Tag Archives: Cat Lady

Boardgames in the News: Is Rapid Market Growth a Good Thing?

The way boardgames are published and sold has changed massively over the last few years. The development of Asmodee is one of the main stories of the last decade: it has grown from a small company (primarily known for clever little kids games like Dobble), into an industrial conglomerate swallowing up the likes of Days of Wonder, Fantasy Flight Games, Z-man Games, Mayfair, Lookout Spiele and most recently, Repos Production. There have been other significant shifts too however. Changes in the way “hobby gamers” learn about and acquire games has been hugely influenced by the internet and with it, the rise of crowdfunding, in particular, KickStarter.

– Image from
kickstarter.com

To give an idea of the impact KickStarter has had: last Easter, they announced that more than one billion US dollars had been pledged by over three million backers, funding nearly seventeen thousand games projects since the platform started a decade earlier. This growth occurred in tandem with a huge expansion in the hobby which has seen modern boardgaming move from the shadows of a dingy corner of geekdom towards the sunny uplands of the mainstream. For the last five years, there have been more games released than any year previously. Despite this growth, the dominance of Asmodee and KickStarter, have increased the squeeze on the smaller players in a relatively niche market.

– Image from alderac.com

These smaller players also flourished as the market grew, but maybe a corner is now being turned. Last year, Alderac Entertainment Group (AEG), producers of games including Smash Up, Love Letter, Cat Lady, Dice City, Thunderstone, and more recently, Ecos: First Continent, announced that after twenty-seven years in the industry, they will be making fewer games. From their press release:

“There is a reason why there are so many games coming. It is a great time to be making games, maybe the best ever. That does not mean it is easy. In fact, it is also the most challenging time to be making games that I can remember. The bar to get noticed and have any kind of staying power is higher than it has ever been.”

AEG are not the only company affected. US Publishers, Winsome Games (producers of train games like TransAmerica, Chicago Express, Age of Steam, Railways of the World and the 18xx family of games) have announced they will no longer be presenting new games at Essen. Part of this is due to owner and developer John Bohrer “aging (dis)gracefully”, but changes in the market have also no doubt taken their toll.

– Image from sjgames.com

Other companies also seem to be feeling the pinch; last year, Steve Jackson Games (perhaps best known for games like Munchkin, Ogre and Cthulhu Dice) reported that gross income for 2018 was slightly down, the fourth year in a row. In their 2017 report, they stated that “the current market is more a periodicals business than one that encourages growing and nurturing single games”. In the 2018 report they observe that “things only got worse … as fewer and fewer copies of new titles were sold into distribution” and as a result, they “were forced to let some talented and hardworking staff go”. As a company, they have expanded their use of KickStarter, observing that “over the last few years, our core hobby market has changed dramatically”.

– Image from
fantasyflightgames.com

Even the massive behemoth that is Asmodee is not unaffected. About eighteen months ago, Asmodee was bought from Eurazeo by PAI Partners, a European private equity company, and it seems they are now consolidating and streamlining their assets. Earlier this month, Timothy Gerritsen, Head of Studio announced the closure of Fantasy Flight Interactive (FFI). FFI was an independent subsidiary within Asmodee Digital with the remit of adapting tabletop games and creating new digital experiences based on Fantasy Flight Games’s best loved brands. One of the highest profile of these was the Lord of the Rings: Adventure Card Game, but unfortunately it was not as successful as the Lord of the Rings Living Card Game it was based on.

– Image from asmodeena.com

The cuts at Asmodee were wider reaching though, with the initial closure of the Fantasy Flight Customer Service department followed by reports of redundancies elsewhere in the company. This has been more recently followed by a withdrawal of Customer Services for products all products from Asmodee, Fantasy Flight Games, Days of Wonder, Catan, Plaid Hat Games and Z-Man. This change in policy is apparently due to “the number of quality titles in Asmodee USA’s growing library” which is making “maintaining an independent stock of elements of each game … more difficult”. This may, or may not be true, but it is clear that as the market is growing, things are changing for everyone: gamers and publishers, both big and small.

