Tag Archives: Die Wandelnden Türme

8th October 2024

As it was our twelfth birthday party, lots of people arrived early for pizza (or an amazing Mixed Grill in the case of Lime and some lovely veggie curry and fiery chilli for Pine), followed by GOAT cupcakes. While everyone waited for food, arrivals from Essen were handed out, including Nucleum, Faraway and Flamme Rouge expansions; Let’s Go! To Japan and Cascadia mini expansions, and Die Wandelnden Türme (aka Wandering Towers), Keyflower and Dixit promotional items. There was a lot of chatter too, about flooding, pot holes, the 34 road closure, full car parks and water leaks, as well as Essen. Indigo and Navy weren’t eating, so had a play with Villagers while the others entertained themselves. This is a card game where players “Draft” Villager cards from a market (called the Road) and then add them to their Village.

– Image by boardGOATS

Some Villagers have prerequisites before they can be “Built”. These are cards that must exist in the player’s Village before the Villager can be added on top to make a chain, cards that must be unlocked by paying money to other Villagers in their own Village, someone else’s Village or the Bank. Some cards allow players to draft extra cards, while others enable players to Build extra Villagers and Special Villagers give powerful special actions. Twice during the game there “Market” Phases when players get income from their cards, and the player with the most money at the end of the game is the winner. Somewhere along the lines, Indigo and Navy had a bit of a rules malfunction, and as everyone else had already started the now traditional birthday “Feature Game“, Crappy Birthday, they abandoned Villagers.

– Image by boardGOATS

Crappy Birthday is a party game where players give each other comedy birthday presents and the recipient has to decide who gave the best and worst gifts. We play a slight variant of rules as written, where we play a single year of birthdays with each gamer getting one turn to receive gift cards from everyone else from their hand of five cards. With lots of players the pile of gifts can get quite substantial and this time everyone was getting thirteen gifts to decide which was the best and which was the worst. The players who gave these then received a point for knowing the recipient so well and the player with the most points at the end of the year is the winner.

– Image by boardGOATS

One of the reasons this game is so fun is that we learn a bit about each other. Pink went first as his real birthday was next. He liked the idea of an Easter Island Mo’ai for the garden (not that Blue was so impressed with the idea), but disliked the idea of cave scuba diving. Plum chose a haunted castle as her favourite (because she loves castles), but pulled a face at the idea of earlobe stretching rings. Purple had the matching neck rings, but these weren’t her least favourite gift, that was a giant swing ride, while she loved the idea of a penguin collection. Byzantium showed his environmental credentials by picking a Global Warming Study as his favourite, while eschewing Jade’s wing suit dive gift.

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Teal felt that trees were quite beautiful enough without being carved, but really liked the idea of a ride-on bike mower. Jade wasn’t a fan of Cobalt’s offering of Polka lessons, but loved the idea of trip to Mars from Sapphire, while Sapphire felt “perkiness training” wasn’t something he really needed, but the thrill-seeker loved the reciprocal gift from Jade, a roller-coaster ride. Lime fancied a three day festival trip, but wasn’t keen on a week eating nothing but Spam. Blue didn’t fancy the creepy baby sculpture to go with the Mo’ai, but fancied Pink’s gift of a Safari (provided she had time to train for the walking element). Ivory didn’t feel his life would be improved by a free satellite TV dish, but always one to send his meeples into space in Tapestry, grasped the opportunity to join them with a space walk.

– Image by boardGOATS

It turned out that Navy has a problem with bees, so Teal’s gift of a bee keeping which he personally would have loved, didn’t go down well, but much to Pink’s surprise, his gymnastics camp was received really well. Indigo was quite abrupt in her negative response to the idea of paparazzi following her about, but liked the idea of exploring a volcano while Cobalt didn’t feel he needed his soul to be searched, but fancied flying lessons. The final birthday of the year was Pine, who didn’t get his usual pile of horses and meat, instead getting the opportunity to run with the bulls, which having known someone who had done it and been gored, wasn’t something he fancied. Pine’s favourite was Larry the Lobster (not that he has space in his garden for him), one of the Big Things of Australia, that Pink and Blue happened to see on their visit there last year.

– Image by boardGOATS

Lime was the last to break his duck and was very pleased not to end the game without scoring any points, indeed, nobody finished with the dreaded bagel, which was nice. The runniest of run-away winners was Teal though, with five successful (or unsuccessful) gifts, with Pink and Cobalt joint runners up with three. It was interesting though, this time there were quite a lot of gifts that people gave “in error” where as Teal commented, he “Gave pressies he thought people would like, but they all hated them!” With the birthday formalities dealt with, there was time for something relatively short. First up was Jade who was very keen to give his new Faraway expansion, Le Peuple du Dessous (aka The People Below).

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Faraway is a fairly simple little game, but one that really messes with your head: players play cards from their hand of three, adding them to a row of cards, left to right, but at the end of they score the eight cards from right to left. The Peuple du Dessous expansion adds just seventeen cards, but these include the Guides and the Three-Eyed Ones, two new Peoples with more opportunities to score, as well as giving enough cards to play with seven people. This time there were only five though, with Sapphire, Byzantium, Indigo and Navy joining Jade. Navy and Indigo were new to the game and, as usual, it took a little bit of getting used to. That said, the both did really well with Indigo ending up with seventy-seven points, four more than Sapphire in second with Navy taking third, just one point behind.

– Image by boardGOATS

Navy and Indigo headed off and took an early night, but the other three had to wait for Plum who’s game on the other side of the room was ongoing. Faraway is a fun little game though and the expansion adds a little more, so the trio decided to give it another go. This time, Byzantium was the victor with seventy-three with Sapphire the runner up again. Meanwhile, Blue, Pink, Pine and Teal, got out Bohnanza. This is a game that is generally popular with the group, though Teal had somehow only managed to play it the once almost six months ago. This is a very simple card game, albeit slightly convoluted and very unpromising when explained, but the key is that players must not rearrange the cards in their hand.

