Tag Archives: Abandon All Artichokes: Rhubarb Promo

20th April 2022

Meeting for the first time on a Wednesday, Pink and then Blue were the first to arrive, and like last time, played a game of Abandon all Artichokes (with the Rhubarb mini-expansion) while they waited for food to arrive. This is a very quick and simple “deck shredding” game: on their turn the active player takes a card from the face up market, adds it to their hand and then plays as many cards as they can before they discard the rest and draw five new cards. If this new hand contains no Artichoke cards, the player wins. Although it is very simple, it seems the function sequence is somehow challenging. Pink struggled last time, but seemed to have got the better of it as he won.

– Image by boardGOATS

As they were finishing, Pine turned up and, while Pink went to the bar, Blue explained the rules to him and then they played again. Pine also struggled a bit with which pile was the discard pile and which the draw pile, and where to take cards from and where they were going to. There is hope though as, despite the arrival of food in the middle, Pink won the second game too. Pink and Blue were just finishing their supper when Purple and Black arrived, soon followed by Green, Lime and Ivory.

– Image by boardGOATS

This week, the “Feature Game” was the new edition of Libertalia, Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest, a card driven game where players are admirals commanding a crew of sky pirates in search of adventure, treasure, and glory. Pine had watched the advertised play-through video and professed it “looked” fun, so was keen to give it a go. Ivory and Pink joined the party, while Green shouted across from the other end of the table that he would be happy either way as he knew nothing about it. In the end, after considerable debate, Ivory, Pink and Pine were joined by Blue and Purple, leaving Green, Black and Lime to find something else to play.

– Image by boardGOATS

Although Blue had read the rules, she had very deliberately not looked at the character cards, so Pine arguably knew most about Winds of Galecrest. It is a rejuvenated version of the older game, Libertalia, but with new, lighter artwork, additional characters and streamlining of some of the mechanisms. Very simply, each player starts with a deck of forty cards, of which six are drawn into their hand. The idea is that players have the same character cards to play, but can play them in different orders. Thus, one player (in our case Pink) shuffles their forty numbered cards and then draws six, which the the others find in their numbered and sorted decks.

– Image by boardGOATS

The game is played over three voyages, the first of which takes four days, the second, five days, and the final voyage takes six days. Each day, players simultaneously choose a card to play, which when revealed are laid out in numerical order on the island. The are then played three times: first in ascending order (daytime), next in descending order (dusk) and finally simultaneous (night). Some cards only have actions that activate in one or two of the time-frames, but any characters still on the island, move back to that player’s ship and stay there till the end of the voyage. At the end of the voyage, players activate any loot and characters they have with end of voyage actions. Despite that being pretty much all there is to the game (and it being written clearly on the board), the group still managed to make a bit of a meal of it.

– Image by boardGOATS

The first hand consisted of six relatively uninteresting cards (or so it seemed at the time), which all had daytime actions. The first voyage, and to some extent the second too, players were feeling their way. Because the group failed to remove the Character cards from their ships at the end of the first voyage, that skewed things somewhat, especially as some players had the First Mate in their ship which in some cases scored twice giving points for the number of characters in their ship which was also artificially inflated. Ivory knew which cards he’d played and when, but others were unsure and some had built a strategy that relied on having certain Characters in their boat at the end of the second voyage. So rather than trying to back-track, ships were emptied for the first time at the end of the second round.

– Image by boardGOATS

It took the group a bit of time to understand when the actions for the loot happened—most occur at the end of the voyage, but some occur on the day they are collected, during the dusk phase. As a result, several players missed some of those dusk actions, the additional reputation gained from picking up a Barrel in particular. At the beginning of the second round, Blue, Pine, Ivory and Pink agreed they were all playing the “obvious card”. On revealing their cards they discovered they had differing ideas of what the obvious play was, which gave the first inkling that there was much more to the actions than had first appeared, but the players really got to grips with the planning aspects of the game in the final round.

– Image by boardGOATS

Ivory played his Carpenter, which reduced his funds by half, and immediately followed it with the Officer which increased his kitty to twelve doubloons. Then, because he is always a threat, he was targeted by Pine and then Blue, losing first his Carpenter and then his Gambler from his ship (both give money at the end of the round). Blue then assassinated Pink’s Carpenter and he took out her Gambler in revenge. Pink discovered that the Saber type loot was much more dangerous than he gave it credit for as yet another of his Characters on the island bit the dust. Meanwhile, Purple was building the contents of her treasure chest largely unmolested, mostly only suffering as collateral damage. Pine also made killing by playing his Bodyguard with perfect timing, simultaneously taking lots of gold for discarding all the Sabers and Hooks from the loot pile, and starving everyone else of treasure.