17th April 2018

With Burgundy and Blue waiting for food, they decided to entertain Red with a quick game of NMBR 9, making it’s appearance at four consecutive games nights and starting three, something of a record. Somehow despite this extended run, Red had managed to avoid playing it, so after a very quick run-down of the rules, we started. The game is really very simple indeed, with players simultaneously drawing tiles and adding them to their tableau. Tiles can be placed on top of other layers as long as they don’t overhang and overlap more than one tile. Each tile depicts a number and the more tiles it sits on, the more points it scores. The whole game is typically over in about ten to fifteen minutes, and in this case it was quite tight between Blue and Burgundy, though Blue finished on ahead thanks to a lot of high-scoring tiles on her third level.

– Image by boardGOATS

Although it has proved to be a highly popular filler thanks to it’s simplicity and minimal set up time, Red was not so impressed because she felt it had seemed to offer more when she had watched everyone else playing. She struggled to explain what she meant, but it was clear that she was a little disappointed though that was probably largely due to her expectations. By this time, food had been dealt with and everyone else was arriving, and as the “Feature Game” was to be be Mini Park, another quick filler, we got on with deciding who would play it. When Ivory’s comment, “I’ll play that, but it depends on what else is on offer really…” was challenged, he added, “Well, if the alternative is Kingdomino, I’d rather try Mini Park!” Since Black had chosen that moment to wave Kingdomino around, that pretty much settled them as the two games and uncharacteristically, almost everyone jumped on the Mini Park band-waggon, leaving Black and Purple to play Kingdomino alone.

– Image by boardGOATS

The group doesn’t usually go for two-player games and as Black and Purple get lots of opportunity to play games like this together, normally someone would join them. However, in this case, both games were short and Kingdomino can be a bit variable with three due to the tiles that are left out, so we just got on with it. Kingdomino was the Spiel des Jahres in 2017 and has been very popular within the group as a light filler, so has hit the table quite a bit in the last year. The game is quite simple in that players take it in turns to choose a “domino” and add it to their “Kingdom”. The clever part of the game is that the tiles are numbered with players who choose the high numbered (and therefore more valuable) dominoes taking their turns later in the next round. In the two player game, players get two turns per round, so their first turn can be used to try to set up the second turn.

– Image by boardGOATS

Unfortunately, Black and Purple forgot about the other key difference when playing a two player game: instead of 5×5 arrays, each player is building kingdoms consisting of 7×7 arrays of “squares”. They suddenly noticed they had more tiles left than they had spaces and realised their error, so decided to carry on playing anyhow. Purple concentrated on getting corn fields and then sea and finally forests, while Black just tried to build areas of everything and make sure he was able to place all his tiles. It was very, very close, but despite the fact that she had to forfeit some tiles and failed to pick up her bonus for completing her grid, Purple just pinched it by a single point.

– Image by boardGOATS

Meanwhile, on the neighbouring table, everyone else was learning the “Feature Game”, Mini Park, another quick-playing, tile-laying game. On the face of it, this has a lot in common with Carcassonne, played with two face up tiles to choose from. In contrast, however, the tiles are hexagonal which gives a little more variability and once during the game, players choose one character which dictates the end game scoring. We played the “advanced” game which has slight changes to the scoring and pairs each scoring character at random with a second character. In our game, for example, the Black Man in the Smart Hat was paired with the Yellow Fish, so the player who chose the Man (Ivory), got half the points that the player who chose the Fish got for that character (Blue). It was felt that this would add an interesting dynamic to the game as it would take on some aspects of a semi-cooperative game.

– Image by boardGOATS

Unfortunately, nobody realised at the start just how powerful (or not) each of the characters were and in that game it turned out that some were really very powerful indeed. For example, at the start of the game everyone was encouraged to place fish next to other fish, as this was the only way to make them pay when they were being placed. However, this left a large fish pond with lots of fish and when Blue (who was the first to get to the Yellow Fish Marker) and then Ivory added to it, it yielded a massive twenty-four points. Although this was the most lucrative character, the Green Man on a Bicycle (claimed by Pine) was not far behind with eighteen points. This was thanks largely to the fact that Pine and Blue (who had the Bicycle as her subsidiary character) kept drawing road tiles and extending the road the Bicycle was on, trying to scupper Ivory’s plans to build roads with benches.

