Tag Archives: Bingo

Boardgames in the News: Why Play is Important

The importance of “play” is well known to boardgamers, but it has now become the subject of a recent report from the BBC. The article discusses how play is usually associated with children and is important in their development. Prof. Sam Wass, a child psychologist and neuroscientist at the University of East London, explains that there are more links between different neurons in a young child’s brain than there are in an adult one, and as a result their brains are “messier”.

– Image from reviewgeek.com

Prof. Wass explains that play helps tidy children tidy up their brains by making connections between which haven’t necessarily been made before. Through the process of repetition, this helps to strengthen the connections between these different brain areas. Further, he argues that as well as the neurological benefits of play, it helps young children to learn about the world around them by experimenting. While the importance of play is understood for children, the article asks whether there is a specific age at which we feel it is odd for people to spend their free time playing a game.

– Image from BGG contributor unicoherent

Play is known to help teenagers define themselves as people and to discover a sense of identity, but also has benefits for older people. The report gives the example of people from different religious and political backgrounds playing Backgammon together in Jerusalem and suggests that a more playful workplace can lead to “reduced absenteeism, greater commitment, more creativity, better team building and general happiness.”

– Image by BGG contributor RobertaTaylor

Further, Dr. Drew Altschul, a psychologist (University of Edinburgh), suggests playing games can help preserve brain function with people who play games later in life showing a less steep decline overall in their thinking skills, and effect not seen for those who spend their spare time reading and writing or playing music. Dr. Carrie Ryan (UCL), suggests it’s not only intellectual play that is of benefit to older people, even playing simple games like Bingo can help those with severe physical and cognitive deterioration like dementia who are enlivened by the experience.

– Image by boardGOATS

In conclusion, the article confirms what most board gamers already know—games really are good for you, and we should all spend more time playing them.

19th January 2021 (Online)

Although they started the meeting early, Blue and Pink left Pine and Green to chat while they set things up. Lime popped in and joined the chatter, with everyone else arriving in good time for 8pm. Blue was just starting to explain the rules for the “Feature Game“, Noch Mal So Gut!, when the gremlins first put an appearance (and no, it wasn’t Beige, though he might have been responsible for summoning them).

– Image by Pine

For the most part, we’ve been quite lucky with the technology. We’ve had a couple of issues, once when Lime and Ivory got alternately thrown out of Microsoft Teams and another when Tabletop Simulator died on us last April in the middle of a game of Finstere Flure (aka Fearsome Floors), but otherwise the issues have been very minor. This time the Gremlin Attack was ultimately more spectacular, although it started slowly with Black and Purple having issues with the window-in-window Teams view that wouldn’t maximise. Eventually the problem went away and Blue explained the rules.

– Image by boardGOATS

Noch Mal So Gut! is a slightly more complex, more strategic version of Noch Mal!, a game we have played a few times (including with the first Zusatzblock) and is known within the group as “Boardgame Bingo“. The basic version of the game is quite simple: the active player rolls three colour and three number dice and picks one of each, using them to cross off coloured blocks on their player board. Everyone else then picks one colour and one number from the remaining dice and uses them in the same way. The player board consists of coloured squares in groups making blocks. Squares can only be crossed off when they are orthogonally adjacent, match the colour on the die chosen and either start in the middle row (Row H) or are next to another square that has already been crossed off.

– Image by boardGOATS

The dice are numbered one to five with a wild for the sixth face, and the number indicates exactly how many squares must be crossed off, it is not possible to “overpay”. Similarly, there are five colours and one wild (black)—each play only gets eight chances to use number or colour wilds during the game, so they must be used sparingly. Points are scored for completing columns or crossing off all the squares of a colour, with the player who manages this first scoring more points than those to achieve it later in the game. Negative points are scored for any stars that are not crossed off. The game ends when a player crosses off all the squares of two colours.

– Image by boardGOATS

The second implementation, Noch Mal So Gut!, adds a couple of new features which add a large slice of strategy. Firstly, there is an extra die which players can choose to use instead of the colour/number dice pair. This special die provides actions like bombs which blow up any four squares in a two-by-two group, or the ability to cross out two squares with stars on them. The special actions can only be used if a player has a “special die” token to spend. These can be collected during the game, primarily by crossing off squares featuring the special symbol. In addition to the special die, players also score points for completing rows, with the first successful player or players additionally gaining a bonus, special dice tokens, bombs or hearts. The hearts are one of the symbols on the special die, in fact it features on two faces so comes up quite often.

– Image by boardGOATS

Hearts give players the bonus points when they complete columns; the number of bonus points they get depends on the number of hearts they have when they complete the column. So this adds a little bit of spice to the game: should a player spend dice rolls in the early stages on hearts and hope to be able to cash in later? Or should they concentrate on completing rows and columns and end the game before other players can capitalise on the hearts they have collected? The good thing about Noch Mal! (and the reimplementation) is the interaction, through the dice selection and also the scoring. This is something that is sorely missing in many of the “Roll and Write” style games we have been playing.

– Image by boardGOATS

That said, the dice selection element does slow the game down somewhat. It’s not too bad though, as everyone is only waiting for one player before they can make their selection simultaneously. It didn’t take too long to get started, though first Black and Purple had technical issues and then Green dropped out for a bit too, so they all had to be filled in on the bits they missed. A couple of others had a moment and Microsoft Teams got the blame, but we soon started playing, and as always, Ivory was quick to start collecting columns making rapid progress to the right where he started to claim lots of points. We were making good progress when Black and Purple vanished, so we waited to see if they would come back.

– Dots by Dribbble on
pinterest.com

After some waiting, and attempts to invite them back, it was starting to look like they had a more serious problem. Green offered to contact them by SMS and everyone else took drink, snack and litter tray breaks while the opportunity was there. Eventually, we heard back that Black’s computer had crashed and was now doing a disk-check. We were reluctant to admit defeat, so although we carried on without them, we took screen-shots of the dice choices they had, just in case they were able to rejoin us. This was working fine until it was Black’s turn and it was looking like the game might have to continue without Black and Purple, when miraculously, they suddenly rejoined the meeting. A quick flash back through the previous three or four rolls and the game continued from there.

– Image by boardGOATS

Blue picked up the first row, Green took one, Burgundy got a couple and Blue took a couple more. Pink meanwhile had collected a full set of hearts and was starting to make hay on the bonus points. People seemed to enjoy this implementation more than the original Noch Mal!, because it offers more in the way of strategy. It was pushing 10pm by the time Burgundy brought the game to an end, though to be fair we’d spent nearly half of the time dealing with the gremlins. And it took a while to work out the scores too. Like the original, the first task is to finish with a positive score, which this time, everyone managed. As the totals came in, Burgundy, Green, Pink and Pine had all done well, but Blue was well out in front finishing with sixty-four points, more than twenty ahead of Pink in second.

– Image by boardGOATS

The lateness of the hour ruled out the possibility of playing ClipCut Parks or Cartographers (again!), and given the IT issues, we decided it was time to move to Board Game Arena. After a bit of chit-chat about leaving up Christmas lights, Ivory and Lime said good night. There was some discussion about what to play: Pine commented that despite nominating it for the GOAT Poo prize before Christmas, he actually really liked Welcome To… on Board Game Arena, and for some reason found it better than playing on paper. Green took a quick look and vetoed it as “another Roll and Write game” saying he’d had enough of them. So eventually, we decide to play Saboteur.

– Image by boardGOATS

Saboteur is an old favourite which we’ve played a lot over the years, including just two weeks ago. This is a hidden traitor type game where players are Dwarves tunnelling to find gold, or evil Saboteurs trying to prevent the Dwarves succeeding. Players have a hand of cards which they can use to progress the tunnel or or action cards which they can use to do things like stop other players from digging, cause rock-falls or look at the target cards and help to identify where the gold is hidden. Half the fun in this game is the banter and accusations that go along with it.

– Image by boardGOATS

This time, the banter started with Green accusing Blue of being a Saboteur, mostly just because. Blue retaliated and accused Green, but when Pink played a dead-end card on the main route to the gold, Black broke Pink’s pickaxe for him and Pine followed by breaking his lamp. Green triggered a rock-fall only for his suspicions about Blue to be confirmed when she blocked the tunnel. With Purple aligning herself on the side of the Saboteurs, by breaking Green’s pick, the three Saboteurs knew each other. The game is always really difficult for the Saboteurs, but with three against four Dwarves and the tunnel blocked, there was just a chance that they might manage it this time.

– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com

Pink broke Black’s trolley only for Burgundy to repair it immediately. Pine removed the blockage and Blue blocked it again. Eventually Pine cleared it again and with the deck exhausted, victory for the Saboteurs was tantalisingly close. That triggered a tsunami of tool destruction. The Dwarves were creeping ever closer to their target though, but there was just a chance. If Purple could play a straight tunnel past the target it would mean the Dwarves would have to tunnel that bit further, and perhaps they wouldn’t have the cards.

– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com

Unfortunately, Purple misunderstood and, amid much hilarity, the Dwarves gleefully claimed their treasure. They almost certainly would have won anyhow, but it still felt a bit like an opportunity missed. There wasn’t time to dwell on it though as it was time for the second round. Burgundy declared his position early by playing a dead end card forcing Pink to clear it, exonerating him. Pine joined Burgundy’s side when he caused a tunnel collapse in the middle of Route One and Purple again showed her evil side by breaking tools. The Dwarves quickly patched up the tunnel, but the Saboteurs again put up a fight.

– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com

Eventually, Blue claimed some coal and the gold with a single card, and it was time for the third round. This time, the Dwarves hedged their bets and started with a three-pronged approach, but before long, the tunnel was marching forward towards the central card. Green revealed his true nature as an Evil Saboteur by playing a dead-end card and was joined by Purple and Pink, (again). Pine cleared his blockage enabling Black to get to the treasure before the deck was exhausted.

– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com

The winner depends on the distribution of “gold cards” at the end of each round. There are the same number of cards as players, and the number of gold on the cards varies at random between one and three. The person who finds the gold will always get the highest value card and one other, as they are doled out to the winning team, highest first, in reverse player order. The problem is, as the Dwarves have the advantage, the “winner” will almost always be a player who has not been a Saboteur.

– Image by boardGOATS

This time that was not the case, with Blue and Burgundy tying for first place, both having been Saboteurs, but also both having personally found gold and also been the penultimate player (thus getting four cards). Black was the only player not to have been Evil at some point during the game and took the bronze medal, also having taken four cards, but with a lower total value. Poor Purple though, who had been a Saboteur in all three rounds definitely drew the short straw. In fact, we are starting to think her friendly exterior belies an Evil lurking beneath as she has been the Saboteur on no fewer than four occasions this year already!

– Image by boardGOATS

As Pink and Pine signed off, eschewing our usual finale of 6 Nimmt!, this time we enticed Green to stay for one last game of Coloretto. This is a very simple card game that forms the underlying mechanism of the perhaps better known board game, Zooloretto. On their turn, players have a very simple choice: Draw a coloured chameleon card and add it to a truck, or take a truck. The chameleons come in seven different colours and players are trying to build sets, but only the largest three sets will score positively, with the rest subtracted from that total. With five players, the game is quite short. This time, the game started with everyone pretty much level until Blue started to lag behind.

– Image by boardGOATS

Forced to gamble, when she found herself the only player left “in” with an almost empty truck, she chanced her arm and turned over cards. When she got lucky the first time, she tried gambled the second time it happened and went from the back of the pack to taking a large lead. Black tried the same trick and also got lucky then when Burgundy decided to “take one for the team” and played “King Maker”, Black took the lead as the game came to an end and held on for a fine victory. With that, Green decided it was definitely time for bed and after a little bit of chit-chat, everyone else went too.

– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com

Learning Outcome: Being evil is harder than you might think.

24th Movember 2020 (Online)

As people signed in, Blue, Pink and Burgundy shared some feelings about the “Feature Game” which was to be Troyes Dice. This is back to the “Roll and Write” style games and is a very recent release, based on the well regarded game Troyes (a game about a medieval city, the name of which is pronounced a bit like “trois”, the French for the number “three”). When Pine joined the group he made his feelings known about the awful joke at the bottom of the reminder page, and said it was old when he was at school back in the middle ages…

– Adapted from image by Zairon on wikimedia.org

Troyes Dice is a planning and resource management game with an interesting rondel mechanism at its heart. Although the fundamentals are not overly complex, the number of options players have make the game very challenging. The game is played over eight days, each with a morning and afternoon phase. At the start of each phase, four dice are rolled and placed on the four available coloured plazas. The clear dice then adopt the colour of the plaza they are placed on, while the black die “destroys” its plaza making it unavailable.

– Image by boardGOATS

Players then choose one of the coloured dice to use, and pay the associated cost shown in the centre of the dial. Dice bought in this way can be used to buy resources or to construct a building of the same colour and number. Buildings come in two types: Worker buildings which ultimately give points and Prestige buildings which provide special effects. There are three colours red, yellow and white representing the Noble, Civil and Religious districts respectively, and there are different resources and special effects associated with the different districts.

– Image by boardGOATS

Although this is fairly straight forward, the number of options players have and the interplay between them make the game one of the most complex that we have played since the group has been forced to play online. All the Worker buildings get players workers which equate to points at the end of the game. However, more points are available to players that build Cathedrals (Religious Prestige buildings) as Cathedrals give points to players for building other buildings.

– Image by boardGOATS

So, a player who has built the left-most Cathedral (i.e. number one) will get points for the number of Noble Prestige buildings they have built. The amount of points each one of these is worth depends on when the player builds that particular building: if it is the first or second, they will be worth just one point, but if it is built later in the game and is the fifth or sixth, each Noble Prestige building will be worth three points. Thus a player who builds all six buildings of one type and then manages to build the associated Cathedral will score six, twelve, or eighteen points depending on when the Cathedral was built. So timing is critical.

– Image by boardGOATS

The Civic Prestige buildings give players resources depending on the number of dice of the relevant colour currently available. Resources are essential. Money (the Civic Resource) is essential for buying dice and the higher value dice cost more. The other two resources, red pennants and white bibles are useful because they allow players to alter the number of the die to be used, or its colour. This is adds hugely to the number of possible options available.

– Image by boardGOATS

The third set of Prestige buildings in the red, Noble district, is the most difficult to understand. Building one of these protects all the buildings of the same number from the black die. From the third round, the black die not only makes its plaza unavailable, but also makes any buildings of that colour and number that have not yet been built, unbuildable for the rest of the game. If a player builds, say, the sixth Noble (red) Prestige building, that means that any subsequent black sixes rolled will have no effect on that player.

– Image by boardGOATS

There are a number of obvious strategies that arise. For example, to get the maximum protection, Noble Prestige buildings should be built as early as possible. In contrast, since the Religious Prestige buildings that are built later give more points, trying to build some other scoring buildings first is a good idea. This is risky though, as failing to build the target building will score nothing. Although the rules are quite complex, in practice they are not as bad as they may seem at first. Simply put, players choose one of the three available dice and use it to collect resources or build a building in one of the three districts.

– Image by boardGOATS

It is dealing with the number of options available that is the real challenge though. There are only three active dice, but using a combination of pennants and bibles, the numbers and colours of the dice can be changed to almost anything people want, which gives lots to think about. That said, even this is not as difficult as it seems at first because resources are valuable so unless the action is mission critical, most options will rule themselves out as they are too expensive.

– Image by boardGOATS

First time through though, the number of options can seem bewildering and planning a strategy can seem daunting. That said, for the first couple of rounds, Blue and Pink talked through the options people had available and almost everyone did the same thing, starting by building protective fortresses because these were good value and early in the game seemed to give the best chance to use them.

– Image by boardGOATS

Playing games remotely can be a bit of a solitaire experience and it is generally very hard to follow what others are doing. As a result, players often take more information from throw-away comments than they would usually do. From this, Green seemed to think that he and Burgundy were following very similar strategies. The game is also a slow burner, and Ivory repeatedly commented that he couldn’t see where he was going to get any points from. This unsettled Pine, because this sort of game is usually meat and drink to Ivory, so if he was struggling, that meant Pine felt doomed.

– Image by boardGOATS

About half-way through, Black and Purple went silent and didn’t respond when people asked if they were OK. Someone pointed out to them that their microphone was on mute, but there was still no reply and even text messages didn’t get a response. Eventually they rejoined the group and Purple got a bit of a telling off for muting the mike, though she was adamant it wasn’t her fault.

– Image by boardGOATS

There are only eight days, or sixteen rounds in the game, so it didn’t last over-long. It wasn’t long before players were adding up their scores and Ivory was finding that he had more points than he’d thought. It wasn’t surprising that Pink top-scored with Blue in second place, as they had both played it it before. What was more surprising was how close together everyone else was. Ivory was a very close third with forty-four and Green was just two points behind him, but everyone else was within ten points of Blue too.

– Image by boardGOATS

With that done, it was definitely time for something lighter. We haven’t played Noch Mal! (aka Encore!, or Boardgamers Bingo as some of the group call it) for a while and since we have some new player boards, we thought we’d give it another outing. The idea of the game is that six dice are rolled, three showing numbers one to five and a question mark, and three showing five different colours and a cross. The active player chooses one colour die and one number die to use and everyone else gets to pick one of each of those that remain.

– Image by boardGOATS

Players use their dice to cross of blocks on their player boards with players scoring points for completing columns and for crossing all of one colour off. The question marks and crosses are wild, but players can only use total of eight during the whole game—any that remain unused by the end of the game score a point. Players also score negative points for any stars that have not been crossed by the time one player has completed all of two colours and brings proceedings to a close.

– Image by boardGOATS

In this game, the first target is to end with a positive score. The first time we played, everyone really struggled with that, but more recently people seem to have got the hang of things a little. We decided to play Zusatzblock I, which is a pink colour. This time, although it was not obvious why, playing with the new board seemed to really upset things. For some, it was clear that the pink background messed up their ability to see the difference the colours (we dealt with people’s difficulty distinguishing colours on camera by placing the coloured dice on a home-made, quickly-cobbled-together play mat).

– Image by boardGOATS

Pine in particular really struggled with the colours and got his plans completely screwed up when he confused orange with red. Others did not have that excuse though, and many still failed to get a positive result. In a remarkably low scoring game thanks to the game “finishing early”, Green looked to have it with a score of just eight. That was until Pink, who had triggered the end of the game as part of his plan, announced he’d managed a massive ten points and took his second victory of the night.

– Image by boardGOATS

Time was marching on, but HexRoller had gone down really well last time and was almost over before it had begun, so the group decided to give it another go. This is a completely abstract game where players write numbers rolled to write on a grid. There are eight dice rolled each round and players choose two of the numbers rolled and write them on their grid the number of times they appear. Numbers must be written in spaces adjacent to numbers (of the same value) that already appear on the board.

– Image by boardGOATS

Points are scored for filling the coloured regions, connecting the two preprinted numbers, for not using the special actions etc.. Although it is not very easy to understand from the description, it is actually quite easy to play, so much so, that Pine, who had missed out last time picked it up really quickly. Also, as the game is played over just seven or eight rounds (depending on the board used), so doesn’t really have time to outstay its welcome.

