Tag Archives: …aber bitte mit Sahne

6th September 2022

Plum and Pine were the first to arrive, shortly followed by Blue with Orange and Lemon. With nobody eating, the group were in a position to start thinking about games straight away. Plum had offered to lead Wingspan, with Lime in mind as he had recently acquired a copy of Wingspan and was keen to give it another go. Pine commented that although he loves birds, he’d never really got on with the game-play of Wingspan so, sadly he’d prefer to play something else. The “Feature Game” was to be Project L, a sort of Tetris-like, engine-building game and it sounded much more his thing.

– Image by boardGOATS

So, Plum took herself off to the other side of the pub to set up Wingspan with the European expansion. The European expansion adds more cards including end of round cards, but doesn’t add any extra mechanisms (like the Oceania expansion), so it was felt that including it wouldn’t cause too much confusion. As the others rolled up, there was much surprise as Teal and Ivory said they would rather give Project L a go. Then Pine changed his mind and joined Wingspan (along with Purple and Lime), allowing Black to play the “Feature Game” as he had played Wingspan recently at Burgundy’s Birthday Event. That left six to play Project L: Orange, Lemon, Blue, Ivory, Teal and Black.

– Image by boardGOATS

Project L is a very simple game: players start with two small plastic pieces and use them to complete Puzzles winning more pieces enabling them to complete more complex Puzzles and thus build an engine. On their turn the active player can do three actions from a list of five things: upgrade a piece to a larger one, take a Puzzle from the display, recycle the Puzzle display, place a piece in a Puzzle they own, or place one piece in each of their Puzzles (or in as many different Puzzles as they can). This last, “Master Action” can only be carried out once per turn, and is clearly very powerful once players can get it going, however, to make it work they need lots of Puzzles and lots of pieces.

– Image by boardGOATS

With six, to reduce the amount of down time there is the “Line Clear Variant” available. In the normal game, there are two rows of four Puzzles, one of White backed Puzzles and one of slightly more advanced and therefore more rewarding, Black backed Puzzles. In addition to winning pieces for completing Puzzles, players can also get points—the player with the most points at the end of the game is the winner. The game end is triggered when the draw deck of Black backed Puzzles is exhausted at which point the round is then finished and one more, final, round is played. In the Ticket to Ride: Switzerland, there are two rows of each colour, each containing three Puzzles. One pair of Black and White Puzzle rows are marked with a dark stone and the other pair with a colourless stone.

– Image by boardGOATS

The idea of the Line Clear Variant is that two players play simultaneously with the active players marked by a dark and a colourless stone that are passed round. When it is their turn, players can only recycle or take Puzzles from the rows that match the colour of their their stone. Ivory was picked as the start player (he drew the player aid marked with the start player symbol) and he began with the dark stone, so Orange, sitting opposite, started with the light stone. Everyone began a little tentatively, but before long players were filling their Puzzles with gay abandon. The game end is slightly less clear with the Line Clear Variant. Still triggered by exhausting the Black Puzzle Deck, the game continues until the first player has been passed both of the markers again, in any order).

– Image by boardGOATS

The Black Puzzles ran out quite quickly—Project L really is just a “Filler Game“, but players still had to finish things off. The start player was Ivory, which meant that Orange was a little caught out. Once the game has finished, everyone can place any pieces they have left, but at the cost of a point for each one. Orange was unlucky, and unable to complete any of his remaining Puzzles, neither could could Lemon. Teal had managed to finish off all his Puzzles in his last turn, but everyone else placed three of their pieces to finish things off. It was quite close for a first game: Blue finished with eighteen points, but Ivory and Black tied with fifteen apiece with Ivory sneaking second place on the tie breaker (the player with the most completed Puzzles).

– Image by boardGOATS

A lot of the comment was about how nicely produced the game is and it had been enjoyable to play too although not very memorable. It was time to move on to something else though and with six, the obvious and usual choice would be Bohnanza, but Ivory had other ideas and suggested New York Slice. This is a reimplementation of …aber bitte mit Sahne which we played recently, but with a pizza theme instead of a cake theme. In both games, the idea is that one player makes the cake (or pizza) and divides it up into segments equal to the number of players, then players take it in turns to choose one of the segments.

– Image by boardGOATS

When a player takes a segment, they can either eat slices or store them for later. Those they will eat are worth points at the end of the game with the number dependent on the number of blobs of cream (or pepperoni slices) on top. The pieces players keep are scored depending on who has the most of each type at the end of the game. Each piece of cake (or pizza) has a number on it which tells players the number of that type in the game and also what the player with the most will score at the end of the game. There are a few things that are different about New York Slice, however, which make it a little more competitive and slightly more of a “Gamers’ Game”.

– Image by boardGOATS

Firstly, in the case of a tie for who has the most pieces of a type of pizza, in …aber bitte mit Sahne all players score points whereas in New York Slice nobody gets anything. Secondly, some of the pizza slices have anchovies on them and any of these that are visible at the end of the game are worth minus one (because everyone hates anchovies on pizzas right? Well, everyone except Teal it seems…). Probably the biggest change though, is that in New York Slice, each pizza is served with a Special—a bonus tile with rule-breaking powers. In most cases, these are added to one of the segments for players to choose. They can be enticing and helpful, or they can be unhelpful and make players’ lives more difficult.

– Image by boardGOATS

Ivory cut the first pizza, leaving Blue to be the first to choose. The first Special was “Cut in Line”, which Blue took straight away and then promptly forgot about it until the final round. Ivory went into battle for mushroom pizza, but lost out to Teal. The front-runner looked to be Black who stored the most BBQ and veggie pizza slices, largely thanks to his “Supersize Combos” Special which meant his two half slices became two whole slices of each type. That only gave him joint second however, with Lemon who turned out to be quite the carnivore and finished with the most beef and meat feast pizzas.

– Image by boardGOATS

The winner, however, and by a single point, was Blue who picked up a lot of anchovies along with her “You Like Anchovies” Special and coupled that with winning the most lucrative pizza (pepperoni). Full of pizza, Teal and Ivory decided it was time, leaving Black and Blue with Orange and Lime and a decision to make as to what to play next. With Wingspan something over half-way through, they were looking for something substantial to play, but not too long. Blue’s suggestion was Wsiąść do Pociągu: Polska, the Poland map for Ticket to Ride. This was one that nobody around the table had played before though it had been played in the group two and a half years ago, shortly after it was released at Essen.

– Image by boardGOATS

The Poland map works in much the same way as all the Ticket to Ride games; players collect coloured train cards and spend them to place plastic train pieces on the central map scoring points for placing trains, but also completing the route “Ticket” cards that they chose at the start of the game and maybe later too. In addition to the usual rules, the base game maps all have a little something extra. As well as the usual city locations, the Poland map also has countries, but unlike the Swiss map, these are not simply locations to connect to. Instead when a player connects two countries, they collect one Country Card corresponding to each. These are worth points at the end of the game.

– Image by boardGOATS

When a third country is added to the “network”, the player again collects Country Cards, one for each country in the network. When Blue explained the rules, Black commented that that aspect was interesting and he was curious to see how it affected the game. Blue started and was followed by Orange, Lemon and then Black. Black started by collecting more Tickets—this was a tactic that was discussed briefly at Burgundy’s Birthday Memorial event. Black had commented then that this was the way all the best players did it. The idea is that by collecting Tickets early, players are best placed to make the most efficient use of their trains and know what coloured cards they might need.

– Image by boardGOATS

However, it is a bit of a “Go Big or Go Home” strategy because if something critical goes wrong early, the player could get left with an armful of unfulfilled Tickets leaving them with lots of negative points. And with the Poland map, this was far from impossible as it turned out to be quite a scrap for the centre of the board. Lemon asked what she should do when someone had just taken a track she wanted, clearly meaning Orange who had just nabbed a critical route from Bydgoszcz to Płock. “Kill them,” was the instant reply to much hilarity. Lemon commented that she would get her revenge, though it was unclear whether that was planned for the game or sometime later…

– Image by boardGOATS

Eventually, Blue claimed the first Country Cards, connecting Belarus to Germany. When she added Russia and Lithuania, it was clear how these could add significant points to a player’s tally. Further, the repeated nature of collecting Country Cards each time the network grew provided a good source of points of a similar magnitude to those gained from Tickets, but without the associated jeopardy. The Country Cards are stacked in descending order of value so that the ones earnt early in the game are worth more, but although the value decreases, as more countries are added to player’s network more tickets are picked up. As a result, value of each additional card pick up (and therefore each country when added) remains fairly constant depending on how many players are fighting for Country Cards.

– Image by boardGOATS

This time, Blue stole a bit of an early march on the Country Cards in the north, while Black acquired loads of Tickets and Orange got in everyone’s way. While Blue’s primary route was in the north running east-west, Black and Orange focused on north-south and Lemon had two separate smaller networks which she unfortunately failed to connect together. As everyone else saw how lucrative Country Cards could be, they joined in, connecting countries to the south. Lemon pointed out the route they had taken from Ukraine through south Poland to Warsaw where they got a flight to the UK. It was about then that the pub became an attraction in itself when one of the locals pointed out that the lease was for sale once more.

– Image by boardGOATS

The game came to a slightly sudden end when Lemon ran out of trains—the Poland map is played with just thirty-five trains per player instead of the more usual forty-five. Actual game play time isn’t much shorter than usual because, like the India map, there are fewer longer routes so players have to take more turns placing trains. At the end of the game though, it was close with Lemon in the lead thanks largely to the fact she had concentrated on the lucrative long routes where possible. Orange and Black had completed a lot of Tickets though, and when they were added on together with the Country Cards, they tied for second place with eighty-two points. The winner was Blue, however, thanks to the huge pile of Country Cards.

– Image by boardGOATS

Meanwhile, over the other side of the room, Plum, Pine, Lime and Purple were playing Wingspan with Blue’s pimped out set. Wingspan is a beautiful bird-themed game where players are collecting birds in three different habitats. On their turn, they can “plant” a bird card in one of these habitats, or activate one of the three habitats to collect food, lay eggs or collect more cards. The clever part of the game is that when players activate a habitat, they also activate any birds within that habitat—in this way, the game is card driven. Played over four rounds, there are bonus points at the end of each round (dependent on tiles drawn at the start of the game). Otherwise, players score for birds, eggs, tucked cards, and personal bonus cards at the end of the game.

– Image by boardGOATS

Players start with eight actions in the first round, but that decreases by one each round as the game progresses. However, because players add birds to their habitats during the game, although they get fewer turns in later rounds, they are actually doing more things in each turn as they are activating more cards. In Blue’s pimped out copy, she had replaced the wooden action cubes with little fluffy birds which are cute, but led to some initial confusion with the phrase “playing a bird” meaning variously take an action (playing a fluffy little bird) or play a bird card into a habitat.

– Image by boardGOATS

This time, everyone was slow to start—the start is almost always slow in Wingspan as players need cards to play and food so they can pay the cost, but this time it was especially true as players found their feet. Lime began with a woodland bird that gave an extra food after re-setting the bird-feeder, which really helped him out throughout the game. He also had a once-between-turns card which was triggered when another player tucked a card. Since Purple had a bird with a tucking action, that looked like a good call. Considerable merriment was derived from the tucking action: who was tucking the most, watching out for people tucking etc.. Unfortunately however, Purple’s action required the tucked card to be taken from Purple’s hand so she often passed up the chance meaning she was not the most prolific tucker…

– Image by boardGOATS

Plum’s first two were wetland birds with one-off powers. As her bonus card rewarded her for having cards left in hand at the end of the game, the fact these early birds increased her card drawing powers from the very start meant they could help towards that too. Pine’s bonus card rewarded him for having birds with geographical names which he pretty much had in his starting hand. Lime’s bonus was for birds with tucked cards, but he only realised later that it meant multiple birds with tucked cards not the number of cards tucked. He was able to pick up another bonus card later in the game, which worked slightly better for him though.