– Image by boardGOATS

Although Burgundy picked up the most points for tile placement, the majority of the points come at the end of the game and, as he was last to pick his character, Burgundy was penalised when he ended up with the relatively low scoring White Bird (ironically partnered with the Orange Cat that also failed to score highly). Pine scored well for his Green Cyclist, but did not pick up enough subsidiary points from the White Bird. Ivory’s subsidiary scored highly (Yellow Fish), but much to his chagrin the scoring for his Black Man in a Smart Hat was severely restricted by Pine and Blue’s tactics. Blue, however, did well on both her primary goal (Yellow Fish) and her subsidiary (Green Cyclist), giving her more than enough compensate for a poor score on the tile placement, and she finished some way in front. If everyone had realised the implications of how the scoring worked, it was quite likely that they would have played differently and it would not have been such a landslide, and chatting afterwards, it was obvious that that aspect coloured people’s opinion of the game.

– Image by boardGOATS

The fact that everyone had only one shot at a character was meant it felt that all a player’s eggs were in one basket. This was made worse by the fact that with only one shot, the challenge was when to choose a character: too early and everyone else would be able to obstruct, too late and only the dross is left with not enough time to improve the situation. That said, it was not a long game and with only three players it would be very different as each player gets two opportunities to take character cards. Furthermore, it seems the rules are still being developed, for example, the latest version of the online rules state that the subsidiary character cards are placed face down and thus kept secret until the end of the game and the tile placement scoring has been simplified too. Given that it is such a short game, we should certainly give this one another go sometime, perhaps with the new rules-set.

– Image by boardGOATS

Kingdomino and Mini Park finished at much the same time, which meant i was possible to re-balance the number of players a little, but not before the usual shenanigans regarding who wanted to play what. Although neither mentioned it by name, Burgundy and Ivory clearly had an eye on giving Yokohama another go. Time was marching on though and Yokohama isn’t a short game, and even without any rules explanation there is a lot to setup. The 10^th Anniversary Edition of Puerto Rico was also available though, and there was just time to squeeze in a game provided it started straight away. So as Ivory had somehow managed to avoid playing it thus-far, we felt it was essential that we rectified the situation and Burgundy and Ivory started setting it up. With Blue joining Burgundy and Ivory, that left four people looking for something interesting to play, so Blue suggested Bärenpark. This another fairly light tile laying game, this time set in a bear park.

– Image by boardGOATS

Each player starts with a plot that will become their park, and the idea of the game is that on their turn, players place a tile from their personal supply on this plot. Each starting plot has a different array of symbols on some of the spaces, indicating different types of tiles. When these symbols are built over, the player takes more of the appropriate tiles from the general supply to add to their personal holdings. Some of these are small animal houses, some are larger enclosures and some are very small amenities like toilets and children’s play areas. Each tile also has a Construction Crew and a Pit providing the foundations for a Bear Statue. The Construction Crew allows the player to take an expansion board for their park, providing a new plot which they place next to their park.

– Image by boardGOATS

In contrast to the rest of the spaces, the Pit cannot be built upon in the usual way and is the last space to be covered in each plot; once every other space in a plot is covered, the owner can claim a statue from the display and place it over the Pit. These statues provide points, with the statues providing a diminishing number as the game progresses. Other sources of points include the animal houses and enclosures, but the number of these are limited and again, the earlier tiles are worth more. The small amenity tiles do not score points, but they allow players to fill in those awkward, difficult-to-fill, small gaps, enabling them to finish a plot and build a statue. Even these are limited, though to a lesser extent, so players need to be on the watch in case they are caught out. The game ends when one player fills all of their four plots and then everyone adds up their scores.

– Image by boardGOATS

After a little grumbling about koalas not being bears (the rules explain that “people like koalas, so we will be including them in our park!”), and a brief explanation from Blue, everyone started building. It was a fairly close game, but Black finishing with eighty-eight, seven points ahead of Pine in second place. Asked what he thought of it, Black’s comment was that it was a very simple game, but the group had been playing the basic game. The “Expert Variant” has achievement tiles which provide another source of points and make the game far more interesting for experienced gamers. Red, on the other hand, enjoyed the game much more, somehow finding in it the tessellation building thing that she had struggled to describe, but she had felt was missing in NMBR 9.

– Image by boardGOATS

Puerto Rico was still going, so the group moved on to one of Purple’s current favourites, Cat Lady. This is a light card game that got an outing last month as well. The game is a very simple a card drafting game, similar in feel to Sushi Go!, though with a very different drafting mechanism. On their turn, the active player takes all thee cards from one row or column in the three by three grid, marking the row they took with a kitty meeple. The cards are replaced from the draw deck and the next player then takes a different row or column. Cat cards go in front of the owner who must feed them before the end of the game or they score negative points. Any food cards yield cubes which can then be placed on the face-up cat cards to show they are being fed. Similar to Sushi Go!, there are also cards that score for the player with the most cards (cat “costumes”) and give players with the fewest negative points and sets that players can collect (toys).

