Tag Archives: Cartographers: A Roll Player Tale

Deutscher Spiele Preis – 2022

The Deutscher Spiele Preis awards recognise the “Best Children’s Game” and a top ten list of the “Best Family and Adult Games”, the results of an open vote by games clubs, gamers and people in the industry. They are awarded annually at the Internationale Spieltage in Essen and the winners are announced in advance. As annual awards, the games named in the Deutscher Spiele Pris lists often intersect with the winners and nominees of Spiel des Jahres Award, but in many other ways, the awards differ.

– Image from
spiel-messe.com

The Spiel des Jahres winners are chosen by a committee with a list of strict criteria whereas the Deutscher Spiele Preis is more a list of the most popular games of the preceding year. As such, games that are not eligible for the any of the Spiel des Jahres Awards often feature in the top ten list of “Best Family and Adult Games”. For example, games that were considered at the time to be too complex or aggressive for the Spiel des Jahres awards have ranked number one in the Deutscher Spiele Preis list. These include Tigris & Euphrates (1998), Puerto Rico (2002), Louis XIV (2005), Caylus (2006), The Pillars of the Earth (2007), Agricola (2008), Terra Mystica (2013), Russian Railroads (2014), Voyages of Marco Polo (2015), Mombasa (2016) and Terraforming Mars (2017).

– Image by boardGOATS

Of all these great games, only Terraforming Mars even received a nomination for the Kennerpiel des Jahres award (though Agricola did receive a special “Complex Game Award”). In contrast, over the last few years, there has been much more overlap with games like Azul (2018), Wingspan (2019) and The Crew (2020) all ranking highest in the Deutscher Spiele Preis list and winning either the Spiel or Kennerspiel des Jahres award. Further, all the other winners of both awards including MicroMacro, Cartographers, Paleo, Lost Ruins of Arnak have featured high on the Deutscher Spiele Preis list and/or received Spiel/Kennerspiel des Jahres nominations.

– Image by boardGOATS

This year, while there is still a lot of overlap between the lists, the top ranked game on the Deutscher Spiele Preis list is a bit of a throwback, being too complex even for the Connoisseur or Kennerspiel des Jahres award. The Deutscher Spiele Preis winner, Ark Nova has been extremely popular amongst gamers creating a lot of “buzz”, so it is no surprise that it did well. The strategy revolves round building card combinations and the theme, zoo building is very appealing—everyone loves animals.

The full Deutscher Spiele Preis list is:

Ark Nova
Cascadia (Spiel des Jahres Award Winner)
Dune: Imperium (Kennerspiel des Jahres Award Nomination)
Living Forest (Kennerspiel des Jahres Award Winner)
The Red Cathedral
Witchstone
Beyond the Sun
SCOUT (Spiel des Jahres Award Nomination)
Golem
Terraforming Mars: Ares Expedition

– Image by boardGOATS

24th March 2022

The evening began with Pine arriving first and wondering if he’d got the wrong night as it was gone 7pm before anyone else arrived. While Blue ate her supper, Pine shared some “worm porn” (a video of a penis fencing flatworm) and Green shared his exploits on Board Game Arena. Apparently he’d been playing Imhotep and had been doing rather well, rising to thirty-fifth. After a lot of discussion about which game he was talking about, it turned out that by pure chance, a copy of Imhotep had made it to The Jockey. In spite of Green’s enthusiastic request for someone to beat him, nobody looked keen to take him up on the offer.

– Image by boardGOATS

While the others discussed the options, Purple and Black joined Blue and Pine setting up the “Feature Game“. This was the Druids expansion for an old favourite, the 2016 Kennerspiel des Jahres winner, Isle of Skye. The base game is a tile laying game similar in nature to the popular gateway game, Carcassonne, but with an auction of tiles and objectives that give points. The auctions are extremely clever: each player draws three tiles from a bag and privately decide how much two are worth, selecting one to be discarded. Players use their own money to indicate the value and therefore the cost of the tiles.

– Image by boardGOATS

After the values are revealed, each player then takes it in turns to buy one tile. The clever part is that the money used to indicate the cost of each tile is reserved to pay for it until someone else buys it. Any tiles that have not been bought after everyone has chosen and paid for one, must be paid for by their owner. The reason this is clever is because of the effect it has on the amount of money that players have to spend. For example, the first player in the round must make sure they have sufficient uncommitted funds if they want to be able to buy a tile.

– Image by boardGOATS

On the other hand, the player at the end of the round has a different calculation to make: if their tiles are priced to give good value they should sell at least one which will provide them with liquidity to buy other tiles. However, being last in the round, their choice will be reduced, and if their tiles don’t sell, the fact the other tiles might be on the expensive side, could leave them unable to make a purchase. It is not compulsory to buy a tile, but players that don’t have enough tiles are unlikely to score as well. Thus valuing tiles is key—overvaluing their tiles is costly as nobody will buy them leaving their owner with a big bill and less money in the next round, while undervaluing them gives good tiles to an opponent and will leave their owner with less money and fewer tiles.

– Image by boardGOATS

Once the tile auction is complete, players add the tiles to their own personal fiefdom. At the end of the round, one or more of the objectives are scored. Similar to Cartographers, there are four scoring objectives. In the early rounds only one scores, with three scored in later rounds, but each one is scored the same number of times during the game. Although this is an important source of points, it is not the only one as some tiles feature scrolls that score at the end of the game. Players receive income at the start of each round, with players getting additional funds for each player that is in front of them, with the amount increasing as the game progresses. As well as being a catch-up mechanism, this also importantly provides an additional channel for money to enter the game.

– Image by boardGOATS

In addition to the auctions and the objectives, there are other ways Isle of Skye differs from Carcassonne. There are no meeples, and players have their own maps instead of sharing one central one. Even the tile placement rules are slightly different as terrain must match, but not roads (though it is generally useful if they do as it can increase players’ income). Thus, although there is a superficial similarity with Carcassonne, Isle of Skye is distinctly more complex. Unlike the first, Journeyman expansion (which we have not yet played), the second, Druids expansion doesn’t really increase the complexity. It adds more strategy options though, with more scoring opportunities and additional ways to spend money (should you have any spare).

– Image by boardGOATS

The Druids expansion adds a second part to the auction phase where players can choose to buy one from the five displayed on the dolmen board. These are more powerful as they generally include scoring opportunities or special powers, but are correspondingly more expensive. The end of round scoring tiles gave A) two points for each tile in players’ largest completed lake; B) a point for each cow or sheep on on or adjacent to a tile with a farm; C) two points for each set of four tiles arranged in a square, and D) one point for each row and column containing a Broch.

– Image by boardGOATS

Pine took the first player token and Purple’s first draw gave her one of the promo tiles from the Themenplättchen mini expansion which was immediately thrown back for causing too much brain pain to work out what it did. Pine and Blue took an early lead at the end of the first round scoring for their lakes, but it was only a handful of points and there was a long way to go. Purple started building her long thin, rectangular kingdom prioritising income. It wasn’t until the third round that the importance of this shape became apparent to everyone else however: since tiles could be used to score multiple times for (C), this meant Purple picked up lots of points.

Isle of Skye: From Chieftain to King – Tunnelplättchen

– Image by boardGOATS

There was a bit of a debate about the Tunnelplättchen tiles from the two mini expansions. Black checked on Board Game Geek and confirmed that tunnels going into the same mountain range connected together. This helped Pine considerably, as otherwise he was in a bit of a mess. Blue bought an exciting looking scroll tile that gave lots of points for enclosed pasture, but when Blue noticed that Black had it too, he commented that it was actually really difficult to enclose pasture, Blue took it as a challenge. It was shortly after this, about half way through the game that the group realised that they’d forgotten about the catch-up mechanism.