– Image by boardGOATS

Despite its simplicity, Black managed to make a meal of it and somehow missed out a number. Although everyone else really enjoyed the game last time, it seems it is not his favourite. Pink tried to claim a “moral score” of fifty-four because he only needed one more number to fill one of his coloured areas, but nobody else was buying into that. It wouldn’t have been enough for him to win his third game of the night though, as victory went to Burgundy who finished with sixty-three points.

– Image by Burgundy

Everyone was feeling a little jaded so we decided to play just one more game, our old favourite, 6 Nimmt! (on Board Game Arena). This pops up almost every games night, and after the new-lease of life given to it by the “Professional” variant, we thought we’d give the “Tactical” variant a go. The idea of the game is that players start with a hand of ten cards and simultaneously choose one to play. Starting with the lowest card played, these are then added to the end of one of the four rows of cards (in the case of the “Professional” variant, to either end).

– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com

When a player’s card is the sixth card added to a row, the player takes the other five into their scoring pile. Normally, the cards have a face value between one and a hundred and four, with typically around half in play in any given round. This means that if a row has three cards in it and ends with a eighteen, playing the nineteen is guaranteed to be safe. Playing higher numbers, say low to mid twenties, though is increasingly risky, but is often a good gamble.

– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com

The “Tactical” variant changes the number of cards in the deck so that the highest card is ten times the number of players plus the four on the table. In other words, every card is present in every round and now, there really is nowhere to hide. This makes the game much more stressful, but as it progressed, we came to the slow realisation that it actually wasn’t as much “fun”. We decided this was probably because there wasn’t as much chance in the game, which effectively reduced the excitement of finding out whether you were going to “get away” with a risky card.

– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com

Furthermore, if the cards were not in your favour, it very much felt that it was game over—yes it might be possible to reduce the number of nimmts picked up, but in most cases, there wasn’t much you could do about it. So in a way, reducing the chance almost made it feel like the game was more random, rather than less. Some things don’t change though. Purple was still the main instigator of the race to the bottom, although this time her main competitor was Black who actually got their first and triggered the end of the game. As usual, Pine came in the top three, this time beaten only by Burgundy. And with that, everyone signed off for an early night.

– Image by Burgundy

Learning Outcome: If at first you don’t succeed, Troyes, Troyes, et Troyes again!

18th August 2020 (Online)

The evening started with a bit of chit-chat about happenings in the village and the big hole in the A417 which had a large number of Thames Water employees staring into it and had closed the road to Wantage. Since nobody is travelling very far to games night these days, nobody was inconvenienced. Every cloud… Although nobody was inconvenienced by the road closure, that didn’t mean nobody had been travelling: Green and his family all called in from Aviemore and shared their picture of “little Nessy” and their plans to visit her big sister the following day.

– Image by Green

While Mulberry (now recovered from her jet-lag) encouraged her computer to play ball, Green “shared” a glass of whisky with everyone and people reminisced about a certain New Year Party and a particular bottle of the “finest” Bavarian whisky. Eventually, we finally started the “Feature Game“, Railroad Ink: Deep Blue Edition. We’ve found “Roll and Write” style games work really well under the current constraints, so we thought we’d try another one. Rather than a communal colouring fest like Second Chance or Cartographers, in this game players are planning a road and rail network where players score points for connecting, generating a long road and a long track, and using the middle of their board, but lose points for “hanging ends”.

– Image by boardGOATS

The idea is very simple: each round, all the dice are rolled and everyone adds all of the features to their map. Three of the dice feature roads and rails (straight sections, bends and T-junctions) while one features interchange stations (straight and on a bend) and an flyover. There are seven rounds and everyone scores their map once at the end. The game comes with a couple of expansions, but as this was the first try for most people, this time we stuck to the base game with just the four white dice.

– Image by boardGOATS

When players add features they must “grow” their network from one (or more) of the entrances to the map and they make notes of the round in the corner of each square to try to avoid confusion. A continuous road, railway line or network is not interrupted by stations, but a rail and a road that cross at a flyover are not connected. In addition to the seven rolls of four dice that everyone must add to their board, players may, optionally, also add special cross-roads to their map, given in white on the print-outs above the play areas. A maximum of one per round can be added, up to a total of three during the game.

– Image by boardGOATS

At the end of the round players score points for several things. Firstly, they score points for each separate network they have built, with networks scoring points for the more exits they are connected to according to a table. Points are then scored for each players’ longest stretch of road and longest section of rail, taking one point per segment. Next, players get bonus points for each square they’ve filled in the centre of their board. Finally, players lose points for each “hanging end” i.e. ends that do not connect correctly.

– Image by boardGOATS

Pink rolled and then the questions and clarifications started. Eventually though, everyone was happy, or at least happy enough and had scribbled things on their board. Pink and Blue showed their boards to help explain and then Pink rolled for the next round. This inevitably led to more clarifications, before Pink could roll again. And so it continued. Everyone seemed to have got the hang of what they were doing, and by this time everyone was lamenting the lack of junctions and blaming Pink for his poor rolling, while Pine and Green were complaining about their “Hanging Ends”.

– Image by boardGOATS

Just before the fifth round, Pink reminded everyone about their special spaces, saying that if they wanted to use all three and hadn’t used any yet, they would need to use one per round from this point forward. This distressed Mulberry as she couldn’t find a way to use any of them without messing things up. It took a while for everyone else to realise her plight and point out that it was a good idea to use them if you could, but they were optional.

– Image by boardGOATS

Before long, everyone was adding up their scores and checking what was and wasn’t valid. It was only then that Green realised that he’d connected roads to some of his rail entrances and rails to some of his road entrances. He tried to say that it hadn’t been clear at the start, but as everyone else had managed to get it right, nobody was feeling very charitable (it was Green, after-all). So his score of forty-six was duly reduced to twenty-one.

– Image by boardGOATS

It was quite close at the front with Blue, Ivory and Black (now known as “The Silent One”) all vying for second place, but Burgundy just took the runner-up position. Pink, however, was a few points in front and finished with a fine fifty-three. Although Pine had really enjoyed it and some of the others were happy to play again, there were some who had found it very challenging and wanted a change. Lime took his leave as he’d had a rough week. Mulberry didn’t have any other print-outs, so being the brave millennial that she is, she said she would edit the pdf on her tablet using a stylus.

– Image by Mulberry

Although opinions had hitherto been divided about what to play, Noch Mal! (aka Encore!) would likely be easier for her than Second Chance, so that decided it. Noch Mal! has become known as “Board Gamers’ Bingo” by some members of the group, and certainly it has a bit of a feel of that about it. Three colour and three number dice are rolled and the active player chooses one of each and crosses off the number of squares in that colour. Everyone else chooses from the colours and numbers left. The catch is that players must cross off exactly that right number of that colour, they must be in a continuous block and adjacent to something already crossed off in the starting column.

– Image by boardGOATS

Points are scored during the game for completed columns and crossing off all of one colour with the game ending when one player crosses off all of their second colour. The first thing we noticed was that red and orange looked the same and yellow was nearly invisible on screen. So, after Pink threatened to rearrange the furniture and crawl under the sofa to get to the plug so he could move the light, Blue took the easy option and wrote the colours on a bit of paper to act as labels and the game began.

– Image by boardGOATS

For those that hadn’t played before, and even those that had, Ivory was startlingly quick to be the first to complete a column, even more so given that it was almost as far to the right as he could go. After that it was a gentle trickle as players called out that they’d finished columns. Before long, Green called that he’d finished the first colour, appropriately enough, green.

– Image by boardGOATS

All the columns were completed and others started to finish colours and everyone knew the end was nigh when Green took his second colour and with it ended the game. As players began to call out their totals, Mulberry was completely aghast that people had actually managed to score points since she’d finished with minus two. She wasn’t alone with a low score and everyone else tried to reassure her that they’d all been there – the first time the group played, three players finished with negative points and the average score was one!

– Image by boardGOATS

This time Green’s father who had joined in from Scotland, top scored with nineteen, but Green felt he hadn’t quite been playing right. It was close at the top with Ivory finishing with ten, Pine with twelve and Blue with thirteen. The winners were Green and The Silent One, tied on fourteen points. With that, the Scottish Connection went to bed as they had an early start in the morning for their Nessy hunt. Ivory and Mulberry also took their leave, leaving six to play on. Playing games on Board Game Arena is just that bit easier and enables a wider variety of games so everyone moved there.

– Image by boardGOATS

Pink is very fond of For Sale, so he suggested that, and, as it is a very quick and relatively easy game, everyone else quickly concurred. This game is played in two halves, buying and then selling. In the first half, in each round enough cards are revealed for one per player. Players then bid to stay in, taking the lowest value card when they pass. Once all thirty property cards have been auctioned off, players sell them. In this phase, in each round, cheques are revealed and players choose one of their properties to sell. The cheques are then shared out with the highest value cheque going to the player who sold the most desirable (highest numbered) property. The wealthiest player at the end is the winner.

– Image by boardGOATS

One of the key rules that makes the auctions interesting is that players who pass, get half their bid returned, while the player who wins the auction pays their full bid. In the original Ravensburger/Schmid editions, where a bid was an odd value, the money returned was rounded up. However, in real life, we play with the more recent, Überplay version where the returned money is rounded down, so this is the way we play online too. For a bit of variety, this time we decided to play with the original rule, which would give everyone a little bit more money to spend and make passing early a little more lucrative.

– Image by boardGOATS

Burgundy normally does really well at this game setting standards others seek to achieve. The change to the rules seemed to really cramp his style though, and he just couldn’t find his rhythm. Pine and Purple were similarly afflicted, where, in contrast, Blue, Pink and Black seemed to flourish where they usually struggled a bit. Most of the high cards came out towards the end of the first half, so the players who hadn’t spent too much in the early rounds were able to capitalise, often getting high value cards without having to pay their full bid.

– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com

In the end Purple had managed to spend only $3,000, but that meant her properties didn’t give her a great return. In contrast, everyone else had spent most of the their starting pot, and Burgundy had no spare change at all. Pink felt sure he had the game in the bag, but it was much tighter at the top than he thought with Black snapping at his heels, and Blue beating him by a single point with fifty-three. It was clear that the change in the rules had unbalanced some people’s game so we decided to give it another go and give Pink another chance.

– Image by boardGOATS

The artwork on the property cards is one of the things that makes the game special and fortunately it has been ported to the online version of the game too. The most valuable property, number thirty, is a space station while the least valuable, number one, is a cardboard box. There are some lovely intermediates though and offering them to people always adds to the atmosphere. This time, Purple commented that “Burgundy’s on the Bothy,” only for Pine to respond, “Burgundy’s on the toilet, you’re on the bothy and Black’s on the banjo-shack!”

– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com

This time, Burgundy and Purple still struggled, though Pine did much better. It was still tight, and remarkably the end result was almost exactly the same as before with Blue winning again. This time she had a margin of two points and a total of fifty-two, but the placings were a bit different. Black moved one place up on the podium and took second, with Pine taking third place, leaving Pink a little crest-fallen. There is one thing guaranteed to cheer up any disappointed gamer, however, and that is to play 6 Nimmt!.

– Image by boardGOATS

Since we discovered the “Professional” variant a few weeks back, it has given 6 Nimmt! a new lease of life for the group. The game is so simple and yet so much fun with the illusion of control until everything goes wrong. In the basic game game players simultaneously choose cards and then, starting with the lowest, add them to the end of one of four rows, picking up cards if the card they chose was the sixth card added to a row. In the “Professional variant, cards can be added to either end of the rows making the decision space that bit more complex, dramatically increasing the madness.

– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com

As people moved to the table, someone commented that it was now playable in 3D, though why anyone would want to play a card game in 3D was anybody’s guess. Inevitably, there was a pause while everyone tried the 3D option. Unfortunately, most people found it was difficult to operate and, everyone seemed to have issues with either cards not showing or not sitting where they should. Still, it’s only in “beta” testing, and we love 6 Nimmt! just as it is. So everyone returned to the 2D mode and got on with playing.

– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com

This time, Black, who had done so well in all the other games, seemed determined to lose and to do so spectacularly. The only thing that seemed likely to prevent it was Purple who has a remarkable knack of picking up cards a skill that is only increased by the new variant. While she didn’t do quite as well as last time, she did manage to pick up fourteen. She wasn’t the only one to pick up lots of “Nimmts” in one turn, Pine managed thirteen in one turn and Burgundy twelve.

– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com

Winning in 6 Nimmt! always requires a combination of good play with a healthy slice of good fortune. For this reason, we usually celebrate the looser, the person who has been most generous in picking up cards for others, as much as the winner. This time, Black’s generosity of spirit was very much in evidence, but Purple was the most altruistic. At the other end, Burgundy had put an end to his poor run in For Sale, coming second, but it was Pink who book-ended the evening with his second win.

– Image by boardGOATS
from boardgamearena.com

Learning Outcome: An integrated transport policy is a Good Thing.

9th June 2020 (Online)

It’s been over three months since we were last officially at the Horse and Jockey, and it is clear everyone is really missing it. When people joined the meeting from 7.30pm and everyone asked how people were doing, most people had nothing much to say. Pine is still furloughed, Blue is back at work from time to time, as is Green; Ivory never left, while Pink and Black are still working from home. Otherwise though, everyone is just getting used to the way things are now. This week, the “Feature Game” was to be Noch Mal!. This is a “roll and write” game by Inka and Markus Brand, designers of Village, Rajas of the Ganges and the award-winning EXIT: The Game series. Although Noch Mal! was first released in 2016, it has only recently been released in English (as Encore!), although the game itself is language independent.

– Image by boardGOATS

Noch Mal! is quite similar to the 2018 Kennerspiel des Jahres nominee Ganz Schön Clever (aka That’s Very Clever), where one player rolls the dice and then chooses some to use to cross off boxes on their player card, leaving the left over dice for the other player(s) to use. The player sheet for Noch Mal! is simpler than the one in Ganz Schön Clever though, and there is less structure to the dice rolling making it more suitable for more players. Indeed, although it is only supposed to play six, we felt it could easily play more, and this is important to us at the moment because the social aspect is the main reason for these online meetings.

– Image by boardGOATS

The idea of Noch Mal! is that the active person rolls the dice and then chooses two of the six dice to use. Three of the dice are relatively normal d6 dice (numbered one to five with a “question mark” replacing the six), while the other three dice are “colour dice” with coloured crosses instead of numbers (red, green, blue, orange, yellow and black). The player cards depict a rectangular array of square boxes, in groups of different colours. Players choose two dice, a colour and a number and “spend” them to cross squares off on their sheet. Thus, if they choose green and five, they must cross off exactly five green squares. The catch is that these must be in a clump together and must include a square in the starting row (H) or one that is orthogonally adjacent to a square already crossed off.

– Image by boardGOATS

Players get points for completing columns, or crossing off all the squares of one colour, with the first player to do so scoring a bonus. The “question mark” and “black” faces are “wild” and can be used as any number or colour (respectively), but each player can only use a total of eight wilds during the game. Points are scored for completed columns (those furthest from the central starting column score more), crossing off all of one colour, and any unused wilds. Some of the squares also feature a star—each one of these that is not crossed off earns a two point penalty. The game ends when one player crosses off all the squares of two colours and the player with the most points is the winner.

– Image by boardGOATS

Everyone had three dice and we began by rolling to see who would go first. Ivory won, but there were lots of roll-offs to settle tie breaks, so determining the order was in danger of taking longer than the game itself! To keep people involved and give them a feeling of agency everyone rolled their own number dice, while Blue and Pink rolled the colours and displayed everything on one of their cameras. For the first three rounds the active players (Ivory, Burgundy and Pink) don’t choose dice and everyone else can choose from the full six, so Pine was the first to play a “proper turn”.

– Image by boardGOATS

Pink was quick out of the traps and was first to score a column, and then taking points for a second too. This meant he was three points up before anyone else had scored. Worse, nobody else could score anything for the starting column (H), and only one point was available now for column G too. Ivory had other plans though and had expanded to the right of the table and was soon picking up some of the higher scoring columns further away from the centre. Others tried the same strategy, some with success, others less so.

– Image by boardGOATS

The general feeling was a little bit like Bingo with dice with players calling out when they completed a column. This feeling was accentuated when lots of people called “House” for a load of columns on the right, all at the same time. Eventually players started claiming colours; inevitably, Ivory was first, and also the first to discover what a curate’s egg it was as he was then forced to pass. It wasn’t long before someone completed their second colour and everyone then had to work out their scores.

– Image by boardGOATS

It was no real surprise that Ivory top scored with what seemed like an enormous ten points, though Black ran him very close with eight. Pink, Lime Blue and Green felt they had done well to avoid finishing with negative points and Purple would have done a lot better if she hadn’t lost sixteen points for her eight remaining stars. It had been interesting though and now everyone felt they had a better understanding of how the game worked, it seemed a good idea to give it another try.

– Image by boardGOATS

This time, Lime was the first to score points, claiming column H so fast that it seemed impossible. Having finished with zero last time though, he was keen to get points on the board straight away. It was then that the IT gremlins began their attack. First Lime had problems with the camera freezing, then Ivory as well. It seemed that the problem was somehow specific to Lime and Ivory and when one left, that seemed to sort out the problem for the other one. When Green looked at the text chat channel, he commented that it was a very long stream of “Lime has left”, “Lime has joined”, “Ivory has left”, “Ivory has joined”, “Lime has left”…

– Image by boardGOATS

Inevitably, we decided it was the French (again) trying to get their revenge for our invasion of their game of 6 Nimmt! a few weeks back—they have very long memories do the French! Obviously, we weren’t going to let them win, so Lime and Ivory took it in turns to duck out when necessary and Blue and Pink took it in turns to let them back in, and the game carried on. This time, everyone had a better idea of what strategies were available and players made a better job of completing columns.

– Image by boardGOATS

More players completed one colour and almost everyone had a near full grid by the end. This meant it was down to rolling low numbers and those who hadn’t used up all their “wild” tokens. This turned out to be really quite important with Burgundy and Pink among others, running out and therefore unable to make use of turns that others could. It was slow at the end, but eventually Black completed his second colour and everyone tallied up the scores.

– Image by boardGOATS

Everyone except Ivory had improved their score, and this time everyone finished in the black. Purple took the award for the most improved player, improving her score by twenty-three points having made an effort to clear up her stars. As the scores came in, Pink really thought he had it with eighteen, but he’d failed to look across the table to see Blue had twenty, and with it victory. Noch Mal! had worked really well which shows how our tastes have changed: in the pub, we would never had played a game like this with so many, however, as Pine pointed out, playing a real game through a camera felt more like game night than playing an virtual game, so we’ll keep that in mind for future events.

– Image by boardGOATS

With that, Pine and Lime finally gave in to the French Gremlins and left for an early night, and eventually, Green joined them. The others were up for something else though, and as Pink was wearing his new 6 Nimmt! socks, that seemed like a good idea. So everyone logged into Board Game Arena for one of our favourite games. The game needs little real introduction: players simultaneously choose a card from their hand and everyone reveals them. Starting with the lowest, the cards are added in turn to one of the four rows—when a sixth card is added the owner instead takes the five cards and starts a new row with their card, scoring the number of bulls’ head points (or “Nimmts”) depicted on the card.