– Image by boardGOATS

In the final accounting Blue was the most successful pirate, though she was one of the beneficiaries of the “rules malfunction” at the end of the second voyage. Purple made an excellent second place though, picking up loads of gold from her loot while largely managing to avoid being caught in the cross-fire as the others attacked each other. Libertalia is a much more vicious game than those we usually play, even though it was a “Calm” game and supposedly “easy and friendly”—Heaven only knows what Stormy will be like! It was a lot of fun though, especially when the group started to get to grips with it properly during the final round. It’s clear the game could cause a lot of relationship trouble, but that won’t stop it getting another outing soon.

– Image by boardGOATS

Meanwhile, on the next table things were much more peaceful with Green, Black and Lime laying carpets. No-one felt up to anything too taxing or long tonight, so after reviewing the selection of games available Black suggested they play Marrakech, which certainly fitted the bill. Marrakech, is an unusual little game, with fantastic little rugs made of fabric and coins made out of wood, where players take the role of a rug salesman who tries to outwit the competition. Each player starts with ten Dirhams and an equal number of carpets. On their turn, players may rotate Assam ninety degrees, then roll the die and move him forward as many spaces as shown (up to four).

– Image by boardGOATS

If Assam lands on another player’s carpet, the active player must pay one Dirham per contiguous carpet square of that colour. Finally, the active player then places one of their carpets orthogonally adjacent to Assam. The winner is the player with the most money after the last carpet has been laid. After a quick explanation to Lime (who hadn’t played it before), the group had to decide the Role of the Merchant. On Board Game Arena, there are two options: one where the player turns him himself before rolling the dice, and another where the player who just played gets to turn him at the end of their turn and before the next player.

– Image by boardGOATS

After a brief check of the rules, the group discovered that the first option was the original rule (move the merchant before rolling the dice) and so they went with that. As a result it took several turns before anyone landed on anyone else’s carpet, then Black landed on a single square of Lime’s. A couple more turns and landing on carpet became a regular activity. When Green landed on a five square of Black’s, it became apparent that Lime had been labouring under a false understanding about what counted as a paying patch of carpet. He had thought that players have to pay for all the carpet squares connected, by any means including other people’s carpets, but of course only the patch that the Merchant is stood on counts.

– Image by boardGOATS

At various points in the game everyone had a large patch of carpet posing a hazard to the other players: Green had a large area in one corner, Black a large squarish patch in the middle, and Lime managed to get a zig-zag line from one corner all the way to the opposite one. Mostly everyone managed to avoid landing on these until they were broken up, but that duck was broken when Green landed on a large Black area, shifting the coin balance heavily in Black’s favour. At the end of the game carpet value was added to coins, and although Green had the most carpet showing, Black had significantly more coins than the others and finished as the winner by five points.

– Image by boardGOATS

Libertalia was still ongoing, and Marrakech had served as an excellent aperitif, but it was now it was time to move on to something more substantial, and the game of choice was Niagara. This is fantastic family game, that won the Spiel des Jahres Award in 2005, but is still a lot of fun seventeen years later. The idea is that players have two canoes that they are using to navigate up and down the river while trying to collect gems and land them safely on shore. Players simultaneously choose a paddle card from their hand, which dictates the distance their canoes travel. Once everyone’s boat has travelled, the river moves and any canoes that are too close to the falls take the long drop and are turned to matchwood.

– Image by boardGOATS

Players are trying to land five gems of the same type (or seven different colours) and the first to do so is the winner. We last played this about nine months ago, online, through the medium of Board Game Arena. On that occasion, Pink had betrayed everyone’s trust and stole several people’s precious loot. The victims (in particular Burgundy), were vociferous in their grievance, and as a result, despite Pink being enthusiastic about playing again, nobody was keen to join him. With Pink tied up in a quite different loot battle, this was a good opportunity to play again as it was still quite early and it was also an opportunity to introduce Lime to an old classic.