– Image by boardGOATS

From the third round, during the income phase at the start of the round, players get gold for every player that is ahead of them on the score track. The amount of gold they get increases as the game progresses, so in the final round players get four gold for every player ahead of them—for the player at the back in the four player game, this comes to twelve gold, and for a player at the back until the start of the last round this comes to a total of thirty gold more than a player at the front. Unfortunately, the group remembered this a couple of rounds too late, so everyone who wasn’t in the lead (i.e. everyone but Blue) received a nice little windfall that they could use to increase the price of their tiles or spend on the Dolman.

– Image by boardGOATS

Black was making good use of the Dolman board and had some really juicy scoring scrolls in his tidy little kingdom and looked the one to beat, especially as he had plenty of cash too (helped by his windfall). Pine, on the other hand was struggling to find anything useful and was resorting to using the alternative Dolman option: draw two tiles from the bag and keep one. Unfortunately despite trying attempts, he wasn’t getting anything he wanted. It was at the end of round five that things suddenly changed and Purple, hitherto drifting about in third and and fourth leapt forward, landing just one point behind Blue.

– Image by boardGOATS

Blue, having led throughout, knew she didn’t really have enough end-game points to challenge and was expecting Black to catch and overtake. In the event, it was extremely tight at the front with Purple finishing with one hundred and two points, six more than Blue who just managed to hold on to second, two points ahead of Black. All in all though, everyone liked what the Dolman board added to the game, as it gave people larger, more exciting kingdoms with something to spend money on (when they had it).

– Image by boardGOATS

Meanwhile, the other group started by discussing what to play. Imhotep was on the table, but Ivory spotted Dice Hospital in a bag and Green was happy to play that instead; as Lilac was familiar with it too she was happy with the switch, as was Teal, though he had not played it. The explanation of the rules and game play took a little longer than the game itself would indicate. The idea is that each play is the owner of a hospital and starts with an administrator which gives them a special power, three nurses, and three patients—dice drawn at random from a bag. The colour of the dice represents their illness and the number on the its severity six indicates they are healthy but if the number falls below one, the patient dies.

– Image by boardGOATS

At the start of each round, players take an ambulance with new patients – if there aren’t enough beds available, another patient must make space by moving to the morgue (where each body-bag is a negative point at the end of the game). Players can then augment their own hospital by adding specialist medics and wards and finally, their medics can visit each patient and improve their health. Different specialisms can only “heal” certain colours or numbers. Any patients not treated are “neglected” and their health deteriorates with any that fall below one moving to the morgue. In contrast, anyone who exceeded six is discharged at the end of the round, but the more that are discharged at the same time, the more points the player scores.

– Image by boardGOATS

As the game progresses, players continue to improve their hospital getting more specialists and acquiring blood bags to help treat their patients. The game ends after eight rounds and the player with the most points is the winner. When the group finally got underway it became clearer how to play and what actions were available. The key to the game is knowing which specialists to get and which ambulance of patients to take – admitting healthier patients gives less choice of ward/doctor (and potentially get something which is of little use) , while curing the sickest patients is more difficult, but gives first dibs specialisms.

– Image by boardGOATS

The administrators dealt out at the start of the game can provide players with a direction for their strategy. Teal and Green had ones that meant that they could leave one patient of a specific colour untreated per round without them declining. Teal was able to use his a few times, but Green found that he just could never seem to get enough red dice to make use of it. Lilac was trying to get at least two red patients healed each turn as her administrator privilege gave her an extra point if she did; she managed it a few times (which was where the red dice kept going). Ivory’s administrator would give him an extra point if he healed at least one patient of each colour which he managed to good effect several times.

– Image by boardGOATS

After a couple of rounds Green commented that he had found it was best to keep a balance of Ward’s and medics otherwise there either wasn’t enough staff to treat the number of patients, or there weren’t enough usable wards to send the your doctors to. Teal and Lilac were quite good at regularly healing patients, but at one at a time they were scoring only one point per round. Each subsequent patient healed in a round scored an extra two points each With more than six worth three points extra. Thus holding on to heal more per round, meant more points. There was also a five point bonus for completely clearing the hospital, but nobody got close to that, except Ivory in the final round.

– Image by boardGOATS

Throughout the game, Teal and Lilac kept healing a steady trickle of patients. Green however was having all sorts of trouble: he found himself with ward’s he couldn’t use, his hospital filing up rapidly, and started losing patients (minus two points)—his was definitely a Failing Trust! Ivory, however, was romping away, keeping his hospital from getting over crowded and kept amassing points. Although his start had been slow start and he didn’t score anything until the third round, he made up for it after that. In the end Ivory proved to have run the best hospital trust, while Teal’s slow steady trickle worked out quite well as his hospital was the second best with Lilac was a close third.

– Image by boardGOATS

Ivory left for home, but Isle of Skye had not yet finished and, although there wasn’t time for Imhotep, there was still time for something quick. So Teal introduced Green and Lilac to a game they’d not played before, called Diamonds. This is a trick-taking game played with normal suited cards from one to fifteen where players are trying to win diamonds—not the suit, but the gemstones. When players cannot follow suit they get to do a “Suit Action” based on what suit they actually play. For example, playing a Diamond card gives one diamond gem from the supply placed into the player’s safe while playing a Heart gives one diamond from the supply to the pile in front of their safe.

– Image by boardGOATS

Similarly, playing a Spade allows the player to move one diamond from outside their safe into it, and on playing a Club the player steals one diamond from outside someone else’s safe and places it in front of their own. Additionally, at the end of the round of ten tricks, the player that won the most tricks in each suit gets to do that Suit Action one more time (in the case of a tie no-one does it). With the game taking six rounds there is plenty of chances to gain diamonds. It did not take long for the group to understand the game, although the for first few tricks the group were a little uncertain.

– Image by boardGOATS

Several times players found that although they had won, they couldn’t do anything as either the person they were supposed to steal from did not have any diamonds or, when they could move one diamond into their safe (from in front of it), they didn’t have any. Plus, several times they found they had to steal from themselves so nothing happened. The group also found that when they started to win tricks, they got control and were able to lead in suits the others didn’t have and so kept winning. It proved to be a clever little game, but the group felt it probably plays much better with more people, so we might try it with a larger part of the group in future. At the end of the game, however, Teal was the master diamond merchant with Green the apprentice.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: A career in diamond trading is not for everyone.

20th July 2021 (Online)

Since last time, there had been quite a bit of debate about returning to the Horse and Jockey, but there was a little hesitancy and with the extremely hot weather, staying at home this week turned out to be the right choice all round. As the decision had been just a little bit last-minute, we chose to keep the “Feature Game” simple and opted for the Skills Mini Expansion for Cartographers. We have played Cartographers several times and everyone has really enjoyed it. With the Spiel des Jahres winners announced this week, this was also the nearest we could get to playing a game to mark the occasion (it received a nomination for the Kennerspiel award last year).

– Image by boardGOATS

Cartographers is a “Roll and Write” type of game, but one with more of a “gamery” feel than most. It is based on Tetris, with shapes revealed on the flip of a card in a similar way to other games we’ve played this year like Second Chance and Patchwork Doodle. However, the thing that makes Cartographers more “gamery” than these is the addition of terrain and players usually have to make a choice, either of the shape or the terrain. The terrains are tied in with goal cards, four of which are revealed at the start of the game. Two goals are then scored at the end of each of the four seasons, in a similar way to another game we like, Isle of Skye.

