For some, the evening began early with fish and chips in the garden to mark a special visit from Plum’s Aunt Damson.  The evening took an even more special turn as it was the day before Pine’s Big Birthday, so there was cake.  Green also put in one of his special appearances, bringing his mum, Saffron, with him.  Salmon came for the second time, and lastly, Orange, who had acquired a motorbike and was therefore now able to travel, also came for the first time in about eighteen months.  So with all these extras as well as the usual suspects, the room was packed and the group split into four with Jade leading the “Feature Game” which was to be Moon, a card drafting game where players construct bases, vying to build the new lunar capital.

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Moon is played over three rounds or Eras, collectively representing the first hundred years of populating the Moon.  Each Era is divided into three parts:  first players produce Resources, Rovers and Hearts from their Settlements.  Then comes the drafting where players choose a card from their hand to Build or discard, then pass their hand to the next player, repeating until there are no cards left.  Finally, players claim the Hearts on the central Flag Reward Board, and score any Hearts placed on their Structures and Reputation Cards.  At the start of the drafting phase, each player has one Expedition cards while the rest of the cards are Structure cards—this hand of cards represents an expedition from Earth that travels between settlements on the Moon.

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Unlike most card-drafting games, turns are taken sequentially with, players a Structure card from their hand and placing it in their Settlement paying any Resources and making sure any Flag Requirements are fulfilled.  Alternatively, instead of playing a card, they can discard (or “Assimilate”) a card, taking the Resources, Rovers or Hearts depicted in the discard line.  There are also four optional actions that players can carry out once each in any order before or after their mandatory action (Building or Assimilating)—use the Bonus Action on their Expedition Card; park a Rover; claim a Reputation card, or turn over a pink Action card.

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Once all players have taken their turn, all players pass their hands (including the Expedition card) to the player seated to their left and the player who now has the First Expedition Card starts the next round.  There are some similarities with Terraforming Mars, with cards having “Flags” (akin to the “Tags”), with some cards needing some Flags as a prerequisite while others display and therefore provide them.  There are five different Flags, Industry, Science, Food, Housing, and Transportation.  There are also four different types of Resource, Energy, Water, Biomass and Metal which are represented by wooden tokens, or Resource-eeples.

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The guts of the game are the cards—there are five different types:  blue Production cards, yellow Flag cards, pink Ability cards, grey Excitement cards and red Special cards.  Blue and yellow Structure cards also display a Rover parking space.  Players begin the game with two Rover-eeples, but can acquire more during the game.  Players can park Rovers on other players’ Structures to either use the card to immediately gain its Resources (blue) or use the Flags on it to fulfill a Flag Requirement when Building (yellow). Pink Ability cards provide an ability players can use once per Era by flipping the card while grey Excitement cards provide Hearts, which are victory points—some of these just give points at the end of the game while others give Hearts during the game.

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There was some hilarity over the card names, especially when Orange built a Toilet right next to his food van, Just in case!  Jade who was the most familiar with the game, took an early lead in the Hearts and finished with what appeared at first glance to be an unassailable lead with fifty-six of them, fifteen more than anyone else.  There are other scoring opportunities however, with points available for Grey Structures and Reputation Cards, and Jade came off worst for both of these.  Black picked up the most points for his Grey Structures with thirty followed by Pine with twenty-seven.  Scores were much lower for Reputation with Black, Sapphire and Pine with a similar tally.  In the end, it was very close, but the victory was Sapphire with a combined total of seventy-nine, just two more than Black in second, with Jade completing the podium.

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On the next table, Ivory and Byzantium were introducing Salmon to Brass: Birmingham.  There was a concern after last time that they might be a bit pushed to finish it in time (especially after last time), but with only three and with Birmingham being quicker to play than the original Lancashire version, they felt it was worth a go.  Ivory explained the rules while Byzantium set up the board.  In both games, players develop, build and establish their industries and network in an effort to exploit low or high market demands.  Players take turns according to the turn order track, paying two cards (from their hand of eight) to take any two actions from a possible six: Build, Network, Develop, Sell (cotton, manufactured goods or pottery), Borrow, and Scout.

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Building involves paying the required resources to place an industry tile while Networking is placing a Rail or Canal Link.  When Developing, players increase the point value of an industry, while Borrowing involves taking a £30 loan and a reduction in income.  The Scout action is new to the Birmingham game and replaces the Double Action Build in original, instead discarding three cards and taking a wild location and wild industry card.  Played in two halves, when the deck runs out players score, remove all the Canal Links then play on but this time building Rails.  The game ends when the deck runs out for the second time.

