Tag Archives: Cottage Garden

13th May 2025 (Report)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2nd May 2023

Blue and Pink were the first to arrive and were just finishing their supper when Magenta walked in—sadly not to join in the games as she was there for a Scout meeting. After a quick chat, she left and as Blue recapped the rules for the “Feature Game“, Zoo Break, Teal arrived and then Purple and Black. The group had just decided to play Alles im Eimer (aka The Bucket King), when Ivory rocked up to make the full compliment of six. Purple explained the rules with help from Black. The idea is very simple: each player builds a pyramid of ten bucket tokens with two of each of five colours.

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One player starts, playing a coloured, numbered, animal card and each player has to follow with the same colour and a higher number before picking up a card. Players can play multiple cards to make the total, but they only ever receive a single replacement card. If they can’t, or choose not to follow, they lose a bucket of that colour, and any buckets above it. Worse, if they split their pile of buckets in two, they lose one part as players can only ever have one pile. On the plus-side, if a player can’t play (or chooses not to), they then lead with a free choice of colour and number. The last player with buckets still standing is the winner. With Purple shuffling, Ivory was the first to play.

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It turns out that there are two things that are really critical in this game. Firstly, how players stack their buckets—it is not as simple as playing to their hand strengths; the smart player also spreads the colours out a bit so they aren’t forced to take buckets from low down when the unexpected happens. Secondly, as Ivory pointed out, like 6 Nimmt!, it is all about timing, which is something players may not have control of. A few rounds in, Black spotted that Pink to his left still had a complete stack where bucket piles had been falling all over the place everywhere else. So, Black made it his business to make Pink’s life difficult. From there, it was gloves off and the buckets really started to tumble. Purple was the first player to kick the last of her buckets over which left Blue to do what she could to damage Ivory’s largely unscathed pile.

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Black, then Blue, then Teal, all fell, leaving just Pink and Ivory to fight it out. With Pink’s dwindling pile, it always looked an uphill task, and so it proved, with Ivory taking victory with five buckets still standing. By this time though, Lime and Green had arrived and with eight, the group split into two tables of four, the first for the “Feature Game“, Zoo Break. Pink was nearly lured away at the suggestion that the alternate might be Takenoko, but despite being very torn by his love of pandas, he stuck with his original panda driven choice and was joined by Blue, Lime and Black as Keepers at Bedlam Zoo.

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Zoo Break is an apparently light cooperative game where players are a team of zoo-keepers trying to prevent a mass break-out. The mechanism is quite simple: the active player rolls a die to decide how many Action Points they get, then they carry out actions, before drawing an Escape card and a Move card (to see what animals escape and move). The game ends when either a dangerous animal (tiger, elephant, or dangerous snake) escapes, or when the fifth cute animal (panda, Capuchin monkey, meerkat or harmless snake) exits the zoo, or when there are no animals roaming about and all the cages are locked up.

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Although the mechanism of Zoo Break is very straight-forward and the art-work implies it is a simple kiddies game, nothing could be further from the truth. The rule book is twenty pages long, and there are a lot of details regarding escaping and recapturing animals. For example, when an animal escapes, it doesn’t just move to the space immediately outside its Enclosure, it moves to the nearest “open” space. Also, different animals are recaptured using different tools which have to be acquired from the supply by the Keepers. For example, a Net can be used to capture meerkats or monkeys, while a Leash is required for pandas and elephants, and tigers need to be Tranquilised and Stretchered home (very carefully, obviously).

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Each Keeper has a different skill. This time, Blue had the ability to reveal snakes and capture animals from adjacent spaces (especially useful for dealing with snakes); Pink could run faster than anyone else, moving two spaces for each action point (instead of the usual one); Black, the Gardener, could move through and hide in bushes, and Lime could re-roll the die twice to try to get additional actions. From experience with games like Forbidden Island and Forbidden Desert, the key is almost always to make good use of these special powers. So Blue suggested she made it her business to concentrate on dealing with the snakes since she could do so without being bitten.

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Pink with his Panda obsession, was always going to go after them, and everyone else was happy to let him get on with it. Before any of that could happen though, the Keepers needed Supplies. Pink started, and went straight to the Supply shed and started revealing tools. These are drawn from a face down pile, but Keepers only have space to carry four tools in their backpack, so can choose only to take the ones they want. This was probably the team’s first mistake: instead of the few players just searching the whole Supply pile and making a discerning choice while taking as much as they could carry, players grabbed a couple of items and headed off.

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This became a problem later in the game when the Keepers realised they didn’t have tools and were now on the other side of the board. Black who had drawn the meerkat enclosure key headed off to the far corner to lock it quickly. Lime captured the only roaming meerkat (which had been playing in the fountain) and Black was just about to lock the cage when another one escaped. As he didn’t have a Net, despite being in the same space as it, he was left chasing about trying to grab it unsuccessfully. And then more meerkats got out. So Lime, Keeper without portfolio (but with both a Net and a Leash), waged war on the disobedient meerkats, while occasionally taking time out to catch an elephant or a monkey.

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Pink, meanwhile, had his panda enclosure Key and a Leash and was trying to do something about them, but was inconvenienced by a pair of elephants, one of which knocked him flying necessitating a visit to the Medic. Lime captured the last of the Capuchin monkeys and Blue who was close at hand with the enclosure Key managed to slam the door shut before any more got out—just as well, as the snakes were beginning to get out of hand, and as for the meerkats, well, these little blighters were causing mayhem. Twice the Keepers had them under control before more escaped, and as they formed a long queue, the queue kept getting longer and longer as they marched inexorably towards the exit.

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Pink used the Barricade to delay the escape of a couple of pandas and the pair marauding elephants, but it failed to hold when the Broken Barricade Move card appeared. The rhino’s occasional charges weren’t much of an issue as they were very predictable, but once animals started to get close to the exit the rhino became more of a problem as players stayed out of its path wasting Action Points. By this time, the tigers were becoming a problem, but Pink and Black put their Tranquiliser darts to good effect and soon the zoo was littered with sleeping tigers. Lime had a Stretcher, but never actually used it, briefly loaning it to Blue for the only tiger returned to its enclosure (and left to peacefully sleep off the after-effects, as per one of the new variants).

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There was a bit of a debate over whether it was more important to work on the rogue pandas or let them and meerkats escape and focus on the dangerous animals (in particular tigers and elephants). Slowly but surely, however, the animals were taking over as there was a little procession of Keepers at the Medic’s tent, with only Lime avoiding injury. Black was the only player to make use of the Train, because it didn’t really go where people wanted it to and players dealt with the issues nearest to them. That was probably a good strategy; like it says in the advice, it is also important to lock stuff up early—the team didn’t. They dealt with the monkeys, but the only other enclosure they managed to lock was the pandas, just before two meerkats and a cobra made a run for it in a single turn.

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Although the mass escape had caused the zoo to be closed down and Pink hadn’t actually been cuddled by a panda, everyone had really enjoyed themselves. On reflection, working in pairs might have worked better (as with Flash Point and Escape), because then the team can do things much quicker, get on top of things and lock cages making life easier all round. Black was curious about the variants available. The group had played on “Standard” difficulty with two “Phew!” Escape cards (where nothing gets out), but thanks to a rules malfunction, had also included the blank cards in the Move deck which provided quite a bit of respite, so everyone had a good laugh at the idea of making the game harder.