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On their turn, players must plant the first card in their hand in one of their two been fields and may plant the second if they choose. They then turn over two cards from the deck, which must be planted before the player can move on. Fields can only contain one bean type, but beans can be traded, or even gifted, and it is the trading and negotiation that makes the game such fun. Once the two cards on the table have been planted, players can trade from their hand, but again all traded cards must be planted. Players can harvest Fields at any time with some of the bean cards dug up becoming money and larger Fields giving more money and at a better rate.

– Image by boardGOATS

Blue took some high valued Garden Beans and then sold them off to buy a third Bean Field, causing a lot of confusion for Pink who couldn’t believe it when they kept appearing even though there were only six in the deck. Teal scored well from his Chilli and Wax and Soy beans, while Pine and Blue ended up in competition for Green Beans. This time with just four, the scores were a little more varied, but Blue was the clear victor with twenty-five Bohn Thaler, five more than Pine who came second. The final game of the evening was Villagers, which was getting another outing on the other side of the room with Cobalt leading Ivory, Purple and Plum.

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After a reminder of the rules, Purple started and grabbed the Carpenter then Cobalt went next taking the Blacksmith. Both of these guaranteed their owners an income of coins (and hence points) at the expense of other players paying to use them. However, this did mean that they fell behind on building an engine to Draft and Build more cards (which Plum and Ivory focused on). From there, the first half of the game went quite quickly with everyone focusing on building their engine. Ivory managed to get a Wine Trader using a Monk as a Graper, as well as playing a Scavenger, enabling him to take slender lead after the first scoring, although the scores were all very close.

– Image by boardGOATS

In the second half of the game, Purple and Cobalt were beginning to have to make tough choices, being unable to play as many cards as they would like and not having the building cards they needed, which were also hard to come by. However, they continue gaining coins from all players. Purple had to discard quite a few cards to get starter cards which slowed her down a little, though Plum and Ivory were able to quickly get to the position to Draft and Build the max number of cards allowed; Plum in particular seemed to always have a fist full of cards. As the game progressed, more people began taking cards that others might want, with Cobalt taking Wool cards that might have been of use to Purple or Ivory. Ivory, however, was actually more focused on getting a second Vintner, already having a second Wine Trader in hand.

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Towards the end of the game, there was face down Grape card which Ivory debated taking a gamble with, but decided not to take the risk. Inevitably, when it was flipped over it turned out to be Vintner and Plum grabbed it. Ivory got very lucky during his next draft though, taking a face down Special card that was Monk, which he could then play as Vintner. Elsewhere, Purple played some Wool cards, getting two Weavers, Plum picked up some good end-game scoring cards in the Locksmith and Freemason. Cobalt focused on Solitary cards and Silver end game scoring, doing well from his Priests, Agent and Blacksmith combo. Ivory ended up focusing on the Hay cards, which scored well and that plus the two Wine Traders (and a second Scavenger), gave him a hundred and twenty-six and a two point victory over Cobalt.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: Getting old is not necessarily a bad thing.

19th March 2024

There were a few absentees again, but the group still made it into double-figures. So, after the usual chit-chat, the group split into two—the first group playing the “Feature Game“, Meadow, while the other, larger group, played a couple of lighter games. Meadow is a very smooth, engine building, set-collection card game with charming artwork. Players take on the roles of explorers competing for the title of the most skilled nature observer. Reviews refer to it as a “Splendor Killer”, that is to say, these people feel it has a similar feel to Splendor, but is a better game. It is also considerably more complex, though not especially difficult in its own right.

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Players start with four or five Action tokens (depending on player count), a Road token and a double-sided Ground card. There are four decks of cards, North, South, East and West, and players also begin with a card from each of the North, East and West decks and two from the South deck. Players then take it in turns to play one of their Action tokens either in the Market or round the Campfire, and complete the associated Actions. The Market is the simplest: this consists of a four by four grid of face up cards. Players choose a notch along the edge of the board to play their token in and this defines a row or column and the number on the token dictates which card they will take from that row.

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There are four types of cards: Ground, Observations, Landscapes and Discoveries. After taking a card from the Market, the active player then plays a card from their hand or the card drawn into the play area in front of them. In general, each card has a large symbol in the top left corner usually with smaller symbols below—these smaller symbols are prerequisites for playing a card and the player must already have them in their area before they can play the new card. Ground cards are just played in the players’ Meadows and are the lowest cards in the Meadow stacks.

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Landscape cards are similar, but require a Road tile, and are played in the Surroundings area, above the player’s Meadow. Observation and Discovery cards are played on top of existing cards (in the Meadow and Surroundings respectively), such that the new symbol replaces one of the old ones. Instead of collecting a card from the Market and playing a card, players can play their Action token in one of the notches around the Campfire. This activates the special Action shown on the token (take one card from the Market; take two Road tokens; take three cards blind from any deck and keep one; play two cards).

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Players taking the Campfire option can additionally place a bonus point token on a tree-stump between any pair of symbols as long as they are displayed in their play area. Players have three tokens (valued two, three and four points) giving a total of nine extra points at the end of the game if they manage to place them all. Finally, in the absence of anything else they can do, players can place their Action token on a bench on the Campfire board and play one card. This is really very much a last resort as this is a much weaker action, giving half or less than the other options give.

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Pink led explaining the rules to Plum, Lime and Teal, and was roundly chastised by Pine from the next table for not knowing what a Meadow was, and confusing it with “normal grassland”. The first round was a little slow as the group found their feet, but then it was all go. Plum started with a Badger card which is quite high value and features a Wolf icon, so she planned her strategy round that. As the game progressed, everyone was collecting Satchel icons and expected them to be needed for something in the second half of the game. However, after the South cards were swapped for the North deck at the half-way stage, there was a slow realisation that they were just the final step on the path (though that could change with the inclusion of expansions of course).

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Plum’s Badger card turned out to be quite difficult to place, so as players can have a hand of ten cards, she filled her hand to give her the most options. Someone else took the space around the campfire on one side of the wolf before she got to it, but as the the icons on either side weren’t as rare she was able to take the other easily enough and followed it with two more to get the full nine Bonus points, the only one to do so. There was a problem with an odd token around the fireplace that featured a Stag with a red border, that turned out to be from Envelop U: Big Encounters. This is a mini-expansion that comes with the base game, and had been confused with the core game as one token had been accidentally left at home.