– Image by boardGOATS

Pine’s bird hunting for rodents largely went hungry in the early part of the game, though it did better in the later rounds. Plum, instead of sharing her latest kitty pictures, mimicked her favourite kitty behaviour, and watched hawk-like for a successful hunt to trigger once-between-turns action. She had a killer “three birds in one go move” set up ready to go—two birds both with a “play a second bird in the grasslands” action. Although she was a little disappointed to have been unable to deploy it in time for the worms they ate to count towards the second round goal of most eaten worms. This increased her egg laying power though and the final third bird allowed her to a sacrifice an egg for two new bird cards ensuring she achieved her bonus in the final round.

– Image by boardGOATS

With the game finally coming to an end, all that was left was the scores. Plum and Lime took the most points for their birds while Purple and Pine had the most eggs. While everything else was fairly close, Lime had his nose in front in most areas and this showed in the final scores which were moderately spread out. Lime’s score of eighty-seven points was some ten points ahead of Plum in second, who was similarly ahead of Pine. As always with Wingspan, it had been fun, though it had sadly confirmed to Pine that while he adores the theme, the game play just isn’t for him. And on that sad note, with everyone else also finished, it was time for home.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: Everyone loves Pizza.

12th July 2022

Blue, Pink, Orange, Lemon and Plum all started with food, and Pink’s was accompanied with cocktails (again). There was a lot of chatter about playing something, but when Pine arrived, that ruled out …aber bitte mit Sahne (which we played last time). While the discussion about what to play and how to split the group was on-going Purple and Black arrived, so the discussion moved on to who would play what and who else was expected. In the end, Pink and Plum took themselves off to the other side of the pub to start setting up Altiplano while everyone else admired the 1980s box for the “Feature Game“, the bike racing game, 6-Tage Rennen (aka 6 Day Race).

– Image by boardGOATS

When Lime, Ivory and then Teal rolled up a few minutes later, Ivory joined the Altiplano game, but Teal, after a tough day, eschewed its complexity and decided to go for a gentle cycle ride with the other group instead. In contrast to Flamme Rouge which we all played last time and emulates road racing, 6-Tage Rennen is set in a velodrome and mimics a six day race meeting. It is quite simple, much simpler than Flamme Rouge actually, but in spite of this the group still managed a “rules malfunction”. Similar to Flamme Rouge, the game is card driven, but rather than choosing simultaneously and then playing in race order, in 6-Tage Rennen players choose their card and play in turn order.

– Image by boardGOATS

There are a couple of other key differences. Firstly, slip-streaming works differently: if a player lands on an occupied space, they move again. If that space is occupied by two riders, the active rider moves twice more and if it is occupied by three or more riders, then they can really make a killing. Also, 6-Tage Rennen is a points race, which means it is the player with the most points at the end who wins, not necessarily the first player to cross the line. Points are available for the first riders to finish with ten points for first place, but also at the intermediate sprints of which there are two, earning five points for the first riders to cross each line and in both cases there are points for the minor placings.

– Image by boardGOATS

Teal went first and moved a single space, followed by Blue who used Teal to bounce on an extra space. Pine, Purple, Black and Orange, further demonstrated how to use the slip-stream mechanism, but it was Lemon, who like last time in Flamme Rouge, took an early lead, though this time without the penalty of Exhaustion cards. Not only did Lemon take an early lead, but she held it to the first sprint line taking the maximum five points, leaving Teal, Blue and Pine to take the three, two and one respectively. It was then that the rules malfunction really took effect.

– Image by boardGOATS

The game is over thirty-five years old and imported from Germany, so the rules were originally in German, but this copy had two English translations. Unfortunately, these were both a bit unclear and, as a result, both Blue and Pine misunderstood how many green cards players started with. This meant everyone ran out of cards very quickly and Blue, on the fly decided players would refresh their hand from the grey cards. As Pine pointed out, this was likely to leave a shortage, so the number of cards was reduced slightly. This meant some players ran out more than once and replaced their cards several times as a result which changed the game massively.

– Image by boardGOATS

Still, as everyone was playing with the same rules and nobody wanted to just start again, the group played on. Lemon led the pack over the second sprint line too, and then over the finish line to a landslide victory with the maximum twenty points, twice her nearest rival, Teal. The game hadn’t taken very long, and Black had long said he thought 6-Tage Rennen was better than Flamme Rouge and he along with some others were keen to play again with correct rules. So, Pine dealt out the correct number of green cards and Lemon, as the winner of the first race went first in the second.

– Image by boardGOATS

The first thing noticed was the lack of a six in the starting hand. As Black pointed out, this was key to the strategy of the game—staying six spaces ahead of other riders helps stop players from “getting a bounce” and moving ahead, and that’s where the grey cards come in. Half-way round the track, there is a “special space” and players who land on this space discard their cards and replace them with grey ones. The starting green hand has a seven, two fives, several fours along with some lower value cards and should just last the duration of the race. Landing on the special space gives cards taken from two piles drawn at random—six slow cards (value one to three) and four fast cards (value four to six).

– Image by boardGOATS

This time, Orange started fast taking the first sprint and continuing on to the special space where he traded in his cards for new grey ones. Lemon wasn’t far behind though, followed by Lime and Teal. Purple demonstrated how to play the game by getting a “double bounce” on her seven, moving twenty-one spaces from the back to near the front on a single turn. That left Blue and Pine who, reminiscent of last time, were “gapped” and struggled to keep up with the pack. Before long, Pine was dropped and resignedly, rolled slowly round the track; he would have stopped at the pub if he hadn’t been in a velodrome!

– Image by boardGOATS

As the game unfolded, Teal commented on how clever it was and added, “It’s almost like it’s been play-tested…” Meanwhile, Black joined Blue and they worked together briefly until their teamwork broke down just before they were able to catch up with the lead riders. Lemon stalled on the “miss a turn” special space, allowing Teal to sneak past and pip her to the line. As everyone else made their final lunge for the finish tape, Lime and Purple positioned themselves for the minor places before Lemon accelerated past and crossed the line to take second. It being a points race, it was the total, not the finishing positions that count. It was much closer this time than in the first race, but the placings were still the same with Lemon just beating Teal, and Lime taking the bronze medal.

– Image by boardGOATS

All this time, on the other side of the room, Pink, Plum and Ivory were playing Altiplano (with the Sunny Days mini-expansion). Altiplano is a worker-placement bag building game that is a re-implementation of the bag-building mechanic used in Orléans. The idea is that players draw resources out of their bag and place them on their personal action boards. Then, players take it in turns to move their “worker” round the rondel to different locations where they can carry out corresponding actions assuming they have the right resources in the right place. In essence, the game can be boiled down to one of resource improvement, for example, players can use an Alpaca to get Wool which they can later turn into Cloth.

– Image by boardGOATS

Points are scored for the resources at the end of the game, with more valuable resources worth more points. Picking up Hut cards also increases the value of resources. When a player no-longer needs a resource, they can move it into their warehouse with completed “shelf-fulls” scoring points at the end of the game. Players have to be careful with this however, as once a resource is in the warehouse it cannot be used anymore. Additionally, players can also score points by completing contracts. It is the player that best interweaves these different aspects of the game that wins.

– Image by boardGOATS

All three players felt they were making a poor fist of things and agreed they were “playing sub-optimally”. Ivory concentrated on collecting and completing contracts. In contrast, Pink completely eschewed contracts and instead focused on getting Glass tokens—the most valuable of the resources. To do this, he had to get cocoa first, which he did by taking the Cocoa Canoe and with it one Cocoa resource. He then increased the value of his Glass by taking the matching Hut.

– Image by boardGOATS

As a bit of a chocoholic, Plum also wanted Cocoa but as Pink had nabbed the Cocoa Canoe, the only way she could get it was to buy an Extension board. Unfortunately, the first one was too early for her and she couldn’t afford it. The next Extension had the “Navigation” anchor icon on it associating it with the Harbour Location, but players are only allowed one Extension board at each Location and, as Plum started with the Fisherman, she was not able to get that one either. The next Cocoa opportunity didn’t come up until much later in the game, by which time it was too late really. She did take an Extension eventually, one for the Mountains, which enabled her to exchange Food to give Ore which she was then able to convert into Silver.

– Image by boardGOATS

Last time the group played Altiplano, we discovered a “rules malfunction” associated with the purchase and use of carts. Unfortunately, although many other aspects of the rules were checked, this was overlooked, so instead of always being able to move one space for one food token, or more with a cart, the group played that they could only move if they owned a cart and then only move one space. That meant movement was much more difficult and made life more challenging. Once again, everyone was playing by the same rules, so it wasn’t hugely important though it may have shifted the balance of the game a little.

– Image by boardGOATS

There was a nice atmosphere during the game though. In a Star Wars reference, Pink advised Plum, “Not to go trading with The Huts” and politely waited until the ladies were no-longer present before indulging in comments about his Woodcutter “getting some wood”. When he started getting wood, however, he couldn’t stop and finished with a particularly large pile. Ivory started with the Farmer and used his Alpaca to produce wool and wove that into some very high quality scarves. There was something remarkably “Fishy” about Plum’s strategy but especially when she carefully stashed too many of her fish in her warehouse and then ran out of resources. She had far more money than anyone else, but ultimately though, there was nothing anyone could do about Pink, who’s Glass factory gave him clear victory.

– Image by boardGOATS

The cycle race finished long before the activities on the high plain. Lime decided to head off to make sure he got home before the infamous Oxfordshire road closures cut him off, and Teal having enjoyed his evening on the bike also took an early night. After some more chatter, the remaining six began “a quick game” of Bohnanza. This is one of our all-time favourite games, and it was time to introduce it to Orange and Lemon. Although it is not difficult, it is very different to the games we’ve played in the last few weeks, and is considerably more challenging if English is not your first language.

– Image by boardGOATS

Bean farming might not seem an exciting theme, but the game is great fun and relies on the simple premise that players must not change the order of the cards in their hand. On their turn, the active player must plant the first card, the card at the front of their hand, and may plant the second card if they choose. Players have just two Bean Fields to work with, and each one can only hold one type of bean at any one time. Once the active player has planted their bean or beans from their hand, they turn over the top two cards in the central deck—these must also be planted before the game can progress, though the active player can trade them with another player or even give them away.

– Image by boardGOATS

Once the two cards on the table have been planted, the active player may trade cards from their hand before drawing replacement cards. At any point a player may harvest beans, but the more cards they harvest, the more they are worth. However, if a player has a field with only one bean in it, they must harvest their larger field first. At the end of the game, the player with the most coins is the winner. Normally, the game ends after the third turn through the deck, but this time, because time was running short, the group finished after the first pass. This meant the group missed out on way the balance of the deck changes and the rare cards get rarer and the deck gets progressively shorter.