– Image by boardGOATS

The first round played relatively gently and much the way it normally does with everyone holding their cloud paddle tile (which allows them to change the speed of the river) back for the last round. Going into the second round however, Black and Green conspired to shake things up a notch. After putting a canoe onto the river, Black then moved the cloud from the plus one space it had been left on at the end of first round, to the plus two space. However, Green had also thought this was a bold move and had planned to do the same, but unfortunately, he had to move the cloud and as plus two is the maximum, the only direction to go from plus two was back to plus one. The result was that everyone spent the rest of that round moving five steps forward and four back.

– Image by boardGOATS

The highest cards were not enough to get players’ boats off the river and each time they just got dragged back again, with the landing stage forever out of reach. Green tried to “go against the flow” using some lower cards earlier in the round and holding a bigger card for later, but apart from moving around on different river discs, the end result was still the same. Everyone ended up on the same disc a couple of times too, and Lime was unfortunate when he lost one of his boats over the rapids. At the beginning of the third round players got their boats off the river. By this point, Black had managed to collect four different coloured gems and only needed that elusive pink. Green also had four gems, but that included two purple ones. Lime had just two gems as he decided to trade one to get his second canoe back.

– Image by boardGOATS

Black tried to inch down the river, sometimes choosing not to move a canoe in order to arrive at that last spot to collect his game winning pink gem. However Lime slowed the river down to minus one, and this left Black’s canoes in the wrong place. In the meantime, Lime also collected another couple of gems and Green managed to pick up another two as well, one purple and one blue. This left Green needing just one gem to win with seven (the fact that a pink would give him one of each did not matter—there is no double win in this game). As the new round began, Green got on the river, collected the final purple gem and there was nothing the others could do to stop him landing it on his next turn. And with that, the paddling was over with Green the victor.

– Image by boardGOATS

Although it was not that late, Lime and Green left for their respective homes, leaving Black to watch the final few turns of Libertalia. When that wound up, Ivory headed home and there was still time left for something short. While everyone else discussed the options, Pink went to the bar for a “tot” of Dead Man’s Fingers Rum. In his absence, Bohnanza was eschewed as “not short” and 6 Nimmt! and Coloretto had both been played recently. Saboteur doesn’t play so well with smaller numbers so in the end, the game chosen was Sushi Go!. The first thing to do was to remove the promotional expansions for its big brother Sushi Go Party! (Sukeroku, Inari, Sake and Pickled Ginger; these can be played with the original version but other cards need to be removed), however the Soy Sauce promo cards included as usual.

– Image by Pine

The game is really simple: from their hand of cards, players simultaneously choose one to keep and pass the rest on before repeating until everyone has no cards. At the end of the round the different cards are scored according to their individual characteristics. After three rounds, puddings are evaluated and the winner is the player with the largest total number of points. This time there was a serious shortage of puddings in the first round and Blue seemed to have more than her fair share. It wasn’t clear whether it was because she was overly focused on deserts or whether it was just because she’s rubbish at the game, but her score was lower than everyone else except Pine.

– Image by boardGOATS

Pine made up for it in the second and third rounds. In general, consistency is usually the winning factor in Sushi Go!, so Pink should have been in a good position, but both Black and Purple had a couple of really strong rounds, as indeed did Pine. As a result, it was a really close game. Pine was undone by the combination of his poor first round and the fact he was the only one with no puddings and lost six points as a result. In contrast, Blue’s score was boosted by six points as she had a clear majority. It was Purple and Black who were the ones to beat though, as they tied for the lead on thirty points and tied on the pudding tie break as well, so shared victory.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: If you are looking for job security, don’t become a pirate.

5th April 2022

Blue and Pink arrived first and, while they were waiting for their dinner, squeezed in a quick game of Abandon all Artichokes (with the Rhubarb Promo). This is a very quick “deck shredding” game, where players are trying to get to the point where they draw a hand that contains no Artichoke cards. The game is really simple: on their turn the active player takes a card from the face up market, adds it to their hand and then plays as many cards as they can before they discard the rest and draw five new cards. If this new hand contains no Artichoke cards, the player wins. Despite its simplicity, Pink kept saying he was confused, so given it was such a short game, it was no surprise that Blue won, and just in time too, as their pizzas turned up.

– Image by boardGOATS

They were just finishing eating when Purple and Black arrived, then Pine popped in to personally deliver his apologies, before Green, Ivory and Teal joined the party. The “Feature Game” was the Prelude expansion for Terraforming Mars, which was last played in the group a little over two years ago. Ivory shared his memories of that game which he felt he had been doing very nicely in thank-you until Burgundy chucked a meteorite in his direction and left him scrabbling for points at end of the game. That game had been played with the Hellas map from the Hellas & Elysium expansion, this time though, for the first try with the Prelude expansion, the group decided that maybe it would be quicker just to stick with the one new change.