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The game was enjoyed by all, though with four it perhaps slightly over-stayed its welcome a little. The eventual winner was Plum with sixty-one points nearly ten points ahead of Pink in second. Meanwhile, on the next table, the rest of the group were having a light evening, playing as a group of six. First up was Die Wandelnden Türme (aka Wandering Towers)—a game that has been very popular in the group since it first came out a eighteen months ago. The idea behind this game is that on their turn, players play two cards from their hand of three cards, one after another, performing all the moves if at all possible. There are three types of cards, those that move a Wizard, those that move a Tower and those that move either a Wizard or a Tower; in each case, the number of movement spaces is given.

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Players can only move their own Wizard and each Tower and empty space can hold up to
six wizards (if a move would exceed that limit, it cannot be made). Whenever a Wizard’s move ends in the space with the Ravenskeep, the player drops the Wizard into the keep—this is one of the key targets during the game as the winner must have all their Wizards trapped in the Ravenskeep. In contrast to Wizards, players can move any Tower segment along with everything on top of it (Tower segments and Wizards). Whenever a Tower’s move ends in a space with Tower segments already in it, the new Tower goes on top, imprisoning all the Wizards it covers—all nine towers and the Ravenskeep could end up in the same space!

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Whenever a Tower covers Wizards, imprisoning them players get to fill one of their Potion Vials, turning it over—this is the other key target during the game as the winner must have all filled all their Potion Vials. The player with both, all their Wizards in the Ravenskeep and all their Vials full of Potion, triggers the end of the game, with play continuing until everyone has had the same number of turns and all players that fulfill the criteria share victory. Jade led the group, reminding everyone of the rules and explaining them to those who had not played before.

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Cobalt managed to tease a few extra rules out of the rule book , in particular that no more than six Wizards can sit on any one Tower segment, and a player’s turn finishes immediately if they place a Wizard in the Ravenskeep. Aside from this, much amusement was had, especially as the stacks of Towers got really tall, they didn’t quite make it to the maximum of nine plus the Ravenskeep, but they did reach a good six or seven segments in one stack. Black was the first to fulfill both the end-game criteria and Cobalt trapped dropped the last of his Wizards into the keep before the round finished.

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As Cobalt still had two empty Vials, he took second place with Sapphire and Jade taking joint third. Staying together as a group of six, they then went on to play King of Tokyo, a fast dice roller along the lines of Yahtzee where players control a monster try to destroy more of the city than their opponents while also attacking the other monsters to either take them out or keep them down long enough to enable the attacker to take victory. Players each have a Monster and two dials which are used to track their Monster’s health (starting at ten) and the number of Victory Points they have gained. The winner is either the first player to earn twenty Victory Points or by being the last Monster standing.

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Players take turns before passing the Dice on, clockwise. They get a maximum of three rolls, but can stop early and any number of Dice can be put aside after each roll. The Dice are not locked, so Dice set aside after the first round can be rolled in the third if desired. The dice feature numbers one, two and three, a Claw, a Lightening Bolt, and a Heart. The numbers give the player Victory Points and the Claw indicates damage inflicted on a chosen opponent. The Lightening Bolt gives the player an energy cube which can be spent on Power Cards, and the Heart increases the Monster’s Health (though the Monster must be outside the City to be able to take advantage of this).

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Once the dice have been rolled and resolved, players can buy Power Cards from the face-up display—these typically cost between two and eight Energy, and can be very useful at helping to control the game. The other key part of the game is the Monsters’ locations: they can be “In Tokyo” or “Outside Tokyo”. To enter Tokyo a player must roll one or more Claws; when a monster in Tokyo is attacked they will take damage and the player has to decide whether to stay in Tokyo or not. If they Yield Tokyo, they allow/force the attacking monster to enter Tokyo in their place. This is critical because Monsters deal damage based on their location and any Monsters in Tokyo deal damage to all monsters outside Tokyo and vice versa.

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One of the handicaps of being in Tokyo is the fact that a player cannot heal whilst in Tokyo. However, when a Monster enters Tokyo it earns a Victory Point for doing so and if it starts its turn in Tokyo, then it earns two Victory Points. These points help a player inch towards that winning total of twenty. With six players the Tokyo Bay location on the game board is also used, effectively meaning that two Monsters can be in Tokyo at the same time, improving the balance and preventing five monsters ganging up on one, while also discouraging everyone outside Tokyo to try and displace them rather than just focus on collecting Energy, Healing or Victory Points.

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Unusually for the games the group plays, King of Tokyo has player elimination—when a player’s health falls to zero, they are out, a fate suffered by half the players in the game this time. Jade was first to be knocked out, but Sapphire and Cobalt weren’t far behind. With six players, Black’s stay in Tokyo which lasted three full rounds was quite remarkable. It was perhaps no surprise therefore that he was the eventual victor, collecting the full twenty Victory Points, some way ahead of Pine in second with eight and Purple just behind him in third.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: A meadow is grassland which is not regularly grazed instead being left to grow to produce hay.

Essen 2023

Today is the final day of this edition of the largest games fair in Europe and arguably the world, the Internationale Spieltage. Known to gamers worldwide simply as “SPIEL” or “Essen”, the annual fair is of particular significance as many new releases are scheduled to coincide with the event just in time for Christmas sales. Following the recent change in management, this year there were quite a few changes. Aside from the logo, the most noticeable was the layout in the halls—according to one game designer, every stand except his was in a new location in an effort to theme the halls. For the most part, this seemed to work, though inevitably some people will feel they lost out in the great shuffle.