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Despite the fact the group rarely plays cooperative games, everyone was keen to give Zoo Break another outing soon. Zoos were popular elsewhere too—the next table had been playing New York Zoo. This is a tile-laying game that got its first Tuesday outing only a few of weeks ago, but had been enjoyed by all. In this game, players add pens to their zoo, populating them with animals, and building attractions. Like Uwe Rosenberg‘s other similar games (including Cottage Garden, Spring Meadow, Indian Summer and Patchwork), it is Tetris-like but what makes this one unique and interesting is the Market.

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Players move the Marker Elephant one to four spaces round the Market, landing either on an Enclosure tile space (taking the top one and adding it to their zoo) or on an animal space (taking one or both of the animals depicted). Enclosure tiles can be placed anywhere in the player’s Zoo, then one or two identical Animals from elsewhere in their Zoo must be moved to occupy the Enclosure. Each Enclosure can only hold one type of Animal. When there are two or more Animals in an Enclosure together they breed when the Elephant passes the Market’s breeding spaces.

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When an Enclosure is full, all the animals are removed and the player takes an Attraction tile of their choice and adds it to their Zoo. Attraction tiles are useful because they fill additional spaces, and at its heart, New York Zoo is a race game—the winner is the first to fill all the spaces in their Zoo. Purple had played last time, and Green had played elsewhere, however, Ivory and Teal were new to the game and the rules needed explanation. That didn’t take long though, and the Elephant was soon touring the market and everyone was building their zoo and adding animals.

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Purple was quick to get going, as was Green. New York Zoo is really a tactical game, but there are a couple of broad strategies—fill the zoo with large Enclosures that are harder to fill, but occupy more space, or fill it with smaller Enclosures which are easier to fill with animals giving bonus Attraction tiles. Purple went for the latter approach, getting some of the large attractions early in the game. Teal however, opted for the former strategy, which is harder to get to work, but can be extremely effective, as indeed it was this time, making him the first to finish his zoo, and with no Attractions at all. Purple was the best of the rest with for spaces left to fill, with Green a little way behind.

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The Keepers in Bedlam Zoo on the next table were still trying to get the marauding beasts back in their pens (largely unsuccessfully) so the others had to decide what to play. Green decided to go home, and couldn’t be persuaded to stay by the opportunity to play Nidavellir despite having been very keen to play it previously. That left Purple, Ivory and Teal, who decided to play it anyhow. Nidavellir is a card set-collection and bidding game inspired by Norse myths. The game was created by French designer Serge Laget (who sadly passed away in January this year after a lifetime of producing some great games) and the striking black and white artwork by Jean-Marie Minguez which nicely contrasts with the coloured cardboard components.

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The story behind the game is that the kingdom of Nidavellir is under threat from the stirrings of the Dragon Fafnir and players are tasked by the King to recruit the best army to defeat it. Appropriately for our venue, the action takes places in three Dwarvish pubs where the players must use their coins to bid for the most skillful Dwarves (in a concealed auction), recruit the most prestigious Heroes, and build the best Battalion they can to defeat the Dragon. Players hire five different professions of Dwarves into their growing army – Warriors, Hunters, Miners, Blacksmiths and Explorers. Each player starts with five coins with the values: zero, two, three, four and five. Players place one of their coins against each pub space on their player mat. The coins are revealed and cards are taken from each pub starting with the highest bidder.

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Ties are broken in favour of the player with the the highest jewel token (randomised at the start) and then these players swap jewels so the losing player has an advantage next time there is a draw. Once the three pubs have been resolved, players take back their coins, and place their cards in their tableaux. At the game end, points are awarded in different ways for each group of Dwarves. For example, Hunters provide points based on the number of cards squared, Blacksmiths score according to the triangular sequence (as used in Coloretto), while the Navigators are simply a total of the number of points printed on the card, and so on. Each round of the game, random face-up dwarf cards are lined up by each pub (equal to the number of players) and players bid for their order of selection.

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If a player plays their “zero” coin, the values of the two unused coins are added together, the highest of the pair is discarded and a new coin of the same total is added to their stash from the Royal Treasure. Thus, players can gradually increase the value of their coins, which is useful for out-bidding others, but also adds value as the total coin hoard is added to their final score. Hero cards, which supply additional points bonuses in a variety of ways are awarded when a player manages to have five cards of different type and then each time a new set of five is achieved. Heroes are selected from, a separate deck which allows for further point scoring combinations. The start was a little slow as Purple and Ivory were both new to the game and had to figure out what to do.

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Teal and Ivory both started by upgrading their coins. Ivory was the first to get a set of five cards and claimed one of the Dwerg Brothers as his Hero giving him the target of collecting the other brothers which greatly crank up the points the more that are collected. Teal, who had played the game before, chose more complex Heroes. Half way through the game, Purple took the King’s Hand and the King’s Great Armourer Heroes for having the most Warrior and Blacksmith cards, while Teal took the Hunting Master and Crown Jeweler (for the most Hunters and Miners respectively), leaving Ivory just the Pioneer of the Kingdom (for the most Explorers).

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The second age (played with a new deck of cards), was similar to the first, with particular tight battles around getting cards to complete sets. Ivory had a slight advantage in this, having upgraded his coins more aggressively early in the game, and used this to get more of the Dwerg Brothers. In contrast, Purple and Teal focused on collecting Dwarves of one kind with Teal using his Heroes to add to their “count” in particular colours when completing a set. In the end, Purple and Teal scored best for Blacksmiths and Hunters, while Teal also took lots of points for his Miners—something he had focused on from the start.

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Ivory however, had more Warriors and having the majority of them meant he could add the value of his most valuable coin to his score. Despite that and over a hundred points for his Dwergs, Ivory finished just shy of Teal’s winning total of two-hundred and seventy-seven. The downside of his victory—the winner has to face the Dragon Fafnir! All agreed it was a good game, not overly complex, but with lots of decisions to make; a game that didn’t out stay its welcome finishing within the forty-five minutes advertised (even with two first-time players).

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Learning outcome: Always keep a close eye on your meerkats.

7th March 2023

Plum and Blue were first to arrive and, by the time they had finished their enormous rack of ribs (or given up and had a doggy bag made up), almost everyone else had arrived. There were a few people missing, but still enough for two games of four. The first was the “Feature Game“, but nobody really wanted to commit to that until they knew what the other game was going to be. As he had done the last couple of times, Green suggested Terraforming Mars. Unlike previously, this time Ivory, Plum and Teal felt up to it, leaving Blue, Black, Purple and Lime to play their preferred choice of New York Zoo.

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New York Zoo is a tile laying game by Uwe Rosenberg, designer of Agricola, Bohnanza, Patchwork and many other well-known games. The idea is that players are building pens in their zoo, populating them with animals, and building attractions. This is one of several polyomino, Tetris-like, tile-laying type games (including Cottage Garden, Spring Meadow, Indian Summer and Patchwork), but what makes this one unique and interesting is the Market. Players move the Marker Elephant one to four spaces round the Market, landing either on an Enclosure tile space (taking the top one and adding it to their zoo) or on an animal space (taking one or both of the animals depicted). Enclosure tiles can be placed anywhere in the player’s Zoo, then one or two identical Animals from elsewhere in their Zoo must be moved to occupy the Enclosure.