– Image by boardGOATS

On Board Game Arena, the player with the most points when one player’s score falls below zero is the winner. There was the usual moaning about how bad everyone’s hand was and how badly everyone always did, but Burgundy pretty much nailed it when he said nobody is going to do well, the aim is just to do less badly than anybody else. In that sense, the game is a bit like escaping a bear, you don’t need to run fast, just faster than everyone else. This time, Pine started off as the slowest runner being the first to pick up, but was soon followed but Black, Purple and then Burgundy.

– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com

For a long time, it looked like it was going to be a “two bull race” between Blue and Pink, but six is a critical number in 6 Nimmt!, so with six players strange things can happen with players becoming synchronised and picking up lots of points on multiple turns. It looked like it was going that way for Blue, but she managed to stem the flow and was tied for second with Pine for quite a while before he started picking up cards again. It looked like Pink’s Lucky 6 Nimmt! Socks were working their magic, but when Black (who had been looking like bear-fodder for the whole game) ended the game, Pink had just picked up, leaving Blue one point ahead.

– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com

There was still time for one more quick game, and with six, the perfect quick game (and one that is available on Board Game Arena), is For Sale. This is an old game that we dug out about six months ago, before all the current strife, and it got a couple of outings. Since all games have been online, it is one of the games we can still play, and, as a result, it’s had several outings recently. It is a game of two halves, first players buy property cards, then they sell them, and the player who makes the most money is the winner.

– Image by boardGOATS

The properties are numbered one to thirty, with the number indicating the relative value. Buying properties is through auction, with players increasing the bid or passing and taking the lowest value property available and paying half of their bid for the privilege. The last player then takes the highest value property, but pays their full bid. In the second part of the game, cheques are revealed and players choose a card to play, with the cheques assigned according to the value of the property played.

– Image by boardGOATS

Thus the game consists of two auctions: a variant of an all-pay auction and a sealed bid auction. In the first auction, a key tactic is predicting what other players will bid so passing can be timed in such a way as to get the best value for money. Whereas previously, most players increased the bid by the minimum increment, this time it was clear that people were playing a little more tactically, with higher starting bids and increments of $2,000 that pushed other players into paying more.

– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com

Black’s and Purple’s strategies were different however: Black spent a total of just $2,000 on properties, mostly just passing and taking the property offered, and Purple spent only $3,000. In contrast, Blue spent $13,000 and Pine spent $12,000, i.e. nearly all of their starting $14,000. There is strategy in the second part of the game too though, and getting the timing right for selling each property is key. For example, although Blue’s profits of $37,000 were larger than Black’s, his rate of return of $21,000 for just $2,000 outlay was better, matched only by Purple’s return of $32,000 for her $3,000 investment.

– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com

That superb return was enough to give Purple third place. It is not all about rate of return though: it is the player who makes best use of all their funds that wins. In this case, this meant we had a tie for first place between Pine and Burgundy, both finishing with a massive $59,000. The tie break is the player with the most cash at the end, which just gave it to Burgundy who had achieved his $55,000 from properties bought for $10,000. And with that, it was time for bed.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: A lot of fun can be had with a handful of dice and a few sheets of paper.

6th February 2018

With seven of us and the “Feature Game”, Ave Caesar, only playing six, we started the evening with a small problem. The general consensus was that the game is more fun with more people, so splitting into two small groups didn’t feel right. Blue offered to sit out as she was still eating, as did Burgundy and almost everyone else as well, but in the end, Purple and Black teamed up so we could all play together. An older family game dating from 1989, Ave Caesar is also a fairly simple game. The idea is that each player has a deck of movement cards, a chariot, and a coin, and the aim of the game is to be the first player to cross the line after completing three laps of the track. On the way round each player must pay tribute to Caesar on the way by pulling up in front of the Emperor in his dedicated pit lane, chucking their Denarius into the game box and crying “Hail Caesar!”.

– Image by boardGOATS

There are some nasty, unforgiving little features about this game. For example, the track is generally a maximum of two lanes wide. Worse, players can only use each of their cards once and don’t have lot of spare moves, so the outside lane should be used sparingly otherwise they may run out of moves before they complete their final lap. Even worse than that, each player starts with a hand of three cards and plays one, then refreshes their hand. The snag is that players cannot jump or move through occupied spaces and must use every space on the card they play, in other words, they cannot play a five for example if there are only three spaces they can move. These “nasty features” can make the game very frustrating, but are also the clever part as they provide the challenge.

– Image by boardGOATS

There have been several editions of the game, but the original Ravensburger is widely believed to be the best because it has slightly longer tracks which makes for a tighter game as players have fewer moves to spare. It is well understood that the newer version that we were playing with could be improved by removing a five card from each player’s deck. So we started sorting and counting cards, and finding a five to remove from each deck. With this done, all those eating had also finished and Burgundy started with a modest two. Blue was second and, with two sixes in hand felt that it was a good idea to get rid of one of them nice and early. The problem with sixes is that you can’t play them when you are in the lead, but they can be quite difficult to play from the back as there has to be enough space in front to play them.

– Image by boardGOATS

Burgundy’s two proved to be a mistake as everyone else promptly overtook him and left him stuck at the back for most of the rest of the lap. In fact, he was so stuck, that he ended up missing three turns on the first lap alone. In contrast, Blue had broken away from the pack and was looking at lapping Burgundy, but this had its own problems as she needed to get rid of her sixes, which she couldn’t do while in the lead. Blue went to hail Caesar on her first lap to give people a chance to catch up. After a bit of moaning that he hated Bank-holiday traffic, Pine finally managed to break away from the log-jam and take the lead giving Blue a chance to ditch a six, and everyone else a chance to make some progress too. Everyone else that is, except Burgundy who was doing an excellent job of bringing up the rear.

– Image by boardGOATS

During the second lap, Pine just managed to nip in and pay his dues to Caesar, while Green followed and then reduced his chariot speed to a crawl and “Hailed” three times successfully causing a queue behind. It was the third lap where things started to get interesting though with everyone jockeying for position to try to make sure that they didn’t have to waste moves. Blue had a bigger problem though, she was miles in front, but still had to draw her final six from the deck and then play it. She tried hanging back, reluctant to give away the size of her problem, but that card stayed in the pack. Finally, as she drew her last card, she found her final six, but it was too late and Team Black and Purple cantered past and pipped her to the finish. Green trotted in taking third place and leading the rest of the pack home. Ironically, had she not suggested removing the fives at the start of the game, Blue would have won easily, but that would have been boring.

– Image by boardGOATS

It hadn’t been Ivory’s sort of game, so to placate him we offered him Yokohama, a game he’s been angling to play since before Christmas, but there wasn’t quite enough time for that, so he went for Sagrada instead and was joined by Pine and Blue. This is a very pretty little game with many features in common with one of our current favourites, Azul. It has simple rules, but lots of complexity and is essentially an abstract with a very thin theme, but for some reason that doesn’t seem to matter. In Sagrada, players build a stained glass window by building up a grid of dice on their player board. Each board has some restrictions on which colour or shade (value) of die can be placed there and players take it in turns to take dice from a pool and add them to their window. Depending on the difficulty of the starting grid, players start with a small number of favour tokens which act as “get out of jail free” options and allow them to use special tools to rearrange some of the dice, either during “drafting”, or sometimes those already in their window.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

Points are awarded for fulfilling certain criteria, depicted on cards drawn at random at the start of the game. Although completing the window can be challenging in its own right if the dice don’t roll well, it is the objective cards that are the key to the game. Each player has their own private objective which scores for the number of pips displayed on dice of a given colour in that player’s window. There are also three public objectives which everyone can use to score points; in this case we were scoring for coloured dice diagonally adjacent; complete sets of one to six and pairs of five and six. The game starts with each player choosing a window from two double-sided cards dealt at random. The hard ones come with a lot of favour tokens; this time almost all the options available seemed to be the difficult ones, which made Blue especially wary given the dogs’ breakfast she made of the game at New Year playing a challenging window.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

Everyone seemed to go for different strategies this time. Blue went for the public “diagonals” goal, making a pretty Battenburg pattern, but only managed to get one five, so struggled with the other objectives. In contrast, Ivory did well getting pairs of five and six, but only got one three, so couldn’t score so well for the sets. Pine completely ignored the diagonals and really concentrated on his private goal and getting complete sets of one to six. It was a really tight game and Blue and Ivory were to rue those dice they’d failed to get as Pine finished with forty-three points, just two ahead of Ivory and three clear of Blue. Despite finishing second, Ivory was much happier with this game than Ave Caesar and was up for giving something else a go. Pine was keen to play Animals on Board again, and it is a nice enough little game and not long so Ivory was happy to give it a go too. The idea is that players are collecting animals to go in their cardboard ark. Each set of animals in the game is numbered from one to five and a selection are drawn at random and placed face up in the centre of the table.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

On their turn the active player either divides one of the groups in the middle into two parts (and takes a box of fruit for their pains) or takes the animals from one of the groups, paying for them with boxes of fruit at a rate of one per animal. At the end of the game (triggered when one player picks up their tenth animal) Noah claims any pairs of animals and the remaining animals are scored: singletons score their face value and sets of three or more score five per animal. It was quite tight, Ivory collected four rhinos and Pine managed three hippos. Blue brought the game to a sudden and unexpected end when she unexpectedly found herself with a large set she could take profitably, leaving her with two sets of three, foxes and zebras, and with it, the she took the game.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

Meanwhile, on the neighbouring table, Black, Pink, Burgundy and Green were playing the classic, Settlers of Catan (now known simply as “Catan”). Despite being over twenty years old now, it still holds up as a good family game in a way that some other games of the same vintage do not. The game is played on an iconic variable tile game board on which players build settlements and cities on the nodes and roads along the edges. One of the things that makes the game so popular is the lack of down time: a turn consists of rolling dice, trading and then buying and/or building. Each hexagon on the board is numbered and rolling the dice gives resources to every player with a settlement on the hexagon on the number rolled. Since each node is on the corner of three hexagons, players frequently get resources during other players’ turns. Everyone is potentially involved in the trading of course, so the only part of anyone’s turn that is not shared is the buying and building phase, but this is usually quite short.