– Image from spiel-essen.com

One thing that hasn’t changed, is the lack of general gaming space, especially when compared with the likes of the UK Games Expo and Gen Con. SPIEL is a games fair, not a convention—it’s purpose is to showcase new and up-coming games and sell them to the general public, but also small and medium-sized resellers. Additionally, there is a lot of business going on behind the scenes, including designers demoing games to publishers, and publishers meeting with producers and other publishers to discuss contracts. It is arguable that large amounts of playing space are counter to SPIEL’s priorities, but they could definitely do with providing more chairs—not everyone has the stamina of a twenty year old, and the number of people just sitting on the ground suggests more seating is an essential.

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Following the cancellation of SPIEL in 2020, there were restrictions on numbers for 2021 and Covid mandates in 2022 leading to reduced numbers (93,600 and 147,000 respectively), so 2023 was the first year when things were back to normal. One question therefore, has been whether numbers would return to the levels, or even exceed those of 2019, when there were 209,000 entries. It will be a few days before the statistics for 2023 are reported, but anecdotally, the answer is yes, with some exhibitors commenting that Friday was the busiest it had ever been, and the annual no-ship Maths Trade and Auction was as mad as ever.

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This year there is the usual selection of the latest releases including, The White Castle, Nucleum, Kutná Hora: The City of Silver, Evacuation, The Glade, My Gold Mine, Amygdala, Forest Shuffle and Footprints. There are also expansions for previous games like Cascadia (Landmarks), Ark Nova (Marine Worlds), Lost Ruins of Arnak (The Missing Expedition) as well as this year’s winners of the Deutscher Spiele Preis, Planet Unknown (Supermoon).

Ticket to Ride Legacy: Legends of the West

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A common theme are the re-releases and reimplementations of old favourites and there are a lot of these this year, like Ticket to Ride (Legacy: Legends of the West) Elfenland, Zooloretto, Dixit (Disney Edition), Shipyard (Second Edition) and NMBR 9. As usual, there are also loads of mini promotional expansions available for games like Flamecraft, Die Wandelnden Türme, Keyflower, Underwater Cities, Dorfromantik and 2022 Golden GOAT, Praga Caput Regni, amongst others. There truly is something there for everyone.

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Spiel des Jahres Nominations 2023

This year’s nominations for the three Spiel des Jahres categories were announced last Monday. This is arguably the most prestigious award in board gaming and, as such, is the one everyone wants to win. There are three categories, the Kinderspiel (children’s game) , the Kennerspiel (“expert’s” game) and the most desirable of all, the family award, the Spiel des Jahres. The nominees for this year’s awards have been announced as:

Kinderspiel des Jahres
Carla Caramela by Sara Zarian
Gigamon by Johann Roussel and Karim Aouidad
Mysterium Kids by Antonin Boccara and Yves Hirschfeld

Kennerspiel des Jahres
Challengers! by Johannes Krenner and Markus Slawitscheck
Iki by Koota Yamada
Planet Unknown by Ryan Lambert and Adam Rehberg

Spiel des Jahres
Dorfromantik: Das Brettspiel by Michael Palm and Lukas Zach
Fun Facts by Kasper Lapp
Next Station London by Matthew Dunstan

In recent years, there has been a marked change the complexity of the games—compared with previous winners like El Grande, Tikal and The Settlers of Catan (all of which won the “Red Pöppel” as they preceded the inception of the Kennerspiel award), for example, even this year’s nominations for Kennerspiel are extremely light games that have been called party games by some. This is at least partly because the criteria or rules for the Spiel des Jahres Awards are very clearly and strictly laid out.

– Image used with permission of Henk Rolleman
(@namellor on Instagram)

For example, one of the most popular games of the year, Heat: Pedal to the Metal, was not eligible, allegedly due to lack of ready availability in the German market. Similarly, the German release for another popular game, Earth, marginally failed to make the entry date, but may therefore be eligible for next year. Another favourite amongst the GOATS is Die Wandelnden Türme (Wandering Towers), which also failed to get a mention either this year or last, presumably because it too fell foul of one of the rules. Iki, on the other hand was first released in 2015, but did not get a “full German release” at the time and therefore the recent re-release with new artwork is eligible, so there is still hope for all those that have missed the boat.

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It is also worth remembering that the “Red Pöppel” Spiel des Jahres Award is specifically aimed at German families, not necessarily families that play lots of games. Even the “expert” Kennerspiel des Jahres Award, is aimed at families that are “just ready to move on to the next step”—neither award are aimed at people who regularly play games. For this, the Deutscher Spielepreis is a much better fit, but the Spiel des Jahres Awards are still the industry’s headline award, and therefore are of great significance.

– Image from spiel-des-jahres.de

The winners will be announced on Sunday 16^th July in Berlin.

Golden GOAT Award Winners – 2022

As usual, the boardGOATS met just before Christmas for a party and to decide the winners of the GOAT Awards. After pizza and crackers and the usual mayhem, the group voted for two awards: the Golden GOAT for our favourite game and the “GOAT Poo” award for our least favourite. Everyone had the usual three points to hand out for the Golden GOAT Award (plus a bonus if wearing Festive Attire), though a maximum of two points could be given to any individual game. Everyone could also nominate up to two individual games for the GOAT Poo Prize.

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This year, there were a few games that received the unofficial “Marmite Award”, that is to say they received nominations for both the Golden GOAT and the GOAT Poo prizes. These included Dice Hospital, Azul, Modern Art and Viticulture. For the GOAT Poo Prize itself, there were several games that received two or three nominations, but the clear winner was Villainous – The Worst takes it All which received six nominations—quite an achievement since only five people played it and one of those wasn’t present for the vote! Villainous is a beautiful, asymmetric card game, but one that we struggled with for several reasons, not least the fact that players had to work out how to play their own character, and we were playing it with five people which is two or three more than it needs.

Disney Villainous: The Worst Takes it All

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Nominations for Moment of the Year included two epic games, one of Viticulture and the other of Tapestry. The latter nomination included the citation: “I thought I was doing well until Ivory lapped me… twice!” Pine also recalled Lilac nobbling him in Turf Horse Racing. The most poignant moment however, with hindsight, was last year’s UnChristmas Dinner, which was the last meeting attended by Burgundy, who very sadly, suddenly passed away just a few days later. We all still miss him, but the fact we were joined by Jade and Plum and their partners this year is his legacy, and one we think he would have been proud of.