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Each Enclosure can only hold one type of Animal, meercats, snow-foxes, kangaroos, penguins or flamingos, but when moving Animals, no pen can be left empty. There is an advantage to pens having two or more Animals in them too—the Market also features breeding spaces, and when the Marker Elephant passes these, up to two pens containing two or more matching Animals get an extra one. When a player moves the Elephant onto an Animal space, they take one of either or both the Animals depicted into Enclosures containing matching Animals (moving another from Storage if they can), or into the Storage space. Moving animals is important, because when an Enclosure is completed the player removes all the animals putting one into Storage if they have space, and then takes an Attraction tile of their choice and adds it to their Zoo.

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Attraction tiles are useful because they fill additional spaces, and at its heart, New York Zoo is a race game—the winner is the first to fill all the spaces in their Zoo. Black and Purple had played this a few times, and once Black had explained the rules to Lime and Blue, Purple started. Black and Purple prioritised completing Enclosures to get Attractions. The Market is stacked so there are large tiles, heptominoes, on the top of each tile space, with hexominoes, then pentominoes and finally tetrominoes at the bottom of each pile. Black and Purple prioritised getting breeding pairs of animals and as the Market dwindled, getting smaller enclosures because small Enclosures are easier to complete than large ones.

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Blue, who had not played the game before, started off getting large Enclosures and fitting them tightly together. As the game progressed, however, she realised her mistake as everyone else’s Animals were breeding and she didn’t have pairs because she was taking one out every time she added another Enclosure. This had the additional consequence that she was starting to run out of Animals too, so she prioritised getting breeding pairs for a couple of rounds before continuing to take the biggest Enclosures she could get away with. It was a tight game—Purple seemed to take an early lead, but it looked like Black and Lime over-took her towards the end and were in a tussle to finish the game first.

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With everyone else concentrating on filling pens and taking Attractions, nobody was watching Blue. So they were taken by surprise when her kangaroos bred filling their pen and she took her first Attraction. That left one space which she promptly filled taking the only Enclosure that fitted, perfectly, and ended the game. With everyone else so close to finishing, however, the rest of the group played on to see who would place where. In the event, Black finished just ahead of Lime. The group were just dissecting the different strategies when Pine arrived, fresh from his meeting teaching “cubbish-sized scouts” about waste. Terraforming Mars was still going on, so the hunt was on for a five-player game, and the group settled on Kingdomino.

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Native, Kingdomino is a four player game, however, with the Age of Giants expansion, it plays five. The base game is simple enough, but it had been a while since most people last played it, so there was a quick run through of the rules. On their turn, players add a terrain domino to their Kingdom; each domino comprises two squares of terrain and when placed at least one end must be adjacent to the same terrain type. Like New York Zoo, the interesting and clever part of the game is the Market. In Kingdomino, there are two parts, current and future—when a player takes their domino from the current market, they choose their next domino by placing their marker on it.

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At the end of the game, players score each terrain region with points equal to the area of each region multiplied by the number of crowns on it. The clever part is the timing of the Market. The tiles are drawn at random from a set numbered from one to forty-eight. The low numbers generally being the less desirable ones, those without crowns or those for terrain types where crowns are more scarce. Since players take the tiles in numerical order (low to high), taking a low value tile in one round gives a better choice in the next. Similarly, taking a high value tile means there will be less (or maybe no) choice in the following round.

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The Age of Giants expansion firstly adds twelve extra tiles (enough for a fifth player), six labeled with letters A to F and six numbered forty-nine to fifty-four. These are ranked below one for the letters and after forty-eight for the high numbers, with the low ranking tiles featuring a Giant, and the high ranking ones featuring Footprints. Players taking dominoes with a Giant on them, also take a Giant-eeple and place it over a crown in their Kingdom so that it doesn’t score. Taking a Footprint domino allows the player to move a Giant from their Kingdom to a crown in someone else’s and this increase their score, making these tiles potentially very valuable.

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Unfortunately (especially for Lime and Blue who ended up with all the Giants), the Footprints seemed hard to come by in this game. The other part of the Age of Giants expansion are the Quests. The base game comes with two Quests, arrangement targets that give points. These are “Middle Kingdom” and “Harmony” which respectively give ten points for a castle in the centre of a player’s Kingdom and five points for a complete five-by-five territory with no discarded tiles. This time, the Quests drawn essentially at random were “Bleak King” and “Four Corners of the Kingdom”. The first of these gave five points for each five square of terrain with no crowns while the second gave players five points for placing cornfields on all four corners of the five-by-five grid that defines their Kingdom.

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Although the Quests had been included in game play several times before, the Giants have only had an outing once and didn’t go down all that well. Still, with five players all the extra tiles were needed and their values would have been unbalanced without including Giants, so the group thought they’d give it another try. This time Blue and Purple had a really hard time getting crowns and things were so bad for Blue that she resorted to picking up twenty points, more than half her total, from the “Bleak King” Quest. Black built a lot of sea and pasture, while Lime scored heavily for his mountains and Pine picked up lots of points for his large woodland.

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It was very close between the top three and both Lime and Pine scored forty-five points for their highest scoring terrain—Lime for nine crowns spread over five spaces, Pine for five crowns spread over nine spaces. There were just two points between Lime and Pine in the end, but Pine’s sixty-eight points just edged Lime into second with Black four points behind that. It had been a good game. However, the group felt that the Giants took a positive constructive game and added a negative aspect. Those that had been stuck with them hadn’t found that aspect particularly enjoyable, especially as it was easy to get lumbered largely through no fault of their own, so it is unlikely they’ll get another outing very soon.

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Meanwhile, on the next table, Green, Ivory, Plum and Teal were still playing Terraforming Mars. To speed up the game they played with the Prelude start cards and also removed the Corporation cards—that turned out to be a good choice as the game only just finished before the pub closed. In this game, players play corporations sponsored by the World Government working together in the terraforming process, but competing for victory points. These are awarded not only for their contribution to the terraforming, but also for advancing human infrastructure throughout the solar system, and doing other generally commendable things.

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The players acquire unique Project cards by buying them into their hand; these can represent anything from introducing plant life or animals, hurling asteroids at the surface, building cities, to mining the moons of Jupiter and establishing greenhouse gas industries to heat up the atmosphere. The Projects can give immediate bonuses, as well as increase production of different resources. Many cards also have requirements and become playable when the temperature, oxygen, or ocean coverage increases enough. Buying cards is costly, so there is a balance between buying cards (three MegaCredits per card) and actually playing them.

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The game ends after the terraforming is complete when the three global parameters, temperature, oxygen, ocean have all reached their goal. Players then score for their Terraform Rating with any other points they might have accrued. This time, Green made his presence felt on the surface of Mars in the early stages with his initial starting forest, which grew a little, and seeded the oceans. He was the only one for a while. Plum played a blue card which gave her a couple of extra Credits every time someone built a city. This one really paid for itself in the four-player game as everyone wanted to build more than one city. Green was first, but had mis-read the card and found himself colonizing Phobos instead.

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So, Teal was the first to actually build a city on the surface of Mars. He opted for the equator but on the other side from Green’s forests. Later he played a blue city bonus card that gave him a Credit production bonus for each one. Although several cities had already been built by then, several more followed and he was able to enjoy the benefit of extra cash in later rounds. Ivory meanwhile had made a different start to the game than his normal opening gambit (building a city), and completed the first Milestone: the Ecologist. However his cities did follow later as he extended down towards the south pole. Teal claimed the second milestone: the Specialist, helped on by his city Credit production bonus.