– Image by boardGOATS

There are lots of other little aspects of the game that make it interesting—the presence of Ruins and Ambush Cards in the deck, for example, deliver a curved ball, just when players feel they are in control. Players can also build their income by surrounding mountain ranges and choosing to play certain shapes; this gives more points at the end of each round. The Skills expansion gives players a way to offset this income for special actions which potentially give players other ways of achieving their goals, further adding to the decision space.

– Image by boardGOATS

One of the most impressive things about Cartographers is the amount of variety that is built into the game, which means every play feels different and the game stays remarkably fresh. So, there are two different player maps and four of each type of goal card. This variety is carried through to the Skills expansion; there are eight cards of which three are chosen at random. This time we chose the B side of the map (with empty “wasteland” spaces marked) and drew the Greenbough, Mages Valley, Wildholds and Borderlands goal cards together with the Search, Negotiate and Concentrate skills cards. These skills cost anything from free (like Search) to three (like Concentrate), and each can be played multiple times per game although only one can be played each Season.

– Image by boardGOATS

We quickly realised that the expensive skills like Concentrate are only likely to be played in the final round, as the cost is in “income” and that income is generated at the end of every round. So, playing Concentrate at the start of the game will ultimately cost a player twelve points, while playing it in the final round will cost three just three points. For this reason, the free Search skill was always likely to be used by almost everyone in almost every season (and so it proved). Of course, the higher tariff reflects the increased power though: Search allows players to increase the size of the shape they are drawing by a single square; Negotiate (which costs one) allows players to draw a two-by-two shape, and Concentrate allows players to draw the shape a second time.

– Image by boardGOATS

As well as the skills which we had not played with before, several of the goal cards were new to us as well, including Greenbough (which rewards gives players one point per row and column with at least one Forest square in it) and Mages Valley (which gave points for each space next to a Mountain—two points for each Lake and one point for each Arable). We’d played with the Wildholds goal before though (which gives six points for each Village of six or more spaces) and, although Borderlands was new to us (which give points for each completed row or column), we’d played The Broken Road goal which is similar (giving points for completed diagonals).

– Image by boardGOATS

The game began much as usual, and Pink, who was watering the tomatoes in the “mini-market-garden”, commented that he could hear Burgundy muttering, sighing and generally sounding stressed from outside. Although we had played with “Wastelands” before, we had all focussed on how the fact some of the spaces were already full would help. We had all forgotten how much the Wastelands obstruct plans and generally make life considerably more difficult. Blue made a bit of using the ruins spaces to give her more flexibility later, but had forgotten that it would reduce the number of spaces she would be able to fill later in the game.

– Image by boardGOATS

It was clear after the first round that Ivory was going to be tough to beat, a feeling that was cemented after the second round. Unusually, Burgundy was the first to post a score, with a total of one hundred and forty-one. Although this was high enough to earn him second though, when Ivory’s score came through he was a massive twenty-five points ahead. Once again, it had been a very enjoyable game, and as we tidied up there was a little bit of chit-chat about the skills and what they added to the game. Since they are not compulsory, the consensus was that we should add them every time, though it was clear that they had been widely used because of the presence of the free Search skill, which everyone had used, and some in every round.

– Image by boardGOATS

With Cartographers over, we had a bit of a discussion about moving back to our much loved and greatly missed, Horse and Jockey. We’d conducted some anonymous surveys over the preceding week to try to gauge opinion trying to ensure that nobody felt under pressure to do anything they weren’t comfortable with. Some of the group had been back on occasional Thursdays, playing old favourites like The Settlers of Catan, Wingspan, and Roll for the Galaxy and new games like Red Rising, Mercado de Lisboa, Ticket to Ride: Amsterdam, Tapestry (with the Plans and Ploys expansion), Ginkgopolis, Everdell, and Draftosaurus (aka “Sushi Go with Dinosaurs”). Others, however, had not been to the pub for nearly eighteen months. After some discussion, we decided that we’d schedule a trial visit in ten days time, so that those who had not been out could see how they felt without committing, and those that went could report back to those that were feeling a little more reticent.

– Image by boardGOATS

After that, we moved onto Board Game Arena. It was a quiet night without both Pine and Lime, and once Green and Ivory had left as well, we were down to five which gave us a lot of options. Coloretto was one, but in the end we chose Niagara, a game we’ve all played quite a bit, but never online, and we were keen to see the new Board Game Arena implementation and whether losing the tactile moving river would leave the game lacking. A strong element of the game is the element of simultaneous play, however, and this was a large part of the appeal this time. Players simultaneously choose a Paddle Tile which dictates how far their canoe will move in the round. Then, in turn order, players move their canoe up or down the river, paying two movement points to pick up a gem from the bank (or drop one off).

– Image by BGG contributor El_Comandante
adapted by boardGOATS

The winner is the player to get four gems of the same colour, five gems of different colours, or any seven gems safely home and into the shallows. On the face of it, this is relatively simple, but the really clever part of the game is the movement of the river. In general, the river moves at the speed of the slowest boat—if the lowest numbered Paddle Tile is a two, then the river moves two spaces and all the boats move with it. However, one of the Paddle Tiles is a weather tile which enables players to increase or decrease the rate to make life harder or easier. Since everyone has to play all their Paddle Tiles before they can recycle them, the timing of their weather tile is critical: players who leave it to the end run the risk of the river running fast and losing boats over the cascade because they can’t do anything about it.

– Image by boardGOATS
from boardgamearena.com

And it wasn’t long before that’s exactly what happened, when both Blue and Black got their timing wrong and lost boats over the falls, so had to pay hard earned gems to get new ones. Then, to add insult to injury, Pink sneakily crept up on Blue and stole another gem from her. Players can only steal if they land on the same space as another boat while travelling upstream, and even then it is a choice. There was much ill feeling especially from Blue, but she wasn’t the only one. And with that, the gloves came off and everyone tried to redress the balance and ensure that such bad behaviour would not go unpunished.

– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com

Pink was abreast of that though and had a plan. Knowing his bad behaviour would make him a target he collected gems in one boat letting others take them while he stole the gems he wanted and got them to shore quickly. Much to everyone’s disgust, he soon had five different gems and there was nothing anyone could do to stop him getting them home. Burgundy actually had more gems giving him a nominally higher score, but his set of six did not include five different colours and Blue’s set of five included three nuggets of amber. The victims of Pink’s grand larceny were unimpressed with his terrible behaviour, and as it was getting late, we decided to call it a night.

– Image by boardGOATS
from boardgamearena.com

Learning Outcome: Theft is totally unforgivable.

11th May 2021 (Online)

There was the usual chit-chat and community update, but eventually everyone was ready to start playing the “Feature Game” which was the Neue Entdeckungen (New Discoveries) expansion to Cartographers. Cartographers is a “Roll and Write” game we’ve played and enjoyed quite a bit over the last year. The base game is simple enough, but unlike a lot of the games we’ve played, has more of a “gamery” feel to it than some of the simpler Tetrissy games it is related to like Second Chance or Patchwork Doodle. The thing these games all have in common is that players are given shapes to draw on a personal player grid. What makes Cartographers different is the addition of goal cards which give points at the end of each round, in a similar style to another game we have enjoyed playing, Isle of Skye.