– Image by boardGOATS

This time, the random layout of tiles gave an even spread, but the number tokens placed on them had an unusual symmetry: both eights were on the mountains (giving stone), both threes were on the fields (giving wheat) and both nines were on the clay beds (giving brick). Green started and inevitably chose the choice spot with that would give him wool, wood and clay, much to Burgundy’s chagrin. Black was last to place and decided to connect his two roads and settlements, so by the time it Green got his second turn, he had very little option and ended up with a port location which would yield only two cards to everyone rather than three. The dice seemed to be rolling according to the predicted distribution with the red numbers (six & eight) coming up often. This gave Burgundy a lot of stone and wood, but due to his lack of brick he quickly converted a settlement to a city which only increased his supply of stone.

– Image by boardGOATS

Unfortunately for him, all these extra resources counted against him as the other number to come up regularly was seven, so meaning the robber was moved and everyone had to reduce the number of resource cards they were holding to seven. Burgundy often was higher due to his regular double productions, but to make it worse he frequently seemed to because of his own demise since he was the one who kept rolling the sevens—three times in succession at one point! With that kind of luck he really began to wonder if he should just pack it in right then and go play something else. While Burgundy was struggling with his own security though, Purple and Green were steadily building their kingdoms. Purple gained another settlement and converted one of her others into a city. Green had spread out from his choice spot to build another settlement on the port side of the value eight mountains and in the other direction to another port with more clay, giving him the longest road, and with it two bonus points, for the moment at least.

– Image by boardGOATS

Black seemed to be languishing, unable to get traction and the cards he needed for expansion. Catan requires investment for growth, but he had barely two coins to rub together to invest with at all. Once Green had built on the mountain-side the eight rolls seemed to dry up and he struggled to get enough stone or wheat to convert his settlements to cities. Purple’s hidden development card made everyone think she had an extra hidden point, and possibly the lead. Certainly the early rolls went in her favour and it was beginning to look like this could be her game. Green’s long road brought him into the running, and the power of Burgundy’s cities meant he wasn’t far behind. The production Burgundy’s cities provided meant he was able to go after longest road and take it from Green, thus starting a little road building war between the two.

– Image by boardGOATS

With nowhere else on the board worth building on, Burgundy decided on an alternative strategy and started trading for development cards. He managed to place two knights and was about to take the Largest Army, until everyone else reminded him he three army cards for that. It only delayed the inevitable though, as one round later he played a third knight card, claimed the Largest Army and two points with it. He easily built two more roads and with it retook the Longest Road card for a second time simultaneously revealing he had a one point development card in his hand. This meant he went from five points on the board to a total of ten points in one turn and with it finished the game. Purple and Black revealed they also had a one point development card to give them both six points and joint second place.

– Image by boardGOATS

Both tables finished at about the same time and, as Ivory headed home, Burgundy commented that he’d like to give NMBR 9 a go. Everyone else chimed in that they’d be happy to join him , but Pine and Purple got there first and with no set up time got started quickly. The game is very simple: one player turns over a card and calls the number and players each take one tile of that number and add it to their tableau. All the tiles are roughly number-shaped and each player will play a total of twenty tiles, numbered zero to nine, with each one appearing twice. Tiles must be placed such that at least one edge touches a previous tile. Tiles can be placed on top of other tiles as long as there are no overhanging parts, and the tile sits squarely on more than one other tile. At the end of the game the number tiles are multiplied by the level they sit on minus one. So, a five on the third level scores ten points (5 x (3-1)).

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

Unlike a lot of games, it is very difficult to tell who is winning, as the largest scores come late in the game when adding tiles to the higher layers. However, the lower layers must be able to accommodate the later tiles as and when they come out, otherwise a player can’t take advantage of the opportunities they may offer. This time Burgundy “got lucky” and was able to squeeze a seven, an eight and a nine onto his third level giving him a massive forty-eight points for them alone and a bit of a land-slide victory. We’ve played this game a few times now as a group and all the previous games have been quite close. Other Bingo-type game like Take it Easy!, Das Labyrinth des Pharao or Karuba, have been relatively unpopular with the group as they feel like multiplayer solitaire, but somehow, in our group, everyone gets involved helping everyone else out, which makes this game much more enjoyable.

– Image used with permission of boardgamephotos

The other three chatted for a few minutes before deciding to play a quick game of Kingdomino as it is a game we know well and can play quickly and without committing too much thought. It consists of dominoes featuring two terrain “tiles” with some tiles also depicting one or more crowns. Players are building their kingdoms by placing dominoes where one end must either connect to another domino matching at least one of its terrain types or to the starting tile (which can be considered to be “wild”). All dominoes must fit in a five-by-five space and if one or more dominoes cannot be placed according to these rules, then they are discarded. At the end of the game, each player multiplies the number of tiles in each contiguous region of terrain with the number of crowns on the tiles in that region and adds them up together with any bonuses to give their score.

– Image by boardGOATS

The game was really tight with each player capitalising and building on different terrain types: Black took forests, Green took pasture and Blue took sea. There were three points between first and third, but it was Black who finished at the front, just one point ahead of Blue. With three players, some tiles are removed from the game at random. Like last time, almost all the tiles removed were the high-scoring mountain and marshland tiles, but at least this time nobody’s game plan depended on them. It did encourage some discussion, though with Black commenting that he didn’t like the game with three because of this uncontrolled randomness, and Blue commenting that perhaps the tiles that are taken out should be turned face up and displayed so that players can at least see what won’t be available. Maybe a variant for another time.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: Some games stand the test of time, others not so much.

28th November 2017

The “Feature Game” was to be Lords of Waterdeep, and with a nearly full turn-out, it was simply a question of who wanted to play it. Some were a little put off by the Dungeons & Dragons theme, but Burgundy, Green, Ivory, and Purple were keen to give it a go, with Ivory and Purple new to the game. Each player is a secret Lord of Waterdeep, who uses their agents to recruit adventurers to collect gold so that they can complete Quests to advance their cause. Each player in turn places one of their “agents” on a building space on the board and immediately resolves the effects of that building. A player may not place his agent on a building space if it has already been taken; the round ends when all agents have been placed, and a game is exactly eight rounds long. Most of the buildings on the board give money or adventurers. The adventurers are represented by coloured wooden cubes: orange for Fighters, black for Rogues, white for Clerics and purple for Wizards.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor mikehulsebus

The adventurers players collect are exchanged for completing Quest cards. These cards can range from only a few points (four to six), but an extra advantage or some adventurer returned (a bit like a cash-back scheme), to some that give a massive amount of points (over twenty). This is not the only source of points as there is also a substantial reward given to each player for completing the requirements on their secret Lord of Waterdeep card. Despite the Fighting Fantasy theme, Lords of Waterdeep is really just run of the mill worker placement game, with adventurers instead of resources. Unlike many games of this genre, “resources” flow in quite readily, but unfortunately they also flow out just as easily too…

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor mikehulsebus

When Green completed a twenty point Quest early on, he looked a long way in the lead, but although it took a couple of rounds for his advantage to be quashed, quashed it duly was. It didn’t take long for everyone to work out which Quest card types everyone had for their secret goals, with Green and Ivory both wanting Commerce, and Green and Burgundy both chasing Piety. Only Purple remained more elusive to work out which was not surprising since she was actually scoring for every building she built and not scoring for Quests completed at all. No-one guessed, even though she managed to build six out of the maximum ten built. To be fair to Green and Ivory, Green had only played the game once before and that was four years ago, and Ivory had never played at all. Burgundy was at least aware that there was such a task, but after the game commented that he never does well at this game (unusually for him), though he enjoys the challenge.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor mikehulsebus

Throughout the game, Purple employed an interesting strategy in that she built up a number of Intrigue cards without using them. She turned that round in the last two or three rounds as her pile of Intrigues got whittled down, gaining her bonuses at everyone else’s expense ( and occasionally to their benefit as well), until she ended the game with none. Ivory put a lot of effort into trying to get the big scoring quests and at one point was holding out for one on display to use with the building that would gain him an extra four points if he could complete at the same time as picking it up. In the end he bottled it and took it a turn earlier in case it was lost. It turned out he was right to do so, as shortly after he had taken it, all the quest cards were replaced. Ivory also managed to gain a number of bonus points as he too was a prolific builder.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor kilroy_locke

Green was trying to get as many Commerce cards as he could figuring the low scores would add up (Peity cards, his other bonus challenge, were in rather short supply in this game). About half way through, he built the extra worker building that when used allows the player to choose an action before anyone else. Green then used this to great effect taking this piece regularly and combining it with the first player marker to get the first two turns. In a game where white Clerics were in such short supply (and many of the Quests that appeared later required lots of clerics), this really scuppered the plans of Ivory and Burgundy in particular. Peity cards need more Clerics than most, Burgundy’s game was often frustrated by the lack of white cubes, and although he kept the first player token in the early part of the game and made good use of it, he just couldn’t quite get his engine going.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor mikehulsebus

The intrigue cards added an extra layer and interaction into the game. Many of them gave a benefit, but also gave a lesser advantage to another player of choice. And some were downright mean to a player of choice, and so alliances were made and broken throughout the game. Reasoning and pleading were a regular feature—an enjoyable interaction which is not so direct in other games. In the end, it was a close game, but Ivory came out on top, just three points ahead of Green. Everyone enjoyed it though and would be happy to play it again, but there was general agreement that with five players it would get crowded and might begin to drag.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor mikehulsebus

Meanwhile, on the next table, they had a bit of a problem: almost all the games they had were four player games and there were five of them! That afternoon, Magenta had expressed an interest in playing The Climbers again and, as it plays five, it was an easy choice. This is a great three dimensional strategy game that we first played about a year ago. It looks like it is designed round a set of children’s building blocks, but it’s appearance belies its true nature however, and, although it looks like a kiddie’s dexterity game, it is really a strategy game with almost no dexterity component at all. The game is played in turn order with each turn comprising three steps. Firstly, the active player can move a block, any block so long as there isn’t anything on it, and they can place it anywhere, in any orientation as long as there is sufficient space. Next the active player can move their Climber as far as they like within the rules.