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Plum was the last to claim a Milestone: the Generalist, as she was able to pay to increase her production one step each round. She did not claim it straight away, but noticed it after Teal had claimed his, and thought she had better get in there quick. Green was not able to claim any milestones, but instead was the first to fund an Award. A quick check around the player boards suggested he should fund Celebrity as he had three high value cards to Teal’s two, but neither Plum or Ivory had any cards over the value of twenty Credits. Later on Teal funded the second award and went for Estate Dealer as he clearly had more tiles next to oceans at this point (having planted his forests northwards around the oceans.

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At the end of the game Green pulled out his wallet once more and funded Benefactor since he was ahead on the Terraform Rating track. Ivory was only one behind, but Green had a couple of options he could play on his last turn for a couple of extra Terraform Rating points. This prevented Ivory from funding the Dessert Settler award for which he had been building. Green decided to go for outworld domination and also built Deimos city. During the second half of the game Green realised he had forgotten his company bonus of a two MegaCredits reduction for each brown, Industrial tagged card. He had built three, so put six Credits aside to be used in the event of a tie, (although had he remembered to claim them at the time, he may have been able to play more and better cards).

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In the final scoring it was very close indeed, although during the game Mars was regularly bombarded with meteors and nuclear bombs, so it was a wonder any one survived at all! Ivory and Green tied for second with fifty-nine points. Even with his extra six Credits, Green still lost the tie to Ivory, who had more Credits left over from the final production. At this point, Green realised he again had misread a card thinking he would get one point per ocean tile in the game for his capital city, but that would have given him a guaranteed nine points and would have been way too powerful. In the end, it was Teal who triumphed, but only just, with sixty-one points, in well deserved victory.

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Learning Outcome: Mama’s taking us to the zoo tomorrow, zoo tomorrow, zoo tomorrow… We can stay all day!

7th February 2023

Blue, Jade, Plum and Byzantium were first to arrive and started by ordering food and then settled down for a chat. Pine soon joined them, followed by Teal, Green, Black, Purple and Ivory. With Lime tucked up in bed fending off his lurgy, and Lilac away for work, it was just Pink who was trapped on the motorway system somewhere between The Jockey and the Frozen North. So, while food was being finished the others wanted a short game for the other end of the table. Teal had brought along The Lost Expedition and Cottage Garden. Both were apparently at least thirty minutes which probably meant nearly an hour, so we settled on a short one everyone knew, NMBR 9.

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This is a super-quick little game, but what really makes it special is that it has almost zero set-up time. The idea is that one player turns over cards, and these indicate which of ten tiles should be played on that turn. Players take the tiles straight from the box and add them to their tableau with players making sure edges touch and when placing tiles on higher layers, there must be no overhangs and tiles must cover at least two other tiles. Players score for the number on each tile multiplied by the “story” or “floor” (thus a nine placed on the third layer (second floor) scores eighteen points). The player with the largest total is the winner.

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Everything started reasonably well with some low numbers to start, including the zero, to help players build a base. The first nine came out in time for most people to have built a base to place it on, but it was after this that it all started to go wrong. Everyone seemed to struggle to fit the numbers coming out anywhere higher than the bottom layer, and even then players discovered they had blocked themselves from the best base places. Players were were struggling to get much on their second layer, let alone the third, so by the time the last two numbers were drawn (six and one), most people had barely managed a third layer.

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The one came out and was generally placed on top for a whopping three points for most and then the six could only go on the second layer. Everyone felt they just hadn’t managed things very that well this time—all except Black that is. He had been quietly getting on with things in the corner, building his third layer and a final fourth layer for his last number. The end result was that Black ended up with a score that was one of the group’s highest ever for this game and nearly twice that of second place Teal with Green not too far behind in third. With that done, it was time to decide who would play what.

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Most people seemed to want to give the “Feature Game“, Flamecraft a go. That was OK, as we had two copies of that available, but the question was what the third game might be. Green failed to find any takers for Terraforming Mars, so in the end Pine and Teal joined him giving the Pennsylvania map for Ticket to Ride a go. The Pennsylvania map is part of Map Collection Volume 5 and is the reverse side to the United Kingdom board. All the Ticket to Ride games are built round the same basic idea: on their turn, players either take carriage cards from the market or use carriage cards to pay to place trains on the map connecting cities together. Players score points for placing pieces on the map and for completing tickets (connecting two places on the board).

Ticket to Ride Map Collection: Volume 5 – United Kingdom & Pennsylvania

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Each map has special rules and or mechanisms that are unique to it. In the case of the Pennsylvania map, this is the ability to acquire Shares. Each time a player completes a route, they claim a Share token for one of the companies depicted next to that route. At the end of the game, whoever holds the most Shares in each company receives points. The trio entered into the game without much thought of how it might be best played, so started out doing their best to complete tickets, with the Shares just an added bonus. Pine was the first to place a train, from Johnstown to Altoona, while Green and Teal continued to collect cards. Teal was second to place trains, a long route on the eastern side from New York to Philadelphia and Green was a little later in the north west.

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There wasn’t much else going on except card collecting, and there didn’t seem to be any Locomotive cards in the deck. When Pine extended his single train westwards to Pittsburg, there was a groan from Green—he had just been unable to get the colours he needed for the same track and now had to go the long way round. Adding to Green’s woes, Teal then took the three train route in from Towanda to Scranton, that he’d wanted for his two point ticket. Annoyingly, it didn’t have a specified colour, so he could have placed something there almost any time, but had been concentrating on getting the colours for the routes into Johnstown for his bigger value ticket.

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When Pine then claimed the final entry into Johnstown to completely block Green out, he was convinced his game was over, with two failed tickets before it was even half way. With a handful of train cards and no-where else to go, Green was the first to take new tickets, keeping just one. After placing trains along the northern edge of the state and into Canada, Green had another go at taking tickets, this time keeping two. With there being a big fifteen point bonus for the most completed tickets and no bonus for longest continuous string of train pieces, this version of Ticket to Ride encouraged everyone to place trains on almost any route.

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And this was without the Shares—everyone had been been quietly collecting them. Pine seemed to be going for a lot of the highest value, the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, although that was mostly because he kept forgetting he had them. Teal was collecting a variety, but was the first to take Shares in a lot of the lower value companies (which had fewer Shares available). In fact he was so entranced with the share collecting, he was placing his trains on routes to collect shares and forgetting about his ticket completion, which was to be his downfall.

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Pine brought the game to a close with just two trains left leaving Green and Teal to place one more two train route each, though Pine was unable to place any more trains for one last Share. Not terribly surprisingly, Pine eschewed Teal’s suggestion of taking tickets. He’d taken some earlier and although in this game players get four tickets and only need to keep one, he still felt they looked awfully difficult to do. Plus with trains all over the board, it seemed very unlikely that a route may have already been completed, much more so than in some of the other versions of the game where it sometimes feels like it is worth a shot.

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The final scoring was to prove interesting: scores for just placing train pieces on the board were all relatively close. Everyone had to get their fingers and toes out to score the Shares, but in the end found the scores were all very close on these as well, even though everyone had had different approaches towards them. It was the tickets that were to be the deciding factor. As mentioned, Teal had largely forgotten about his routes, and although he had managed two of them, the last was incomplete and counted against him, giving him a ticket score in single digits. Pine had completed four tickets with most of them being good scorers. Green had also managed to complete four tickets, but this score was off-set by his two failures from the early part of the game.

