Tag Archives: Burgle Bros.

11th July 2023

Blue and Pink were really late arriving, and were much amused by the cheers and applause when they came through the door. Slightly embarrassed, and after a quick explanation, everyone started splitting into groups. First was the “Feature Game“, the Fantasies & Futures expansion for one of our more popular, heavier games, Tapestry. On the surface, Tapestry has simple mechanisms, but they combine to make a complex game. Basically, on their turn, players move one step along one of the four Civilisation tracks around the board: Science, Exploration, Military, Technology and carry out the action (or actions associated with it). Each space requires payment of resources, and the further along the track, the more expensive the spaces become.

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If a player cannot afford to pay (or chooses not to), then they instead take income, which gives them more resources. They also gain points and play a tapestry card, which usually provides a power for the next round. So, at its heart, Tapestry is an engine building and resource management game: players carry out actions and get resources so they can get more resources and ultimately, points. We have played the first two expansions, Plans and Ploys and Arts & Architecture, but this time the “Feature Game” was the Fantasies & Futures expansion, which is the smallest, adding new Fantasy Civilizations, advanced Capital City mats, new Tapestry and Tech cards.

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Ivory was joined by Green, Plum and Byzantium. Along with the Fantasies & Futures expansion, the group decided to add the “Plans” from the Plans and Ploys expansion as a sort of mini expansion, a private goal, where players get their own, special building they can build. They also left the Tapestry cards and Civilisations in the mix from the first two expansions and really only left out Arts Advancement track from the Arts & Architecture expansion as they thought it would add too much complexity to the game overall.

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Tapestry is one of those games that sometimes comes in for criticism for being multiplayer solitaire. Although that’s not true, there is a strong element of players “getting on with their own thing”. Although they were each very much playing their own game, there was still quite a bit of interaction which definitely gave the game teeth. Green’s Civilisation (“Spies”), had him perusing over his neighbours positions and cards each income turn. Luckily for him Ivory’s Civilisation (“Aliens”) gave him four starting space tiles, and one bonus he could choose was the benefit on an unused tile in a neighbours supply which gave a nice healthy early bonus.

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Plum’s “Islanders” Civilisation was focused on collecting area tiles and placing them on her Civilisation mat. So she started out prioritising collecting landscape tiles, looking for ones with water on more edges as these would give her more points in the final income phase. She got a bit lucky right from the start getting two out of three. From there she went for an expansionists strategy as did Byzantium (with his “Riverfolk” Civilisation), and from there, throughout the game they found themselves trying to conquer each others territories on the central island.

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Plum started the game with two Tapestry cards, so chose to use the standard one for her first era. The second was from one of the expansions and “charmed”, so much to Byzantium’s annoyance when he tried to topple Plum’s Tower in the middle of the map, his attempt was thwarted by Plum’s Trap card which also gave her an extra benefit. When Plum later attempted to Conquer Byzantium’s tile, he was delighted to be able to repay the earlier battle with his own Trap card. That satisfaction didn’t last, however, as Plum proceeded to play her charmed Anti-trap card which not only stopped the trap dead, but also gave her yet another bonus.

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That bonus was a random Tapestry card from Byzantium’s hand—he had two, and the one she picked just happened to be the one he had been working towards maximising the effect of (moving up each track once and getting the bonus action for free). Plum felt pretty bad about picking it, but it was too late by then. So, all round, it was quite a frustrating game for Byzantium, who started the game with a large forty-eight point bonus from his landscape board (“Forest”), and his first conquering dice rolls, time after time, gave him the choice between a resource or seven points—quite a dilemma in the early part of the game. Initially he took the seven points (the highest that dice could give him), but found he wasn’t getting as many turns as the others, so later switched to taking the resource.

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Ivory, meanwhile, managed to make good use of the charmed Tapestry cards, keeping himself well stocked with resources throughout the game. The rest of the group barely saw any charmed Tapestry cards (aside from Plum’s Trap and Anti-trap cards), but did find the new Civilisations and Landscape boards quite an interesting addition. As the endgame approached, Green was last man standing, and for his last few turns he was able to grab an extra Civilisation (“Urban Planner”) which was to reward him handsomely.