– Image by
Pushpendra Rishi

And that just left the Golden GOAT Award for the best game of the year. Previous winners including Wingspan, Altiplano and 6 Nimmt! were ruled out, but there were plenty of options remaining. Lots of games received three nominations including Endeavor, Cascadia, Old London Bridge, Splendor, Tapestry and Die Wandelnden Türme But this year, the clear winner was Everdell. This card-driven game was only played for the first time a few weeks ago, but it is planned to play it again soon with one of the expansions being the “Feature Game” early in the new year.

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31st May 2022

While they were waiting for their dinner to arrive, Blue and Pink squeezed in yet another in their on-going head-to-head series of Abandon All Artichokes matches. The idea of the game is that players start with a deck of ten artichoke cards from which they draw a hand of five cards. Then, on their turn, they take one card from the face up market, play as many cards as they can, before discarding their hand to their personal discard pile. When, on drawing their new hand of five cards a player has no artichokes, the game ends and that player wins. Pink and Blue have played this cute little “deck shredding” filler game a few times recently and, after an initial flurry of Blue winning, Pink got the hang of it and won a couple of games.

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Last time, Blue got her revenge and Pink said that now Blue had won again, that would probably be that. This game showed that was not so, and while this had all the potential for being a tight game, Blue claimed victory by carefully stacking the top of her deck ensuring an artichoke-free draw despite having three left. With food over and everyone else rocking up, it was time to decide who was going to play what. There was a lot of enthusiasm for Die Wandelnden Türme, which was the “Feature Game“, after people had seen it from a distance last time.

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As it plays better with more people and there were only eight people in total, the group split into a five and a three, with Pine, Green, Black, and Lime joined by our special guest from Nottingham, Magnolia. The game is a fun little family game where players start with a handful of Wizards placed on top of the little Towers arranged round the board, and a hand of three cards. On their turn, the active player gets two actions: play a card or cast a spell. Playing a card which allows them to move one of their Wizards a set number of spaces forward, or move a tower a set number of spaces. When Towers move, they take any resident Wizards with them but can also land on top of another Tower and trap any pieces that were on the roof.

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A player that catches other pieces in this way gets to fill a Potion Flask. They can then spend the Potions to cast spells. In the base game the spells available are “move a Wizard one space forward” or “move a Tower two spaces forward”, but others are available and change the feel of the game a little. Players are trying to land all their Wizards in the black, Raven Castle and fill all their Potion Flasks—when someone succeeds, that triggers the end of the game. It is a fun and entertaining game where players Wizards get variously trapped and if they have a bad memory, can find they lose them in the circus of dancing towers.

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Although Pine kept losing his wizards last time (captured under the towers), this week everyone managed to keep track of them most of the time. Only Lime got muddled at one point when a tower was moved and he expected one of his wizards to be underneath, confusion only reigned until his next turn though, when he found it again. Lime was first to get a wizard into the Ravens’ Castle, quickly followed by Pine. A little while later Pine and then Magnolia got their second wizards in the castle, by using two of their potions for an extra move, then Green got his first wizard “home”. Black’s wizards still hadn’t caught up with the tower, and he wasn’t managing to fill any of his Potion vials either.

– Image by boardGOATS

With everyone too busy keeping track of their own game, Pine made up for last time’s confusions by filling his final potion vial and dropping his last wizard into the Ravens’ Castle to end the game. Although there is no second place in this game unless you can get all your wizards into the Ravens’ Castle filled all their Potion vials, Green was closest with all four potions and none used. Magnolia took the last place on the podium, also finishing with four potions, but he had used two of them. Aside from Pine, no-one had more than one wizard in the tower, in fact, everyone had exactly one.

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Black’s game was somewhat stymied by the fact all his wizards were trapped under towers so he couldn’t move them, and his cards didn’t allow him to move towers. This is the downside of Die Wandelnden Türme: there is some luck of the card draw and when that goes awry players can find themselves stuck, but as it is a short game it’s not too much of an issue and it is a fun little game. Green remarked how Terry Pratchett-esq it felt with wizards chasing towers and towers chasing wizards.

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Die Wandelnden Türme is such a quick game that the others were still busy and the group of five looked round for something else to play. At Pine’s suggestion, they decided to go for a popular classic: Ticket to Ride: Europe. This is a well known family of games that everyone was familiar with so there was no need to go through the rules at any length: on their turn, players take two cards from the market, or spend cards to place trains on the central map. Players score points for placing trains, but also completing route tickets. Players receive these at the start of the game but can also draw more in lieu of a turn. They must be careful though as any incomplete at the end of the game score negatively.

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There were some extra pieces and some unexpected cards in the box so Black perused the rules in the box trying to work out how they worked. Blue piped up from the other table that they were for the Dice and Europa 1912 Expansions, but the group decided to leave them out and just stick with the base game. A little kerfuffle broke out when Pine chose to play as Green for the second game in a row, which caused Green to be sad puppy dog. Green decided that maybe he would use Pink’s special Pink set instead, only for Pine to relent and choose black, leaving green available for Green after all. With Pine being black, Black chose Yellow, so Lime was blue and Magnolia was red…

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Green popped away for a couple of minutes and in his absence, Pine laid his first, two train route, to kick off the scoring. Half way through the round Green noticed that Pine had laid his trains on a tunnel. Although Stations had been clarified at the start of the game (they can be used to connect cities to avoid negative points from tickets), Tunnels hadn’t been mentioned. So, Green brought the subject up and everyone realised they hadn’t noticed it was a Tunnel. When a player chooses to “build” one of these, they turn over the top three cards of the draw deck and if any match the colour the player used to build it, they have to pay extras (the idea being that building tunnels is expensive and unpredictable).

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It was felt that it wouldn’t be fair to force the tunnel check on Pine retrospectively as he may not have chosen to lay the train in the first place if he’d realised he might need more. However, Lime was uncertain how Tunnels worked and the explanation didn’t seem to clear it up. So, in the end, Pine drew the three train cards to demonstrate how this worked and on the last card found he needed an extra card. He had a Locomotive card (wild) so used that and thus, the turn was corrected and all was now clear. However, having seen the consequences, both Pine and Lime said they might have chosen different tickets had they realised how Tunnels work.