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Ivory went first.  Due to Shrewsbury accepting all goods (this was randomly determined as part of set up) and selling goods being critical to scoring points, initially everyone focused on building near there and building industries that gave resources (i.e. coal and iron) that were going to be need to build further industries.  So Ivory, who went first began by building a Coal Mine in Coalbrookdale, while Byzantium added an Iron Works at the same location and Salmon placed a Coal Mine next door in Wolverhampton. At the start it looked like all three would all be competing in the same area, but once they continued building their networks (via Canals) and more industries, everyone started to spread out.  Ivory headed south, building Cotton Mills in Kidderminster and Worcester and was the first player to Sell, Selling to Shrewsbury and gaining four points for consuming Beer there (Beer being a prerequisite to Selling) and filling the tile to increase his income.

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Byzantium went north and sold Cotton to Warrington, gaining £5 as his “Beer Bonus”, and increased his income. Seeing the opportunity Byzantium was building, Ivory took the opportunity using a Leek card he had which allowed him to build outside his network, to build a Cotton Mill in Leek and immediately Selling, using the remaining Beer there to also gain £5. Salmon went more central (Cannok and Walsall), focusing on Coal Mines and Iron Works, but as no one was consuming the resources (both Byzantium and Ivory were slightly self-sufficient), he was unable to flip his industries and increase his income. This became a major issue for him as the game progressed. Everyone ran out of money quite quickly and were forced to take out Loans, decreasing their income making it negative so that they had to pay money to the bank at the end of each round.

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Whereas Byzantium and Ivory promptly Sold some Goods, flipped tiles and increased their  income so it was positive again, Salmon got caught in a debt trap, having to take further Loans to take actions and service his debt. When required to take a third Loan (and then pay £9 each in upkeep), it was agreed that he should take the Loan without the drop in income, allowing him to take actions and sell goods and ultimately get back to a positive income. After a late era focus on breweries to get the Beer to Sell further goods, cotton and in Byzantium’s case, Pottery, the Canal Era came to an end. After scoring flipped tiles and Canal Links, Ivory had a slight lead.

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At the end of the Canal Era and going into the Rail Era, as well as all the Canals, all Level 1 tiles are removed from the board, representing obsolete technologies.  This wiped out everything Ivory had and most of Byzantium and Salmon’s tiles, so the start of the Rail Era was similar to the beginning of the game.  That said, Byzantium and Salmon were tied to their positions because, without a named card, players always have extend their Network from an existing position if they can.  That meant, Byzantium and Salmon always had something that was going to score twice though, where as Ivory had to build from scratch, but was free to start anywhere.

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With Rail connections requiring Coal to build, and because the cards in Ivory’s hand were all close to Shrewsbury (which that accepted all goods), he began the second Era almost exactly the same action way as he started the first, building a Coal Mine in Coalbrookdale. Although he had nothing on the board, Ivory was able to rebuild very quickly, partly because he had a good income, but also because he had taken a Loan as his very last action in the Canal Era.  Salmon and Byzantium also built their Networks in similar areas to the first Era. Byzantium’s core strategy was building and selling pottery to Warrington.

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Pottery is a unique resource in Brass: Birmingham, with the first pottery title being worth a large amount of points when flipped, the next being worth very little, the next giving big points etc.. Players are also restricted in developing Pottery, which mean they can’t skip the low point value titles. However, the big scoring tiles are worth a lot and Byzantium was able to get the highest level title out and flipped for a total of twenty points. Ivory again focused on the more standard cotton Mills, and each title being worth more points than the last, he was able to get multiple titles placed and Cotton sold, flipping the tiles to Shrewsbury. He also spent actions building lots of rail links next to his flipped tiles.

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Salmon again took a different approach, focusing on goods, the easiest to build and flip (especially as some don’t need beer), but these are not worth as many points. The game ended after all the cards had been played (for a second time), with Ivory’s focus on rail links and Cotton giving him victory over Byzantium by about twenty points.  Meanwhile, Teal beginning to explain the rules for Cottage Garden to Plum, Plum’s Aunt Damson and Blue, but then Ruby arrived.  Blue had cake to dispense and had a curiosity about Brass, so quickly offered her seat to Ruby and the Teal began again.  Cottage Garden is a fairly straight-forward Tetrissy, puzzle-type, polyomino game with a similar feel to Patchwork, but with more people.

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In Cottage Garden, players are competing in the art of gardening and are working two beds with a variety of flowers.  To do this, players select polyomino tiles of flower beds from a central market grid (restricted by the location of the “Gardener”), then place them on one of their two personal garden boards. Each board has several garden elements that are worth points when not planted over, and these are scored (on two different tracks) as soon as a garden has been completed. There are points “bars” on each track, and when these are passed players receive bonus tokens that can fill in empty spaces or give players a better selection of the flower bed tiles.

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Once a garden is finished, the player receives a new one to complete. After the Gardener completes her fifth lap around the market, the game enters its final round, after which, the player with the most points from their completed gardens is the winner.  The received wisdom is that the problem with the game is that it doesn’t change or intensify, which some people find boring.  However it also means that players have time to “get their eye in” and learn how to play without the game evolving beneath them and catching them out as they spend whole time playing chase.  As such, it was pretty much the perfect game for the occasion.