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The game which had been a quite sedate affair, started speeding up a little towards the end. Pretty much everyone did something that if they had thought just a little a bit more would have gained them another point or so—Green put a cube on another player’s map, Plum put a building somewhere where it could have completed a row if she’d considered a little longer. As the game came to a close, Ivory and Plum counted their remaining income scores to amazingly find themselves both on two-hundred and thirty-five points.

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Then Green counted his final points, giving him the lead by a solitary point. That was until he realised that he’d added thirty-six to one hundred and ninety-nine and discovered he was part of a three-way tie with Ivory and Plum! Nobody was quite sure how they all managed to have an identical score in such a high scoring game. If the tie-break had been resources remaining, then Green would have won and if it was Tapestry cards remaining, then Plum would have been the victor. However, a quick check of the rules suggested the tie-break was in favour of the player with the tallest building (which everyone agreed that was a rubbish tie break), and although Ivory narrowly had a taller building that Green, he graciously agreed that everyone should just share victory.

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While Tapestry was setting up, on the next table Jade was introducing Black, Purple and Pine (who chose to spectate) to Fantastic Factories. This is a game where players compete against each other trying to build the most efficient set of factories as quickly as possible. Players have to carefully manage their blueprints, train their workers, and manufacture as many goods as possible in order to achieve industrial dominance. Each round consists of two phases: the market phase and the work phase. In the market phase each player in turn order can either gain a blueprint card from the four available in the market or hire a contractor.

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To hire a contractor players must pay one card (that matches the tool symbol associated with the contractor’s location on the board) and any additional costs listed. Contractors have various benefits mostly related to gaining extra resources or extra dice workers for the work phase later in the round. In the work phase, all players perform actions in their play area simultaneously starting by rolling their four coloured dice (and any additional ones gained from contractors). Players can use their actions to build cards (which cost various resources matching the building type); while players can build as many cards as they wish in a turn, they may one of each type of building.

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Dice can be used to take actions on a player’s main Headquarter board or on building cards you have constructed. A player’s Headquarter board allows them to generate metal and energy. Players can also activate their buildings once per round. If any player has built ten buildings or produced twelve goods that triggers the end of the game and one final round takes place before end game scoring. Players add up the prestige value of their buildings to their produced goods and the winner is the player with the highest total. The game was a fairly typical learning game, but was quite close. Both Purple and Black took thirteen points for their buildings, and while Purple was yet to get her engine going, Black took nine points for his goods.

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Jade, on the other hand, had fewer points for his buildings (nine), but they were functioning more efficiently. His total of twenty-three was just one point more than Black who took second. While they were packing up, the group chatted and Jade showed off Vaalbara, another of his acquisitions from UK Games Expo, which he described this as a nice little set collection, and semi-interactive card game. Then they chatted while they waited for Tapestry to finish. And waited some more as the clock ticked and it turned out that Tapestry was no-where as near to finishing as everyone had thought…

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Meanwhile, Teal was introducing Blue, Pink and Lime to a much older game, Condottiere. This is a sort of trick taking, battle game. Set in 13^th century Italy, where the wealthy city-states had weak armies. The Condottiere were veteran English soldiers returned from the Crusades who were contracted to fight for individual city-states by an agreement known as a condotta, the most elite fighters were the mercenary leaders known as the Condottiere. During each round, control of a State is put up for auction, and players bid the number of troops they are willing to lose in order to win the province. Players bid with cards that represent Mercenaries, Seasons, Scarecrows, and Political Figures, in an effort to try to take control of four adjacent States.

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Each player starts with a hand of cards, and one player starts the bidding by choosing a State and a starting bid, playing the card or cards from their hand, face up on the table. Other players follow, playing cards each round. When a player either cannot play another card (or chooses not to), they “stick”, but unlike many other auctions, in which only the highest bidder loses their bid, at the end, everyone loses all the cards they played, whether they finish with the highest value hand or not. Mercenary cards have values one to six or ten, while the other cards have special powers that take effect when they are played, but it is how the cards work together that is key.