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The next trains to go down were all around Germany—because one was placed it drew out the rest in order to secure routes that were rapidly filling up. Pine was the first to lose out on this and used his first station to piggy back a route. After this initial flurry, trains were placed at a more relaxed pace, but all around Western Europe. Eventually Magnolia broke out eastwards to Kyiv, quickly followed by Lime. Lime didn’t stop there, however, he carried on to Kharkiv and thence to Rostov. Magnolia and Lime had this area to themselves for much the rest of the game.

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Green was the first player to complete his routes and draw new tickets, but groaned as he looked at them commenting that they were awful and difficult to complete. There was little sympathy for him round the table, however, he chose one card and pushed on. Quietly he started collecting green cards and Locomotives. After collecting his third Loco, Lime became suspicious of Green’s plans. After yet another Loco Lime mentioned that it must have been his fifth one (he was in fact correct on that) and wondered out loud why he needed so many and whether he could be stopped.

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By then everyone had twigged that Green (who’s route had taken him from Cadiz to Stockholm) was aiming for the big eight train Tunnel along the top from Stockholm to Petrograd. When he went for it, no green cards or Loco’s turned up—most of them were in his hand so it was unlikely—and the twenty-one points he received took him from the back of the field to the front. Soon after this Green and Black placed their first stations, which meant everyone had placed exactly one, and everyone all piggy-backed on each other in a daisy chain. The station usage didn’t stop there as Magnolia and Black would both use one more before the end.

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As the game drew to a close it seemed to slow down as no one could get the colour cards they needed, until eventually Lime and Green gave up and just started placing random tracks just for points. These two were leading the points race as well, even though Lime had been complaining all the way through that things just weren’t going right for him and he didn’t know what he was doing really. Despite all this, it was Lime who ended the game by placing four of his last five trains. Everyone then had their last chance shot and it was time for the final scoring.

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A quick run through the route scores again to double check showed that the group had been pretty good at keeping them right. It looked like Green had the longest set of connected trains and was ahead on points as well. Working from the back of the pack to score the Tickets, Pine had several but he had discarded his long route and moved temporarily into second place having suffered from missing out on the Tunnels rule at the start. Then Black and Magnolia both surpassed a hundred and then Lime leap-frogged to the front. Lastly Green’s tickets looked to have sealed him victory only to realise that he had forgotten to connect to Berlin.

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Green took the longest train, by a wide margin, which took him into third place, ruing his silly mistake without which he would have taken a narrow victory. In the end, victory went to Lime, even though he claimed all the way through he did not know what he was doing and it was all going wrong—definitely shades of Burgundy! Magnolia was second, but first to fourth were all withing about ten points of each other in what had been a close and quite epic game. With that, Magnolia, Green and Lime took an early night while Black wondered over to see what Pink, Purple and Blue had been up to.

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They had started out with Ivor the Engine, a charming little game that we used to play quite a bit but hasn’t had an outing since before the global pandemic hit. The idea is that the players are helping Ivor to collect lost sheep and complete tasks for his friends. On their turn, the active player takes a sheep from their current location (if there is one) and then can move their wagon to an adjacent location and play Job cards. The Job cards are the meat of the game: they can either provide a special action, such as extra moves and adding sheep to the board, or allow you to complete a Job if you are at a location where there are no sheep.

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Once the active player has completed their movement and any card play, they take a Job card from the market. The catch is that jobs can only be carried out at the correct location and there is a hand limit of four cards, and taking a card is mandatory. This makes the game very tight and some of the actions available on the cards have the potential to make the game quite vicious. The game ends when one player reaches a set number of sheep and then players count up their sheep, add any gold and any end-game bonuses they might have picked up, with the player with the most sheep-points named Ivor’s Best Friend Forever.

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This time, Pink and Purple got in each other’s way in the west leaving Blue to collect sheep alone in the east. The disadvantage of this is that it took a lot of turns to clear the locations of sheep so that she could play the nice set of Job cards she started with. On the other hand, Pink was causing Purple all sorts of problems very effectively trapping her in Grumbly Town. Purple tried to get her revenge at the end by dumping a load of sheep into the location he was at and thus stopping him from playing a Job card there. However, he just played a different card to claim the sheep and ended the game anyhow, taking victory by seven points from Blue in second.

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Once Ivor was over, the trio moved on to Kingdomino—another game we used to play quite a bit, but hasn’t had an outing since we returned to face-to-face games. This is a very clever little game that won the Spiel des Jahres award five years ago. The idea is that players take a numbered, double-ended tile and add it to their kingdom. At least one end of each tile must extend an area of terrain or be placed adjacent to their central castle. Additionally players’ kingdoms must fall within a five-by-five grid. At the end of the game, each terrain scores for the number of spaces it occupies multiplied by the number of crowns depicted in it.

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There are additional points available for objectives, but although there are some interesting objectives available in the Age of Giants expansion, the trio decided to stick with the originals: ten extra points if their castle is in the centre of their kingdom and five if they manage to play all their tiles. So far, so simple. The clever part of the game is that the tiles are numbered according to value and chosen according to an ordered market. In this way, players who choose the least exciting tiles get to choose first in the next round, while players who get the best tile will end up with no choice.

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Unfortunately, playing with only three means that some tiles do not come out and a player can find they do very badly through no fault of their own if Lady Luck deserts them. This time Blue was the unlucky one, though it wasn’t helped by some poor play (perhaps associated with the arrival of a certain puppy who delighted in chewing her ear). Purple was did better, but the runaway winner with seventy-three points (more than twice as many as Blue), was Pink. This was thanks to a large cornfield, which by itself scored almost as many points as Blue’s whole kingdom.