– Adapted from image by BGG contributor
Johnny Dangerously

Each cards depicts a shape and terrain, giving some element of choice in either terrain type or shape. The game is played over four rounds, each consisting of several cards. At the end of each round two of the four goal cards are scored, such that each is scored twice during the game. This time, the four goal cards were Stoneside Forest (A), Shoreside Expanse (B), Wildholds (C), and The Broken Road (D). At the end of the first round the first two of these, Stoneside Forest and Shoreside Expanse were scored. Stoneside Forest gives points for connecting the mountain spaces that are preprinted on the map. Shoreside Expanse on the other hand rewards players for each area of lake or arable not adjacent to arable or lake (respectively) or the edge of the map.

– Image by boardGOATS

Stoneside Forest was made more challenging by the fact we were playing with the Neue Entdeckungen (New Discoveries) expansion which adds new ambush cards (from the Ambush Mini Expansion) and a new map with wastelands. Wastelands are areas that are preprinted on the maps that players are unable to use, but are considered already filled. There is an alternate map in the base game with a large area of wasteland which we played with last time, but the Neue Entdeckungen expansion map has several smaller areas of wasteland adding a different set of challenges. we’ve played with both Shoreside Expanse and Stoneside Forest before, so for the first round, we all knew what we were trying to do.

– Image by boardGOATS

Wildholds and The Broken Road were new to us though. The Wildholds gives eight points for for each village area occupying six or more spaces. Eight points is a lot, and if an area is complete in time for the first scoring phase, it will also score the second time making it very lucrative. With this in mind, Ivory started planning for Wildholds early in the first round, while others concentrated on first round goals first. The final goal, The Broken Road, rewards players with three points for every complete diagonal that connects the left hand edge of their map with the bottom edge. With eleven possible diagonals, everyone was of the impression that The Broken Road would be easy to score a lot of points with, but it turned out to be more difficult than most people expected.

– Image by boardGOATS

In fact, most people left it to the end assuming it would take care of itself, only to discover that it didn’t really. That said, unusually, the arrival of the Ogeroffensive Ambush card actually did most people a favour. This is unusual, as Ambush cards give players negative points for any unfilled spaces adjacent to their goblin spaces at the end of the round. We play the cards using the solo rules where players place them in a given corner and, if that is already filled, slide it one space in a given direction following the edge of the map. They continue spiralling in to the centre until they find an empty space.

– Image by boardGOATS

Because the Ogeroffensive arrived as the first card in the round and starts in the bottom left corner, for many people it actually gave them twelve points (filling two diagonals and scoring for two rounds). Arriving so early in the round, most of those who were able to benefit from it, didn’t even score many negative points as there was plenty of time to fill any empty spaces. All three of the ambush cards we introduced came out early in the rounds which meant they added a more strategic obstacle rather than throwing an unexpected spanner in the works as they do when they come out at the end of the round.

– Image by boardGOATS

The rounds get shorter as the game progresses and it wasn’t long before it was the final round and everyone was looking to maximise their final scores. From the in-game table chatter, it was clear that Ivory and Burgundy were going to be difficult to beat and, as is so often the case, so it proved. This time, Burgundy had the edge over Ivory and took victory by four points. The battle for the final place on the podium was fierce too, but Black ultimately took that from Blue by just two points. Regardless of where they ended up though, everyone had enjoyed it. From there, we moved on to another “Roll and Write” game that we’ve played quite a bit over the last year, Railroad Ink.

– Image by boardGOATS

This is a fairly straight-forward game where dice are rolled and players have to write the road and rail segments on their maps. The base game is played over seven rounds with four white dice rolled in each round. In this game, all the dice have to be used, but players also get three chances to play special “cross-roads dice” during the game. At the end of the game, players score for their longest rail segment, their longest road section, the spaces they have succeeded in filling in the centre of the board and the number of entrances they have managed to connect together.

– Image by boardGOATS

This time, however, we decided to play it online through Board Game Arena rather than engaging our inner artist and playing on paper. There were advantages and disadvantages to playing the game online and people had mixed feelings about it. It was certainly easier to correct errors, but somehow it lost… something… It was another highly enjoyable game though and the results were also close at the top. With Ivory taking an early night, the challengers to Burgundy’s crown were Green and Blue. Despite their best efforts, Burgundy’s crown was too firmly wedged, and he finished four points ahead of Blue and five ahead of Green. Although Cartographers had taken longer than many of the games we play, and time was marching on, there was still enough for one last game. And this time, with just six, we relatively quickly (for us) settled on For Sale after a quick Vevox vote.

– Image by boardGOATS

For Sale is an older game that has had a bit of a resurgence recently for us. The idea is that the game comes in two phases: firstly, players use their starting $14,000 to buy properties at auction, then they use these properties to “bid” for cheques in the second phase. The winner is the player with the highest total in cheques and left over starting currency. It is such a quick game to play that this time we played it twice. The first time through, Pink paid $8,000 for the space station while Purple picked up the cardboard box for free. But then, Pink sold his space station for $15,000 and Purple ended up parting with her box without return.

– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com

That is only part of the story of course, but important to most people was that Burgundy didn’t take his third win in succession. In the end, everyone (except Burgundy) was content as they got that part of their wish as Black topped the podium edging in front of Blue, though Burgundy was just a couple of thousand behind. You can’t keep a good gamer down for long though and Burgundy saw the second game as his chance for revenge. In the event, the same three were on the podium, but with Black and Burgundy swapping places. This time it wasn’t close at all either, with Burgundy finishing $9,000 ahead of his nearest challenger. And that was that for another week.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: Sites of Insectoid Invasions should be shown on every map.

Spiel des Jahres Nominations 2021

The nominations for the Spiel des Jahres have been announced. There are three categories, the Kinderspiel (children’s game) , the Kennerspiel (“expert’s” game) and the most desirable of all, the family award, the Spiel des Jahres. The nominees for this year’s awards have been announced as:

Kinderspiel des Jahres
Dragomino by Bruno Cathala, Marie Fort and Wilfried Fort
Fabelwelten (aka Storytailors) by Wilfried Fort and Marie Fort
Mia London by Antoine Bauza and Corentin Lebrat

Kennerspiel des Jahres
Lost Ruins of Arnak by Michaela Štachová and Michal Štach
Fantasy Realms by Bruce Glassco
Paleo by Peter Rustemeyer

Spiel des Jahres
The Adventures of Robin Hood by Michael Menzel
MicroMacro: Crime City by Johannes Sich
Zombie Teenz Evolution by Annick Lobet

Last year, the winner of the Spiel des Jahres was Pictures, a game where players model the picture on their card using the available components, e.g. shoelaces, coloured cubes, etc.; players get points for correctly guessing other players images and for other players guessing their image. This is considerably lighter than some of the earlier winners, notably, Tikal and El Grande, or even some of the best known winners like The Settlers of Catan, Carcassonne or Ticket to Ride. As the main award winners have become lighter over the years, we have found the Kennerpiel des Jahres better fits to our tastes. The Kennerspiel nominees are not especially complex games, but are typically a step up from the light, family-friendly games of the main prize, the Spiel des Jahres.

– Image by from spiel-des-jahres.de

Last year the Kennerspiel award went to The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine a game we have still been unable to play thanks to the global pandemic. The Crew beat our preferred choice, Cartographers. In contrast to The Crew, as a “Roll and Write” game, we have played Cartographers a lot. So far, we are unfamiliar with the nominees this year and likely won’t get the chance to play any of them until some time after the winners have been announced (19^th July in Berlin for the Kennerpiel and Spiel des Jahres Awards; 14^th June for the Kinderspiel des Jahres).