– Image by boardGOATS

Players can also collect catnip cards which score minus two if the player only has one at the end of the game, or one or two points per cat if they have more. There are also lost cat cards, and discarding a pair allows players take a two victory point token or one of the three stray cat cards which are particularly useful because they have special powers. The tricky part is making sure that the food a player gets matches the cards, because cats are fussy creatures and some like tuna, while others will only eat chicken… At the end of the game, players score points for each happy well-fed cat and for their toy collection with extras if they have the most cat costumes. Unfed cats, having the fewest costumes, and the largest surplus of food will give players negative points.

– Image by boardGOATS

This time everyone went for different approaches with differing degrees of success. For example, Purple went for costumes and Pine went for toys; Black and Red both went for lots of cats and catnip, but Black failed get enough catnip to score, and actually ended up with negative points. It was very close between Pine and Red in the end, but Pine who had fewer cats (but very contented ones thanks to all the toys they had to play with), just beat Red with her larger number of cats that were all high on catnip. Time was getting on and Puerto Rico was just coming to an end giving them just enough time to watch the last few rounds.

– Image by boardGOATS

Puerto Rico was the number one rated game on the BoardGameGeek website for over five years and still commands a lot of respect though it has significant flaws. The problem is that there is very little randomness in the game which is great, but when a game like that is played a lot people become “experts” and there is a perception that there are right and wrong moves. In Puerto Rico, this point is exacerbated because of the way the game is played. In each round, beginning with the Governor, players take it in turns to chooses an action. Every player carries out the action, but the player that chose it gets a “privilege”, i.e. a bonus. The catch is that players that players need to watch what everyone else is doing in order not to give an advantage to an opponent, or worse, give one opponent an advantage while making life difficult for someone else (also known as “King making”).

– Image by boardGOATS

In Puerto Rico, players are plantation owners in seventeenth century Puerto Rico growing up to five different kind of crops: corn, indigo, sugar, tobacco, and coffee. Each plantation owner must try to run their business more efficiently than their competitors. First they must grow their crops then they must store them efficiently. Finally, players must sell their crops at the right time or ship their goods back to Europe for maximum benefit. In order to do this most effectively, the plantation owners must make optimal use of the arriving colonists and develop the capital city, San Juan, building useful amenities. Thus, the aim of the game is to get victory points which are awarded for buildings and for shipping goods. However, to build, players need money, and before they can ship goods, players need to be able to produce the goods with a plantation, and where necessary process them in the appropriate building.

– Image by boardGOATS

As Ivory had not played the game before, Burgundy was Governor for the first round and Blue went second, giving him a little thinking time before he had to choose an action. This has consequences for the setup, with Blue and Burgundy starting with an indigo plantation and and Ivory starting with a corn field. At first, Ivory couldn’t see why corn might be useful as selling it doesn’t give any money, however, he quickly realised that it doesn’t need a production building and therefore is quicker and easier to produce, making it ideal for shipping. Blue joined him and the pair were soon filling boats as often as they could. Burgundy meanwhile, had gone for the high value coffee. This took him a little while to get going, but once he had a coffee roaster he was able to sell his first batch of coffee and for a short while looked like he was going to storm ahead as he added sugar to his portfolio. Unfortunately, for him, once he had spent his coffee profits, Burgundy got a little stuck as Blue and Ivory worked together very efficiently to make life difficult for him.

– Image by boardGOATS

To begin with, Burgundy was able to ship his coffee, but as it is a high value produce, he really wanted to sell it and use the profits to build. That wasn’t possible though as the Trading House already had a coffee crate in it and until there were four different commodities there, no more coffee could be sold. Burgundy had been able to commandeer a ship for coffee, but once that was full, Burgundy was in an even worse position, because between them, Blue and Ivory were able to make it very difficult for Burgundy to ship two different goods types. The reason why this caused him problems was because of the Boston Tea Party Rule: after shipping, players are only able to keep one crate and anything else is lost over the side. Thus, to begin with, Burgundy was forced to ship when he didn’t want to, and then lost valuable stock when he couldn’t ship. And all the while, Blue and Ivory were collecting victory points for shipping their corn and a little sugar or indigo.