– Image by boardGOATS

Purple started, and talked through her turn, followed by Blue. Pine knew what he was going to do and got on with it as did Black, before it was Orange and then Lemon’s turn. Purple started collecting Green and Soy Beans, with Pine planting Wax and Black-Eyed Beans. Orange competed with Blue for Red and Coffee Beans and with Black for Chili Beans. Lemon started with Blue Beans and later moved onto Green Beans. There were lots of “generous trades” and gifts too—the group generally play together nicely, but tonight, the heat and the tiredness all round, meant everyone was especially kind to each other.

– Image by boardGOATS

With time marching on, the group agreed to call a halt when the deck ran out the first time, even though that meant Pine missed out on two turns that he had set up beautifully. It was a really close game, but it was Blue who just won the chocolates that Pink offered up for first prize. As she was only one point clear, she shared her winnings with Lemon who generously passed her’s on to Purple. It was hot and late, and as everyone left, the pub locked up behind them.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: Games usually play better with the rules as written.

28th June 2022

When Blue, Pink, Orange and Lemon rolled in (late thanks to the delights of the Oxford traffic and garden watering), Plum was already there. A gamer with Gweeples in Didcot, Plum was a friend of Burgundy’s that members of the group first met at his funeral about six months ago. While she finished her tagliatelle, Blue and Pink waited for their supper to arrive, and everyone admired Pink’s Pornstar Martini, the group revisited Tsuro, which Orange and Lemon had enjoyed so much on their first visit, last time.

– Image by boardGOATS

While setting up, Pine arrived and needed a quick reminder of the rules, but that only took a moment: players have a hand of three tiles and, on their turn place one of them in front of their stone and extend it’s path, moving their stone (and any others) to the end of its path. Players are eliminated when their stone goes off the board or collides with another stone—the last player on the board is the winner. First blood went to Blue, who took out Lemon and Pine, but that was collateral damage as she had no choice and went off the board herself at the same time.

– Image by boardGOATS

Pink was next, being trapped and left with no option, and then just Plum and Orange remained to duel it out. There was very little space left on the board and the writing was already on the wall when Plum went off. That left Orange a worthy winner, especially as he had a tile to spare too. Teal arrived and while Blue and Pink fed, he led everyone else in a game of No Thanks!. This is a game we’ve played a lot in the group and is a very clever design but like all the cleverest games, has very simple rules. Played with a numbered deck of thirty-two cards, the idea is that on their turn, the active player can take the card in the middle or pay a chip to pass the problem on to the next person.

– Image by boardGOATS

The next person has the same decision: they can take the card and the chip, or pay a chip, and so on. At the end of the game, a player’s total score is the sum of the face value of the cards they took and the player with the lowest number wins. There are two key points that make the game, however. Firstly, if a player has consecutively numbered cards, only the lowest card in the run contributes to their total, which means cards have different values to different players. Secondly, nine cards are removed from the deck, which adds jeopardy on top. The game can play out in several different ways.

– Image by boardGOATS

The player or players with the most chips are always in control, until one player is left with so few chips or runs out completely, that they are forced to take cards even when they don’t want them. This can prevent players, even those with lots of chips, from getting the cards they need to close runs causing the strategy to back-fire, and leaving those with the most chips with the most points as well. This time, Orange and Teal amassed a huge pile of chips each, but both managed to avoid ending up with multiple high scoring runs. Then someone dropped a chip on the floor giving Pine the opportunity to recount the tale of how he dropped a chip between the floor boards and how it is still there despite everyone’s best efforts.

– Image by boardGOATS

This time, the dropped chip was recovered successfully and the game ended without further mishap. Orange and Teal took first and second respectively, giving Orange two in two games to match Lemon’s achievement at the start of last time. By this time, the feeders had finished feeding and everyone else had arrived, so it was time for the “Feature Game“. To mark the start of the Tour de France later in the week, this was to be the Peloton expansion for the cycling game, Flamme Rouge. Flamme Rouge is a fast-paced, tactical bike-racing game where each player controls a team of two riders: a Rouleur and a Sprinteur. The aim is to manage the first rider to cross the finish line.

– Image by boardGOATS

Each rider has a deck of cards, and Players move their riders one at a time, by drawing four cards from the rider’s deck, choosing one to play, and recycling the rest. Once every player has picked cards for both their riders, players simultaneously reveal their cards and, starting with the cyclist at the front, each rider is moved in turn. After all the riders have moved, slip-streaming takes effect, with groups that have exactly one space between them and the group in front moving forward to remove the gap. Finally, every rider that still has an empty space in front of them is deemed to be riding into the wind and takes an exhaustion card which goes into their deck—these are bad because they are slow cards and block up plays’ hands.

– Image by boardGOATS

At the start of the race, everyone’s Rouleurs have the same cards, and everyone’s Sprinteurs have the same cards. The Rouleurs have lots of cards with a similar face value, where the Sprinteurs have some cards that are faster and have a higher value, which are offset by others that are slower and have a lower value. Players have to balance how they manage their riders and make the most of the slip-streaming opportunities. The game is modular with the option to add hills to the base game. The Peloton expansion adds extra riders (so that the game plays up to six players), cobbled sections (aka “Pavé”), Feed Zones, and rules to set up a break-away.

– Image by boardGOATS

Unusually with so many people, rather than splitting in to three groups playing three different games, we split into just two with both playing the same game. Since the Grand Départ was due to take place in the essentially flat Denmark this year, both groups largely played without hills, but included cobbled sections (à la Stage 5, from Lille to Arenberg, a week later). Cobbled sections change width frequently and are generally narrower than normal road, but perhaps more importantly, riders can no-longer benefit from slipstreaming but still get exhaustion cards. The slightly larger group, led by Ivory and Teal also decided to start with a break-away.

– Image by boardGOATS

Their chosen route was Stage 11 of the stage race and took in three sections of Pavé. The first of these was shortly after the start, the second after the first hairpin and a short slight up-hill ramp, and the third was after a second hairpin and a little chicane. Teal and Lime made it into the breakaway and they stayed away for most of the game. Being at the front “pushing air out of the way” all the time is tiring though, and inevitably, they picked up a lot of exhaustion cards. That meant that as the Peloton was bearing down on them, just as the finish line was in sight, they didn’t have the energy fend them off.

– Image by boardGOATS

As a result, Black and Pink, who had been sheltering in the middle of the group slid across the line just ahead of the gallant breakaway, who were definitely candidates for the day’s combativity award. Black took first place, having spent most of the race doing as little as possible and saving it all for the final sprint. While saving energy is a good tactic, Purple took it to a different level picking up no exhaustion cards at all, though she wasn’t able to turn on the burners in time to take advantage of it.

– Image by boardGOATS

The smaller group, led by Blue and Plum rode a simpler route based on the Avenue Corso Paseo ride, with a cobbled section in the middle between the two hairpin bends. With most people in this group new to the game, they decided to keep things simple and eschewed the complexities of hills completely, sticking to a pan-flat course, and kept to the standard roll-out used in the base game. First Orange and then Lemon rode off the front while Pine and especially Blue were repeatedly under threat of being spat out of the back of the peloton. Most rounds seemed to end with Blue breathing a sigh of relief as she managed to hang on and Lemon laughing as she picked up yet another exhaustion card.

– Image by boardGOATS

Once the riders had passed the Pavé the speed picked up and Blue and Pine started to try to move forward in the field. Lemon who had led most of the way “bonked” and “hit the wall”, and as a result, was unceremoniously dropped. It was tight, but Pine’s Rouleur was first over the line just holding off Plum’s first rider who took second followed by Pine’s Sprinteur who took third. It had been a close and quite attritional race, but despite the fact there were fewer riders with a shorter parkour, the race finished at much the same time as the other one. So races were compared and there was a bit of chatter about other options as people packed away.

– Image by boardGOATS

Ivory took himself off for an early night, as did Teal, but those that were left were keen to play on, albeit not for long in some cases. Inevitably there was a lot of discussion about what to play, but when Ticket to Ride got a mention, Pine and Lime were keen to give the London version a run out, and were quickly joined by Pink and Purple. Ticket to Ride is one of our favourite games and we play a lot of different versions, short and long. They all have the same basic structure, but different layouts on different maps, and often with a little rules change. In summary, in the original game, players are connecting cities across the USA.

– Image by boardGOATS

They do this by collecting coloured cards and then spending those cards to place trains. Players score points for placing trains and also for completing “Tickets” by connecting two cities together by any chosen route—the further apart the cities, the more points they are worth. The game end is triggered when one player has only two train pieces left and at the end of the game, the player with the most points is the winner. The original game takes around an hour to play with the full compliment, but more recently, there have been a number of smaller, lighter versions available. They have the same rules, but players have fewer pieces and the maps are more congested, based on cities like New York, Amsterdam and later this year, San Francisco.

– Image by boardGOATS

This time, however, the version chosen was London. In this edition, players are placing buses to mark routes, and in addition to scoring points for claiming routes and Tickets, players also score points for connecting all the places in the same district. Pine won the “name the people on the front of the box” competition and went first. Lime crossed the city travelling from Baker Street to The Tower of London while both Purple and Pink did the same but from Buckingham Palace to Brick Lane, and via different routes. Pine had a northern route and a south route that looked like they would join up in the middle, but didn’t quite make it. He did manage to claim a district though, the only player to do so for a district of any significant size.

– Image by boardGOATS

It was very close between first and second, though there was a bit more distance to Pink in third. In the end, Lime just pipped Pine to victory by two points. Meanwhile, there had been some debate between the other five as to what they would play. Blue suggested introducing Orange and Lemon to one of our old stalwarts, 6 Nimmt!, but it wasn’t one of Plum’s favourite games. So instead, Blue and Black introduced everyone else to …Aber Bitte mit Sahne, a clever but simple little “I divide, you choose” game. The idea is that one player is The Baker who divides the cake into pieces and then everyone else takes it in turns to take a one of them.

– Image by boardGOATS

Each slice of cake has a type, a number on it and a some cream. When a player takes cake, they can choose to eat it or store it. For all eaten cake, players a point for each blob of cream. For stored cake, however, the player with the most of each type will score the number of points associated with that type. The clever part is that the number of points is equivalent to the number of slices of that type in the game, so the more common types which are harder to get a majority in are worth more, but they also have the most cream, tempting players to eat them straight away.

– Image by boardGOATS

It is always difficult for the first couple of players to take the role of Baker, but this is exacerbated with five players. Blue went first, then Black. It was only a couple of rounds in, that the twinkle appeared in Plum’s eye as she realised how clever the game was and expressed her approval. It was quite tight in the early stages with players staking their claims to different sorts of cake. There was competition for kiwi and redcurrent, but others went largely un-stored (and therefore eaten). After everyone had been the Baker it was time to see who had the most of each and add up the scores. Black got lucky with the chocolate as everyone else was greedy and ate theirs.

– Image by boardGOATS

Unfortunately, there was a rules misunderstanding and Orange thought he would get points for every slice he kept if he had the most of that type, so we’ll have to play it again soon so he can try again. This time though, Black who had been very abstemious and eaten none of his cake, ran out the clear winner with thirty-five points to Blue’s twenty-nine and Plum’s twenty-seven for second and third place respectively. Ticket to Ride: London was still underway on the next table, so as Orange and Lemon had not played it before, Blue got out Dobble. We’ve not played this in the group for years, but it is a fantastic little Snap-based filler.