– Image by boardGOATS

2nd February 2021 (Online)

There was a bit of chit-chat as people turned up clutching their brown, manilla envelopes, delivered over the previous few days by Purple Packet-force or Pink Parcel Post. At 8pm, everyone opened their envelope to find the bits and pieces for two games: the “Feature Game” Take it Easy!, and Das Labyrinth des Pharao (with the Sphinx und Triamide expansion boards) which we will play in a month or so. There was also a little chocolate, so as people munched, Blue explained the rules to Take it Easy!.

– Image by boardGOATS

Take it Easy! is a tile laying game where players have a pile of hexagonal tiles which they place on their hexagon player board (because hexagons are simply the bestagons). Each tile has three pipes crossing it, in three different colours. There are a total of nine different coloured pipes, three in each different direction. Tiles are drawn from a stack one at a time, and each player adds them to their personal player board. The rules are simple: the tiles can be placed anywhere on the board but must be placed so the numbers are the right way up so that the directions of the nine different coloured pipes are fixed.

– Image by boardGOATS

Players score points for any pipes that contain only the one colour, and the number of points is dependent on the colour of the pipe (the number on the pipe) and the number of tiles in the pipe. Thus, a yellow pipe, five tiles long going straight down the middle scores forty-five points, while a black pipe, along the edge, just three tiles long would only score three points. There are a maximum of fifteen pipes, but it is almost impossible to complete all successfully, especially as there are some tiles that are not used, so there is an element of chance as well as hedging bets. Blue and Pink drew tiles and displayed them for everyone to see.

– Image by boardGOATS

The pieces the players used had been modified with the addition of letters to make it slightly easier for players to uniquely identify the individual tiles. We were about three or four tiles in, when someone’s comment suddenly made Green realise that he’d started with the wrong tile. Having form with this sort of thing, Green got a certain amount of stick for “cheating”, but having found it early, he corrected his mistake and we carried on. As the game drew towards a conclusion, the number of spaces players had left progressively decreased, and increasingly, players needed specific colours and then specific tiles to complete their pipes.

– Image by boardGOATS

Pink was particularly desperate, but inevitably didn’t get the yellow pipe he so desperately wanted, which ultimately cost him thirty-six points. As everyone else was still taking off their shoes and socks to add up their scores, Ivory gave his total as one hundred and ninety-four, to howls of distress from everyone else, who clearly felt they were nowhere close. Indeed, the closest score was a hundred and eighty-two from Green in second with Blue four points behind him. Although everyone believed Ivory’s score, they were keen to see how he’d done it so we looked at the photo he’d sent in and admired his layout and looked sadly at their own.

– Image by boardGOATS

Take it Easy! hadn’t taken very long to play, indeed it was only quarter to nine. Everyone had really enjoyed it and now they felt they understood the game a little better, they all fancied another chance to see if they could catch Ivory on the second attempt. So, this time everyone had their plan and they were keen to get going. As the tiles were drawn there were variously coos of delight when a desired tile came out and teeth sucking when the tile was difficult to place. Again, as the game progressed, the teeth sucking and pleas for particular tiles got more desperate.

– Image by boardGOATS

When the last tile was drawn the stress was released and everyone settled down to count. Ivory was first to finish his arithmetic, and when he commented that he’d done better than last time, everyone else’s hearts sank. Ivory set a new target of two hundred and two, but aside from him, almost everyone else failed to improve on their first score (Lime’s excuse was that he was missing the help of his assistant). Lilac was the most improved though, increasing her score by sixty to take an excellent second place with one hundred and ninety-six, with nobody else coming close.

– Image by boardGOATS

We had all really enjoyed Take it Easy! and we’ll definitely give the game another outing, but in the meantime it was still quite early, so although Lime took an early night, everyone else was keen to play Cartographers. This is a game we’ve been trying to get to the table since before Christmas, but have been unsuccessful thanks to the IT gremlins last time, and On Tour and electing the Golden GOAT taking longer than expected. However, even two plays through of Take it Easy! had not taken over-long and with everyone familiar with the rules, we thought there was time to squeeze it in.

– Image by boardGOATS

That was before the gremlins returned, this time to kybosh Ivory’s printer. It looked like plans would have to be revised, but after a bit of poking he persuaded it to cooperate and everyone settled down to concentrate on their artwork. Cartographers is a “Roll and Write” type game or perhaps more accurately a “Flip and Colour”, as the game is driven by cards instead of dice and players are colouring terrain blocks, fitting shapes together in a Tetris-style. This is similar to other games like Second Chance and Patchwork Doodle, but is definitely a step up thanks to goal cards revealed at the start of the game. There are four goals two of which are scored at the end of each round in a way reminiscent of the scoring in another game that is popular with the group, the 2016 Kennerspiel des Jahres winner, Isle of Skye.

– Image by boardGOATS

This time the four goal cards were Stoneside Forest (three points for each mountain terrain connected to another with forest), Shoreside Expanse (three points for each lake or arable that is not adjacent to water, farmland or the edge of the map), Great City (one point for each space in a player’s second largest city) and The Cauldrons (one point for each single, empty space completely surrounded; the only goal card that was different to when we played the game back in September). Goals A and B are scored at the end of the first round, Goals B and C at the end of the second and so on. The game proceeds with players drawing their choice of shape and terrain from the card revealed, trying to score as effectively as possible for the current round, but also with an eye to scoring in later rounds.

– Image by boardGOATS

The game is made more interesting in that cards give players a choice of terrain or shape and sometimes both, increasing the decision space over games like Second Chance and Patchwork Doodle. Additionally there are Ruins cards which restrict where players can play for a turn, and Ambush cards which force players to put negatively scoring shapes on their board. In the past, we have used the house-rule that instead of introducing one Ambush every round we only add them from the second round onwards to give people a chance to settle into the game. Additionally, because we are playing remotely, we play the Ambush cards using the solo player rules.

– Image by boardGOATS

Although we like the spice the Ambush cards add, they can swing the game quite a bit and add a bit of randomness. Part of the driving-force to play Cartographers was the desire to try out the alternative, “Wastelands” map, so because of the additional challenge we thought this would add, we again used the house-rule, and only added three Ambush cards during the game. The “Wastelands” are an area of the map that is inaccessible to the map-makers and as such is terrain already filled in, but is space that cannot be used. It quickly became apparent that this meant players filled up their maps much more quickly so it became harder to place the bigger shapes from a much earlier point in the game.

– Image by boardGOATS

For some, this was an advantage when it came to the Ambush cards later in the game, as it meant there wasn’t sufficient space to add them to the player board. The first round was full of Water and Farmland, which was useful for the Shoreside Expanse goal (at the end of the first and second rounds), but keeping them separate with the additional obstacle of the Wasteland was difficult. Worse, this caused obstructions for players trying to score for connecting their Mountains using forest (Stoneside Forrest, scoring in the first and final rounds).

– Image by boardGOATS

There was also a lot of Settlement early on, with Woodland relatively scarce. There weren’t any Ruins until later either and with the first Ambush card only appearing in the third round, players could mostly do what they wanted in the early part of the game. When the Ruins came towards the end, some players had no choice where to place them while others benefited from being unable to place them at all. The same was true for the Ambush cards with some players being unable to play them at all and therefore not picking up negative points at the end of the game.

– Image by boardGOATS

When everyone was feeling the pinch the Marshlands card appeared, which is one of the biggest shapes. Purple’s distressed cry of, “It won’t fit, I can’t get it in!”, was followed by Black’s dry response, “It’s too big…” which had everyone else in stitches. From there it wasn’t long before the game came to an end. Ivory was once again the first to report his score, posting a massive total of one hundred and eight, which most people felt would not be surpassed. Indeed, that was the way it stayed with nobody else exceeding a hundred (after Black’s goblin-related recount), until Pink, giving his score last, sneaked into the lead with one hundred and twelve.