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For example, the Drums double’s the value of all that player’s Mercenary cards, but this effect can be offset by another player placing a Winter card reduce every Mercenary card played to a value of one, while a Scarecrow can be used to return a card to its owner’s hand, making it available to play later. There is also the Heroine, which is untouched by either the Drums or Winter, but also cannot be returned by the Scarecrow. Perhaps the cleverest cards, however, are the Surrender and Bishop cards; the Surrender ends the battle immediately (with the current leader winning the battle), and the Bishop ends the battle in peace with no-one winning.

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While there are some clear uses for some cards (the Bishop is only likely to be played by someone who is losing badly, and the Surrender card is usually played when the active player holds the lead), the meta-game is also important. Although winning is obviously the aim of the game, as battles become head-to-head, players sometimes end up playing with emotion rather than strategy. Once a battle has been won, the winner chooses the next city-state to be auctioned and starts the bidding. Unlike other games, however, play continues with the cards they have left until all players but one have run out of cards, and only then do players get more cards (before they start the next battle).

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Teal explained the game, and that, although he understood the rules, he had no idea how to win. Indeed, despite having played Condottiere a lot in the weeks since he acquired it at UK Games Expo, he had never won, a situation that was destined not to change this time. Teal and Lime won a couple of States, giving them extra cards in the refresh. Blue and Pink realised they were at a disadvantage, so set out to rectify things. They took a couple of States and redressed the balance. Then Pink stole a march when he forced Lime to lead out in a battle he could not win. With this giving him three adjacent states, the writing was on the wall. Lime, Teal and Blue tried to work together to prevent Pink from taking the last one, but without success.

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It had been a very enjoyable game, and given its success, the group went on to play another of Teal’s UK Games Expo acquisitions—Burgle Bros.. This is a cooperative game, a style the group traditionally eschew, though recently have played more often (including Scotland Yard last year, The Lost Expedition about six months ago, Zoo Break twice in quick succession, and Forbidden Dessert a couple of weeks ago). Burgle Bros. works in a similar way to the other games of this type. Players are a team of robbers, attempting to enter a building from the ground floor, raiding the safes on each floor before escaping by helicopter from the roof. In addition to finding and cracking the safes, players also have to avoid the Security Guards that patrol the building.

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In the game, players each have three Stealth tokens. Whenever they are on the same tile with a Guard, they lose one and if any player is caught without a stealth token, the game is over. On their turn, players have four actions (move, preparing a safe for cracking by putting some dice on its tile, rolling dice to attempt to crack the code etc.). Once the player has taken their turn, the Guard takes their turn, moving towards their target room (assigned by the route deck and marked with an orange die). So to win, players first have to find the safe and then crack the code and all without triggering the motion detectors, heat sensors, fingerprint scanners, laser fields, open walkways, deadbolt rooms, and of course avoiding the guards…

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The group decided to play on the beginner’s level which meant they only had two floors to explore before they could escape the building. They got lucky right at the start as they popped up from the ground floor right next to the safe. That meant they only had to reveal all the orthogonal tiles and then roll dice to match the code. They were luckier still as the security guard was on the other side of the building and there were very few walls obstructing their way. As a general rule, cooperative games of this type give each player unique special powers and using these effectively is usually critical to success.

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So, Pink (who was “The Hacker” and didn’t trigger alarms) was sent off to reveal tiles while Blue (“The Spotter”) started setting up the safe for Lime, who was “The Peterman” and got to roll an additional die when trying to crack the safe. Before long, things on the first floor looked pretty much under control with just the last few numbers left to crack the safe, so Teal (“The Juicer”) took himself off to the second floor to start hunting for the safe there. This was a risky strategy as it triggered the Guard moving on the second floor. However, with fewer people on both floors, the Guards effectively moved slower and gave players more chance to avoid them.