– Image by boardGOATS

Climbers can climb up any step below their head height unaided as long as the face they are climbing onto is grey or their own colour. They can also use their long and/or short ladders to climb larger distances, but they are fragile and therefore single use. Before the end of their turn, the active player may place their blocking stone, which prevents a brick being moved or used until that player’s next turn. These are also single use though, so timing is everything, in fact that is true for almost everything about this game which was amply demonstrated by Blue. Nominated to go first by random draw, she made the most of it using her long ladder and getting as high up as she could as quickly as possible, much to everyone else’s disgust. Black got himself somewhat stuck on a ledge, but Red, Pine and Magenta quickly caught up. Then it became a real game of chess with everyone trying to outmaneuver everyone else. Red accused Blue of using “Dubious Tactics”, but they proved to be winning tactics as she finished just higher than Red in second.

– Image by boardGOATS

With the Matterhorn conquered, and Lords of Waterdeep still going, it was back to the search for a five-player game, and Santo Domingo fitted the bill. This is a light card game of tactics and bluffing with a pirate theme set in the world of one of our more popular games, Port Royal. The idea is that in each round player one character card from their hand which are activated in character order and then are placed on a personal discard pile. The characters are designed to maximise player interaction, with their result dependent on cards that other players have chosen, similar to games like Citadels and Witch’s Brew. For example, the first card is the Captain who can take a victory point (from a track on a central game board) up to a maximum of twice. The second character is the Admiral who also takes one victory point, but this time up to a maximum of five times, but this is only possible if there are enough points available. This means players have to play “chicken” and try to time playing their second card when other players play something other than the the Captain or the Admiral.

– Image by boardGOATS

Players have to be careful though because the third card is the Governor which gives players goods (rather than points) for every player who played either a Captain or an Admiral card. This means players are trying to maximise their return by reading everybody’s minds and saving their Governor for the round when everyone else is playing the Captain and the Admiral. Cards four, five and six are the Frigate, Galleon and Customs are roughly analogous to the first three characters, except the Frigate and Galleon yield goods (instead of points) and the Customs card gives points (instead of goods). Goods are very useful as they can be turned into victory points using the Trader (the seventh character card). Timing is key here too though as the potential return increases for every round that nobody uses the Trader; the return also depends on the number of people to play the card though, so even if everyone waits and then plays the Trader at the same time, players may get less than if they had played a round earlier.

– Image by boardGOATS

The final card is the Beggar which allows players to pick up their discard pile so that they can re-use them in the following rounds. At the end of each round, players check to see if anyone has passed thirty points and if so, that triggers the end of the game where any residual goods are converted to points at the minimum rate and the player left with the most points is the winner. It was about half way through the game that Blue realised that there was something missing. When the Trader is played, the return is dependent on the yellow track and how many players play the same card. The problem was that once someone plays the Trader, that triggers a reset of the yellow, trader’s track. Unfortunately, we forgot the reset bit which meant that players who were prioritising goods were finding it easy to get a good return whenever they wanted. As a result, the game was very close and finished very quickly.

– Image by boardGOATS

Magenta took the first place with thirty-one points, just two ahead of Black in second. As we had time, we decided to give the game another go, playing correctly this time. Second time round was still close, though there was a better spread and the Beggar (who also gives goods for every Trader card played in the same round) suddenly became a bit more interesting. After doing well in the fist game, Black got his timing wrong and failed to trade his goods. Magenta was extremely efficient the second time round as well, but this time was beaten into second place by Blue. With the game finished, Red and Magenta headed home and Blue, Black and Pine began a game of Azul.

– Image by BGG contributor JackyTheRipper

This is a new release that Pink and Blue picked up at Essen this year and so far has been popular with the group as well as receiving a lot of buzz further afield. The idea of the game is that players are tile laying artists decorating a wall in the Palace of Evora with “azulejos”. On their turn, the active player can either take all the tiles of one colour from one of the factory display (putting the rest in the central market) or take all the tiles of one colour from the market in the centre of the table. They then place the tiles in one of the five rows on their player board. The catch is that each player only has five rows, each with a set number of spaces, one to five. Players can add tiles to a row later in the round, but once a row is full, any left-overs go into the negative scoring row. Once all the tiles have been picked up, players evaluate their board, and, starting with the shortest row, one of the tiles from each full row is added to the player’s mosaic and scored.

– Image by BGG contributor JackyTheRipper

Players score one point for a tile that is not placed adjacent to any other tile, whereas tiles added to rows or columns score the same number of points as there are tiles in the completed row (or column). The game continues with players choosing tiles from the factory displays and then adding them to rows, the catch is that as the mosaic fills up, it is harder to fill the rows as each row can only take each colour once. The game is actually much more complex to explain than to actually play, and as such is just the sort of game we really appreciate. Blue and Black had both played before, but Pine was new to the game. Last time he played, Black had commented that this was “just the sort of game that he really liked, but wasn’t any good at”, so it was left to Blue to lead the way. Pine didn’t need much showing however, and soon had a very fine wall of his own. So much so in fact, that when Blue was forced to pick up five black “azulejos” she didn’t have space for he was in prime position to take a well deserved win.

– Image used with permission of boardgamephotos

While Azul was still underway, Lords of Waterdeep had come to an end, so Green, Ivory, Burgundy and Purple decided there was time for quick game of Lanterns: The Harvest Festival. This is a straight-forward, light tile laying game, where players are decorating the palace lake with floating lanterns and competing to become the most honored artisan when the festival begins. Each tile is divided into four quarters, each of which has a colour, red, orange, blue, green, purple, black and white. On their turn, players choose a tile from their hand of three and add it to the central palace lake. Every player then receives a lantern card corresponding to the color on the side of the tile facing them, with the active player receiving bonus cards for any edges where the colours of the new tile match those of the lake. At the start of their next turn, players can gain honour tiles by dedicating sets of lantern cards, three pairs, four of a kind or seven different colours. Each tile is worth honour points and the player with the most points at the end of the game wins.

– Image used with permission of boardgamephotos

Purple, Burgundy and Ivory went for trying to collect for the full colour set, while Green was content to begin targeting the “two-pairs” or four of a kind. Purple was a late starter to exchange her cards, forcing Burgundy to go for a couple of two-pairs, and Green got stuck with three orange lantern cards with none left to collect. Part way through the game, they suddenly realised that the six point scoring taken was actually a nine point scoring token and everyone had to work out who should have earned what. There weren’t too many already taken, so the correction was worked out quite easily. Purple seemed to not only hoard the cards, but was also building a large collection of bonus discs, such that the others thought that she wasn’t going to be able to use them all. As usual there was the normal mutterings of the tiles being the wrong way round. Later on with shortages of some colours, tiles were placed in such a way to prevent some players collecting anything at all. As the game wore on Purple started to exchange her cards and use her discs. By the end of the game she had actually used them all, and it turned out that she’d used them to perfection, proving that hoarding can sometimes be a winning strategy.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

Just as they started, Azul finished so Blue suggested Black might like to give NMBR 9 a try since he had been quite intrigued last time when Pine, Blue and Purple had played it. Black was Keen and Pine had enjoyed it, so Blue explained the rules. The idea is that players will play a total of twenty tiles, numbered zero to nine, with each one appearing twice. One player turns over a card and calls the number and players each take one tile of that number and add it to their tableau. Tiles must be placed such that at least one edge touches a previous tile. Tiles can be placed on top of other tiles as long as there are no overhanging parts, and the tile sits squarely on more than one other tile. At the end of the game the number tiles are multiplied by the level they sit on minus one. So, a five on the third level scores ten points (5 x (3-1)).

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

The game followed the usual course, but it wasn’t long before the the bingo calls started. Pine began, but Ivory on the next table soon joined in: “Number eight, garden gate”; “On it’s own, number one”. Pine finished with, “This number’s smaller, Ivory’s the caller!” And finished the evening just about was, with only the maths left to be sorted out. Both Blue and Black had managed to sneak a nine and a one onto the third story. Pine had more than Black on the first story, but Blue had more than either of them and finished with a grand total of fifty three, some five points more than either of the others.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

Learning Outcome: Don’t be misled by an unpromising theme.

14th November 2017

While Blue and Burgundy finished their supper, everyone else played a quick game of The Game, played with cards from The Game: Extreme. The game is a very simple cooperative game: played with a deck of ninety-eight cards the group have to play all of them to win. Each player starts with a hand of cards and must play at least two of their cards on one of the four piles. The first rule is that cards added to two of the piles must be higher face value than those previously played, while cards on the other two must be lower. The second rule is “the backwards rule”, which says that if the interval is exactly ten the first rule is reversed. The third and final rule is that players can say anything they like so long as they don’t share specific number information about the contents of their hand. The Extreme version has blue cards instead of red ones, but also has additional symbols on the cards which add further restrictions and make playing cards more difficult.