– Image by boardGOATS

In Terraforming Mars, each person takes the role of a giant corporation initiating projects to make Mars habitable by raising the temperature, increasing the oxygen level, and expanding the ocean coverage. The game is card driven and at the start of each round, players draw four cards, keeping as many as they like, but paying 3M€ per card. Players then take it in turns to take one or two actions from seven available: play a card; use a Standard Project; use an Action Card; convert eight plants into a greenery tile and raise the Oxygen Level; use eight Heat to raise the Temperature; claim a Milestone, and fund an Award.

– Image by boardGOATS

At the end of the round, players simultaneously produce, turning any energy into heat, taking finance according to the combined total of their Terraforming Rating and their M€ production level, and finally receiving all other resources according to their production levels. The game ends once all three Global Parameters are met: all of the Ocean Tiles have been placed, the Temperature has reached 8°C, and the Oxygen Level is at 14%. Teal, Ivory and Green all knew the game reasonably well so really only needed to discuss the integration of the Prelude expansion. This provides Prelude corporation cards that jump start the terraforming process or boost the players’ corporation engines. During setup, as well as corporation cards and their starting hand, players are dealt four Prelude cards, of which they keep two.

– Image by boardGOATS

The group decided to not use the advanced cards as they wanted to go home before midnight, so during set up players were dealt one base game corporation card and one corporation card from the new ones that come with the Prelude expansion. Teal went with the Prelude Cheung Shing, which gave him 3M€ production extra and a 2M€ discount on all building tag cards. Green wanted to use the Prelude Corporation Card no matter what it was and ended up with Vitor. This would give him 3M€ back for every card that he played with positive points. He also had to fund an award for free as his first turn. Ivory had chosen Saturn Systems and all his other cards round that. It was only as they were about to mark out their starting benefits that he realised it was from the Advanced deck.

– Image by boardGOATS

Rather than force Ivory to take his other card, the group gave him another two cards to choose from and this time he selected The Miners Guild, which gave him an extra steel production and five steel at the start of the game. Every time he gained a steel or titanium through building on Mars, his steel production would increase by another one too. Although it was a good project, it did not fully suit the other cards he had selected, so Ivory started with something of a handicap. If anyone in the group can cope with a handicap, it is Ivory however, as he regularly wins these more complex games.

– Image by boardGOATS

The trio then went round the table revealing their chosen Prelude Cards that give players that extra kickstart. Ivory chose Aquifer Turbines (an Ocean tile, two Energy production and -3M€) and Mohole (three Heat resources and three Heat production). Teal went for Umni Contractor (three Terraforming Steps and extra project card) and the Allied Bank (3M€ and 4M€ production). Green chose Dome Farming (2M€ production and one Plant production) and Society Support (-1M€ production, one Energy, one Greenery and one Heat production). At the start Teal went straight for city building with a Standard Project, while Green and Ivory were a little more traditional with paying for project cards.

– Image by boardGOATS

Generation One was short and Generation Two was equally as short as Teal bought a second city, which prompted Ivory to also build a Standard Project city in Generation Three. Teal had placed his cities in a convenient triangle to maximise points from greenery tiles when they got laid, but later in the game (before all those forests could be planted), Ivory played the Urbanisation project and built another city right in the middle of Teal’s carefully constructed plan! Despite this, it was only towards the latter part of the game did it become clearer who’s strategy was working out and who’s wasn’t.

– Image by boardGOATS

Ivory had been embracing his “inner Burgundy” and grumbled that he wasn’t getting any Green tag cards, yet Teal seemed to be building nothing but Green tag projects. Green joined the grumble adding that although he’d had some good ones at the beginning with microbe actions, these just weren’t fulfilling their purpose due to the lack of Green tags in his hand. Black commented from the next table that was why he felt that Terraforming Mars really needs to be played with the drafting variant, where hands are drafted at the start of each turn.

– Image by boardGOATS

The group had chosen not to do this as it strongly favours more experienced players. As Teal felt he was relatively new to the game having only played the electronic version against AI opponents on Board Game Arena, he did not want to add in extra complexity. Black certainly had a point though and it is something to consider for next time. With all the cards laid out, Teal commented how it was quite different from the electronic version. Seeing everyone’s cards grow gave an element of satisfaction and wonder that was missing from the computer version—even the wobbling and waving Mars on the computer didn’t make up for it.