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The tie for the most ticket bonus was “friendly” so they both scored it, but those failed tickets cost Green a total of around forty points, roughly Pine’s winning margin. As the group packed away, they discussed the Pennsylvania map and agreed it was quite good. Although the Shares score was fairly even, the fact that the bonus was for tickets and not the longest continuous set of trains, meant everyone tended to build all over the board rather than focusing on a connected set. The feeling was that playing again people might well go for even more of the short routes to gain more Shares, rather than the long high scoring routes—food for thought from a very worthy Ticket to Ride expansion.

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By this time it was nearly 10pm, but Teal wanted to try out the cooperative game, The Lost Expedition. The box suggested thirty to fifty minutes, but Teal assured the group that it was unlikely to take that long and everyone would probably die fairly quickly. He had played it solo a few times and always died, so was keen to try it with a team. The idea of the game is that they take the role of a team of three in search of the lost legendary explorer, Percy Fawcett. The game has really nice artwork a little reminiscent of Tin Tin style and large, easy to read cards. Teal explained the rules, but it wasn’t until play started that Green and Pine really understood how it worked and it wasn’t really that difficult.

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Each player started with a hand of four cards and took it in turns to lay one forming a route, with the numbered cards increasing in value. This was creating a path for the explorers to travel, with some loses and some benefits, and several cards which also allowed them to skip or swap other cards on the track. This meant that if there was a particularly bad card the players could try and place it after one that allowed following cards to be skipped, and therefore not have to deal with it at all. In the first “Morning” round, the group each played two cards from their hand. Once that was done, they then started down the path, deciding what to do with each one.

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There were usually several choices: some had compulsory things to do, others were optional. For example, for the Panther card the group had to decide on whether to use one of the three bullets the team start the expedition with (leading Pine to comment on how stupid it was to enter a several day jungle adventure with only three bullets!) in order to gain three food, or to lose a health token to skip over the card. Once the first path was completed, the group progressed onto the next part, the “evening”, building a path from the remaining cards in the order of placement (the face value on the card was irrelevant now).

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Fortunately, the group had a couple of skips and swaps (allowing them to switch the position of two cards on the path), and by the end they had taken several steps on the main route through the jungle towards their goal. The group had taken a few health hits along with the way, but their three characters still seemed to have at least two or three of their initial four health points remaining. The next day everyone again started with four cards and by the end of the morning phase the team were only two steps from the goal, but their health was beginning to look a little poor. With the evening placements the group somehow managed to make those final two steps with the first two cards of the path before anything bad happened.

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The team had beaten the game, however, it was with the easy setting which has only seven spaces on the main route through the jungle—the standard game has nine! Nevertheless, Teal was pleased to have finally beaten the game and Green and Pine had enjoyed it too. It is a clever little co-operative game that really encourages discussion and doesn’t let one player dominate. With the hand of cards it also provided an element of individual game play and decision making, further preventing the “alpha gamer” problem that often blights cooperative games. As a result, this game might well appeal to those who do not normally enjoy them and this one could well get another outing.

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Meanwhile, the other two tables were playing the “Feature Game“, Flamecraft. This is a game where players take the role of Flamekeepers, gathering items, placing dragons and casting enchantments to enhance the Shops of the town with the aim of finishing the game with the most Reputation points. A sort of worker-placement game, players take it in turns to firstly move their dragon to one of the Shops and then either Gather resources from it and optionally play a dragon into the Shop, or spend resources to Enchant or upgrade it so it provides more resources. This sounds very simple and not terribly exciting, but the interplay between the actions on the dragon cards and the large pile of available Shops is what makes the game interesting.

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When a player Gathers resources they can also activate or “Flame” one dragon and the special ability for the Shop (if it has one). In contrast, a player that Enchants a Shop, they can activate all the dragons in the Shop, but cannot activate any special ability associate with the store. There are six different types of Artisan Dragon and, although every card has a unique name and artwork, the actions are the same for any one type. For example, all Diamond Dragons allow the active player to take three gems from the supply, and all Bread Dragons allow them to take another Artisan Dragon card from the market or face down deck.

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Players get Reputation points for Enchanting Shops: they pay resources to buy one of the face up cards from the Enchantment market and add it to the Shop they are at which must match the Resource type. There are other ways of getting Reputation though. For example activating a Plant dragon allows a player to gift another person any resource and in return get two Reputation points. Some of the Shops also give Reputation points, but perhaps one of the best source is through Fancy Dragons. These are special dragons which are effectively Goal cards.

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Players start the game with two Fancy dragons and choose one to keep and add to their hand. These come in two types—day and night. Daytime Fancy dragons (marked with a sun) can be completed at any point during the player’s turn and give points in exchange for Resources or manipulating the game so certain conditions are met. In contrast, nighttime Fancy dragons are evaluated at the end of the game giving points, for example, for being the player with the most of one Resource or for each Resource of which you have an odd number.

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Both groups began with the slightly simpler, purple enchantment deck and without the special helper cards (which are an optional addition to the game that provide a one-time special ability to each player). Just as Byzantium, Ivory and Blue were about to start, Pink rocked up and joined the game so after the set up had been adjusted and the rules were explained they got going. Blue started by collecting Resources. On the first play, Flamecraft has a tendency to feel a little bit aimless, but as soon as the special (non-start) Shops started to come out, things get a little more interesting. Although there are only six different types of Artisan dragons, the interplay between them and the Shop powers is much more interesting than it seems at first glance.

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Ivory was quick to get a feel for things and soon scored some points, as was Byzantium, who was the only one around the first table that had played it before. Pink and Blue were a little slower to get off the ground, but soon started to improve their Reputation as well. There was a bit of a rules glitch towards the end when they realised they had forgotten to put out at least one new Shop, but otherwise play proceeded very smoothly to the end of the game. None of the Shops with the wild icon came out, but there was an awful lot of iron available from early in the game.

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There was also a bit of a general shortage of Bread dragons, which is significant as activating them allows players to take another Artisan dragon card, and the few that were played were moved all over the board by people playing Potion dragons. It was a close game though with lots of to-ing and fro-ing, but when Blue had the chance, she triggered the end of the game by taking the last of the Artisan dragons, giving everyone one last turn which they tried to use to their best advantage. Blue just got her nose in front with Ivory a point behind, but there were still nighttime Fancy dragons to add on and points from dragongeld too.

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Unfortunately for Ivory, his extras exactly matched Blue’s so her single point lead remained, with Byzantium taking third. The second Flamecraft group were slightly slower to get started and were still very much underway with both the Ticket to Ride/Lost Expedition and first Flamecraft groups finished. Pine, Teal and Ivory headed home, so while the second Flamecraft group finished and Byzantium watched, Pink, Green and Blue played a quick game of the filler, No Thanks!. This is one of our old favourites and is very simple with players either taking the face up card on their turn or paying a chip to pass the problem on to the next player.

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The player with the lowest face up total wins, so eyebrows were raised when Green started collecting cards in the thirties. If players get a run, only the lowest of the set count to their final score, but since nine of the thirty-four cards have been removed from the deck it is dangerous to bank on building long runs. Pink picked up the four as almost the first card of the game, and managed to build quite a long run over the course of the game. All was going well until he ran out of chips and was forced to take cards he didn’t want. This also screwed up Green’s plans as he wasn’t able to make the most of his high value cards and force Pink and Blue to give him chips.

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Worse, Pink took a couple of cards Green really wanted. Blue, who started collecting cards in the high teens extended her run into the low twenties. The final card she needed, the seventeen was the final card in the deck and she snaffled it at her first chance to end the game and give her a run from fifteen to twenty-one. After a couple of recounts, Pink and Green finished in a tie with a massive sixty-nine points, more than twice Blue’s winning score.