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Things were slightly more challenging on the second floor—the Security Guard was a little more proactive, stepping it out more and, of course, the group didn’t find the safe at the top of the stairs this time. It didn’t take him long to find it though, and with nothing better to do, Pink joined Teal on the second floor, ducking under the risky laser trap at the top of the stairs. Meanwhile, Lime had finally managed to crack the safe, so Blue headed up the stairs only to find the second floor security guard heading her way, so she escaped to the roof toting their loot (a very annoying large and heavy bust and a particularly yappy dog) .

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There was a bit of shenanigans as Lime joined Teal and Pink and also dodged the Security Guard (and lost a couple of Stealth tokens), but although there were a couple of near misses, it wasn’t long before all four were on the roof awaiting their lift to safety. It was another fun game, but with time marching, Lime and Teal headed for home, leaving Blue and Pink to join Jade, Purple and Black who were still waiting for Tapestry to finish. It was nice to chat though, and eventually Tapestry did finish and everyone who needed one got their lift home (without having to climb on to the roof…).

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Learning Outcome: New games are fun, but there are lots of good, slightly older games to be had as well at places like Expo.

30th May 2023

Pink and Blue were late arriving thanks to a debate as to whether the actor Gary Lewis was in the Roland Emmerich film The Day After Tomorrow. Eventually Blue and IMDb were proved right when Pink found the guy who WAS in the film (Richard McMillan, who bore no resemblance to Gary Lewis whatsoever), but that meant they were late arriving and Plum and Byzantium were already there. Unfortunately, due to a mix up, the Jockey wasn’t serving food, so Blue headed off to get chips for everyone from Darren at The Happy Plaice. As the chips were consumed, everyone else arrived and it was just a question of who would play the “Feature Game“, the Wild Ride expansion to our go-to motor racing game, Downforce, and what everyone else would play.

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Eventually Pink and Green committed to Downforce, and were joined by Pine (who claimed that after doing well the first time he played, he’d come last ever since), Black and Lime (as long as the other group weren’t playing Wingspan). Pink and Green reminded people of the rules of the base game, which are simple enough: after being dealt their hand of cards, players bid for cars, with the player who pays the most deducting the cost from their final score. Once the bidding is over, the race takes place. Players take it in turns to play one card from their hand, and then move all the cars depicted on it in turn.

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When the first car crosses a betting line, the race is paused while everyone bets on which car will win the race. There are three betting lines, but the winnings for betting decrease the closer they are to the finish line. At the end of the game, players total their winnings from the race with those from the betting, deducting the cost of their car and the player with the most cash is the winner. The Wild Ride expansion adds two new tracks: Aloha Sands and Savanna Stretch. Aloha Sands adds water jumps which cars can use if they are moving fast enough. The jumps allow players to pass other cars and get round the track more efficiently, but timing is everything.

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In contrast, Savanna Stretch features wild animals that block the track. Once the first car has passed an animal, they are moved to another part of the track, as such, they help to prevent the “runaway leader” problem that can sometimes be an issue in the base game. It was this track that players chose to use this time. The inclusion of extra animals on the track caused a little confusion initially, but the group soon worked out two of the important features of this track. Firstly, the animal tile only moves after the first car is fully past it and all other the cars have finished their movements for that card, which means that the animal is really only an impediment for the first few cars.

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The other the slightly unusual aspect of this track is that the pole position car starts at the rear of the pack. With five players and six cars, there was always a chance that someone would get two, and that someone was Lime. While this can be a huge advantage, especially if the cars are cheap, it can also be a risky strategy as it can be difficult to manipulate two cars and they can also become a target for other players. Unfortunately for Lime, his cars were among the most expensive, leaving him with a deficit of $11M before the racing began, compared with Pink and Green for example, who paid just $2M for theirs. Once everyone had got to grips with the rules and the cars had been allocated, the race was underway.

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For a track with so many tight sections it was not surprising that there was a lot of blocking going on—most of it, to be fair, totally deliberate… Pink (in the red car) found his early push to the front to be a mistake, as he was instantly the target for blocking maneuvers from turn two until the final straight. Green (in orange) used his online experience from Board Game Arena to keep himself in the pack, but not at the front. Luckily for him several other players selected his car to win the race at the first two check points, which helped keep him out of trouble and pushed forwards.