– Image by boardGOATS

It was quite late, so Ivory headed off to bed as did Lilac, but there was still time for the rest to play a game of our current end of evening favourite, the Professional Variant of 6 Nimmt! on Board Game Arena. This is so simple yet so much fun: players simultaneously choose a card from their hand and then add them to one of the four rows in order. The fast play, lack of down time, and the illusion of control together with the sudden disasters that befall people who are doing well, just hits the spot for the group.

– Image by boardGOATS

This time, Burgundy started the race to the bottom, but was quickly joined by Purple. Her efforts were outstripped by Burgundy though who had high cards when he wanted low ones and low cards when he wanted high ones. As a result, he finished with a very impressive minus twenty-seven. At the other end, Green, Pink, Pine and Blue were neck-and-neck, until Green started collecting nimmts. Pine, who always does well in 6 Nimmt! held the lead for most of the game, but with the end in sight, it all went wrong for him leaving Blue to take the glory just ahead of Pink. Thanks to Burgundy’s prowess at collecting nimmts there was still time for one last game.

– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com

There was a lot of discussion about options, but when someone pointed out that No Thanks! had had been added to the list of games (albeit in beta), everyone was keen to give it a go. As Blue set up the game, Pine asked whether there was a “drop a token between the floorboards option” in reference to a memorable evening that had ended with a round of Hunt the Game Piece only to find that it had dropped seamlessly through the gap to nestle in the dust under the floor of The Jockey. That sort of diversion aside, we all know the rules and the game is (usually) quick to play, so we thought we’d give it a go.

– Image by boardGOATS

No Thanks! is an extremely simple game: the top card from the deck is revealed and the first player has a simple choice, take the card or pay a chip to pass the decision on to the next player. When a player takes a card, they also take any chips and then turn over the next card and start again. The cards have a face value between three and thirty-five, but nine cards are removed at random. When the deck is depleted, players sum the face value of their cards and subtract this total from the number of chips they have to give their final score—the player with the most positive score is the winner.

– Image by boardGOATS

The really clever part of the game is that players who have a run, only count the lowest card. This means cards have different values to different players and there-in lies the tension and the fun. Further, since the number of chips players have is kept secret, players have to decide whether the card they want will still be available when their next turn comes. The version of the game we usually play, nominally only plays a maximum of five people. The more recent version plays up to seven, as does the Board Game Arena implementation.

– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com

The first thing we discovered was that the “Spend a Chip” button was perilously close to the top of the cards which meant it was very easy to “sausage-finger” and accidentally take a card without meaning to. Black was the first to fall foul of this, but he was not the only one. The second thing was that somehow, playing online somehow took away some of the tension, perhaps partly due to the automatic bidding, possibly contributed to by the fact we were playing with six, but probably mostly due to the fact that players cannot see the angst of their opponents as they try to make the simple decision.

– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com

Success in this game is always achieving a rare positive score. This time, Pink hogged all the chips finishing with nearly half the total in the game. This put pressure on everyone else and even the winner finished in the red, albeit with a lot more than the minus sixty-four scored by the player at the bottom. The winner was Pine, with minus six, some nine points ahead of Burgundy in second place. Although we all enjoyed playing, somehow it didn’t have quite the same effect as 6 Nimmt!, so the search to find another game we can play at the end of the evening continues.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: Never assume the name of a game is a guide on how to play it.

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.

Remote Gaming: Some Learning Outcomes

With the advent of Covid-19, boardGOATS, like many other groups were left with the choice of meeting online or not meeting at all. So, like many other groups, boardGOATS chose to try to continue with meetings. While some groups have struggled, dwindled, and eventually given up, so far, boardGOATS has managed to keep going with almost everyone still attending regularly. We decided that we would put together this summary of some of the reasons we think we are still meeting, and a resource companion in case anyone else is in the same boat.

– Image by boardGOATS

The first, and by far the most important factor is that everyone has been extremely patient and very tolerant of the limitations. Everyone is fundamentally appreciative of the interaction meeting online offers and have been amazingly understanding of the current issues. This is essential. Secondly, we meet once a fortnight: boardGOATS meetings have always been alternate weeks, but this is actually quite key when meeting online. If meetings are too frequent everyone can get very frustrated quite quickly, but too infrequent and people lose the routine. As it is, fortnightly means everyone makes a date to make it happen as otherwise the next one would be a month away.

– Image by boardGOATS

Finally, there’s planning and organisation. Having a plan is vital if things are to run smoothly, and smooth is essential to avoid people becoming frustrated. The group has always had a “Feature Game“, because we’ve always been a group that takes ages to decide what to play; having a starting option helps us to get going a bit quicker. With remote meetings, however, the “Feature Game” has become essential. It is also important that someone takes the lead to teach if necessary, and keep things moving to stop games dragging, but also allows the all important banter to flow when possible as well.

– Image by boardGOATS

The group have broadly used three different approaches to remote gaming, all underpinned by Microsoft Teams. This choice of platform is largely immaterial, but our decision was made early on because of possible security issues with alternatives and the hardware that some of the group were using. Either way, this provides sound and, where required, visuals. We always start the meeting early and then leave a place holder in front of the game camera so everyone knows which screen to pin in advance. In our case we usually use a stuffed panda doing something humourous, but a game box would suffice too.

The three different approaches to remote gaming we have used have been:

A real-life game hosted at one location, shared through Teams.
This works well, but really only for relatively simple games like Second Chance, HexRoller or Noch Mal!, though we’ve played Cartographers and Troyes Dice as well. It turns out that “Roll and Write” type games work exceptionally well, but other games are possible too. The most complicated game we’ve played using this method is Las Vegas/Las Vegas Royale, which is one of the group’s favourites, but this is right on the limit of what is possible. The key is that players need to be able to see the whole game layout with all the information. For this, the resolution of the camera is important, but also that of the screen used for displaying it at the other end. Video compression by the platform feeding the data can also be an issue. Lighting is absolutely critical too—good lighting makes all the difference.
Main Advantage: We’ve found this feels most like playing a “real” game.
Main Disadvantages: One person/location does most of the manipulation, and there is a complexity limitation.
A virtual game on Tabletop Simulator manipulated by a small number of people , shared with everyone else through Teams.
Some people can’t install software on their computers and for others sand-box type environments like Tabletop Simulator are too complex. Piping a virtual game through Teams is a sort of half-way house. To make this work, the person “hosting” has to set the game up with the camera view set to “overhead” with everything in view, and leave it there. Then they share this screen through their meeting platform (in our case, Microsoft Teams). Again, this means there is a limit on the complexity of the game: the most complex games we’ve played using this method are Camel Up and Finstere Flure (aka Fearsome Floors). These have worked quite well, but it’s a bit more impersonal and relies on a small number of people operating the Simulator to make the game work. Downtime is a bit of an issue too for turn based games. For these reasons, this has been the least popular method for our group.
Main Advantage: We can modify and play slightly more complex games to our own house-rules.
Main Disadvantages: People need to be comfortable with the software and there are limitations caused by the stability of the platform as well as there being a steep learning curve for those who are not used to playing computer games.
An online game played on a website (e.g. Board Game Arena) with audio provided by Teams.
These are great because they allow players to do things like draw cards from a shared deck and keep them hidden until they play them. This is a fairly fundamental aspect of many games and enables games like Saboteur which would not otherwise be possible. There is a limited range of games available though, and there is no scope for modifying the game either (adding extra players or altering the end-game conditions, for example). On the other hand, the software does a lot of the up-keep and can make even quite advanced things possible. For example, without Board Game Arena to do the maths, we would never have discovered the delightful madness that is the “Professional Variant” of 6 Nimmt! (which recently won the 2020 Golden GOAT at our annual GOAT Awards). It does feel very much like playing a computer game though.
Main Advantages: Very low maintenance and higher complexity games are possible including those with “hidden information”.
Main Disadvantages: Everyone needs to have an account on the platform and a device, and the games are restricted to those that are available and the rules as implemented, in particular, player counts.