– Image by boardGOATS

The idea is that every card has several pictures and each card shares exactly one match with every other card in the deck and using this principle, there are five possible Snap-based games. Black decided discretion was the better part of valor and opted to spectate while Plum had a significant drive so headed off, leaving just Blue, Orange and Lemon. They started with a pile of cards each and the winner the first to shed their pile onto the central one. The game was all very well, but there was a vocabulary check as, although Blue said they could play in Ukrainian, Orange and Lemon were game to give English a go. Once the items had been identified, the mania started.

– Image by boardGOATS

As it was a trial game, the piles weren’t carefully measured, but Orange quickly got the hang of it and in spite of the language differences, managed to shed his pile first for yet another victory. From there, the group did the reverse and started with one card and grabbed progressively matching cards from the middle. This can be quite savage, which is why Blue opted for the gentler game first. Still, everyone was well-behaved and nobody got scratched. The tension and concentration was palpable though and Ticket to Ride finished and Lime and Pine left with only a a cursory grunt from those playing Dobble, before Blue just edged it to win the final game of the night.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: Tour de France coverage is available on ITV4.

17th Movember 2021 @ The Women’s Institute

Invited to introduce the Stanford-in-the-Vale Women’s Institute to the concept of modern board games, Blue and Pink took a pile of light games to the Village Hall. After the obligatory rendition of William Blake’s Jerusalem, in tables of four, people were introduced to No Thanks!, Coloretto, Tsuro, Indigo, Riff Raff, Second Chance, Aber Bitte mit Sahne… and Just One. Rather inevitably, the biggest success, however, was Boom Boom Balloon—it was quite a sight to see the middle aged ladies of the WI competing to make the biggest bang!

– Image by boardGOATS

26th August 2021 (Back at the Jockey!)

Following the test event at the Horse and Jockey and much discussion, we decided to try meeting in person once again. As the pub are not currently serving food on a Tuesday, we decided to move to Thursdays, at least in the short term, especially as times are so uncertain. This week, the “Feature Game” was Red Rising, a new card collecting game inspired by Fantasy Realms and themed round the books by Pierce Brown. The books are set in a dystopian future on Mars following low-born miner Darrow, a Red, as he infiltrates the ranks of the elite Golds.

– Image by boardGOATS

In the books, society follows a fourteen-colour caste system from Gold at the top to Red at the bottom. Red Rising the board game takes this colour hierarchy and adds elements of hand-management and card-combo building. The idea of the game is very simple: players start with a hand of five cards and on their turn, play one card onto the game board and pick up another. The aim is to improve the quality of their hand and with it, its value. Cards are played on one of four locations on the central game board and have an additional deployment action when played, the effect of which can be dependent on the location they are played in or the card they are played on top of.

– Image by boardGOATS

The card picked up must be the top card from another different location except where enabled by the played card. The location from which the card is collected dictates an additional bonus action: Move along the Fleet track, Collect helium, Increase one’s presence in the Institute, or Claim the Sovereign token. There are a couple of other options: play a card and then take a card blind from the Character deck and roll a die to decide what their bonus action will be. Alternatively, instead of playing a card, just draw a Character card from the deck and place it, then take the bonus action. In practice, these two options are relatively rare and only taken if there is nothing to pick up, or the player likes the hand they have.

– Image by boardGOATS

The game ends when either seven is reached in all three of the Fleet track, helium and the Institute, or one player has reached seven in two of them. At the end of the game, players sum their total score from each card, the scores from combining effects of cards, ten points if they finished with the Sovereign token, three points for each helium, their score for progressing along the Fleet track, and points for each of their tokens in the institute (four per token for the player with the most, two and one for less committed players). Anyone over the seven card hand-limit loses ten points per card over the limit.

– Image by boardGOATS

There is a large deck of cards of which only a relatively small number are seen in each game. The nature of the game changes dramatically depending on which cards come out. This time Blue, Pink, Burgundy and Pine made up one table while Ivory, Green, Black and Purple made the other, both playing with the Collector’s Edition. The first difficulty, was that although beautiful, some of the colours in the Collector’s Edition are difficult to tell apart. The Influence and Fleet tokens in blue and green, and pink and red, were a particular problem which was made worse in low light. This was not too much of a problem in practice, however, because influence tokens can be grouped together and we weren’t playing with the maximum number of players so could ditch the worst clashes.

– Image by boardGOATS

A bigger problem was the amount of text on the cards. Pine and Burgundy both had issues with this, which could be got round by passing cards if people wanted to read them. Additionally, the cards used in a game tend to circulate with one player playing it and another picking it up before playing it themselves. So the burden is not as heavy as it seems at first. Despite it not being complicated, the one table seemed to have a significant issue with rules. Pine struggled with whether the action was associated with the location a cards was played or the location it was collected from.

– Image by boardGOATS

Pink, meanwhile, developed an inexplicable habit of taking the action at both locations. Adding insult to injury, Pink also repeatedly distracted Blue by complaining that he couldn’t see a way of increasing the number of cards in his hand and asking advice. On the next table, however, Green felt he was being got at. This is actually quite a normal state of affairs because we all love to pick on Green, but in this case that wasn’t what was happening. Green’s special power that meant he was able to place an Influence token in the institute every time he took the Sovereign token, but he had a card that meant he would lose points if he had the Sovereign token at the end of the game.

– Image by boardGOATS

So, for this reason, Green concentrated on collecting red helium gems instead. Unfortunately, random draw meant that on this occasion the game had an awful lot of cards that penalised players with the most helium or a player of choice, which Green felt was mostly him. Worse, the nature of the game is that players play these cards then others pick them up and play them again, which can make it feel like there are more cards like this than there really are. Black’s influence dominated the Institute, while everyone competed for points on the Fleet track. It was an extremely close game with four points between first and third. Purple channelled her inner “Magic: The Gathering” player and with a lot of helium, sneaked ahead of Ivory to take second.

– Image by boardGOATS

Despite struggling to get Gold cards and feeling the game was against him, Green finished just ahead with two hundred and fifty two points. The other game was nowhere near as close and clearly played out very differently. Blue, also lost some helium thanks to Burgundy, but it only happened once, there was no real shortage of Gold cards, and the game seemed to take a lot longer. Part of this was because Pine spent a lot of time checking what he was doing and insisting it wasn’t his sort of game, yet he dominated both the Institute and the Fleet track.

– Image by boardGOATS

There were over a hundred points between first and last in this game, but the scores didn’t feel as disparate while playing. In spite of his complaints, it was Pine who came out on top with a massive three hundred and nine points. Overall, both games were a bit of a mixed bag with Burgundy saying it didn’t gel for him, Pine feeling bewildered (not withstanding his success), Green feeling “got at”, and even Pink (who had played it twice before) made a bit of a hash of things. Ivory, Pink and Blue had played it before, and all three had been unconvinced after the first game, but more positive after the second. So it is definitely a game that benefits from multiple plays, if people are prepared to give it a second chance…

– Image by boardGOATS

Ivory, Green, Black and Purple finished first and, at the time it looked like the other group wouldn’t finish for ages. So after some discussion, they started another game and chose Ticket to Ride: Amsterdam. This is one of the “little” spin-off games based on the original Ticket to Ride. Themed round a city rather than a country or continent, these are smaller and quicker to play than the bigger games, but lots of fun. This one is based on the Dutch capital, but the game play is essentially the same as the other editions.

– Image by boardGOATS

On their turn, players either collect coloured cards from the market, or spend them to place plastic carts and score points. Players start the game with three tickets (of which they must keep at least two), which depict two locations. Players who can connect these locations score points at the end of the game; failure to do so leads to negative points. Each variant has a little tweak. So, in addition to scoring points from placing pieces and successfully completing tickets, in the Amsterdam edition, players can pick up goods cards when they complete a route marked with carts.

– Image by boardGOATS

The player with the most of these at the end of the game scores an extra eight points with other players scoring fewer with the amount depending on the number of players. This time, Purple built her routes through the middle of Amsterdam and to the north. Everyone else went for the potentially lucrative goods routes in the south, east and west. The problem with this was the competition, with Green the main casualty. Although Green managed to get three goods cards he failed to complete his second ticket.

– Image by boardGOATS

Ivory also went for two tickets and completed them, but managed to add five goods cards giving him the most and adding a valuable eight points to his score. Both Purple and Black largely eschewed goods cards (collecting just one) and concentrated on finishing their three tickets. In a tight game, which this was, those solitary tickets and the tie-breaker for them was critical. It was a tie for second between Black and Ivory, but it was Purple, who just edged in front, winning by a single point.

– Image by boardGOATS

While the others were playing with their ~~trains~~ carts, the second table had finally finished their game of Red Rising, so they picked up where they had left off last time with another game of the filler, Love Letter. This “micro game” consists of just sixteen cards. Players start with one, draw a second and play one of them doing the associated action. The player with the highest value card, or the last player standing is the winner of the round. The first player to win three rounds is the winner.

– Image by boardGOATS

Last time, it was all about Blue and Burgundy, with Poor Pine being knocked out every single round. This time it was a bit different, and it was all about Pine and Blue. Pink and Burgundy failed to take a single round, but it was tight between Pine and Blue. There was a bit of ebb and flow with one taking a round and then the other, but it was Pine who took his third round first and with it revenge for last time as he left Blue languishing with just two love tokens.

– Image by boardGOATS

Although Ticket to Ride: Amsterdam and Love Letter finished at about the same time, Purple, Black, Green and Ivory all decided it was time to make a move. The others felt there was still time for one quick game of …Aber Bitter mit Sahne, a fun little game based on the simple “I divide, you choose” mechanism. On their turn as Master Baker, the active player constructs a “pie” from pieces drawn at random and divides it into portions, each consisting of several pieces. Starting with the player to the Baker’s left, each person takes a portion of their choice and decides which pieces to keep and which pieces of cake to eat.

– Image by boardGOATS

When all the cake has been distributed, the player with the most of each type scores the number shown on that type, while each piece that has been eaten scores for the number of blobs of cream, sahne. The clever part is that the number of cake pieces of each type in the game is the number shown on the pieces, thus the most common types are the most valuable, but also need the most pieces to score. Thus the aim of the game is to collect sets, but only the largest of each type scores, everything else is worthless unless it has been eaten.

– Image by boardGOATS

Players tend to wind up collecting different sets. This time, Pine won nine points for his gooseberry pie, Burgundy won seven for his blackberry flan and Pink took twenty-one points for his strawberry tart and chocolate gateaux. That was without counting the cream though. Pink thought he’d done enough, but was just beaten by Burgundy who, as well as a lot of cream, also shared the points for a lot of the lower scoring cakes. His final total of thirty-four was one more than Pink with Pine and Blue tied for third. And on that sweet note, it was home time.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: It will take a little time to get used to playing face-to-face again.

7th January 2020

Almost everyone was late arriving and many wanted to eat, so we decided to play something quick to get people going while we waited for food to come. In the top of the bag was …Aber Bitte mit Sahne (a.k.a Piece o’ Cake), and as there were a lot of hungry people, it seemed appropriate somehow. “Sahne” is a very simple little “I divide, you choose” game where players are collecting pieces of cake. On their turn, the active player, or Baker, begins by turning over one of the five piles of cake slices in the order they appear in. They then divide the cake into segments, each containing one or more slices. The player to their left then chooses one of the segments, either “eating”, or “saving” each of the slices they take.