– Image by boardGOATS

As for the terraforming of Mars itself, the group completed the Oceans fairly quickly and Oxygen levels also rose at a reasonable rate. It was just so cold for most of the game though! So, in the end, it was a race to see who could heat up the planet the most. Throughout the game everyone all remained close on the Terraforming score track, which meant everyone had all equally contributed to the improvement of Mars and the game would be won or lost in the bonus points.

– Image by boardGOATS

The award for most Award points went to Ivory, as he came top in two of them. There was a debate regarding the Award Green had funded at the beginning (Scientist). Green had won clearly with four science tags, but both Teal and Ivory had none. The question was whether they should they score nothing because they hadn’t achieved anything, or whether they should get a second place tie (and as ties are friendly in this game, both would get the points). Ivory managed to find a thread on Board Game Geek which resolved the issue: the designer himself stated that second place is second place, even if nothing was done to achieve it. So Green scored five, while Teal and Ivory both got two, and the free Award from the Prelude Corporation card, Vitor, scored Green a grand total of three points!

– Image by boardGOATS

Teal managed to get two of Achievements and Ivory got the third with just points for the map left (one point for each forest and for each forest tile adjacent to a players city). Teal’s early planning came good here, as he scored eighteen points in total, while Green and Ivory took only twelve and ten respectively. Green had been playing those bonus point projects to good effect, but although he got nine points from them, Ivory and Teal still managed five and four each. Adding everything up, Teal was the master Terraformer with a massive seventy-four points, eight ahead of Ivory in second—who knows what his score might have been without that starting handicap.

– Image by boardGOATS

There are several members of the group who aren’t so keen on Terraforming Mars and others who felt it would be too taxing on a night when their brain felt a bit fried. So those members of the group looked around for something more relaxing to play. Lime had said he would be there, and although he was unusually late, Black, Purple, Pink and Blue decided to play a quick game of Coloretto in case he had been delayed by traffic or other unforeseen circumstances. Coloretto is a super-simple, but clever little game that we’ve played a lot, so needs little explanation: on their turn players either draw a card from the deck and add it to a truck, or take a truck and add the coloured cards to their collection. The largest three sets of chameleon cards score positively, while the other score negatively.

– Image by boardGOATS

Despite having played Coloretto lots of times, we still needed to check what the Golden Joker did and how it differed from the normal multicoloured Joker. This led to a brief hiatus while Pink tried to read the minuscule text in the English Rules and Blue tried to translate from the original German rules. The conclusion verified later was that it acted as a Joker, but the player who took it also got an extra card drawn from the top of the deck—this could be a good or a bad thing depending on how lucky they were. This time, Pink was ultimately the either the luckiest or perhaps the best player (the line is a fine one), with Blue the best of the rest—just.

– Image by boardGOATS

The foursome were just looking round for something else to play when Lime walked in wearing a suit having come straight from Reading. His arrival altered the options as the foursome became five. In the end, Pink persuaded everyone to play Modern Art as he was keen to play something that would make use of the recently rehoused coins he and Blue had brought back from Essen last time they went (now quite a while ago). Modern Art is a much older game, dating from 1992, but it had been out of print for a while and we only played within the group for the first time a few months ago. That had been a remarkably enjoyable experience though, and it definitely deserved a second outing.

– Image by boardGOATS

The game is simple enough to play, but difficult to play well. The idea is that players take it in turns to auction off one of the Art cards from their hand: if another player wins, the auctioneer gets the money, if the auctioneer wins, they pay the bank. At the end of the round, the Art is evaluated according to the artist by determining who has the most artwork in players’ collections, with the most being the most sought-after and therefore the most valuable. Players then sell these to the bank for the determined amount which gives them money to spend in the next round.

– Image by boardGOATS

The clever part (which is also the part that messes with people’s heads) is that in any given round, only Art by the three most popular artists is worth any money, however, the value depends on both the popularity in the current round and any previous rounds. Thus, a painting might be worth £120,000 if it is by the most popular artist in all four rounds, but would be worthless if that artist was the fourth most popular in the final round. As all the art is available for play, this is a potentially deterministic problem, however, players can try to control the game by avoiding playing some cards.