Each of the different modes has their limitations, but we’ve found that by mixing them up we avoid getting fed up with any specific issue.

One of the biggest challenges boardGOATS has is that we have been playing as a group of up to ten. This is because we are all friends, even though many of us only know each other through the fortnightly meetings. If the group were to break into two or more parts it would likely be along the lines of game “weight”, which would mean some people would never play together and it could be divisive. This only works because those who prefer more complex games are extremely patient and understanding. Ultimately, as a group, we feel the social aspect is the most important thing at the moment, much more important than the quality of the gaming. We’ll definitely make sure we play lots of more complex games when we finally return to our beloved Horse and Jockey though.

– Image by boardGOATS

15th September 2020 (Online)

Green and Lilac were first to roll up, with pizzas and a large basket full of wild mushrooms. While they finished their supper, everyone else rolled in and joined the largely aimless chit-chat before Blue started to explain the rules for the “Feature Game“, Patchwork Doodle. This is another “Roll and Write” style game in the “communal colouring in” vein. As such it is quite similar to the Second Chance (which we played last time), but with different scoring and a little more planning.

– Image by boardGOATS

Both games are based on the Tetris idea where shapes depicted on cards are drawn in a grid. In Second Chance, the cards are revealed two at a time and players choose one to draw on their grid. If they can’t add either, they get one card just for themselves; if it fits they stay in, if they still can’t draw it, they are out. When the last card is turned over or the final player has been eliminated, the winner is the player with the fewest empty spaces.

– Image by boardGOATS

In Patchwork Doodle, eight cards are revealed at the start, so everyone can see all the cards that will come out in the round. The chief seamstress then rolls a d3 die to move the factory foreman, and players all draw the shape he lands on. The round ends after six of the eight shapes have been used. After each round there is a scoring phase and, the final score is the sum of the three totals minus the number of empty spaces.

– Image by boardGOATS

In addition to the change in scoring, everyone has three special actions: they can use a shape either side instead of the one selected, make a single cut and draw one of the two resultant shapes, or fill a single one-by-one square. Additionally, there is a fourth action which allows everyone to use one of the other three actions a second time.

– Image by boardGOATS

The interesting, and indeed difficult bit to understand, is the scoring. Players score the number of squares in (usually) their largest square, plus one point for each row or column it is extended. Thus a five-by-three rectangle will score eleven points (nine for the three-by-three square, and two points for the extra two rows). Usually the largest continuous rectangle will give the most points, but sometimes that is not the case and players have to work out what will give them the biggest points haul.

– Image by boardGOATS

Once everyone had got to grips with the scoring and asked all their questions, Pink rolled the die and silence descended as everyone concentrated on their colouring in. At the end of the first round, Pine, Lilac and Ivory had their noses in front achieving a five-by-five square while others were struggling to get much less. By the second round, people were getting the hang of things and it was clear that Ivory was the one to beat, although Green had a bet on Lilac as she was doing a lot better than he was.

– Image by boardGOATS

By the final round, there was a peaceful calm as people engaged their inner toddler. The scores were a little bit incidental as Mulberry won the prize for “The most inventive work with just two colours” and Lilac just pipped Black and Pine for the neatest and “staying within the lines”. Pink stumbled at the end going for artistic impression over scoring, putting the penultimate shape in the corner instead of filling the hole in the middle. Blue top scored with one hundred and twenty, just beating Ivory, largely thanks to the fact she had only one unfilled space.

– Animation by boardGOATS

Mulberry commented that the communal colouring in was very calming, and Lime said that although he had really enjoyed it, the next game looked too complicated given that he had been up since 4am, and was finding it hard to focus. The next game, Cartographers, certainly was a step up, so despite having done really well in Patchwork Doodle, Lilac also decided to duck out. Cartographers is another “Roll and Write” game, but has slightly more of a “boardgame feel” to it. In fact, part of the reason it we chose it was to celebrate the fact that it had just been announced that Cartographers was runner-up in the 2020 Deutscher Spiele Pries.

– Adapted from image by BGG contributor
Johnny Dangerously

The game is played over four seasons during which cards are revealed showing Tetris-like shapes which players draw on their player board. The difference is that this time, the cards show options giving players an element of choice, either between two different shapes or in the colour to be used. The colours represent different terrain types, and there are mountain spaces and ruins spaces also pre-printed on the map.

– Image by boardGOATS

At the beginning of the game, goal cards are identified for each season; a selection are available which gives games a lot of variety. Two of these are scored at the end of each round in a similar way to Isle of Skye, another game that is quite popular with the group, but of course one that we can’t really play at the moment. These scoring cards are really the driving force of the game, essentially creating a set of criteria that players try to follow when adding pieces to the map.

– Image by boardGOATS

This time the scoring cards were “Stoneside Forest”, “Shoreside Expanse”, “Great City” and “Lost Barony”. These can be really quite variable, for example, the first of thesegave players points for each mountain space connected to another solely by forest. In contrast, the “Shoreside Expanse” rewarded players for each block of farmland not adjacent water and for each block of lake not adjacent to arable, or the edge of the map. The Great City, however gave points for each square in players’ largest cities and the lost Barony was reminiscent of Patchwork Doodle giving points for the largest completed area in a square.

– Image by boardGOATS

The other interesting addition is the “Ambush” cards. In the “Rules as Written”, one of these is added at the start of each round and when they appear, players pass their map to their neighbour who adds the shape in the most inconvenient place they can. These then give players negative points for each empty adjacent space. This doesn’t work well with remote gaming, so we play these using the solo rules where the shape starts in one corner and and moves stars following the edge, progressively spiralling towards the centre until it finds a space that it fits in.

– Image by boardGOATS

Although we played Cartographers a few weeks back, quite a lot of people missed out, so we decided to add the “House Rule” that we wouldn’t add Ambush cards for the first round to give players a chance to get started. This works nicely, however, because they are removed from the deck once they have appeared, adding one less makes their appearance much less likely. For this reason, in future we would probably just add two at the start of the second round as they certainly add quite a lot to the game.

– Image by boardGOATS

Once the edge case rules had been clarified, Blue started revealing cards. Each card has a time counter in the top left corner where the number is roughly based on the number of spaces the shape fills. This helps to control the rate the board fills at and maintains the level of tension throughout the game. This time, the first round included quite a few large pieces, one of which was forest which enabled those who spotted it to connect two mountain squares and score a quick six points. Otherwise, the first round was all about players trying to find good places to place lots of fields and water ensuring they didn’t touch and starting a large city to set up the next round.

– Image by boardGOATS

The next round was all about the first Ambush card: the Gnoll Raid. Pink had a near perfect place to put it, tucked neatly round the Rift Lands space he’d placed on his ruins in the previous round. As he looked pleased with himself, others applied the complicated Ambush rule and variously sounded please or unimpressed depending on how much work it had left them with and how many negative points they had to mitigate.