– Image by boardgoats

By ignoring the extra symbols the original version of The Game can be played with cards from The Extreme version. As is often the case, the game started badly with almost everyone starting with cards between thirty and seventy. There are two problems with this, firstly it forces players to progress the decks faster then they wanted. Secondly, the very high and very low cards are still waiting to be revealed which causes the same problem a second time later in the game. And this is exactly what happened. Pine for example started with nothing below forty and only one card above sixty, and ended the game with a lots of cards in the nineties. With such an awful hand before everyone else was ready, he ended up just playing everything and was the first to check-out. By this time Burgundy and Blue were finished with pizza and had discovered that watching the others struggle was strangely compelling. It wasn’t long before Purple was unable to play though, which brought the game to a close with a combined to total of seven cards unplayed.

– Image by boardGOATS

With food finished and The Game over, the group split into two with the first group playing the “Feature Game”, Flamme Rouge. This is a bicycle game that Blue and Pink played at Essen in 2016, but actually picked up at the fair this year. The game is quite simple, bit even then we managed to get it slightly wrong. The idea is that each player has two riders, a Sprinteur and a Rouleur, each of which has a deck of cards. Simultaneously, players draw four cards from one of their the rider’s deck and choosing one to play, before doing the same for their second rider. Once everyone has chosen two cards, the riders move, starting with the rider at the front of the pack, discarding the used cards. Once all the riders have moved, then the effect of slip-streaming and exhaustion are applied. Exhaustion is simple enough – players simply add an exhaustion card to the deck for any rider without cyclists in the square in front of them at the end of the round. The slip-streaming is slightly more complex, but the idea is that every pack of cyclists that has exactly one space between them and the pack in front, benefits from slip-streaming and is able to catch up that one space.

– Image by BGG contributor mattridding

Slip-steaming is applied from the back, which means riders may be able to benefit multiple times. The problem was, Blue had played incorrectly at Essen: they had played that a pack had to comprise at least two riders and would move forward regardless of how many spaces there were in front of them. Ironically, the person to suffer most from this rules mishap was Blue as her Sprinteur was dropped from the pack early in the race and, although he got on to the back of the pack again, the exhaustion caused by all the early effort meant he struggled for the rest of the race and was soon dropped completely. All the other riders managed to stay in the Peloton and, as the race drew to a close, there was some jockeying for position. Black’s Sprinteur made a dash for the line, but got his timing very slightly wrong and didn’t quite make it. Pine’s Sprinter on the other hand, timed his dash to perfection and pipped Black to first place. In fact, Pine rode such a canny race, his Rouleur came in third.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor zombiegod

Meanwhile, on the next table, Burgundy, Purple and Green were giving Azul a go. This is a brand new release that Pink and Blue picked up at Essen this year and played back at their hotel while they were in Germany. It has such nice pieces and is such a clever, yet simple game, that Blue tipped it for the Spiel des Jahres award next year (or at least a nomination if something even better comes out). The idea of the game is that players are tile laying artists decorating a wall in the Palace of Evora with “azulejos”. On their turn, the active player can either take all the tiles of one colour from one of the factory display (putting the rest in the central market) or take all the tiles of one colour from the market in the centre of the table. They then place the tiles in one of the five rows on their player board.

– Image by BGG contributor JackyTheRipper

Each row can only contain one colour, but players may have more than one row with any given colour. The catch is that each player only has five rows, each with a set number of spaces, one to five. Players can add tiles to a row later in the round, but once a row is full, any left-overs go into the negative scoring row. Once all the tiles have been picked up, players evaluate their board, and, starting with the shortest row, one of the tiles from each full row is added to the player’s mosaic and scored. Players score one point for a tile that is not placed adjacent to any other tile, whereas tiles added to rows or columns score the same number of points as there are tiles in the completed row (or column). The game continues with players choosing tiles from the factory displays and then adding them to rows, the catch is that as the mosaic fills up, it is harder to fill the rows as each row can only take each colour once.

– Image by BGG contributor JackyTheRipper

The game is much more complex to explain than to actually play, and as such is just the sort of game we really appreciate. There are also end game bonuses which keep everyone guessing right up to the end. So, although fairly simple to play, it is very clever and gives players a lot to think about. Blue had played it with Burgundy, Black and Purple at the Didcot Games Club and everyone had enjoyed it, so Burgundy and Purple were keen to share it with Green. The previous game had been very tight between first and second, with a tie for third, but this time, the game seemed quite tight throughout the game. In the end, Burgundy finished the clear winner with seventy-eight points. It remained tight for second place though, but Purple’s extra experience showed and she pipped Green by four points. Both games finished at about the same time, so with Black, Ivory and Green keen to play 7 Wonders, and Purple and Blue not so keen, it was musical chairs while everyone else decided which group to join.

– Image used with permission of boardgamephotos

7 Wonders is a card drafting game similar to games like Sushi Go! or Between Two Cities. Each player starts with a hand of cards and, simultaneously, each player chooses a card to play, a card to keep and then a passes the rest to the next player. The cards are played with various different aims: players might try to build up their city and erect an architectural wonder, or attempt to have a superior military presence to neighbouring players. The game consists of three rounds, the first and third passing cards to the left, with the middle round passing cards to the right. Black and Green went down the military route taking points from both Ivory and Burgundy and picked up additional victory points from blue cards. Ivory and Burgundy, on the other hand, went for science points, but Ivory managed to take the most squeezing out both Burgundy and Black. It was a close game with just five points between first place and third place, but it was Green who just finished in front.

– Image by BGG contributor damnpixel

On the next table, Blue, Purple and Pine played a game of another Essen acquisition, Animals on Board. This actually belonged to Pink, but Blue still had it in the bag from Didcot Games Club a few days before. It is a very simple game of set collecting, with elements from Coloretto and 3 Sind Eine Zu Viel!. Totally over produced, the game comes with fantastic cardboard arcs and thick card animal tiles. There are five of each animal, and each set includes animals numbered from one to five and a selection are drawn at random and placed face up in the centre of the table. On their turn the active player either divides one of the groups into two parts (and takes a box of fruit for their pains) or takes the animals from one of the groups, paying for them with boxes of fruit at a rate of one per animal. At the end of the game (triggered when one player picks up their tenth animal) Noah claims any pairs of animals. The remaining animals either score their face value if they are singletons, or score five if there are three or more.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor chriswray84

Blue began collecting pandas and zebras, while Purple and Pine fought over the tigers, foxes and crocodiles. It was Blue who triggered the end of the game and everyone counted up their totals in whst turned out to be a very close game. Everyone had at least one set of three and Purple had managed to take four foxes. Blue had managed to pick up a total of eleven animals and that extra critter made the difference giving, her the win. Since it had been so close and 7 Wonders was still going, they decided there was just enough time to play something else and see if revenge could be had. Since NMBR 9, another game that came back from Essen, needs no setting up, they decided to give it a go.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

NMBR 9 is a Bingo-type game like Take it Easy! or Karuba, where one player calls a number and everyone plays their tile that corresponds to that number. NMBR 9 takes the number theme one step further, since all the tiles are roughly number-shaped. The idea is that players will play a total of twenty tiles, numbered zero to nine, with each one appearing twice. One player turns over a card and calls the number and players each take one tile of that number and add it to their tableau. Tiles must be placed such that at least one edge touches a previous tile. Tiles can be placed on top of other tiles as long as there are no overhanging parts, and the tile sits squarely on more than one other tile. At the end of the game the number tiles are multiplied by the level they sit on minus one. So, a five on the third level scores ten points (5 x (3-1)).

– Image used with permission of boardgamephotos

Blue started off well, which was unsurprising as she had played it before with Pink. She quickly got herself into a bit of a tangle though, with the plaintive cry, “I’ve got a hole in the wrong place!” Pine was steadily making up ground, but concurred, muttering, “There are too many sticky out bits on a four…” With 7 Wonders finally coming to an end, Black and Burgundy found their curiosity piqued by the strange shaped tiles and tried to work out what was going on. It wasn’t long before the last cards were turned over though and everyone had to take their shoes and socks off to work out the scores. Pine’s smart second level placement had yielded success and he finished with score of sixty-one, a comfortable lead of five over blue in second place.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

Learning Outcome: Some games, make surprisingly good spectator sports.

Spiel des Jahres Winners – 2016

The 2016 winner of the coveted German Game of the Year or Spiel des Jahres award is Codenames. Codenames is which is a word-based deduction game played in teams. Each team has a leader who gives clues to the rest of their team who are trying to choose particular word-cards from an array. The trick is for the leader to come up with a clue that covers multiple correct answers so that the rest of the team can identify the complete set before the opposition. It’s not really a game that really suits our group as several of the regulars aren’t very keen on social deduction games, but it is very quick to play, so, although we would probably have given the award to one of the two other nominees, Imhotep (manipulating large wooden blocks) or Karuba (“boardgame Bingo“), it may well end up as the “Feature Game” next week.

– Image used with permission of boardgamephotos

At the same time the Kennerspiel des Jahres was awarded, which honours more challenging games. It was introduced in 2011 to replace the jury’s habit of intermittent special awards for games too complex for the Spiel des Jahres (notably Agricola which was awarded a special “Complex Game” prize in 2008). This year the Kennerspiel des Jahres award went to Isle of Skye: From Chieftain to King, which is one of our favourite games. This year was a bit of a “Marmite” year for us as there were a lot of games on the lists that don’t really fit our group, including the two other Kennerspiel des Jahres nominees (Pandemic Legacy and T.I.M.E Stories). The Kinderspiel des Jahres award was announced last month and went to Stone Age Junior (aka My First Stone Age), which is a simpler version of the family worker placement game Stone Age.

– Image used with permission of boardgamephotos