– Image by boardGOATS

After a strong first round, Blue began the second round well. She took a couple of early, cheap Kaminskis followed by auctioning a couple of Kaminskis of her own. This worked well, except that she didn’t have a fifth to trigger the end of the round and ensure they scored. As Kaminski is the weakest artist in the tie-break and nobody else seemed keen to help her, she did not make the expected profit. Consequently, she went from having “cash to burn” to struggling, a problem exacerbated by a large winning bid on a Mondrian that didn’t come off. Meanwhile, everyone else was making money from Blue’s mistakes.

– Image by boardGOATS

In addition to the unusual money allocation, different pieces of Art are auctioned in different ways: some are sealed bids, while others are once round or highest bidder and others use a “double auction” where players sell two pieces at the same time. The double auctions are curious affairs as, if the active player only has one artwork by the given artist (or chooses not to sell a second), they forfeit their turn as auctioneer and play skips on until another player takes up the mantle, selling one of their own together with the original piece. This has several consequences: firstly, the new auctioneer takes all the profit, and secondly, any players between the first and second auctioneer miss a turn.

– Image by boardGOATS

This happened a couple of times as the group played out most rounds to the near maximum, especially as the game wore on—the final round had four Hicks, Ivorys and Okamotos before it came to an end meaning the tie breaker determined which would score. It is an odd game and, not helped by a bit of “group think”, it was also quite a long game this time, though enjoyable, especially as it wasn’t obvious who was winning. Black was obviously doing well, but then Lime also made a couple of good sales. It was Pink, however who navigated the notoriously fickle art market most successfully though, finishing with £428,000, £26,000 more than Purple who took a strong second.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: Mars has a Marmite Factor.

10th March 2022

Green and Lilac were first to arrive followed by Blue, Black, Purple and Pine with Pink late to arrive as he was enjoying the seemingly random deployment of variable speed limits along the M42 (30 mph, really?). The others had finished their supper and Pink was still dealing with his Ham, Egg & Chips, by the time everyone else had arrived and the great “who’s playing what” debate began. Several people were interested in playing the “Feature Game“, the first Tapestry expansion, Plans and Ploys, but it proved difficult to confirm a group. Despite enjoying the game, Blue was not up for something too thinky after a long week at work, and Jade (putting in a welcome return six weeks after his first visit) fancied something different. In the end, Green joined Ivory and Teal over the other side of the room.

– Image by boardGOATS

Playing explanations were relatively quick, and even set up did not take as long as some heavier weight games. It turned out everyone was a relative novice with Ivory having played it twice, Teal only once (and that was online at Board Game Arena), and Green not at all. Functionally, the game is quite straight forward, indeed the rules consist of just four, well illustrated pages. On their turn, players either advance along one of the advancement tracks, or begin an era by taking Income. The clever part is that the game ends at different times for each player — each player ends their game when they finish their final, fifth Income turn. Thus, prolonging their eras means more turns which means more time to generate points.

– Image by boardGOATS

Otherwise the game basically proceeds with players paying the fee for the space they move to and then doing whatever the space they move to dictates, sometimes with an optional bonus action. Often the action involves getting resources, but the four different tracks also allow players to claim space on the central map, gain technology cards (which give end game points as well as in-game bonuses), and build fabulous resin buildings in their capital city. Although this is quite simple in concept, the depth of the game is in the cards and the asymmetry in the special powers associated with the Civilisations that players get at the start of the game.

– Image by boardGOATS

The expansion mostly just adds more of the same with new Civilisations, Tapestry Cards and space tiles. The biggest difference is the addition of Landmark Cards which are designed to give each player a personal short-term goal in the first part of the game, in the form of buildings that only they can claim. The first few turns required a little help from Ivory, but very soon everyone had got the hang of it. The game is deceptively simple with only a few choices on each turn. As a result, turns were very quick and the group soon felt comfortable.

– Image by boardGOATS

Teal started on the Exploration Track, just ahead of Green who also wanted to go down that route. Ivory started on Science, which also got him going on the Military Track. Green had a plan and found Teal being one step ahead on the Exploration Track quite frustrating. In no time players started taking their second Income turns. Teal snatched the first Exploration Building and concentrated on developing his island on the central board. Green was using the Explore options to build his little huts onto his Craftsmen Civilisation Card instead of on his capital city board, gaining benefits on the way. Ivory was trying to get several different small buildings onto his city, and being the only one in Science he was unhindered in getting these to his board as well.