– Image by boardGOATS

The third round was fairly quiet as there was no Ambush, increasing the chance of one appearing in the final round. The last round started very slowly and gently with lots of very “low time” cards appearing and everyone sounding initially unimpressed, then quite pleased as they discovered pleasing ways of filling spaces to help satisfy the “Lost Barony” scoring card. Then, just when everyone was nearly nearly home safe and sound, we were ambushed by the penultimate card of the game: the Bugbear Assault.

– Image by boardGOATS

The Bugbear Assault is two one-by-two columns with a gap down the middle, making it quite hard to place at the end of the game. Mulberry was unable to place it and therefore got away unscathed, but others like Burgundy, Purple and Black found they were suddenly four or five points worse off than they had been a moment earlier. The final piece was also difficult to place being large and awkward, and then it was just the final scores.

– Animation by boardGOATS

It was really tight at the top, with Pine and Pink taking second and third respectively, separated by just a single point. Ivory, however, who had lost out by four points to Blue in Patchwork Doodle, managed to take victory by the same margin, winning with the same total of one hundred and twenty points. With that, Ivory departed for the night, and Pine and Green said they would follow. Before he went, however, Green shared an image of kookaburra which looked a bit like a goat provided you mistook it’s beak for an ear…

– Image by boardGOATS

The chit-chat moved on to the Jockey and what it was like there now. Black, Purple, Blue and Pink had enjoyed a meal and a distanced game of Wingspan there and Ivory had joined Blue and Pink for games of Everdell and the new mini Ticket to Ride, Amsterdam. In both cases the pub had been quite quiet, but had felt very safe, partly because there was so much space and partly because the staff had done an excellent job of cleaning. The pizzas were just as good as always, and it was really good to see the staff again.

– Image by boardGOATS

Green commented that he was now quite bored with “colouring in”, so Pine’s parting shot was “Blue’s doing a great job”. Blue agreed that there had been “colouring in” for two weeks running, but that it would be different next time when they would likely be playing Welcome To…, and sadly, there wasn’t really that much alternative to “Roll and Write” that we hadn’t already tried. Burgundy added that nobody could play what they wanted all the time anyhow, especially at the moment. And with that, there were five left to accommodate, who switched to play something more interactive on Board Game Arena.

– Image by boardGOATS

After a bit of discussion and general ambivalence, those left eventually opted for Coloretto. This is a very light and simple set collecting game that we all know the rules for: turn over a card and place it on a truck, or take a truck. Despite the simplicity of the rules, the game itself is very clever and can be played positively, or aggressively taking cards others want. The winner is almost always the player who best balances these two elements.

– Image by boardGOATS

This time, the three of the first four cards to be drawn were Rainbow coloured Jokers. These are such valuable cards that first Black, then Blue, then Purple took them on their own leaving Burgundy and Pink without a look-in. From there, Burgundy started collecting sets of blue and brown chameleons, while Pink started work on collecting a rainbow—totally not the point of the game. Black took a cart that Blue wanted, so she took one that Burgundy wanted and the tit-for-tat rippled through the group.

– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com

It was quite tight at the end, and by that point almost everyone had joined Pink with five different colours. Not that it did him much harm as he finished with a very creditable twenty-four to give him second place, just behind Burgundy who finished with twenty-eight. With that, he decided it was bedtime and that left four…

– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com

After a bit of debate, the now dwindling group settled down to a game of Kingdomino. We have all played this game a lot, so it was remarkable that we managed to make such a meal of it. The game is very simple, but punches above its weight in terms of depth. The key part is the domino market. There are are two rows sorted by value; on their turn, the player takes their tile from the first row and moves their meeple to their chosen tile in the second row. Since tiles are taken in order from least to most valuable, players are trading value for turn order and thus, choice in the next round.

– Image by boardGOATS

In other words, if a player chooses the least valuable tile, on their next turn they will play first and therefore have first choice and can pick from four tiles. Alternatively, if they choose the most valuable tile, they will play last in the next round and will have Hobson’s choice. The dominoes are placed in the players’ kingdoms with players scoring points for each terrain type, where the number of points is the number of crown features multiplied by the number of squares in the area.

– Image by boardGOATS

Unfortunately, Blue, who set up the table chose the rules and picked the seven-by-seven variant, and the bonuses for completing the kingdom and for placing the starting tile in the centre. Sadly, as the expansion has not yet been implemented on Board Game Arena, the seven-by-seven variant is only available for the two-player game. There is no warning about this, and Blue was slow to realise, screwing up one tile placement and then was unable to complete her kingdom or get her castle in the middle.

– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com

Just as Blue was realising and the extent of her problems, and failing to put them right, Burgundy was busy building a very fine kingdom that would rival “Far Far Away” and when everyone else was unimpressed with the tile draw commented, “Well, all those are good for me.” The immediate response was, “Just as well, since you don’t have a choice…”

– Image by boardGOATS
from boardgamearena.com

Meanwhile, Black put a tile in the wrong place and made a wonderful growling noise, something between a cross dog and an angry bear. Then discovered the cancel button and cheered, only to discover that the piece he wanted wouldn’t fit after all and howled with disgust. The Silent One definitely wasn’t silent this time! In fact, he thought he would have beaten the winner, Burgundy, if he hadn’t placed a single tile the wrong way round, so we decided to play again.

– Image by boardGOATS
from boardgamearena.com

This time, Black started going for lakes but had competition from Purple who was also after lakes, but augmented them with forest. Burgundy went for marshland and Blue actually managed to complete her kingdom and get her castle in the middle this time. It was much closer, and all the kingdoms were much more mixed. The winner was Purple though, who just edged Black. Everyone was really pleased, especially when the Board Game Arena presented her with a trophy for her first win at Kingdomino. And that seemed like a good way to end the evening.

– Image by boardGOATS
from boardgamearena.com

Learning Outcome: Colouring in nicely is an important board gaming skill.

Deutscher Spiele Preis – 2020

This year is very different in so many ways, but one thing that hasn’t changed is the announcement of the Deutscher Spiele Preis list. This award is the result of an open vote by games clubs, gamers and people in the industry. It typically rewards slightly heavier games than the Spiel des Jahres awards, but as the top ten list is published, a range of tastes and complexities often feature. The list is usually announced in the run-up to “Essen“, but with the cancellation and then virtualisation this year, the feeling is very different: instead of stoking the fire of anticipation, it is a sort of sad echo of what might have been.

– Image by BGG contributor kalchio

In general, this year the games on the list are definitely on the heavier side with the winner amongst the lightest in the top ten list. As last year, the winner of the Deutscher Spiele Preis was also awarded the Kennerspiel des Jahres Award i.e. The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine (known as “Die Crew: Reist gemeinsam zum 9. Planeten” in Germany). This is a co-operative trick-taking game which is played as a campaign over fifty missions. With each mission, the game becomes more difficult, but it is not the amount of tricks the team takes, but taking the right tricks at the right time that counts.

– Image by boardGOATS

Cartographers: A Roll Player Tale, was second on the list. It seems appropriate that it did well this year as it is one of the best “Roll and Write” games available and they play so well remotely, which has so often been the only way to play this year. Other games in the top ten list include Maracaibo, Crystal Palace, PARKS and Paladins of the West Kingdom (the sequel to Architects of the West Kingdom which featured in last year’s prize list). There have also been a lot of reimplementations released in the last year or so, and these were also well represented in the list, namely by Glen More II: Chronicles and Marco Polo II: In the Service of the Khan.

– Image from
spiel-messe.com