counties with so few players. In round one Green ended up with two upgrades and took his level two Knight straight to level four which gave him access to higher level counties that were out of the reach of the other two. This helped him gain the nobles he wanted, but in the next round he sent the valuable level four Knight off to the wars in France, to help in a level seven & eight conflict that needed the firepower.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor kilroy_locke

There still wasn’t much conflict in the Shires, except for one where Burgundy knocked Ivory’s level one Knight out with another level one Knight and a squire. Ivory just accepted it and went elsewhere. There was a little more conflict during rounds three and four, but not much. Again it was Burgundy picking on Ivory, although Ivory put up more of a fight this time. Green did not make effective use of his voting influence and Burgundy was becoming a threat. By regularly taking the ‘free’ Noble bonus when entering conflict in France, he had started to catch Green in the total number of Nobles.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor aleacarv

Finally, in round there more conflict, though still not as much as we usually get in four and five player games. Every one had managed to increase the number and value of their Knights. Ivory had also managed to gain three castle improvements and no longer needed to place any Knights there. Burgundy and Ivory entered into a savage battle over a level four County which would give the victor the chance to gain two nobles, and lost several squires in the process. It didn’t stop there either as they fought over a couple of other counties that seemed a good benefit in this final round. Just when it all seemed settled with Ivory coming out on top, Green placed his last Knight with a whole bunch of squires in the level four county. Neither Burgundy nor Ivory had the “squire-power” remaining to dislodge him, so instead they entered into a new round of conflict in other Counties.

– Image used with permission of
BGG contributor punkin312

In the end we realised that all the current Laws would benefit everyone all equally, and the new ones were not much help either, but we voted anyway. When it came to dishing out the rewards, both Burgundy and Green realised they had made a mistake, forgetting that they wouldn’t get the Knight upgrades they needed for the reward until after reward had been evaluated. Not that it made a huge difference as the scores were all quite well spaced already. During the reward taking in the counties Ivory realised he had taken both Nobles from one county, which was against the rules (all nobles must be from different counties). There wasn’t a lot that could be done, but he insisted on putting it back and so the others suggested he take back his three coins as well. Burgundy did point out that he and Green may have done something different as they had both wanted this one too. These things happen sometimes though, and it is “only a game” after all.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

In final scoring Ivory won the points for the most improved castle, Green won the points for the most powerful Knights, and Burgundy and Green both had one more Noble than Ivory (who had grabbed a load in that final round). Packing up, we discovered that three of the laws had been left in the bags (one of each of two, three & four class). We had commented how we had seem to get to the last round quickly, and now a check of the rules showed that we should not have taken any laws out and it should have gone on for another round. The scores were pretty comprehensive though with Green nearly ten points clear of Ivory in second place. But Ivory had enjoyed it though, so it will no doubt we’ll play it again in the not too distant future.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

Meanwhile, on the next table, Pine, Black and Purple were playing Calimala. This got an outing only a few weeks back, but Black and Purple have played it quite a bit since Yellow introduced it to them a six months ago at Didcot Games Club. Calimala is an area-influence driven, worker-placement game set in the Republic of Florence during the Late Middle Ages. The action is all centred round the unusual action board, where place one of their workers on one of the twelve worker spaces. Each one of these is adjacent to two of the nine action spaces and the active player gets to carry out both actions. If there is already a worker disk present on the space when a disk is added, the owner of the other disk gets another turn. This continues until a player places the fourth disk on a stack which triggers scoring. In addition to worker disks of their own colour, each player also gets a small number of white disks: coloured disks give players a maximum of two actions on three occasions (i.e. a total of six), while white disks give four actions when played, but none later in the game.

– Image by boardGOATS

The fifteen scoring phases are built on the actions, rewarding players for the amount of cloth they have shipped to a given city or combination of cities for example, or for their contribution to a specific building, or their contribution to the building effort of a given resource. In each case, the player with the most scores three points, the player in second place scores two and the player in third gets just one point. In case of a tie there is a complicated series of tie-breakers. The game ends when either all fifteen tiles have been scored, or everyone has placed all their workers (in which case any remain tiles are scored).

– Image by boardGOATS

This time Pine led the way in points, pretty much from the start. He managed to give the impression that he had no idea what was going on though, as he kept asking questions. It was really close at the end, however. Black had the Barcelona scoring card, Purple had Troyes and Pine got close to the Lord, with the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore. It was all largely academic in the end though; as is often the case in this game, there were lots and lots of tie breaks when scoring the districts. Gradually, as Black kept winning the tie-breaks, he began to catch up with Pine. The question was, would he make it? He did, just, beating Pine into second place by a measly three points.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: Nobody is indispensable.