– Image by boardGOATS

At the end of the game, if a player has saved the most of a given type of cake, they score the number of points shown on the slices of that type; they also score one point for each blob of cream they have eaten. The clever part is balancing the possibility of scoring a lots of points later with banking the blobs of cream now. The cake types that score the most highly are those that have the most slices available, but they also have the most cream. The player with the most points after the five rounds wins. Burgundy started the first round, and, as there were four players, he also started the last round, arguably giving Blue a slight advantage since it meant that she was able to choose first twice. Blue began by collecting chocolate cake, because, well, it’s chocolate cake, (obviously), while Green and Pine began a bit of a tussle for “pea pie” (probably gooseberry tart really).

– Image by boardGOATS

One of the key parts of this game is that ties are friendly, in other words, if there is a tie, everyone gets the points. This generally has the effect of making players work to get just enough pieces of cake to join the group of players that will score points rather working that bit harder to than get more pieces than everyone else and be the only one to score. Thus, many people often score points for the same type of cake. This was instrumental in making it a tight game this time, as there were several ties. In the end, the fact Green wasted none of his slices, winning points for everything he kept and eating the rest, meant he beat Blue by just one point with Pine not far behind in third place. Towards the end of “Sahne” Ivory arrived and commented on the differences between it and it’s reimplementation, New York Slice, where cream is replaced with pepperoni and anchovies are added to give negative points – one to play another time perhaps.

– Image by boardGOATS

Once everyone had finished feasting (both in the game and in real life), we started looking at what people might play. First up was the “Feature Game”, Suburbia in it’s rather epically large, and very fancy new “Collector’s Edition”. This is a tile-laying game, where each player tries to build their own town providing an economic engine and infrastructure that starts off as self-sufficient and hopefully becomes profitable and encourages growth. Each player has two tracks: Income and Reputation, the facilities that a player builds affect these, so as the income of their town increases there is more money to spend on purchasing better and more valuable buildings. These, in turn, can increase the reputation of the town which will increase the population. The winner is the town with the largest population. While one might think this means going for the highest possible reputation would be the way to victory, the scoring track contains several expansion checks that immediately reduce a player’s income and reputation.

– Image by boardGOATS

The frequency of these scoring checks increases as scores increase, which could be disastrous for a player who allows rampant population growth to get out of control. Although only Ivory had played the game before, the group decided to include one of the expansion sets, Nightlife. Setup did not take as long as it looked, with the box inserts from the new edition making the job much quicker and easier. The three communal objectives were: Most houses, Highest Income, and Most Municipal Buildings. Each player also had their own private objectives with Green going for Nightlife, Ivory for Factories and Burgundy for Offices. In the first round, even though the developments were as yet tiny villages, both Green and Ivory built Helipads. With the owners of each helipad receiving $5 for every Helipad currently in the game (including the ones just taken), the power of the game became immediately obvious.

– Image by boardGOATS

In most games, players receives bonuses based on the situation when a card or token is taken. In Suburbia, any benefits act through past, present and future, so tiles can keep on giving throughout the game. Burgundy used this effect to gain $1 every time anyone built an Office. Green managed to build up a bonus of $3 for every House built in the game. This type of Income really helped, as Green didn’t need to worry too much about his base Income level and could concentrate on building up the Night tiles and Houses that he needed to fulfill his personal goals. Ivory and Burgundy both decided to chase the Income bonus and ended up fighting for the Income producing tiles pushing each other up to ever higher values. Obviously that Income helped them buy tiles, but they were largely in competition with each other and thus allowed Green to build a commanding lead in Accommodation and Nightlife.

– Image by boardGOATS

Another unique aspect of Suburbia, are the expansion checks that prevent a run-away winner. For every few population points gained, the player’s Income and Reputation markers are pushed back by one point each. Since Burgundy and Ivory were competing for the income bonuses, there was the highly unusual (and amusing for anyone who was not Burgundy or Ivory) situation in the final couple of rounds where they were trying to avoid scoring too many “points” resulting in reducing their income and potentially losing the fifteen points the end-game objective would. Ivory in particular was racking his brains over the best way to do this and spent so much thought on it that he failed to spot that he was only one Municipal building ahead of Green who’s turn was next (and had a pile of cash even though his Income was minus three!).

– Image by boardGOATS

Thus, for his final turn Green (knowing he had already won the Houses and Nightlife bonuses) bought the one remaining Municipal building on the track, robbing Ivory (no friendly ties in this game, to get a bonus you have to have most). In the final scoring, Green’s green and pleasant city, with only Houses, Schools, Nightlife and a large Park (aside from his one starting Factory) was much more popular with the residents than Ivory’s Factory filled city or Burgundy’s green Office city. Overall the group had enjoyed the game, which had perhaps more than the usual amount of interaction for a personal area building game. Although there weren’t really any new mechanics, it was well implemented and everyone would be very happy to play it again.

– Image by boardGOATS

Meanwhile, Pine, Lime and Blue opted for the slightly lighter game, Istanbul. This is an old favourite that won the Kennerspiel des Jahres in 2014, but thanks to the new fare hasn’t been played in the group for some time. The game is played on a modular board with players making paths between different locations. The aim of the game is to be the first player to get five red Rubies, but there are a number of ways to get these. For example, they can be bought from the Gemstone Dealer, but this costs money (and every time someone buys a Ruby, the cost increases too). Money can be obtained by trading goods obtained from the three warehouses at one of the two markets.

– Image by boardGOATS

Each player starts with a small barrow, with space for four different goods and the Rubies. Three of the goods (Spices, Cloth and Fruit) can be gained from the associated warehouse, with a visit allowing players to fill their barrow to its maximum. A small barrow will only hold a maximum of two of each though, so visiting the wheelwright to buy an extension or two makes these visits more efficient, but barrow extensions also cost money… So planning the order of visits to these different places, and this is the clever part of the game.

– Image by boardGOATS

Each player is in charge of a stack of wooden disks representing a Merchant and his Assistants. The idea is that on their turn, the Merchant visits one of the different locations by travelling orthogonal a maximum of two spaces. At each location, he can negotiate a deal and leaves one of his Assistants to complete it. After several turns, the player runs out of Assistants so they can continue to move their Merchant without making deals returning to the Fountain to call their Assistants so they can start again, possibly using a couple of turns to do so. Alternatively, the Merchant can move up to two spaces and return to one of the locations where they left an Assistant and carry out another deal at that location, taking the Assistant with them.

– Image by boardGOATS

Thus, the game is similar to Yokohama in that it is all about planning an efficient route, in this case, dropping off Assistants at useful locations and then, ideally, travelling the route again reusing them and picking them up. There are other factors to consider too however. Encountering another Merchant will cost money, for example. On the other hand, meeting the Smuggler or the Governor provide opportunities to get resources, including the rare Jewels (valuable, but distinct from Rubies), or bonus cards that can be kept and played to give an advantage later in the game.

– Image by boardGOATS

This time, the group used the big numbers on the location tiles to dictate their layout. Then, after a rules run-down, Blue started, moving her Merchant from the Fountain to the Post Office. Visits here provide a couple resources and some cash, which she planned to sell, using the profits to extend her barrow. Lime started out visiting the Tea House (via the Caravansary) to get cash, while Pine went to the Black Market to get money and Jewellery. Blue was first to get a Ruby, but Pine and Lime weren’t far behind, and it was even closer by the time they were claiming their second Rubies. Lime, every inch the accountant was accruing vast amounts of cash, and somehow seemed to be collecting gems too, without the pile seeming to diminish significantly.

– Image by boardGOATS

As the game approached the end, Lime went on a spending spree, at the end of which Pine scuppered Lime’s plans. He took a Ruby from the Gemstone Dealer, increasing the price for Lime in the process, making things worse by the fact that he was squatting putting the cost just out of Lime’s reach. In the end though, Blue made a mistake leaving the door open for Pine to have another visit, and claim his final Ruby, with it the game. With that, Pine left for an early night, convinced that Suburbia which was “just finishing” would be at least another half an hour. Blue and Lime, waited and set up For Sale, but it turned out Pine was right, and by the time the other group finished there wasn’t time to play. So, after a bit of chit-chat, everyone went home.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: Green and pleasant towns are nicer places to live.

Pink’s sPecial Party

It being a very special day for Pink, he decided he wanted to spend it playing games with friends and family at the Jockey. The early arrivals set up PitchCar, including the new “Loop” expansion and others played Loopin’ Louis, Patchwork Express, Dobble and the surprise hit, Boom Boom Balloon. Little-Lime won PitchCar (perhaps flicking talent runs in the family as Lime himself managed to complete the loop at least three times), and almost everyone managed to lose Boom Boom Balloon at least once. Late in the afternoon, a game of Scotland Yard was started with Pink as the fugitive, and finished almost before it was begun when he was quickly captured. It was then restarted with Mrs. Lime as the fugitive and turned into an epic game that went on for a couple of hours with a brief break as people tucked into the buffet supper and amazing sticky-toffee pudding cake-desert provided by the Jockey Kitchen.

– Image by boardGOATS

The evening continued with more games including No Thanks!, Finstere Flure (a.k.a. Fearsome Floors), Saboteur, …Aber Bitte mit Sahne (a.k.a. Piece o’ Cake) and Ice Cool. The team of five eventually managed to corner Mrs. Lime, freeing up Pink to play his special request, Captain Sonar, which his team fittingly won, twice. This was followed by a game of Ca$h ‘n Guns (it is always fun entertaining the bar staff by waving foam pistols about and threatening to shoot each other), before finishing with 6 Nimmt!, a game to match Pink’s socks. It was a great day, and we all went home tired, but very happy, with Pink and Blue keen to thank everyone for sharing Pink’s sPecial day.

– Image by boardGOATS

17th September 2019

Blue and Pink arrived nice and early and so after ordering food, started a quick game of Ganz Schön Clever (a.k.a. That’s Pretty Clever). This is one of the first of the “Roll and Write” games from the last couple of years and, as it received a Kennerspiel des Jahres nomination last year, arguably one of the best. This type of game has been around for many years, with Yahtzee being one of the first, but the current trend was started by games like Qwixx. Qwixx came out seven years ago, but has since been followed last year by games like Roll to the Top!, Railroad Inc., Welcome to… and the Roll Through the Ages and Penny Papers Adventures series of games.

– Image by boardGOATS

These games all have different themes and different mechanisms, but the basic principle is the the same with players rolling dice (sometimes bespoke dice) and marking the results on a piece of paper, usually from a bespoke pad, or more recently a laminated card. Ganz Schön Clever is an abstract game using six coloured dice which are used to fill in boxes in five coloured areas of the individual player “boards” (the white die is wild). The active player, rolls all six and chooses one to keep and use, discarding all dice with lower pip values. They then roll any remaining dice, again keeping and using one and discarding the rest before rolling the rest one last time keeping and using one final die. The other players can then use one of the discards, before play passes to the left.

– Image by boardGOATS

The clever part is the way the dice are used, and the fact that filling in some of the boxes gives a bonus action, enabling players to fill in other boxes or gain the opportunity to re-roll their dice or even use an extra die. With just two, the game is played over six rounds, giving them just eighteen dice on their own turn with another six from their opponent’s turn and as many bonuses as they can get. The player who wins is therefore the player who makes the best use of the dice they roll and usually, the player who manages to build the most combinations to take advantage of the bonuses available. This time round, Blue was failed to get a good start and Pink took her to the cleaners, finishing with a hundred and ninety-two, a winning margin of twenty-six.