– Image by boardGOATS

Ivory had got off the mark quite quickly buying a Hacienda early on. It wasn’t till much later in the game when Blue bought a second that we realised we’d been playing it wrong and instead of choosing which extra plantation tile he got, he should have been drawing them blind. This had two consequences: firstly it gave Ivory a small, but potentially significant advantage, and secondly, it meant we didn’t run out of plantation tiles quite as quickly as we would otherwise have done. It couldn’t be fixed though, so we just carried on and as long their strategies were aligned, Blue and Ivory were worked well together. It wasn’t long before Ivory moved on to the next stage of his development and first built a Factory and then started raking in the cash every time he produced. Blue then built herself a Warehouse and upped her shipping rate and starting raking in the victory points.

– Image by boardGOATS

The game was coming to a close when the Big Question came up: Burgundy asked whether players were allowed to buy more than one large building. Both Burgundy and Blue had a vague recollection of the rule, but it couldn’t be found in the booklet. Ivory graciously switched his strategy and did something else, though checking later proved that was wholly unnecessary. The game came to a close as we ran out of on victory point chips and colonists (something that would have happened a lot earlier had we realised there should always be a minimum number arriving on the Colonists Ship), and all that was left was to tally up the scores and it was very tight indeed. Although he had lots of buildings, Burgundy’s shipping had been effectively stymied by Blue and Ivory and the shortage of colonists had also made things a lot more difficult for him than it should have been, despite all that though, he wasn’t far behind Blue and Ivory. In the end, Ivory won by a single point. There was no need to re-count as he would have undoubtedly won by far more if he had built that second large building, though perhaps that off-set some of the advantage he had received early on with his Hacienda.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: Sometimes it is best to play the “basic” game to get a feel for it before trying the advanced rules, but other times, it just feels trivial.

6th March 2018

Food had been ordered by those who intended to eat, but there seemed to be a bit of wait so we decided to play our “Feature Game”, Plague & Pestilence. This game had been chosen as it was Purple’s birthday and she had enjoyed playing it in the past. A fairly simple card game, everyone felt it wouldn’t be too difficult to play around when food arrived, added to which, there weren’t many other options available that would play six in a short time. The game is played in two phases, the first is the “Prosperity Phase” and the second is the “Plague Phase”, but both are played the same way. During their turn, the active player rolls a pair of purple six-sided dice which indicate how much their population increases by, and takes population cards accordingly. The active player then draws Prosperity cards to refill their hand and plays one, which allow players to attack others and build their own protections for later in the game.

– Image by boardGOATS

A special Death Ship card is shuffled into the Prosperity deck and when it appears, it triggers the start of the second phase, the “Plague Phase”. This is played exactly the same as the first phase, but now the dice rolls indicate how much the active player’s population decreases by. As the game progresses, the plague ravages the populations and players are eliminated; the last player standing is the winner. The game started fairly benignly as most players either built improvements or had bumper harvests. There was the odd pestilence played and a Mongol raid, however, Green upped the ante when he played the mass migration card and gained five citizens off every other player. This released the inevitable retribution when he then found himself beset with wars, famines and pestilence. With two Pied Pipers up his sleeve (metaphorically of course) he was then able to pick on Ivory, and did so twice since Ivory had twice hit Green hard with a major war, and had also caught Pine with Viking raids. Meanwhile, Burgundy tried to build defences, and but they fell to earthquakes and other attacks before he could actually make use of their benefits.

– Image by boardGOATS

The game had not seemed to be going on long when Green drew the Death Ship and the game entered the Plague Phase. A quick run round the table while everyone tried to bolster their dwindling populations and then food started to arrive. After a brief interlude, play resumed with Black and his seemingly never-ending stream of Trade Centres. Before long, a fatal blow was dealt to Burgundy when Purple started a war between him and Green. With three ties in a row, both suffered heavy losses. Although Burgundy did eventually win the war, he suffered some poor dice rolls and soon found himself to be the first without citizens. By now, Green was struggling and Black’s own mass migration had put both him and Pine on the edge as well. The inevitable backlash against Black gave Green and Pine a reprieve, but it was short lived and both toppled very quickly.