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The second game of Flamecraft was just coming to an end, but unfortunately, they had a slight rules malfunction and were playing that emptying either the Fancy dragon or Enchantment deck triggered the endgame, when it is the Artisan dragon or Enchantment deck according to the rules as written. Usually, it is Blue that makes these sort of rules errors, so despite having read the rules at least three times in the last few hours, she panicked and checked them yet again, just in case. The second group had a shortage of Bread dragons as well, though for a slightly different reason.

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The selection of Artisan dragons in the face up market was almost entirely “Toast” for most of the game—Black shuffled so they blamed him. This meant players spent most of the game taking Artisan dragons blind from the top of the face down draw deck. As a result, players didn’t have Bread dragons in hand, so only a couple of Bread dragons were placed in Shops and they just got pulled from pillar to post for the whole game. The Shop shuffling was slightly better though and there were some that came out that were new Plum and Jade (who had both played before), which was nice. The game was also close, with Jade taking victory by a single point from Plum with Purple taking third a few points behind.

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Learning outcome: Even dragons like a nice sandwich.

Essen 2017

It is that time of year again when the gamers’ minds turn to Essen and – The Internationale Spieltage. To Gamers worldwide, Essen is synonymous with the largest games fair in Europe and, arguably, the world. The fair runs Thursday to Sunday in mid/late-October every year and is the one of the biggest and most significant of all the boardgame conventions with many new releases and timed to coincide with the end of October. This year the first day will be this Thursday, 26^th October and games, publishers and their wares are all making their way to Germany for four days of fun and games.

– Image from merz-verlag-en.com

Last year several of the group went, and they came back with a lot of expansions for well-loved games like Istanbul, Colt Express, and Orléans and picked up some new games like Key to the City – London, Ticket to Ride: Rails & Sails and Cottage Garden. This year, new games include Queendomino, Indian Summer, Altiplano and Keyper, with expansions to old favourites like Isle of Skye, Imhotep, Ticket to Ride, Terraforming Mars and Splendor as well. Once again, several locals are going and they are sure to bring back some interesting toys to play with over the coming months.

– Image used with permission of designer Richard Breese

2nd May 2017

With the inevitable pizzas mostly dealt with, we started the evening with one of Red’s “silly little games from Germany”. Tarantel Tango (aka Tarantula Tango) is a daft little “get rid of your cards” game with the addition of animal noises. The idea is that each player starts with a deck of face down cards which will be placed face up in one of five piles located around a central pentagon. On their turn, the active player first makes a noise in response to the animal and number of spiders on the previous player’s card before placing their own card in a location dictated by the number of animals on the previous player’s card. Thus if a player’s card depicts one donkey and a spider the next player says, “Eee-ore” and places their card on the top of the next pile. If the card had two donkeys, the card would be placed on the next pile but one, on the other hand, if there were two spiders, the player would have to make a double animal noise, “Eee-ore, Eee-ore!”

– Image by boardGOATS

Simple enough, but things were confused by the fact that the animal art was like something from a Tim Burton Film, so it was easy to confuse them. Also, according to the rules, a cow says “Moo-moo” (not “Moo”), which means with two spiders the active player must say, “Moo-moo moo-moo” – something that it is easy to forget when a noise must be made and a card played in less than two seconds, under the pressure of everyone else’s gaze. Worse, some cards have no spiders at all which means the player must remain mute. The penalty for failing to make the correct noise or put the card in the right place is to pick up all the cards on the table. A similar penalty awaits when a Tarantula Card is played – everyone must slap their hand on the table and woe-betide the player who is last…

– Image by boardGOATS

Once Red had roped Pine and Ivory into her madness, they were joined by Pink and Blue who read the rules out. Black’s comment from the next table was that it would take ages, but neither he nor Purple could be persuaded to join in, so with Burgundy still finishing his pizza everyone else started, what they thought would be a quick bit of fun. It seemed like ages before the first person had to pick up cards and before long it looked like Pink had it in the bag with just three cards left. Unfortunately, the stress of being so close meant he inevitably tripped over his words and gathered a large pile of cards as a consequence. Ivory was next and managed to reduce his hand to just one card before making his mistake. From here everyone took it in turns to reduce their stack to small handful of cards, but fail to actually get rid of the final few, by which time Purple was in such fits of laughter she was practically soiling the furniture. It had been a lot of fun, especially at the start, but we were all quite pleased when we could finally move on to something else, so there was relief all round when Pine finally managed to get rid of his last card successfully.

– Image by boardGOATS

With the gratuitous silliness over, we split into two groups, the first of which consisted entirely of people who hadn’t eaten any pizza and fancied making up for it with the pizza based “Feature Game” Mamma Mia!. This is an unusual little card game designed by Uwe Rosenberg of Bohnanza fame (as well as designer of games like Agricola, Le Havre and the more recent Cottage Garden). Everyone in the group likes Bohnanza, but Red is especially fond of it and was particularly keen to give this one a go. Uwe Rosenberg has a liking for unusual mechanisms in his card games and Mamma Mia! is no exception. The idea is that players are trying to fulfill pizza orders by first putting toppings in the oven and then sneaking their order cards in on top before another player does the same and claims the toppings for their order. So, each player has a deck of personal order cards and a random hand of toppings. On their turn, each player must place at least one topping card in the oven pile (all the same type) and may follow it with an order card if they choose.

– Image by boardGOATS

All cards are placed face down so players have to try to remember what cards have been played. Once a player has placed cards in the oven, they draw back up to the hand limit of seven, but the catch is that cards can only be drawn from either the ingredients pile or their own personal order pile. This is very clever because players have a hand limit of seven and this is something that needs to be handled with care: order cards are needed to give a target to aim for, but too many and there isn’t enough space to hold enough ingredients to build sets. Just to add to the challenge, we included the Double Ingredients mini expansion which adds a small number of cards which contribute to toppings instead of one. Black and Purple had played the game before, but it was completely new to Pine and Red and it took a little while for them to get their heads round it.

– Image by boardGOATS

Pine (who’s special ingredient was chili) cleared himself out in the first round taking an order for “Pizza Bombastica” (with at least fifteen toppings) and struggled to get back into the game. Black (special ingredient pepperoni) on the other hand failed to place orders for any pizza in the first two rounds, instead, as Pine pointed out, “Saved himself to make ‘Quality’ pizza!” Meanwhile, Red (with mushroom as her special ingredient) was very confused and was struggling to understand what was going on. This was a feeling that wasn’t helped when Pine requested a “Pineapply-looking-olive” in the final round. Despite her evident confusion, Red was definitely proving to be the “Queen of Pizza”, a title that also earned her accusations of “card counting” (something she might have tried had she understood what was going on). In the final accounting, Red finished with seven orders, three more than Purple who had played a quiet, but very effective game making good use of her special ingredient (olives).