– Image by boardGOATS

Blue and Pink had only just started, when the others started rolling in, but unusually, there was no sign of Burgundy. By the time food had arrived, we were into double figures, but still no sign of Burgundy. People were starting to get worried until Blue borrowed a phone and checked her email to discover he wasn’t feeling well. There were still enough players for three games, and eventually, everyone else took themselves off leaving Blue, Pink and Green to play the “Feature Game”, West of Africa. This is a game set in the Canary Islands (which really are west of Africa, unlike Krakatoa which is famously not East of Java), and has a slightly nasty edge to it, making it almost like a “Vanuatu Light”.

– Image by boardGOATS

The game is quite simple with some very nice little elements. The basic flow of the game involves planting crops, selling crops, becoming Alcalde (or mayor) of islands and then building settlements. Each player has their own deck of cards which they use to carry-out their actions, with each card having a value. Players simultaneously choose up to five of their cards (the first four are free, the fifth comes at a cost), then each hand is evaluated and the lowest value hand is played first. This means there is a nice tension between choosing a low value hand and going first, or choosing higher value cards, giving other players the chance to carry out actions first, potentially meaning that those actions are no-longer available.

– Image by boardGOATS

There are two types of cards: islands and actions. Moving workers or boats are simple actions where players just move workers a given number of steps along the shipping lanes, however, some of the action cards need a location to be played. For example, planting crops needs to be played with an island card which indicates where the crop tokens are to be played. Similarly, selling crops and settling both need to be played with island cards, but the clever part is that island cards can be used for multiple actions and actions can be carried out at multiple islands an unlimited number of times. The round ends once all players have completed their actions, then any planted crops are automatically moved into the warehouses where they can be moved and/or sold in later rounds.

– Image by boardGOATS

The islands are split into east, west and central with islands in the different regions having different characteristics. So the western Canaries only have spaces for production, while the eastern islands only have spaces for settlements. Selling goods is more lucrative in the east than in the west, however, each lot selling for twelve gold, instead of six. So shipping goods eastwards can be lucrative, but that requires playing a card and only four (or five) can be played each round. Selling only provides gold, however, and players need points to win. The two players with the most gold at the end of the round get a point each, but this is not the main source of points.

– Image by boardGOATS

At the end of the round, the occupation of each island is evaluated and the Alcalde or mayor of each is assigned, with players getting a point for each island they control. This is not the main source of points either though, that is settling with each settlement giving three points. Settling is expensive though and gets more so as the cheaper plots get built on. Another of the clever little features of the game is that the number of settlements available in each round is limited which adds more pressure to the turn order. As this is so critical, ties have to be resolved, and are always in favour of the player with the most gold which increasing the importance of money, adding balance to the game.

– Image by boardGOATS

Pink had the lowest scoring starting hand so went first. This can be a substantial advantage as he knew he would be able to do what he wanted. Green went next and managed to interfere with Blue’s plans, though she had been aware of the risk and had managed to build in some extra options to help mitigate the effects a little. Pink took control of La Hierro and La Palma, and Green took La Gomera leaving Gran Canaria to Blue who also picked up Fuerteventura, with an eye to later in the game. Green got the best of the early rounds though setting up a small, but important lead, though more significantly, arguably better positioning. The game is not a long one, and there isn’t really time to build an engine, so it wasn’t long before Green, in particular, was threatening to trigger the end of the game by getting twenty-five points.

– Image by boardGOATS

It was then that Blue made her monumental mistake: when choosing which of two island cards to play she ended up playing both and not the sale action card to go with them. This, coupled with Green’s action which he took first, meant she was unable to do anything at all in the penultimate round. Green followed this by messing up his final round, also failing to play a sale action card which meant he didn’t have enough gold to build the number of houses he wanted to. He was still able to build one final settlement though, giving him a clear win with forty points. It was much closer for second with Pink’s thirty-two points just pipping Blue by a single point. It had been an enjoyable game, but despite the excellent balance and some really nice touches, none of the three players could put their collective finger on what was lacking and what the game needed to take it from “OK, but eminently forgettable” to “great”.

– Image by boardGOATS

Meanwhile, on the neighboring table, despite their reluctance to play it with two chemists, Pine and Lime had joined Red and Mulberry to play Periodic: A Game of the Elements. This is a recent KickStarter delivery, and seemed entirely appropriate for the International Year of the Periodic Table. On their turn, the active player either pays energy to activate trends (such as “Decrease Atomic Mass” or “Increase Atomic Radii”) to move their flask around the periodic table board in the direction allowed by the trend. If they finish a trend movement on an element that appears on the top, visible card of one of the four goal card decks, they can “discover” that element. Flasks can be moved up to five spaces, but activating the trend multiple times means the player’s flask can be moved further enabling them to “discover” multiple elements.

– Image by boardGOATS

The first activation costs one energy point and all additional trends costing two energy points with tokens spent in this way placed on a space associated with the trend used. Instead of paying to move, the active player can take all the energy accrued on that trend and move their flask according to a trend, but just once. Thus, the conservation of energy forces players to spend carefully and play efficiently. When someone discovers all the elements for one goal they take the associated card with a bonus action tile, and all the other players who discovered some of the elements on the card, get consolation points. Players can also discovering particular types of elements, as shown in by cards laid out around the edge of the board.

– Image by boardGOATS

Moving along a step along this “track” gives players academic achievement which is worth an ever increasing amount of points. The third and final source of points are from the agenda cards which give players personal objectives and are dealt out at the start of the game. The game ends when someone completes the research track or when a stack of goal cards is depleted and the player with the most points at the end wins. Unfortunately, due to a “rules malfunction”, the group were halfway through the third stack of goal cards when they realised the game should have ended so decided to carry on till all four piles were depleted in what they referred to as “Periodic: The Director’s Cut”.

– Image by boardGOATS

All in all, Pine and Lime needn’t have worried that Mulberry’s and Red’s chemistry backgrounds would give them a significant advantage. Although there were a lot of nice chemistry references that the scientists appreciated it was not necessary to understand these to play the game effectively. The strategies employed varied: Red and Mulberry concentrated on progressing on along the academic track, while Lime on his agenda cards and Pine focused on goal cards. In the end, it didn’t make a lot of difference and there was a three-way tie for second place with Red, “The Evil Chemist” finishing seven points ahead of the others, with a final total of seventy-one. Everyone had enjoyed the game though and would be happy to give it another go though they all agreed they would do things differently next time.

– Image by boardGOATS

On the other side of the room, Ivory was introducing Black and Purple to this year’s Kennerspiel des Jahres winner, Wingspan. Wingspan was our “Feature Game”, a few weeks ago and was always going to have another outing – in fact, this time we had a choice of two copies! Wingspan is a robust, card-based engine builder, with beautiful production and gorgeous artwork. The idea is that players are collecting birds for their reserves. On their turn, the active player chooses one of four actions/habitats, and then starting with the card furthest to the right in that habitat, activate each card in turn.

– Image by boardGOATS

The primary action associated with the habitats are spending food to play cards; getting food; laying eggs, and more drawing bird cards. Players start with eight possible actions per turn, which gradually reduces to five over the course of the four rounds of the game. All the bird cards in the game give bonuses that fit with their real-life behaviour. For example, the food needed to play cards closely resemble their diet. The designer and producer have paid attention to other details too. For example, the number of eggs each bird has in their nest is not accurate, but are proportionately correct and bonus actions are associated with birds that flock and birds of prey.

– Image by boardGOATS

This time the game was very tight, though different strategies were employed. Purple tried to maximise her food income, starting with an Eastern Phoebe which provided invertebrates , and later adding a Baltimore Oriole, a Red-Breasted Nuthatch, a Mountain Chickadee and an Indigo Bunting ensuring a lucrative food source giving her a wide variety too. Then she added a White-Faced Ibis and a Ferruginous Hawk both birds of prey that are triggered by other players actions and give points at the end of the game for each food they bring in.

– Image by boardGOATS

It’s arguable that the cards could have been shuffled better, and as a result birds that ate small mammals or fish and aquatics didn’t come out till later so she wasn’t able to take as much advantage of some of her food supplies as she might. In contrast, Black and Ivory went for a more egg-based strategy, with Ivory playing a Cassin’s Sparrow and a Brown-Headed Cowbird both of which laid eggs, the sparrow when activated and the Cowbird on other players’ turns.

– Image by boardGOATS

Black played a Yellow-Billed Cuckoo, which also activated on on other players’ turns and coupled it with a House Finch which enabled him to store a lot of eggs. The end result was really close, with only four points between first and third. Everyone had a similar number of “tucked” birds, bonus points and end of round points. Purple took more from her birds and finished with ten food on her cards from her predators. Although Black and Ivory had no stored food they had twice as many eggs as Purple and, on aggregate, Ivory pipped Purple, by just two points.

– Image by boardGOATS

With time marching on, some of the group decided to head off for an early night leaving Blue, Black, Purple, Pink and Pine to play “something short”. Pink determinedly eschewed the option of Bohnanza, and suggested “Sahne” instead, which was quickly accepted by the other four. This cute little game, correctly known as …aber bitte mit Sahne (a.k.a. Piece o’ Cake), is the archetypal “I divide, you choose” game. Played over five rounds, players take it in turns to be the “Master Baker”. They divide the eleven slices of the pie into pieces and each player takes it in turns to take a piece (leaving the Master Baker with whatever’s left).

– Image by boardGOATS

As players take their share, they can choose to keep slices or eat slices: eating a slice guarantees points (equal to the number of blobs of cream on top), while saving it gives the opportunity for more points if the player has the most of that type stored at the end of the game. Each slice has a number on it which is the number of points the player with the most uneaten slices of that type gets, but also how many are available (though a couple are always removed to add a little non-determinism). Thus, the most valuable cakes are also those with the most slices available but also those with the most cream.

– Image by boardGOATS

Purple started out collecting slices of strawberry tart, while Pine opted for what he insisted was gooseberry flan, but looked like it was made out of peas. He also went for the pizza (or possibly apricot?) and got into a tussle with Blue for that and cockroach (which Pine insisted on calling pecan, though in truth it could have been date too). Things kicked off when Pine offered Pink (sat to his left) a particularly favourable selection and when Blue pointed this out, was persuaded by Pink to be “nice”. However on Pink’s turn, when he had the option to be nice to Blue, he wasn’t.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: Clever mechanisms, a great game do not necessarily make.

19th March 2019

Yet again, the evening began with a discussion of everyone’s ailments: Pine had spent the last fortnight visiting Swindon for a daily dose of intravenous antibiotics; Green’s absence was explained by his contagious skin condition, and Blue was feeling particularly blue thanks to a nasty cold (a present from Pink). The general itchiness of the group was increased by the addition of everyone’s favourite nit-nurse stories. Perhaps it was the general malaise, but there seemed to be a lot of food eaten, including several helpings of ice-cream, but eventually we got down to playing games, beginning with the “Feature Game”, Botswana (aka Wildlife Safari). Unusually, this was very, very popular, and Mulberry drew the short straw, so she was promised a chance to play it soon.

– Image by boardGOATS

Botswana is deceptively simple: Players have a hand of cards and take it in turns to play one card onto central set piles and then take any one of the plastic animals. There are five “animal suits” and six cards in each, numbered zero to five. At the end of the round, players multiply the number of plastic animals they have in each suit by the face value of the last card played in that suit. Thus, a player with three plastic elephants where the last card played was a four would score twelve for that suit. The game is played over as many rounds as there are players.