– Image by boardGOATS

It was looking like a fight between Ivory and Black as Purple’s pile of people was also looking decidedly dodgy, but then Black tried to start a war between the other two. Ivory brought out his “Negotiated Peace” card though and all was well. It was a race of attrition that Purple couldn’t win and she was the next to drop out with an empty city. In the end there was still little Ivory could do and he finally bowed out leaving Black the winner. It was then that Black revealed his hand to have several military advantages that he never used as he was the only one who had not been at war; everyone else had been wondering where those tactical advantages had disappeared to as they really needed them! With the death and destruction over, we quickly decided to split into two threes. As it was Purple’s birthday and she wanted to play Cat Lady, Pine and Black joined her.

– Image used with permission of
BGG contributor HedgeWizzard

Cat Lady is a card drafting game, similar in feel to Sushi Go!, though the drafting mechanism is very different. At the start of the game nine cards from the cat deck are laid out in a three by three array. On their turn, the active player takes all thee cards in one row or one column and then replaces the cards from the draw deck marking the row they took with a kitty meeple so the next player knows they can’t take that row. Any cat cards go in front of the owner (or should that be staff?) and these must be fed by the end of the game or they score minus two. Any food cards give cubes which can then be placed on the face-up cat cards to show they are being fed. Similar to Sushi Go!, there are also cards that score for the player with the most cards (cat “costumes”) and give players with the fewest negative points and sets that players can collect (toys). Players can also collect catnip cards which score minus two if the player only has one at the end of the game, or one or two points per cat if they have more. There are also lost cat cards, and discarding a pair allows players take a two victory point token or one of the three stray cat cards which are particularly useful because they have special powers.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor HedgeWizzard

The tricky part is making sure that the food a player gets matches the cards, because cats are fussy creatures and some like tuna, while others will only eat chicken… At the end of the game, players score points for each happy well-fed cat and for their toy collection with extras if they have the most cat costumes. Unfed cats, having the fewest costumes, and the largest surplus of food will give players negative points. The game began with Purple going for costumes and toys while Black and Pine tried to get catnip to add extra points for their fed cats. Perhaps Purple concentrated too much on the accoutrements for her pets because she ended up with so many cats that should couldn’t feed them all. In her defence, it wasn’t that she had no food, it was that her cats were fussy eaters and turned their noses up at the fresh chicken, preferring to starve. Unfortunately, this meant she lost points for having unfed cats, but also for having the largest surplus of food. In contrast, the others had well fed cats and were level in almost every department, finishing with only three points between them, and Pine just a whisker in front of Black.

– Edited from video on youtube.com

Meanwhile, on the next table, Burgundy, Green and Ivory opted for NMBR 9. Only Burgundy had played it before, but the rules are simple enough so didn’t take long to explain. The idea is that players will play a total of twenty tiles, numbered zero to nine, with each one appearing twice. One player turns over a card and calls the number and players each take one tile of that number and add it to their tableau. Tiles must be placed such that at least one edge touches a previous tile. Tiles can be placed on top of other tiles as long as there are no overhanging parts, and the tile sits squarely on more than one other tile. At the end of the game the number tiles are multiplied by the level they sit on minus one. So, a five on the third level scores ten points (5 x (3-1)). This time, Ivory and Green matched each other for several turns before making a slight different placement which then ballooned into big differences.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

Ivory and Green were quite pleased early on when they were able to place the eight on the, then highest level when Burgundy had to be content with adding it to his “ground floor”. In the end, Burgundy proved cannier than the others, however, and even managed to get a fourth level by the end of the game, while both Ivory and Green could only manage three tiers. In the final scores, it was Burgundy’s experience that showed through and his score dwarfed that of Ivory and Green, who finished with only a point between them. Chatting about the game afterwards, everyone was surprised how quick it had been and how easy it was to learn (helped by the zero setup time). So much so in fact, that even though the game was not to everyone’s taste, everyone felt it made a very handy little filler game and with a nice little bit of challenge. Having played it once though, both Ivory and Green felt they had a better understanding of the challenges and were more familiar with the tessellation possibilities and looked forward to doing better next time.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

On the other table, Cat Lady was still underway, so the Green, Ivory and Burgundy opted for another of the hits from Essen 2017, Azul. Despite the number of times we have now played this in the group, Ivory had somehow missed out. The idea of the game is that players are tile laying artists decorating a wall in the Palace of Evora with “azulejos”. On their turn, the active player can either take all the tiles of one colour from one of the factory displays (putting the rest in the central market) or take all the tiles of one colour from the market in the centre of the table. They then place the tiles in one of the five rows on their player board. The catch is that each player only has five rows, each with a set number of spaces (up to five). Players can add tiles to a row later in the round, but once a row is full, any left-overs go into the negative scoring row. Once all the tiles have been picked up, players evaluate their board, and, starting with the shortest row, one of the tiles from each full row is added to the player’s mosaic and scored.