– Image by boardGOATS

While the pizzaioli were busy making pizza, the other group (consisting predominantly of pizza eaters) were settling into a game of Last Will. This is a game we’ve played before, but that was nearly two years ago, so it required a recap of the rules. Last Will is basically the boardgame equivalent of the 1985 film “Brewster’s Millions”. The story goes that in his last will, a rich gentleman stated that all of his millions would go to the nephew who could enjoy money the most. In order to find out who that would be, each player starts with a large amount of money, in this case £70, and whoever spends it first and declares bankruptcy is the rightful heir, and therefore the winner. The game is played over a maximum of seven rounds each comprising three phases. First, starting with the start player, everyone chooses the characteristics of their turn for the coming round from a fixed list by taking it in turns to place their planner on the planning board. This dictates the number of cards they will get at the start of the round, the number of “Errand Boys” they will be able to place, the number of Actions they will get and where they will go in the turn order.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor PaulGrogan

Inevitably, this is a compromise, so choosing to go first when placing Errand Boys, might guarantee the action of choice, but will only give one card at the start of the round and crucially, only one Action. On the other hand, choosing to sacrifice position in the turn order could give three or four Actions. Since all but two cards are discarded at the end of the round and Actions must be used or lost, this decision is critical. Actions are important, but so are Errand Boys as they allow players to control the cards they are drawing as well as manipulate the housing market and increase the space on their player board. The heart of the game is the cards, however, which are played in three different ways: as a one off (white bordered cards); on a player’s board where they can be used multiple times (black bordered cards) or as a modifier (slate bordered cards) which enable players to spend more when black or white bordered cards. Thus, White bordered “Event Cards” cost a combination of money and Actions to play, but once played, are discarded. In contrast, Black bordered cards cost at least one Action to play, and occupy space on the player’s board, but are kept and can be activated once in each round.

– Image used with permission of BGG reviewer EndersGame

Black bordered cards come in three different types: “Expenses” which allow players to spend money; “Helpers” which additionally allow give players some sort of permanent bonus, and “Properties” which are by far the most complex cards in the game. Properties are an excellent way of spending money as they are bought for a given amount and will either depreciate every round, or will require maintenance which can be expensive. Unfortunately, players cannot declare bankruptcy if they have property and must sell them. This is where the property market comes in: one of the possible errands is to adjust the property market, so if a property is bought when the market is high and sold when it is low, this is another possible avenue for losing money. At the end of the round, everyone reduces their hand to just two cards and loses any left-over actions, which puts players under a lot of pressure as it makes it very hard to plan. So the game is an unusual mixture of timing, building card combinations, strategy and tactics.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor bswihart

Burgundy went first as he was the last person to pay for something – he paid for his pizza while everyone else had put their purchases on a tab. The random draw meant everyone started with £120 (in poker chips), making for a slightly longer game. Only Ivory hadn’t played it before, but it was such a long time since Blue, Pink and Burgundy it was only a vague memory, and none of them felt they had ever really fully understood the game. Inevitably therefore, there was plenty of moaning and groaning from Burgundy and a lot of puzzled expressions from Pink. Accusations of “winning moves” were aimed at Blue (accompanied by appropriate denials) when she was the first to take her dog and a chef on a Boat Trip and then bought herself a small mansion. Property is the key, as it is expensive to buy and either costs to maintain or depreciates, however, it must be sold before a player can go bankrupt.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor Toynan

Maintenance costs or depreciation alone are not sufficient to ensure a player spends enough to win, so players need to find a away to make their properties cost more. Blue first added a Steward (who enabled her to carryout maintenance on a property without needing an action) and then an Estate Agent to her portfolio. This latter was particularly useful as it enabled her to over pay for property by £2 when buying and sell for £2 below market value. Meanwhile, Ivory had bought a couple of valuable farms to which he added animals, then he maximised his outgoings by adding a Training Ground. Not though want of trying, but Pink was the only one who failed to get a helper who would provide an extra action. Instead, he had to make do with a two Hectic Days (which gave him extra actions) which he coupled with visits to the Ball. The first of these was very effective, the second less so. By this time he was beginning to run out of space on his player board, so Pink then decided to get an extension to his player board, but Ivory had other ideas and kept taking it first, much to Pink’s disgust.

– Image used with permission of BGG reviewer EndersGame

While all this was going on, Burgundy was muttering away and shaking his head ominously, quietly buying properties, and making reservations at restaurants with occasional trips to the theatre or trips on the river. As the game entered its final stages it was becoming clear that it was Ivory who had really got to grips with the game though. The extra messenger card came up and, as everyone had other things they wanted to do, he took it cheaply which gave him a little extra flexibility in his options. Blue and Burgundy had began selling properties first, leaving them with a lot of cash to get rid of. In contrast, although he had no money left, Ivory still had to sell his farms and dispose of the income before he could actually go bankrupt. Despite Burgundy and Pink’s best efforts to get in his way though, Ivory just made it, finishing £1 in debt. Nobody else could match that, with the Blue the closest with £16 credit.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor CellarDoor

Mamma Mia! finished long before Last Will, and the group were looking for something else to play. Blue (from the next table) suggested they might like to try Indigo, which she described as “a bit like Tsuro but backwards”. Tsuro is a simple “last man standing” game where players take it in turns to place a tile in front of their stone and move it along the path. Indigo is also a game of moving stones, however, instead of trying to keep one stone on the board, players are trying to move different coloured stones off the board through their own “gates”. There are other differences too, for example, the tiles are hexagonal rather than square and instead of choosing which tile to lay from a hand of three, tiles are drawn at random. To make up for the random draw, players can place tiles anywhere they like, which enables players to try to build routes from their gates to stones, rather than the other way round.

– Image by boardGOATS

One of the cleverest parts of the game is its semi-cooperative nature – with four, players share their each of the gates with one of the other players. This introduces an interesting tension between working with other players while simultaneously competing with them. So, as Purple commented, players that don’t work together get nothing. Black, on the other hand, was quite taken with the pretty patterns the tiles made on the board. It was quite a tight game throughout – since stones are stored secretly and have different values, it wasn’t easy to be certain who was in the lead. In the event, the lead probably swapped several times, and the game finally finished in a tie between Black and Pine, both with ten points, with Red following on in third, three points behind.

– Image by boardGOATS

Last Will was still underway, so the hunt resumed for another game, and Blue suggested Pueblo. Although a slightly older game, this was a recent acquisition and Pink had met pine when he collected it from the village Post Office. Although he hadn’t known precisely what it was at the time, the rattle had given away the contents as a boardgame. Pueblo has a very robust rattle as it consists of lots of very solid plastic pieces. It is one of those games that is quite different to anything else; Blue and Pink had played it quite a bit out in the garden over the weekend and thought the others might like to give it a go, especially as it was simple enough to play from the rules.

– Image by boardGOATS

Each player has a set of coloured pieces and a matching number of neutral pieces. These are paired up to make a cube consisting of one coloured and one neutral piece. On their turn, the active player places any unpaired pieces they may have on the grid shown on the board. If they don’t have any unpaired pieces, then they break up a cube and choose which half to play. Once they have placed a piece, the active player moves the Chieftain along the track around the edge of the board. They can choose whether to move him one, two or three spaces, after which, he looks at the building along the grid lines and scores any coloured bricks he can see. At the end of the game, the Chieftain makes one last trip round the board and the player with the lowest score at the end wins.

– Image by boardGOATS

The game was quite close, and everyone felt that the idea was great but that the game play was not as exciting as it sounded. Unfortunately, everyone also suffered a bit from “Analysis Paralysis”, and as a result, the game felt like it dragged, a problem that was undoubtedly made worse playing with four than with two. This is because with two there is just one opponent and the game becomes one of cat and mouse; with more players this tension is diluted. As the game progressed, it seemed to drag more and more, so the final trip round the track was dispensed with leaving Pine the winner, just two points ahead of Purple. With that over, and Last Will coming to an end, Pine, Purple and Black headed off for an early night leaving Red to watch over the final moves before it was time to for everyone else to head home too.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: Games that are a hit for some players are not guaranteed to work for others.