– Image by boardGOATS

It took a round for people to get a feel for the game, but it quickly became clear how clever it is. A bit like 6 Nimmt!, Botswana has a feeling of luck about it, but it is also very tactical. Players want to make sure they play the high value cards that they have and get as many animals as possible in those suits, but play them early and someone else may subsequently play a zero making them worthless. On the other hand, waiting to the end to play high cards risks someone else ending the game and failure to maximise the score. So the game is all about timing and second guessing everyone else.

– Image by boardGOATS

Blue and Pine took the first round, and while the second and third were more level, going into the final round, Black commented to Burgundy that it was clearly a two horse race. Blue’s answer that it was surely a “two zebra race”, was met by Pine’s response that he’d rather ride an elephant as they are generally better tempered and can be trained to carry people. After a discussion about whether the plastic, model elephants were African or Asian, the appearance of the leopards and their spots, and the collective noun for rhinoceros, the game continued. Like a crush of rhino, Pine could barely contain his pride as he trampled over the rest of the herd in his stubbornness. In a bit of a dazzle, Blue came in second with a late leap.

– Image by boardGOATS

Meanwhile, on the next table, Ivory, Mulberry and Purple were playing Splendor. Although we’ve played this very extensively, somehow Mulberry had missed out. The game is very simple however: on their turn, players either take three different coloured gem-chips or use gem chips to buy cards. The cards are effectively permanent gems that can be reused without loss, but some of them give victory points as well. The other source of points are Nobles: players who collect a given number of cards featuring certain gems get a visit from a noble and a bunch of points as a result. Despite Burgundy being occupied with the safari on the next table, it was still a bit of a landslide. Diamonds were scarce, and Purple had a bit of a melt-down. With Mulberry new to the game, the way was clear for Ivory who took two of the Noble tiles and finished the game with an unassailable sixteen points.

– Image by boardGOATS

Everyone was feeling a bit washed out, and nobody was particularly enthusiastic about suggesting games to play. Ivory was the most proactive suggesting Altiplano, Dice Forge, Dinosaur Island and Bohnanza, but nobody looked terribly interested. After a discussion about which throat sweets people preferred (where Fisherman’s Friends were equated to “Toilet Duck Pastels”, eventually the inevitable happened and the whole group settled down to a game of Bohnanza. This is one of our most popular games when everyone’s a bit tired and can’t be bothered with anything more complex, and often gets an outing when everyone wants to play together.

– Image by boardGOATS

The game is quite simple and everyone in the group knows it well now, but the game always starts with everyone chorusing “Don’t rearrange your cards!” as the habit is so ingrained. On their turn, the active player must play the first bean card into a field in front of them, playing a second if they wish. Two cards are turned over from the central deck which can also be planted or traded, but must be planted by someone before the active player can trade cards from their hand with anyone else round the table and finally draw cards into the back of their hand.

– Image by boardGOATS

As a group, we usually “play nice”, that is to say, players trade positively rather than negatively and gratefully accept freebies if offered (by players keen to get unwanted cards out of their hand). With a full compliment of players, the game is always tight, often coming down to luck and this was no exception, and no less enjoyable as a result. With only three points between first and sixth place it looked like it was going to be a three way tie between Pine, Purple and Ivory who all finished with eleven points. Suffering with a think head though, Blue was slow counting and they were all disappointed when, after a couple of recounts (just to check) she pipped them to first place.

– Image by boardGOATS

With Ivory and Mulberry wanting an early night, we were looking for something short before they went. Not many games play seven well, but 6 Nimmt! is always popular and this was no exception. People often claim 6 Nimmt! is a game of luck, but in reality it is one of walking a tightrope of perfect timing: get it wrong and everything falls apart, but get it right and with Lady Luck in support a perfect round is possible. Indeed, Ivory managed just such a perfect round, not once, but TWICE, last time we played, and everyone was determined he wasn’t going to manage the same this time. Ivory’s “ivory tower” quickly fell, as he picked up nine points; Pine and Blue did well taking a single point each, but Mulberry managed to keep a clean sheet. We play over two rounds, so the question is usually not so much who manages to do well in the first round as who manages to sustain it over both rounds.

– Image by boardGOATS

Ivory’s game went completely to pot in the second round when he top scored with twenty-five, leaving him to fight for the dubious honour of the Wooden Spoon. That was close between Purple, Burgundy and Ivory, but this time, Burgundy won the race for the bottom with forty-three. Black managed a clear round at the second attempt, but it couldn’t make up for his fourteen in the first round. It was very tight at the front, with all three of the lowest scorers maintaining their timing for the second round; Mulberry followed her clean sheet with five, but Pine went one better finishing with a total of four. Normally either of these scores might have been expected to be enough to secure a win, but Blue, despite her lurgy, added a second single point round to her first, ending with the lowest score, with just two.

– Image by boardGOATS

Once Ivory and Mulberry had said their farewells, the rest of the group were looking for something light that would play five. Coloretto was an option, but …Aber Bitte Mit Sahne (aka Piece o’ Cake) was on top and hadn’t had an outing for a while and with general laziness and lethargy the order of the day it was inevitable that Coloretto was going to lose out this time. …Aber Bitte Mit Sahne is just about the simplest game to use the “I divide, you choose” mechanic, but simple is sometimes simultaneously very clever and in this case, it is also very well rendered. The game consists of a pile of fifty-seven pieces of “cake”, each one an eleventh of a complete cake, randomly shuffled to form five stacks (with two left out). As well as artwork showing the type of cake, each piece also has a number on it (the number in the deck), and some have a blob of cream as well.

– Image by boardGOATS

On their turn, the “Master Baker” take one of the piles of face down pieces and turns them over one at a time to make a complete cake. They then divide this into “slices”. The player to the Master Baker’s left chooses a slice, and for each individual piece they can either keep it, putting it face up in front of them, or eat it, turning it face down and putting it to one side. At the end of the game, each player scores points if they have kept the most slices of a particular type, and scores points foe each blob of cream they have eaten. It was quite a cagey game and was very close as a result. Blue was the only one not to eat any of her cake, not due to any dairy or low fat diet, simply because her head was too fuzzy to deal with the extra option. Somehow though, she got lucky and nearly everything she kept scored her points.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: It’s possible to win, even with a bad cold.

13th Movember 2018

There was a bit of a delay for food, so after Blue had handed over an exciting box of echidnas to Pine and given Burgundy and Green a selection of Splendor, Orléans, and Zooloretto promo cards from Essen, we decided to play something quick. As there were a lot of hungry people, we decided to start with a quick game of Om Nom Nom. This is a fabulous little double think game based on critters eating other critters further down the food chain. The game is set up with a large handful of dice which are rolled to give either items from the bottom of the food chains (flies, carrots and cheese) or animals from the middle of the food chains (frogs, rabbits and mice). Players start with six cards representing animals from the middle of the food chain and the predators from the top of their food chains (hedgehogs, wolves and cats). Players simultaneously choose a card to play and then everyone reveals them and they are placed on the appropriate space on the three central player boards. before and the animals begin to feed starting at the top of the food chain. For example, wolves eat frogs and any surviving frogs then eat flies.

– Image by boardGOATS

If only one card of any type is played, the predator feeds and the player takes their card back with any cards/dice their animal has eaten placing everything in their scoring pile. Where more than one card of the same type is played and there is enough food to go round it is shared equally and everyone eats (taking their cards back with their share of the prey). If there is not enough food for everyone to get a share, they all starve and lose their cards going home with nothing. This is repeated until there are no cards left. Food at the bottom of a chain is worth two points at the end of the game and food from the middle of a chain and any cards are worth one point. The game is played over three rounds and the winner is the player with the most points.

– Image by boardGOATS

Blue won the first round with eleven, more than twice the points anyone else managed to gather. Om Nom Nom is one of those games where a high score in one round is usually balanced by a dreadful score in the next, so everyone expected Blue to fail to score at all in the second round. Burgundy’s twelve points in the second round looked really good, but contrary to the usual run of things, Blue somehow managed to improve her score picking up eighteen points—one less than the record for a single round in our group. The third round was a little bit of a dead rubber, but Burgundy was keen to see Blue get her bad round and if she did, fancied his chances. It was a much more even final round and with lots of points available, things looked good for Burgundy, but unfortunately for him, everyone else chose this round to get it together. In the end it was all about second place, which Burgundy just managed to take ahead of Black and Mulberry as food arrived.

– Image by boardGOATS

While Burgundy, Blue and Mulberry ate their belated supper, everyone else carried on the food theme, playing a little Japanese game picked up by Black and Purple at Essen called くだものフレンズ or Fruit Friends. This is a little card drafting and set collecting game where players are collecting different types of fruit using the “I divide, you choose” mechanism. There are a surprisingly few games that use this idea, but two of the best are …Aber Bitte Mit Sahne (aka Piece o’ Cake) and San Marco. …Aber Bitte Mit Sahne is relatively unusual as it works well with players dividing the pie into more than three. In contrast, San Marco is a three to four player game, but plays much better with three than four because the “I divide, you choose” mechanism generally works best when the pile is divided into three.

– Image by boardGOATS

In Fruit Friends, each player starts with a random start or “seed” card, dealt face up. Players are then dealt seven cards which they divide into three piles of two (discarding the final card). Beginning with the player who was dealt the apple start card, players offer the three piles to the player on their left who takes one pair; the next player then chooses from the remaining two piles leaving one pair for the active player. Play continues in this way until everyone’s cards have been taken. The second round is played the same way except cards are offered anti-clockwise and the player with the grapes start card goes first. The final round is clockwise again, and the player with the kiwi start card begins. At the end of the game, each player has eighteen fruit cards, with each type scoring differently.

	1 card	2 card	3 card	4 card	5+ cards
Apples	0 points	2 points	5 points	9 points	14 points (max)
Grapes	2 points	5 points	8 points	11 points	11 points (max)
Kiwis	2 points	6 points	0 points	12 points	18 points (max)
Bananas	3 points	7 points	12 points	0 points	0 points
Peaches	2 points	5 points	9 points	14 points	20 points (max)

There are some catches, for example, peaches come in two colours, yellow and white, but only one of them scores. Oranges score one point per apple card and similarly melons score one point per grape card (both up to a maximum of four points). The scoring intervals also offer some quirks, so while almost everyone scored twelve points for their bananas at the end of the game, Ivory went “Banana Bust” by over-shooting. Otherwise it was close at the top and you could fit the first four players in a fruit-basket with only five points between them. It was Purple, the “Kiwi Queen”, who just had the edge, “pipping” Green by a single point with Pine and Black finishing in joint third.

– Image by boardGOATS

By the time the game came to an end, the eaters had mostly finished, so Black started getting out the “Feature Game”, Imaginarium (also described previously as “the one with the elephant on the box”). Burgundy and Ivory were quick to stake a claim to play it and Purple was equally quick to opt out. Mulberry and Blue made up the five, so Green started to collect together the games he thought the rest might play, which Pine pointed out just made it look like he was playing Jenga with boardgames. It took a while to come to a conclusion, but eventually the trio went for Echidna Shuffle.

– Image by boardGOATS

Echidna Shuffle is a game that we first discovered at the UK Games Expo back in June and since then, has been very popular with everyone who has played it. This is partly because of the fabulous, over-produced pieces, especially the lovely echidnas with cute smiley faces. The game is very simple: Players have to get their bugs to their tree-stumps by moving echidnas around the board. On their turn the active player rolls the die, and moves echidnas a total of that number of spaces. The clever part is that players only roll the die on alternate turns with intermediate turns evaluated from the dice board giving a total over two turns of nine moves. Thus, if someone rolls the maximum, a seven, the next turn they get just two. Similarly, if they roll a small number, say a three, then they get a six on the next turn. This means nobody gets screwed over by the dice, but there is still a nice, randomisation effect to the movement.