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As the epic game of Ticket to Ride was still on-going on the neighbouring table, Blue, Purple and Pink felt there was time for one more game and, after a little discussion, they settled on Splendor. This was the game Burgundy played extremely well and was almost unbeatable at, so we always remember him when we play it. It is very simple: on their turn, the active player takes gem chips, or uses chips to buy gem cards. The cards act as permanent gem chips, allowing players to buy more expensive cards. Some cards also give points with the most expensive cards giving the most points.

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Players can also get bonus points for claiming “noble” tiles—these go to the first player who collects a certain combination of gem cards. This time, Blue went first. As always, some players struggled to get the cards they wanted, and while Pink had an awful lot of cards, somehow he wasn’t able to make anything of them. The game ends when one player gets fifteen points and Blue, who had got a bit of a head start, could see that the other two were struggling. So, when Black joined them, he was just in time to see her end the game, taking the only noble and a high value points card in the last couple of turns.

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Learning Outcome: Do not meddle in the affairs of Wizards, for they are subtle and quick to wander.

17th May 2022

Black and Purple were first to arrive this week, but Pink and Blue were not far behind, and once food had been ordered, there was just time for a quick game of Love Letter to commemorate its recent tenth anniversary. We used to play this quick little filler game quite a bit, but that fell victim to the global pandemic and, as a result, it’d been a while since anyone round the table had played it. Played with just sixteen cards, the game is really simple, but is a great way to kill a few minutes. The idea is that each player starts with one card, and on their turn draw a second from the deck and play one of the two.

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Each card has a number and an action or effect. The actions range from number one, the Guard, which allows the player to guess what character card a player is holding and “assassinate” them if correct, to number eight, the Princess, who will win the game for the player holding it at the end, but lose it for them if they are forced to discard it before then. There was just time for three rounds before food arrived. Black took the first round and Pink the second. Pink then recused himself as he went to chat to some of the locals about Jubilee plans leaving Black, Purple and Blue to fight it out with Blue taking the final point.

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With the arrival of Pine and Lime, the group went on to play Moneybags, which had been the “Feature Game” a couple of weeks ago. The idea of this is that, on their turn, players have to decide whether to rob another player’s hessian sack of gold or not. Critically, however, they must not be too greedy. This is because the victim can challenge the thief, and if the thief is found to have more than the victim, the victim takes the lot, but that makes them more of a target as now everyone else knows how much they have…

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This time, the game did not go according to plan. Black played the Godfather and divvied up the loot. Purple robbed Pine, who promptly challenged and won a huge pile of gold. As it was his turn next, after lots of advice from everyone else, he closed his bag and stepped out. Then Blue challenged Black and won, knocking him out too. Although it was close between Pine and Blue, much closer than most people thought it would be, Pine’s huge stash won out. The moral of this story is to rob someone before you in the turn order otherwise, if they challenge and win, they can kill the game by closing their bag.

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This week, the “Feature Game” was the Arts and Architecture expansion to Tapestry, which is something that Ivory in particular, had been waiting ages to play. We wanted to give others an opportunity to play the base game first and then the (slightly less complex) Plans and Ploys expansion, which got an outing a few weeks ago. That was enjoyed by everyone involved, so it was now time to add the second expansion. The base game is simple in terms of what you do, but playing well is much more difficult. The idea is that there are four advancement tracks: Science, Technology, Exploration and Military, and on their turn, the active player progresses along one of these taking the actions for the space they land on.

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In general, players must pay resources to carry out actions and, in some cases, may pay more to carry out a bonus action. The first player to progress along each of the tracks receives a building as they pass landmark spaces, which those players then add to their city. Filling rows and columns of their city gives additional resources and as these are scarce, the extras can be invaluable. Players can focus on a specific track or take a more balanced approach, but this decision is often driven by starting Civilisations which give players a special and unique ability. Coupling the Civilisation with the right strategy is often the difference between success and failure.

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When players run out of resources, they can instead take income which means players move on to the next round at different times. The Arts and Architecture expansion provides more civilizations, tapestry cards, technology cards and capital city plans. The biggest change, however, is the addition of a new advancement track featuring new Art or Masterpiece cards and tiles and, of course, associated Landmark miniatures. Each Income phase, players can activate their masterpiece power and get the benefit shown, typically resources or points allowing players to prolong their turns further, but like the Technologies, they are really a long term investment.

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Green and Teal joined Ivory in what was a Tapestry rematch of the last game and, in addition to the Arts and Architecture expansion also included the Plans & Ploys expansion. Each player received a standard capital city and an expansion capital city, but everyone decided to try the new ones to add variety to the game. For the Civilisations, in an effort to ensure things were balanced, the up-to-date starting adjustments were used, and players chose:

Craftsmen (Ivory), which gave him a new board to place his income buildings on for extra bonuses;
Historians (Teal), which enabled him to choose a player each round, and when that player placed a special building, Teal would gain extra resources;
Architects (Green), which gave his income rows double points scoring under certain conditions.

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Green’s Civilisation did not last beyond his first income phase, however, as he played the Plague Tapestry card which allowed him to draw a new one. This new one, Entertainers, gave him an extra bonus track to follow each income phase. Ivory made his intentions clear by moving up the new purple Arts track and gained a couple of special Arts cards. Green followed him, but also spread a bit more onto the Technology track for a Technology card. It was Ivory who was first to take an income phase, but as he had not explored the Technology track he did not have a Technology to upgrade on his first income. Ivory did have a couple of Arts cards to provide him with a nice little bonus though.

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Teal went a different route and travelled up the Explore track and expanded his island. The resources he gained on the way enabled him to take his first income much later than the others. This pattern of Teal taking income last remained in play to the end of the game. Green took the second income first, and Ivory switched back to first for the third income. It was Ivory who took his final income first, closely followed by Green leaving Teal to play on his own at the end. By this time, Ivory had collected all the Arts buildings, completed both the Arts and Science tracks and expanded his empire by three more hexes.

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Ivory had also collected three Arts cards and replaced two of his income scoring tracks. He had only placed two income buildings on his Civilisation card, but had mostly completed his capital city (including a massive seven special buildings), but had only one, solitary technology card. Teal had completed the Explore track, although two of his space hexes were very poor scoring for him, and had not progressed at all on the Arts track. His empire was seven hexes in size, including the one in the centre of the territory. He had also collected six special buildings on his way, but no Technology at all.