21st March 2017

As usual, we started with a debate about who would play what. Green picked out a load of games he fancied, including The Voyages of Marco Polo which he had only played the once before and fancied playing again. Blue commented that it was the sort of game that Ivory would probably enjoy and with Black having spent quite a bit of time playing it online, he joined the others to make a trio. The Voyages of Marco Polo, won the Deutscher Spiele Preis in 2015 and was designed by the same pairing that put together Tzolk’in: The Mayan Calendar, another game we have enjoyed recently and is a game we should play more often. The game is played over five rounds with players recreating Marco Polo’s journey to China via Jerusalem and Mesopotamia and over the “Silk Road”. Each player has a different character and special power in the game. Each round, the players roll their five personal dice and can perform use them to perform one action each per turn. The actions include: gathering resources, gathering camels, earning money, buying purchase orders and travelling. The game ends with players receiving victory points for arriving in Beijing, fulfilling the most purchase orders, and having visited the cities on secret city cards that each player gets at the start of the game.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor henk.rolleman

Last time he played, Green had been very successful with Kubilai Khan. This time, after dice rolling to see who started, Green got to go first, but although he had the opportunity to take Kubilai Khan again, he decided to go for a different challenge. So this time Green went for Matteo Polo giving him the white dice and the extra contract every round. Ivory was next and went for Mercator ex Tabriz, a potentially powerful character which would give him an extra resource every time anyone else got one from the favour track or resource selection track. Black, having played often online, opted for Kubilai Khan and starting from Beijing with the immediate ten point bonus, but no other advantage. The fourth character that was rejected by all, was Wilhelm von Rubruk who allowed the player to place houses on cities they passed through without the need to stop (Black commented afterwards that this was a a very difficult character to be successful with). Next, each player received four destination cards from which to choose two. With many groans of dismay everyone quickly discarded one card they felt was all but impossible to complete and then had to choose the worst of the remaining cards for the second discard. No one felt very happy with their selections, but the cards dictated the strategies.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor jsper

For Green the strategy was simple, get as many contracts completed as possible and not worry too much about travelling. However, some of the contracts provided extra free movement on completion, so with minimal travelling some of the cities could be completed. For much of the game Green and Ivory laboured under the false understanding that only one contract could be completed per round. This meant that after he had secured the resources he needed for his one contract, Green was left with some “spare” actions, which he decided to use for travelling and money collection. It was only at the end of the penultimate round that Black corrected their misunderstanding and that although only one contract could be completed per turn, several could be done per round! It was all a little too late for Green though. The extra free contract he got in the last round was a doozy, giving him another new contract when completed, but only yielding three points. Unfortunately the new contract released was also low value at only two points (although it was then easy to complete).

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor henk.rolleman

Meanwhile, Black quietly got on with his game, regularly choosing the six camel resource and buying black dice to travel slowly from Beijing, down the board, and releasing the three action city. He used this to good effect gaining lots of purple resource bundles for contracts. It was while activating one of these city actions he revealed that the number on the die used indicated the number of times it could used. Cries of foul play came from Green and Ivory. Green had used a four spot on the “coins for houses” action before and Ivory would have used his six die on it this round instead of the five coin action space. Black scurried to the rules and discovered that for this “coins for houses” action, it was the number of houses which could be claimed for by the die. In other words, he could use a die of two to claim only two houses even if he had three. A player would need a three spot die to claim for all. So in the end, nothing changed for Ivory and Green, though it was something to try to remember for next time.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor henk.rolleman

Ivory decided that money was important and regularly placed his die in the purse and the “five coin” action. He was able to do because he was gaining so many resources from Black and Green’s actions, thanks to his special character. This kept his contracts ticking over and he managed to travel around the board and complete all but one of his cities and get to Beijing. This left him with with a dilemma in the final round: he needed a high value die and used his spare camels to provide a black, but only rolled a one. Green gave him another camel (thanks to his resource collection). So Ivory placed in the favour track for two more and bought another black die, this time rolled a three… In the end he decided to just take coins to try to get an extra point.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

It was moot in the end. Green managed seven contracts in all, one more than Ivory and two more than Black, so Green got the seven point bonus after all. With twenty-nine coins at the end he was one short of an extra bonus point, though it wouldn’t have been enough. Black had made a mistake in his travelling and not got the cities he meant to – he failed to get one of his cards and only built two houses. Despite this, his ten point bonus for Beijing and several high value contracts gave him second place. Ivory had had a great game though, picking up six contracts, taking second place in Beijing, completing one city card and taking a full 10 points from four cities in total. It was more than enough to give him a three point lead and win the game. Ivory decided that Blue was right, he had really enjoyed The Voyages of Marco Polo.

– Image used with permission of
BGG contributor bovbossi

On the neighbouring table, Blue, Burgundy, Purple and Pine had started off with the “Feature Game”, Habitats, This is a very light tile laying game, which comes with small ceramic animals instead of the more usual wooden player pieces. There are a lot of tile laying games available, but there are a couple of things that make this one a little different. Firstly, tiles selection: there is an array of tiles and on their turn, players move their ceramic animal one step forward, left or right and take the tile it would have landed on and add it to their park. Players can add their tile almost anywhere they want, so long as it borders at least one other tile. The second unusual aspect of the game is the scoring: tiles feature an animal and a terrain, but to score they most be surrounded by a set number of other given terrain tiles. The game is played over four rounds with bonuses after the first three and final scoring at the end of the game. Pine, with his orange Camel started out very strongly making him a bit of a target, however, although there is plenty of interaction, it is quite difficult to interfere with their plans a lot. Burgundy started a little slower, but soon got his “extremely correct little Zebra” picking up tiles he wanted (as Pine said, “All zebras have a Hitler mustache and pink ears, don’t they?”).

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

Purple and her Penguin got a little trapped in the early stages, but got herself out of the mess quite quickly. The bonuses were for the most different landscape tiles in the first round, different numbers of areas in the second and for a small compact park in the third. They didn’t really seem to add much to the scores though, and with hindsight, some players might have done better ignore them completely as it is possible they were more of hindrance than a help since the most anyone got was five points (Pine and his orange Camel). That said, the final scores were quite tight, with Blue and her yellow Leopard finishing just five points ahead of Pine who took a solid second. On reflection, the difference was Blue’s effective use of Diagonal Tower tiles which allowed her to double score a lot of her animals. Interestingly, the most recent edition of Spielbox had had a review of Habitats and they had been decidedly unimpressed. While we agreed that it was quite a light game and certainly wasn’t long, the over-riding view was positive and Burgundy, summed it up when he commented, “Quite liked that”.

– Image by BGG contributor styren

The Voyages of Marco Polo was still underway on the next table, so the group decided there was time for something else. Pink had wanted to play Cottage Garden at the last Didcot Games Club meeting, but the number of players had been all wrong, so he had played it with Blue over the weekend. Since it was fresh in her memory, there was a good chance of getting the rules right. In any case, like Habitats, it is a fairly light tile-laying game, basically the boardgame equivalent of Tetris. Cottage Garden is similar to the earlier, two-player game, Patchwork, but with a slightly different front-end and scoring mechanism. The idea is that at on their turn, the active player chooses a tile from the appropriate row of the square “market garden”, and add it to one of their two flower beds. If they have completed one or both of their flower beds by the end of their turn, then they are scored.