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However after the halfway mark, Black (driving the blue car) and Pink both surged forward causing Green and Pine to lose their nerve and bet on Black (instead of Green) at the last checkpoint. However, they should not have worried, as very soon after that, Green’s car surged forward weaving between the cars in front to race for the line and victory. Pine was close behind, followed by the first of Lime’s cars (the other brought up the rear). With the race done, there were just the winnings to claim from the bookies. Because Green had got away with paying little for his car and won the race, he had a significant prize pot even before betting was paid out.

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There wasn’t a huge difference in the results from the betting, but it was enough for Green to extend his lead. Pine also raked in millions as his betting pattern was the same as Green’s (perhaps someone should investigate them for race fixing). As a result, Pine come in clear second with Black completing the podium. Since there was still some time left for a “proper” game, the group hunted around for something that wasn’t too long and could play five. In the end, they settled on the simple little “push your luck” game, Port Royal, as much because no one could find anything better for five players, than because anyone really wanted it specifically.

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It had been a little while since most of the group had played, though the rules are simple enough. On their turn, the active player chooses to “twist” and turn over the top card of the deck, or “stick” and keep the current card set. The deck of cards consist of coloured ship cards and character cards. The first decision is to decide whether to risk a “twist” because if second ship card of a colour is drawn the player goes bust and their turn ends. If a player “sticks” they can take a ship and add its treasure to their stash, or they can use their gold to buy the support of characters. These give players victory points and special powers, but also can be used to claim contracts and give more points.

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Once the active player has taken a card, players round the table can take a card too. The cards are double-sided like those in San Juan or Bohnanza, so in the same way, keeping an eye on the discard pile and the money in players’ hoard is also key. Although Black and Green did their best to quickly explain the rules, Pine and Lime were still both a little unsure, and perhaps with good reason. Part way through the second round Black and Green realised something was amiss and re-read the rules and spotted a “rules malfunction”: they had forgotten that when a player takes a card on another player’s turn, they pay the active player one coin, thus encouraging players to push their luck further to give more players more choice.

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So from the second round on-wards they group started playing correctly. Pink’s strategy involved ignoring the Sailors and trusting to luck with turning the cards while spending his money on symbols to make up Expedition cards. That gained him the first Expedition card, but ultimately, this single minded approach wasn’t very successful, at least in this game. Green went for a strategy of collecting fighting cards, in order to fight off the pirate ships. This worked initially, but by the time he had five fighters (and seven points), he kept going bust on his turn as he turned up skull bearing Pirate Ships against which there is no defence!

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This meant that everyone else was able to gradually build their wealth and cards to catch him up. Green then collected two more fighters and in preparation for one final attack, but would he get the chance? Black had managed to accumulate a lot of points, not least because he collected money for both a large array of cards and for when it went bust thanks to the Admiral and the Jester. If Black could collect another special symbol he could claim an expedition and win the game before Green could make his mega move with a full fighting force. Unfortunately for Pine, he wasn’t able to collect the symbol he needed to claim a expedition as he went bust.

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So it was Green’s turn again and he started to pull out cards, with a huge line of cards. After defeating every lower value Pirate Ship he came across, he managed a full five different coloured ships. From there he was able to collect another five coins and purchase the two crosses on display, which gave him an expedition card and enough points for victory. At the conclusion of the game, Pine confirmed his early feelings that he did not really like this game, and Lime felt it was all a bit too confusing, never really sure what he was doing. This was an older game that we used to play a lot of at the club, but it seems to have lost its lustre now and will probably forever remain an occasional play game.

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Meanwhile, on the next table there was a lot of debate as to what they’d play. With five, the options were quite restricted, Burgle Bros. almost made it, until Teal realised it only played four, which left Tiny Towns. Plum wasn’t so keen, so in the end, the group went for the old favourite Wingspan (having said to Lime that they weren’t going to play it… Sorry Lime!). There was some debate as to whether there was time for the game with five players, and options of playing three rounds instead of four were briefly discussed, but since everyone knew what they were doing, the group decided to give it a go and see if they could squeeze in a full-length game.