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Everyone did pretty well—Ruby picked up the scoring quickest, but Aunt Damson got the first beehive.  Teal wasn’t far behind though, getting the second.  In the final round, Plum just scored her current flower bed and discarded the second so that she didn’t get any negative points, something that turned out to be a critical decision in a very tight game.Plum and Teal had the edge in scoring for Pots, but that was off-set by Ruby’s scoring for her Cloches and and Aunt Damson’s Beehives.  Teal, Ruby and Aunt Damson were all within a couple of points, but the victor, was Plum with fifty-six, just three points clear of Ruby who edged second from Teal.

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In addition to Aunt Damson, Green had brought his mother, Saffron who was visiting. the area  Saffron was quite well known to some of the group so there was quite a bit of chatter before she joined Green, Lime and Purple in a game of Azul.  This is a game that is well known within the group and with everyone familiar, the rules explanation could be kept short:  the game uses a very simple, but very clever market mechanic where players take all the tiles of one colour from a market stall and put the rest into a the centre, or take all the tiles of one colour from the centre.

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As soon as they have taken the tiles, players add them to one of the rows on their player board.  At the end of the round, one tile in each full row is moved into their mosaic.  The game ends when one player completes one full row of their mosaic.  Players score points when they add tiles to their mosaic (one point for each tile in the row and column it forms), and receive bonuses for completed rows, columns and any completed sets in their mosaic.  The catch is that each feeder row can only contain one colour and and if there are left-overs when they add to it, these score negative points.  Further, each row in a player’s mosaic can only have one tile of each colour.

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This time, Lime nearly got caught out, however, after Blue was summoned for a rules adjudication.  The question was, was he able to have more than one feeder row in a colour?  If they all had to be different he would be forced to place a lot of tiles in his overflow space and pick up a pile of negative points.  As the rules are clear and players can have as many feeder rows of the same colour as they like at any point during the game (they can only put each colour in a row of the mosaic once), Lime dodged a bit of a bullet.  As a result, he just edged it taking victory by three points from Green with Saffron a few points behind him.

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With everything else still going, when Azul finished, Blue joined the table to introduce Saffron to another one of the groups favourite games, Draftosaurus.  This is a very simple drafting game (similar to games like Sushi Go! where players choose from a hand of cards and pass the hand on), but in this case players are drafting cool dino-meeples and adding them to their dinosaur park, with different locations scoring for different combinations of dinosaurs. The game is played over two rounds, each placing six dinosaurs.  The first game was a bit of a land-slide although it ended in a tie between Green and his mum, Saffron, both scoring thirty-seven points.

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It couldn’t be left there of course, so the group “did a Lime” and played again.  This time it wasn’t until the scoring that Green realised why he hadn’t seen a single T. rex—Blue sat to his right had nabbed them all before he got to see them!  T. rex is a special dinosaur in general, but especially in Draftosaurus, giving an extra point for each one, but also having some placement restrictions.  Blue is generally very bad at this game, but even a park full of dinosaur kings (and queens) didn’t help, although it was a very close game with four players within a couple of points.  The clear victory though was Purple with thirty-eight, three points ahead of Lime who led the rest of the pack.

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From there, there was a bit of chatter, but by the time Cottage Garden had finished, Teal, Lime, Green and Saffron all decided it was time to head home, leaving Purple to join Ruby, Plum and Aunt Damson.  There was some question about that they would play, but in the end they decided on one of Purple’s favourites, the hidden traitor game, Saboteur.  In truth, this is not at its best with four, but despite that, the group really enjoyed it.  The idea of the game is that players are Dwarves building a network of Tunnels in order to find treasure.  They do this simply by playing a card to extend the Tunnel and drawing a replacement.  The catch is that there is a traitor, an Evil Saboteur, in their midst.

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So, if the Dwarves have not found the treasure by the time the deck runs out, then they have lost and victory goes to the Evil Saboteur.  In addition to Tunnel cards, the deck also contains Special Map, Rock Fall, Broken Tool and Fixed Tool Cards which Dwarves and Saboteurs can use as they feel appropriate.  With four players, Ruby put two Saboteur cards in the pile used to assign the roles, but as it happened only one came out—Ruby.  Plum seemed to get the all map cards and checked the target nearest her first: Coal.  She then tried the the middle target card, but finally found gold in the one furthest from her.

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Ruby chose to strike out at Aunt Damson first, but that left Purple and Plum to continue digging for the gold.  Ruby then played a tunnel card with a dead-end which exposed her as a Saboteur, and as the only one, the writing was on the wall.  The game is formally played over three rounds, but we don’t like the way that plays and treat one round as a game in its own right.  Everyone enjoyed the game, but Aunt Damson in particular—she had watched and enjoyed The Traitors, so the overall concept particularly appealed.  It had been a lovely evening with a slightly different set of people and lots of games played.

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Learning Outcome:  It’s lovely to host family and old friends.