– Image by BGG contributor JackyTheRipper

Players score just one point for a tile that is not placed adjacent to any other tile, whereas tiles added to rows or columns score the same number of points as there are tiles in the completed row (or column). The game continues with players choosing tiles from the factory displays and then adding them to rows, the catch is that as the mosaic fills up, it is harder to fill the rows as each row can only take each colour once. At the end of the game, players score bonus points for completed columns, completed rows and complete sets of five of the same colour. The game is actually much more complex to explain than to actually play and Ivory appeared to pick it up very quickly, successfully completing a column and two full coloured sets. Green, on the other hand, had managed only one column and one colour set as he had got stuck with a single blue on the bottom row for at least two turns as there weren’t enough of that colour drawn from the bag which stopped him placing the colours he really wanted to. It was Burgundy who romped home in the lead though, with two full columns and two complete colour sets and ninety-eight points, just three ahead of Ivory.

– Image used with permission of boardgamephotos

While Azul was going on, Cat Lady had finished and the group also fancied playing Azul. Unfortunately, we only had one copy between us so they settled on Sheep & Thief instead. This is another light abstract that has proven quite popular in the group. Each player has a board divided into a four by four grid, and starts with their home card and two sheep in the top left hand corner. Each round is played in two halves: first players draft cards then they play them, taking it turns to place one card per turn. It is a strange little “point salad” of a game with players trying to connect their home card to the other three corners while also trying to keep their sheep safe and trying to catch other players sheep with their fox as well as attempting to navigate their black sheep to the town in the bottom right corner of their board.

– Image by boardGOATS

With points for sheep captured, sheep retained, long rivers, connecting the home card to the other corners of the board as well as for moving their black sheep as far from home as possible, it is hard to see who has the most points and get an idea of who is in the lead and it is astonishingly hard to do well at everything. During this game, there almost seemed to be a lack of sheep and not much movement around the fields either. The black sheep only moved a space or two and the foxes mostly sat and watched. Everyone managed to connect their home card to at least one town, but it was Black who managed to collected a huge number of points when he managed to mastermind a huge river system giving him a completely unassailable lead.

– Image by boardGOATS

Meanwhile, Azul was over, but as Sheep & Thief wouldn’t be long, Green, Ivory and Burgundy settled on a quick game of Love Letter with Green’s home printed Hobbit cards. It is a while since we last played Love Letter, but nobody had forgotten how as it is simple enough: draw a second card and chose one to play then action it trying to knock everyone else out—last player standing is the winner. This time, Burgundy was caught out first as he had been forced to discard the Elvenking, leaving Green with a fifty/fifty guess at Beorn or the Great Eagle (the mutterings on placing the Elvenking suggested he wasn’t Smaug). Although he guessed right, Ivory played a Troll to compare hands and Green could not match Ivory’s eagle. In the second round, history repeated itself for Burgundy as the first card he played was an Elvenking and the Great Eagle guess proved correct. It was Green’s Troll card that forced the compare this time and took out Ivory.

– Image by boardGOATS

In the third round, Green started off by keeping himself out of harms way with Elrond, but he drew Smaug as his next card and knew that the writing would be on the wall—it’s very hard to keep that quiet for long. The inevitable happened when Ivory forced Green to reveal his card, but it didn’t do Ivory much good as Burgundy was then able to beat him on another comparison. With one golden ring apiece and Sheep & Thief being scored on the next table, it was all or nothing on the final round. Burgundy was knocked out first, but Green and Ivory took it to the final cards, a compare hands. Much to the dismay of Green who had accused Ivory of being Smaug earlier in the round, Ivory had subsequently drawn the dragon card, and with it took the game. It wasn’t all that late, but nobody really wanted to start anything else. With Green and Ivory making for home, Black, Burgundy and Pine waited on the birthday girl’s decision, but she also wanted to head off—she’d had a busy day.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: Don’t be a fussy pussy or it could be fatal!