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The game is an engine builder that is quite simple in theory, but quite difficult to play well. Players are collecting birds for their sanctuary, scoring points for exciting birds, eggs, cached food and cards tucked under birds (representing flocks of birds or prey caught), as well as bonus points for achieving particular goals during the game and at the end of the game. The idea is that, on their turn, players either play a bird card from their hand into their tableau, or carry out the action associated with one of the three habitats (Woodland, Grassland or Wetland) and then activate each bird in that habitat. While that is all there is to it, it’s all in the cards and getting them to work together.

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Wingspan can be a little “multi-player solitaire”, that is to say, there can be very little interaction between players in some games. For some players this is preferred as it means players don’t have their carefully laid plans destroyed by others, while others feel they might just as well be sitting alone and interaction between players is what makes playing games important. It had been a while since it’s last outing, but the group were quick to get going and were happy to play with the European Expansion which was already mixed in. Plum in particular, got off to a flying start with her opening hand, four of which were coloured birds and matched her chosen Bonus card (the Photographer).

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In contrast, Blue had cards that didn’t match at all. The Rodentologist was her best Bonus card giving her two points for each bird in her sanctuary that ate a rodents, but not one card in her starting hand qualified. Teal started out with a strategy to maximise his egg production and prioritised birds with brown powers and resource conversion to assist that aim. The first card Plum played helped him in this, and everyone else too as it happens as it was a very generous Ruby-throated Hummingbird that gave everyone food every time it was activated. Teal returned the favour as he laid eggs at every opportunity and Plum had a bird that rewarded “once between turns” if anyone laid eggs.

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As the game progressed, players worked on the end of round bonuses. Three of the four birds Plum had kept from the start also happened to have bowl nests which contributed towards the fourth round goals, as long she could ensure they had eggs on them. She didn’t really aim for anything else, but Blue, Byzantium and especially Teal did well in the early rounds. Plum picked up some more birds with colours in their names, but also managed to play the Yellowhammer end of round card which she was able to use to great effect as it enabled her to play an extra bird card if she had used all four actions during the round. Byzantium had issues with the dice which repeatedly wouldn’t give him what he wanted.

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Then to compound Byzantium’s woes, he got himself in a bit of a mess when he played his migrating bird into the wrong habitat meaning he didn’t get the advantage of moving the bird straight away and costing him more eggs into the bargain. Purple had different dice issues when she rolled five berries and called “Yahtzee!” Blue had improved her hand and acquired some more helpful cards, including one that gave her an extra Bonus card, the Behaviourist, which gave her three points for each column with three different power colours. As people sifted through the deck trying to find cards they liked the look of, the California Condor appeared, which everyone agreed looked like a monkey.

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Towards the end of the game, partly as a result of Plum’s Hummingbird, Byzantium ended up with a surfeit of food and nothing to spend it on. So, he switched tactics and took the Condor hoping to get a bonus card that would improve his fortunes. It didn’t. Blue tried the same and didn’t do any better. After the final round Plum activated her Yellowhammer again and was left with the choice of playing a bird that gave her a Bonus card or one that gave two extra points. She also went for the Bonus card, the Fishery Manager, but only one of her birds ate fish. Time was ticking on, but the game was over well within two and a half hours with just the scoring to go as last orders chimed.

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Blue had some high scoring birds, but not as many as Plum who took fifty-five points for them alone. Blue had quite a lot of eggs too, but not as many as Teal who had twenty-three. Everyone else was concentrating on counting, when Purple (aided by Black who had come along to lend a few fingers), gave her score for her bonus cards: thirty-four points, more than twice that of anyone else. Unfortunately for her though, prioritising her Backyard Birder Bonus which gave her points for birds scoring fewer than four points left her with lots of low scoring birds. It was a close scoring game, but first place went to Blue who finished a handful of points ahead of Plum with Teal a little way behind in third.

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Learning Outcome: Forget snakes on a train, what about snakes on a race track?!?!