– Image by boardGOATS

There are two sides to the game board: green “Summer” and snowy “Winter”. There was some discussion as to which to play. Pine thought the Summer side of the board rather than the Winter side was more of a challenge. He explained that it was more confusing on the snowy side and that it is not so easy to block people. On the other hand, the first time it was played with the Summer side, the game had become something of an epic marathon as everyone worked together to stop everyone else winning. So this time the group started with the “advanced” Winter board and ended up with a very short game indeed. After only about three rounds, Purple had got one of her bugs home and Green had managed two. Then Pine surprised everyone and with a roll of seven managed to complete all three of his bugs and the game was over, almost before it had begun.

– Image by boardGOATS

Echidna Shuffle is really meant to be a children’s game, so perhaps it should not have been a huge surprise that it ended quite so quickly. Maybe Pine had had a point though, so unusually the game got a second chance, this time with the Summer board. This second game, did indeed last longer, but was still relatively quick and before too long everyone had just one bug remaining each. Green was first to get to this point, but Purple and Pine managed to successfully block his route while they also got their second bug home. In the end Pine became the “Kingmaker” as everyone knew how many moves each player would get and he found himself in the position where he could either move the echidna out of purples way and into Green’s or do something else entirely. Either action (or inaction) would result in win for either Green or Purple and in the end he inevitably chose to open the door for Purple.

– Image by boardGOATS

It maybe that as a bunch of adult gamers, we have found the limit of this very pretty and lovable game. On the other hand, the number of players also has quite an impact—the full compliment of six seems to have the effect of dragging out the Summer board, but the combination of a small number of players and the complexity of the Winter board appears to make the game too open. Hopefully the company will bring out some new expansions or different board layouts that will give us more to explore, in the meantime, the game may get fewer outings in the weeks to come.

– Image by boardGOATS

Because of the late start and the fact that Green wanted an early night, there wasn’t enough time for another medium-weight game, but it was still early enough for a short game. After some discussion, the trio agreed upon Walk the Plank!, a cute little programming game with a hefty dose of “take that”. In programming games players choose the cards they are going to play before the round starts and then action them during the round, usually taking it in turns to reveal one card and then carry out the associated action. One of the classic games of this type is Colt Express which won the Spiel des Jahres a few years ago, but Walk the Plank! is a quicker and simpler game. The idea is each player has three pirate meeples on a ship and the last one remaining is the winner. Players start each round by simultaneously choosing three cards and laying them face down in front of them. On their turn, players turn over the top card and action it.

– Image by boardGOATS

The cards allow players to do things like “shove” one of the meeples belonging to the player on their left, or to the player on their right. When this is played a meeple that shares a space with one belonging to the active player is moved one step along the plank and thus closer to falling into the depths. There are lots of other actions including “drag to ship”, “drag to sea” and “Charge!”, but the most exciting cards are probably the “retract the plank” cards. At the start of the game the plank comprises three pieces, but usually at least one player removes one of these at the start of the game, heightening the stress levels. We usually play with a couple of house-rules too, firstly we play to the last meeple standing (the rules say the last two share victory) and we allow the plank to be completely removed (the rules say there is always one piece left).

– Image by boardGOATS

We’ve loved the game for years and have several different editions within the group—this time we played with the “limited edition” which includes some optional extra cards. This time two of the extra single use cards were added to each player’s deck: “Parlay”, which gives a player a chance to turn the tables via a game of Rock-Paper-Scissors, and “Dynamite”, which pushes everyone on one tile one space closer to the sea. After a little shuffling about, Green played his “Dynamite”, but succeeded in sending two of his own men closer to the water as well as the others. Then Purple played a “Charge!” card to try to push Green into the sea. Green used his “Parlay” to see if he could to prevent it, but this ended up in hysterics thanks to a total inability to play the game correctly. It started with Green playing on the count of three as agreed and Purple after the count of three (i.e. on four). After multiple attempts including one where Purple ended up just pointing vaguely at Green everyone was in fits of giggles, but it didn’t look like the tie was anywhere nearer being resolved.

– Image from theguardian.com

Pine suggested that perhaps they should try after the count instead. Green duly obliged, but Purple had finally worked out how to play on the count of three and still the problem persisted. Then Green chose stone and Purple also chose stone changing to paper at the last second, but this was spotted by Pine who ruled a “Let” and so they had to try yet again. By this time everyone was laughing so hard that in a fit of confused giggles Purple then chose “none of the above” by using a single finger. Pine suggested Green and Purple put their hands behind their backs, but this time it was Green’s turn to make a mess of things and he just couldn’t get the hang of it. In the end, in an effort to stop Purple from soiling the furniture, Pine suggested they remove the counting element and play with closed eyes which was finally successful. It was largely immaterial by this time, but Green won, so one of Purple’s pirates went charging off the plank into the sea.

– Image by boardGOATS

Getting back to the game seemed tame by comparison. Everyone ended up back on the boat and then started moving forward again. With the plank retracted, Green found himself with all three of his pirates on the end when Pine played his dynamite and Green was out in one go taking one of Purple’s and one of Pines own with him. So Green became the Ghost and with two pirates versus one, it looked to be Pines game. Two rounds later, though the Ghost shoved one of Pine’s pirates off the ship to level things up until Purple played her “Dynamite” and managed to get both dumped into the water, bringing the game to a shuddering halt, and on that note, Green headed home.

– Image by boardGOATS

Imaginarium was still underway with no sign of finishing soon, so Pine and Purple decided to give Azul: Stained Glass of Sintra a go as Pine had missed out last time. As in the original game, Azul, players take all the tiles of one colour from a “factory” and put the rest in the middle, or they take all the tiles of one colour from the middle. Tile placement and scoring is rather different however. All the tiles taken in a turn are placed in a single column of the player’s personal player board. This board is modular with the double-sided strips laid out at random so everyone has a different starting setup. Tiles must be placed in the strip immediately below the Glazier meeple, or in a strip to its right. The Glazier is then placed above the strip the tiles were placed in. Instead of taking tiles, players can choose to reset the Glazier’s position, moving him back to the left most strip.

– Image by boardGOATS

Players get points when strips are completed scoring the sum of the score depicted below the strip and any strips to the right that have already been completed. There is also a colour bonus—each round has a colour drawn at random at the start of the game, and any tiles that match the colour for the round score extra. Once a strip has been completed, it is flipped over; after it has been filled a second time it is removed. Any left over tiles that cannot be placed yield a penalty with players moving along a negative score track which has small steps at the start that get larger. There are also end-game bonus points with two variants available, one colour dependent and the other rewarding completing adjacent strips.

– Image by boardGOATS

This is definitely a game that takes a at least one play to understand how it works and what the best way to score points is. For example, the way the score builds, it is imperative to complete the furthest right strips early as then they score again and again. However, they are relatively low scoring, so this is not the only important strategy. So while Pine started off well, Purple scored more later, especially when she picked up colour bonus point as well. Early in the game, the penalty for picking up the first player token or for having left-over tiles is small, but it quickly increases, and with Pine taking the first player token more than Purple, he finished with more negative points too. All the little extras combined to make it a bit of a landslide in Purple’s favour, but then Purple had the advantage of having played the game several times, so next time will surely be different.

– Image by boardGOATS

While these games had been going on, the “Feature Game”, Imaginarium was getting an outing. Subtitled “The Dream Factory”, this game is a worker-placement, engine builder with a Steam Punk theme where players are building machines in a factory. Beautifully produced with remarkable artwork, players first take it in turns to choose a position on the factory conveyor-belt. They select either the broken machine card that they are going to buy or a position to collect charcoalium. These are then carried out in “action” order which then also becomes the selection order for the next round. At the end of the round any unused cards move long the conveyor-belt and the early positions are populated with new, exciting cards. As the game progresses, the broken machine cards generally become more expensive, but the machines become more useful, producing more and/or higher value resources.

– Image by boardGOATS

On a player’s turn, their existing “machines” first produce resources, then the player must buy the broken machine card they had chosen. The active player finally carries out two actions dictated by an unusual clock mechanism: each player has a board with the six possible actions arranged in a circle and the hands of the clock are fixed such that players are unable to take actions that are adjacent. As the clock hands must be moved every round, players are only able to take repeat one action in consecutive rounds. Possible actions include hiring a character, trading resources, extracting charcoalium, repairing broken machines and reorganising or dismantling existing machines. When a machine card is taken from the conveyor-belt, it is broken, they must be repaired before they will work and produce resources. Once repaired, machines can be combined to make them more efficient, or dismantled to give points, the game ends when one player gets to twenty points.

– Image by boardGOATS

One of Ivory’s questions before playing a new game is always, “Where are the points going to come from?” In addition to dismantling machines, points are also available for completing “projects” i.e. satisfying goals drawn at random at the start of the game, or by trading charcoalium. There are also two points available for players who have the most of one of the four resources at the end of the game. As the game was late starting, the group decided to end the game at fifteen points instead of twenty, though to begin with it didn’t look much like anyone was going to get to fifteen points before midnight. Black assured everyone that people would pick up speed as the game progressed and eventually, Ivory got going completing the first of the projects and then Black and Blue followed.

– Image by boardGOATS

The game is mostly multi-player solitaire, except when it’s not. There are some machine cards that take resources from the other players. In a game where resources are very tight and players are very reliant on resources for their plans this can be crucial. The game also has a distinctly mean streak, as a player that is unable to pay for the card they have chosen, doesn’t get the card, but also loses all their resources, completely upsetting their plans and forcing them to start again from scratch, potentially losing them the game. This is exactly what happened to Blue—Ivory went earlier in the turn order and bought and then repaired a machine that took all her charcoalium which meant she lost the card she was going to buy and all her resources. She vowed to get her revenge, but the opportunities for that are few and far between. As she waited for her chance, she gathered charcoalium to ensure she would be able to buy the right card when it came up.

– Image by boardGOATS

Sadly for her, interaction in the game is minimal so there she never really got her chance. Amassing large amounts of charcoalium wasn’t totally without use though as it enabled her to fulfill one of the projects and as they were playing to a smaller total, she started trading them in for points in an effort to avoid coming last. Meanwhile, Ivory kept amassing points and Mullberry kept doing “the weird goat-head thing” which ensured she always had plenty of charcoalium and was starting to build a productive engine. Black and Burgundy had also just got their engines going and were planning to score heavily when Ivory announced that he’d passed the fifteen point mark. With Blue still to take her turn, she maximised her points and everyone added up their scores. Sadly, for Black, Burgundy and Mullberry this wasn’t a long process as shortening the game had had the unforeseen consequence that the game ended just before their plans had come to fruition. Much to her surprise, Blue had done rather better as she had stuck to short-term targets that lent themselves to the short game.

– Image by boardGOATS

There was only one winner though and Blue’s fourteen points flattered her position as the scores did not tell the true story of the game. It’s definitely a game to try again sometime, though perhaps with fewer people which would give players a bit more control over their own destiny. The artwork is somehow both amazing and very disturbing at the same, and it certainly had an unforeseen effect on Blue. She is not normally one to remember dreams or one to design games, but when she awoke the next morning she had a fleeting recollection of dreaming about playing a card only version of Om Nom Nom that she had designed called “Yum Yum Tum”. We will have to see if that ever comes to fruition.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: When gamers are hungry they play games about eating.