– Image by boardGOATS

Then much to Green’s delight, Teal changed tack and started on Military expansion. Now that his island had grown, Teal needed to expand if he wanted to it to grow any more. His collection of unused land tiles then enabled him to gain him his personal Landmark, making him the first to do this. By now his score was racing ahead of the others even though Ivory had started with a twenty point boost thanks to the civilisation adjustments. Green continued to concentrate on the Explore track and gained the next building and then revealed that his Landmark for the game had been to get the launch pad (third building on the Explore Track) and make it in to space. That had been Ivory’s strategy for his very first game too… “To get Meeples into Space!”

– Image by boardGOATS

Teal’s island empire was ever growing and he was the first to get to the central island. He was further helped by his Islanders Civilsation that enabled him to conquer an extra tile each Income round. He wanted to make sure he kept a buffer to everyone else’s islands though as he did not want any toppling. Ivory was flying up the Science Track by this time, getting other bonuses on other Tracks too, and his capital city was beginning to look a little crowded as well. Ivory had also got a couple of Technology Cards to Green’s one while Teal eschewed Technology entirely.

– Image by boardGOATS

As the game looked like it might be drawing to a close, Teal had raced well ahead on points, although Green was starting to catch him while Ivory was trailing well behind. Ivory completed the Science Track, then just into his final era, Green made his final trip into space reaching the top of the Explore Track. Teal, for his last action, played an extra Tapestry Card and declared an “Alliance of Peace” between Green and himself, which instigated much spluttering and muttering from Green who had just settled on growing his empire with a plan to topple Teal in the centre island for his final turns. With his carefully worked out plan in tatters he scrambled around to maximise the last few points, but probably lost some on the way.

– Image by boardGOATS

It was about at this point, Teal and Green realised that Ivory had still to collect his fourth Income round. So with Green and Teal finished, Ivory started his “attack run” and was left playing alone. His fourth Income gave him more than fifty points and he shot past both Green and Teal; both knew that they were going to be well beaten. This of course turned out to be the case, as in final income scoring Ivory lapped both his opponents and kept going lapping them a second time. Although it had been an extremely dominant victory by Ivory (winning by over a hundred points), everyone had thoroughly enjoyed the game. Although the game play is good, the icing on the cake really is the fabulous 3D buildings that come with it; cardboard counters would have been cheaper, but nowhere near as pretty or as satisfying.

– Image by boardGOATS

Meanwhile, after the game of PARKS last time, Lime had requested the chance to play it again, so Pink, Black and Jade joined him. The game is reasonably simple, with players taking it in turns to choose one of their two hikers to move along the track, and then carry out the action dictated by the location. The aim is to collect “memories” (or “resources” as most players think of them) to buy “trips to National Parks” (or Park Cards). Lime and Pink ran through the rules as they had played it the previous week, discovering as they did so, a few deviations that had crept into the previous game. These included the fact that the trail gets longer each round and a misinterpretation of one of the icons. As last time, to keep it simple, the group decided not to include the personal bonuses, though they included the Parks Cards from the Nightfall expansion.

– Image by boardGOATS

This time, Pink (playing what he thought was pink this time, not what he thought was orange, like last time), was fortunate in acquiring the Sunscreen gear card. This replaces Mountain tokens with Sun tokens when buying in Parks Cards and along with the canteen that provided two Suns, gave him a formidable points generating engine. There was much conversation about whether sunscreen could let you replace ALL the Mountains with Suns for a single Parks Card, or just one. Based on the use of the plural in the rules, the former seemed more likely. However, it was an important point, so a drinks break was instituted whilst Jade consulted the the rules forum on the Board Game Geek website.

– Image by boardGOATS

Results were inconclusive, so the decision stood (or to quote Pink who had been watching too much rugby, “On field decision is ‘Try’ — is there any reason why I cannot award the Try?”). As last time, Lime went for a “reserve Parks Card and then work towards it strategy”, whilst Black, Jade and Pink only reserved cards occasionally. This time, nobody seemed to want to take the camera: Pink got it at the start of the game, and despite him trying persuade people to take it, no one was having it, and he kept it until the end of the game, taking only the occasional photo (worth one point each at the end of the game).

– Image by boardGOATS

Jade picked up the compass Gear Card which came in very useful for collecting Parks Cards, while Black collected a store of emergency ketchup sachets. Lime almost kept the start player marker from start to finish until Jade decided at the very end of the game, that he fancied that extra point and took it off him. In the end, the Sunscreen strategy did it for Pink who won by a healthy margin of seven points, but otherwise it was really tight with just one point between everyone else and Lime and Jade tied for second place.