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Green managed to complete the Arts and Technology track, choosing to travel up the Arts again for his technology completion bonus. He did not expand his empire at all, although he had grown the islands a little. He finished with four Arts cards and three Technology cards, but only five special buildings. In the final scoring Green finished with a personal best of two hundred and ninety-three points, beating the hitherto invincible Ivory who “only” managed two hundred and fifty-one, some way ahead of Teal. Part of the reason for this was that Teal did not place his last player cube choice from his civilisation on his penultimate income.

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This was because the game ended in a bit of a rush because time was getting on and Teal unfortunately didn’t thought the others wouldn’t get any more buildings. As a result he missed out on a few free resources in the final round and even a few resources can make a huge difference. As ever it is difficult to find the right balance in Tapestry as players need to both specialise and be a Jack of all trades, which is very hard to do. Although the game took longer as a result of the expansions, all three liked the added enhancements and would be keen to play again with all the extras.

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Meanwhile, on the the other side of the room, Lime was introducing Black, Lilac and Pine to Die Wandelnden Türme, a recently released, curious little family game. The idea is that players start with a handful of Wizards placed on top of the little Towers around the board, and a hand of three cards. On their turn, the active player plays a card which allows them to move one of their Wizards a set number of spaces forward, or move a tower a set number of spaces. When Towers move, they take any resident Wizards with them but can also land on top of another Tower and trap any pieces that were on the roof. A player that catches other pieces in this way gets to fill a Potion Flask. They can then spend the Potions to cast spells.

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In the base game the spells available are “move a Wizard one space forward” or “move a Tower two spaces forward”, but others are available and change the feel of the game a little. Players are trying to land all their Wizards in the black, Raven Castle and fill all their Potion Flasks—when someone succeeds, that triggers the end of the game. It is a fun and entertaining game where players Wizards get variously trapped and if they have a bad memory, can find they lose them in the circus of dancing towers. And that is exactly what happened to poor Pine. His Wizards disappeared and every time he uncovered where he thought they were, he discovered they weren’t.

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In the end it was a tie between Lime and Black, but it had been a lot of fun, and Pink in particular was watching with envious eyes from the next table as he’d read about the game in the Spielbox magazine and fancied giving it a go. While eying up the Wizards, Pink was playing Calico with Purple and Blue. This is another game that is new to the group, although it was released a couple of years ago. It has a similar feel to Patchwork, the popular two-player tile-laying game about designing quilts, though the games are by different designers. The most obvious difference is that Patchwork is a Tetris-like game with polyomino tiles, where all the tiles in Calico are regular hexagons.

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On their turn, the active player chooses a patch tile from their hand of two, and sews it into their quilt, before replenishing their hand. If they complete a colour group with that tile, they can add a button to their quilt; if they create a pattern group that is attractive to a cat, it will come over and sit on their quilt. At the end of the game, when the quilt is finished, players score for buttons, cats, and their own personal target. In reality, the theme is a bit “pasted on”, but the pieces are nice, and make what is otherwise a bit of a brain-burny abstract a little more accessible. Purple and Pink struggled with the puzzly nature of the game at the beginning, where Blue got a better start.

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Achieving the personal targets is difficult—these specify the number of different tiles that should surround a particular tile. For example, the goal tile AA-BB-CC scores when surrounded by three different colours, or three different patterns, with two matching tiles in each colour/pattern. Successfully fulfilling a target with both the colour and the pattern scores more points, but is significantly more difficult. Despite explaining this to Purple in her rules outline and saying she had decided to give up on the extras, Blue somehow got lucky and was able to fulfill two of private goals with both the colour and the pattern. With lots of buttons and cats, it was a bit of a runaway victory for Blue, but it was very close for second, with Pink just edging it.

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Die Wandelnden Türme finished first, so the foursome scratched about for something else to play and settled on The Game. This is a simple cooperative game that was one of Burgundy‘s favourites. The team have a deck of cards numbered from two to ninety-nine (in our case, from a copy of The Game: Extreme, but ignoring the special symbols), and they must play each card on one of four piles. For two piles where the card played must be higher than the top card, and for two it must be lower. There are just three rules: on their turn, the active player can play as many cards as they like (obeying the rules of the four piles), but must play at least two cards before replenishing their hand, and players can say anything they like but must not share “specific number information”.

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Finally, there is the so-called “Backwards Rule” where players can reverse a deck as long as the card they play is exactly ten above or below the previous card played on that pile. The game ends when, either all the cards have been played onto the four piles, or a player cannot play a card. This time, things went wrong from the start and unusually, kept going wrong, so much so that there were still two cards left in the deck when the group could no-longer play. Lilac ducked out and Pine, Lime and Black gave it a second try, but the end result was not much better. Clearly the group keenly felt the loss of Burgundy’s special skills.

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While they played their second game of The Game, Calico came to an end, and Lilac joined Purple, Pink and Blue for a game of Sushi Go!, the archetypal “card drafting” game. Players start with a hand of seven cards, and choose one to keep, passing the rest on to the player on their left. Players repeat this with the aim of the game being to end up with the set of cards that score the most points. The game is played over three rounds with the player with the highest total winning. This time, the game was interrupted by an arrival, one some people had been waiting all evening for. The “special guest” was the new resident at the pub, a gorgeous black Labrador puppy by the name of Winston.

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The game decidedly played second fiddle when cuddles were on offer. Despite the distraction of Winston, or perhaps because of his help, Blue, who is usually appalling at this game, somehow managed to make two solid rounds. Pink did the same in the first and third rounds, while Purple and Lilac were more consistent over the three rounds. Purple finished with the most puddings, and Pink and Lilac shared the penalty for having the least. Those penalty points made all the difference as Blue pipped Pink to the post. And as Tapestry had also finished and Pink had finished admiring Teal’s copy of Root, it was time for all little puppies to go to bed.

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Learning Outcome: It’s hard to specialise and be a “Jack of all trades” simultaneously.