– Image by boardGOATS

The third table were slow to get going with nobody being very decisive. Eventually Blue suggested playing Sagrada and everyone else concurred. We’ve played this quite a bit in the group since it was released five years ago, but it has been a little while and we were rusty on the rules and details of setup. The idea of the game is very simple though: In “Settlers Style”, players draft dice and add them to their player board. Each die must be added according to the placement rules: next to another die (orthogonally or diagonally) while not orthogonally adjacent to a die of the same colour or number. Additionally, at the start of the game, each player chooses a “window card” which dictates the numbers and colours of dice in some of the positions.

– Image by boardGOATS

The game is completed by Tool Cards which allow players to pay one of their limited number of tokens to briefly break the rules, and public and private objective cards. Sagrada ends after ten rounds (twenty dice). The group started with a lot of discussion about the private objective cards as some had snuck in from an expansion and confused everyone. Once everyone was mostly happy with what they were trying to do, Pine started with the first draw. Although he wasn’t aware of it at the time, his first placements turned out to be sub-optimal, as for the next few turns he had little or no choice in his placement and used up a lot of his most flexible spaces in the process.

– Image by boardGOATS

Purple and Blue tried to focus on the public objectives which were Shade Variety, Colour Variety and Row Colour Variety. The latter pair fitted together very well since one gave points for each set of five different colours, while the other gave points for five different colours in the same row. Given that people were trying to go for sets of different colours and numbers, it was particularly amusing when the random nature of dice drawn from a bag and rolled gave a very limited selection, which only added to Pine’s woes. The Tools cards weren’t terribly helpful either, especially as everyone was trying to save them for later.

– Image by boardGOATS

Lilac was the only one new to the game, but she got to grips with it quite quickly despite the fiddlyness of some of the rules. When she realised she had got herself into a little bit of a tangle, she managed to extricate herself using the Tap Wheel tool which allowed her to move dice. Lilac was very disappointed when she was unable to complete her window and had to leave a couple of spaces blank, but empty spaces only cost one point and the additional flexibility can often mean more points elsewhere. Indeed, only Purple actually managed to complete her window.

– Image by boardGOATS

The dice just rolled right for Purple and Blue was able to use the Running Pliers to ensure she got what she needed in the penultimate round. So, aside from poor Pine who had struggled throughout, everyone got what they wanted. When Lilac took the only “red three” in the final round, however, it cost Pine twelve points . With ten points for each complete row containing five different colours, it was clear it was between Blue and Purple. Blue just had the edge though with more points from the Shade Variety and pushed Purple into second by nine points. Pine took an early bath, but as the others were still playing, the remnants of the group looked for something else to play and grabbed the nearest quick game, which was Abandon all Artichokes.

– Image by boardGOATS

Abandon all Artichokes is a very silly little deck-builder, which is somehow different to almost anything else. Players start with a deck of ten artichoke cards from which they draw a hand of five. The aim of the game is to shed all their artichoke cards so that when they draw their new hand of five at the end of their turn, there are no artichoke cards in it. To do this, on their turn, the active player chooses one card from the face up market and, unlike most other deck builders, adds this to their hand (rather than their discard pile) They then play as many cards as they can/want before discarding any leftover cards into their personal discard pile and drawing again.

– Image by boardGOATS

Artichoke cards are basically hand blockers, with no practical use, but all the other cards (including the Rhubarb Promo cards) have an action that allow players to do things. These include swapping cards with other players, discarding cards onto other players’ discard piles and placing artichokes onto the compost heap (a communal discard pile) which takes cards out of the game. It took a while for everyone to get to grips with the rhythm of the game, but before long everyone was down to their last couple of artichokes.

– Image by boardGOATS

You could hear the anticipation as people drew their five cards and disappointment when they found it still contained an artichoke. PARKS had finished so, Pink and Black came over to see what was going on, and they were soon joined by Teal and Green who left Ivory to play with himself (the last era of Tapestry). Eventually, after each player had had several hands where they’d hoped to finish and hadn’t, Purple finally put everyone out of their misery and ended the game. Her obvious delight was in victory, rather than because of any dislike for the game, so although it is a strange little game, it will likely get another go soon.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: If you arrive late, you might not get the dinner of your choice.