Tag Archives: Ginkgopolis

8th August 2023

Blue and Pink were first to arrive, and, as they finished their pizza, others began to turn up too. It was a slow start on a relatively quiet night, but eventually Blue Ivory, Black and Jade were settling down to play the “Feature Game“, Ginkopolis. This is a medium weight tile-laying game with an area control element. Blue explained that it was one of those games that had been through a phase of being very out of print and therefore inevitably in high demand, though now was much more available. The game is set in 2212 where players are urban planners trying to building the eco-city, Ginkgopolis, though the theme is quite loose and in reality, it is much more more abstract that that.

– Image by boardGOATS

The game is card-driven, with players simultaneously choosing a card and any tiles they are going to play with it, and then, starting with the first player, taking it in turns to carry out one of three possible actions: Urbanise, Construct or Exploit. There are two different sorts of cards in the game, Urbanisation cards which feature a letter, and Construction cards which come in three different colour suits, red, blue and orange, and are numbered one to twenty. When choosing either an Urbanise action or a Construct action, players additionally choose a Tile to play from their personal stash. Urbanising involves placing a tile in the space matching the letter on their Urbanise card, adding a wooden Resource block in their colour to claim it.

– Image by boardGOATS

There is a little upkeep, in that they move the Urbanisation letter marker to a space orthogonally adjacent to the Tile they placed and mark it with a grey cylinder. As a reward for urbanising, players get to Activate all orthogonally adjacent buildings. This is claiming a number of Tiles, Resources or Ginkgo Points (a sort of currency used in the game), with the item dependent on the colour and the number received equal to the height of the Building activated. Constructing is similar, except the Tile chosen is placed on top of another Tile, returning any Resources on the tile to their owner and claiming Ginkgo Points from the bank for each one.

– Image by boardGOATS

In addition to this immediate reward, there are also costs: if the Constructed Tile has a lower number than the tile it is built on, they must pay the difference in Ginkgo Points and if the colour is different, they must also pay one Resource to the general supply. In addition to these potential costs, the active player must also place Resources from their stash on top of the newly expanded building to claim it (with the number equal to the height). This can make Constructing expensive, though as the game progresses, they get Resources back as other players build on buildings they have Urbanised or Constructed. Still, particularly early in the game, players can find themselves running out of supplies, in which case, they can Exploit.

– Image by boardGOATS

Exploiting involves playing cards (without a tile) to gain Tiles, Resources, or Ginkgo Points. How they Exploit depends on whether the card they are Exploiting is an Urbanisation card or a Construction card. For Urbanisation cards, players just take either a Resource or a Tile from the supply, whereas for Construction cards, players Activate the building on the card to receive Tiles, Resources or Ginkgo Points equal to the height of the building. This is not the only way to get resources, however. Once a player has carried out their chosen action, they either recycle the card (if they Urbanised or Exploited) or, if they Constructed, they keep it in front of them. Each Construction card has an action as well as a number and a colour, and these are activated during the game, most after carrying out actions, with some providing end-game Points.

– Image by boardGOATS

And scoring is where the game gets tricky. The winner is the player with the most Ginkgo Points at the end of the game, but in addition to chips acquired during the game and end-game points from Construction cards, the majority of the points come from the area control element of the game. The city is divided into districts with districts defined as areas containing at least two buildings of the same colour. The player with the most Resources in the district wins control and takes Ginkgo Points equal to the total number of Resources in the district. The player to take second gets Ginkgo Points equal to the number of their Resources in the district. Ties are broken in favour of the player with the highest building.

– Image by boardGOATS

There is quite a lot of critical upkeep in the game, but the most important it to remember to put a grey construction cylinder on buildings during Urbanisation and Construction. This is because at the end of each turn, players top their hand back up to four cards drawn at random—when the draw deck is empty, however, the discard deck is recycled and topped up with cards that correspond to the newly constructed buildings. Since cards that correspond to buildings are kept when the building is over-built, and everything else is recycled, the draw deck (and the cards in hand) comprise all the buildings currently visible, together with all the Urbanisation cards, and nothing else.

– Image by boardGOATS

Getting this wrong, breaks the game spectacularly, as Blue and Ivory had found out on the one other occasion they played it (with Pink, during one of the sporadic meetings in the pub late in the Summer of 2020). This time, they were aware of the importance of placing the grey markers and mostly managed to stay on top of that so everything went a bit smoother, allowing players to concentrate on the nuances of the game. And there are lots of nuances. For example, over-building can help a player to take control of a district, or, if they change its colour, break one up, but it also gives Resources to the previous owner. Similarly, Urbanising expands the city, but provides a cheap way for other players to expand districts and perhaps muscle in.

– Image by boardGOATS

The game started with everyone feeling their way, trying to make the most of the Character cards they were dealt at the start of the game. These give bonuses to players to get them going in the early stages of the game. It is possible to draft these character cards, but the group began with the preconstructed sets: Ivory got set one, Black got set six, Jade got set two and Blue got set five. These give players a strategy steer in the early part of the game, for example, Blue and Black’s cards gave them two bonuses for Exploiting while Jade and Ivory both benefited twice for Constructing. Quite early in the game, it became clear that there was one building towards the middle that was going to be quite critical in the area control battle and Blue, Black and then Ivory all over-built and tried to claim it for their own.

– Image by boardGOATS

The game has the ability to feel very swingy, and lacking in control, and yet it is actually an extremely smart, tactical game—one clever tile placement can completely change the game by breaking up a district or joining two districts together and totally change the balance of power. This game was no different in that regard, though it took a little time for everyone to really start to see its potential. There were other elements of the game that players gradually came to appreciate. For example, Black ran into the unexpected difficulty of running out of Resource markers, because he had a lot in the city. This gave the others a problem—building over his buildings relieved that pressure, but because he had so many on the board, it was hard to avoid doing it.

– Image by boardGOATS

Jade also had difficulties getting the tiles he wanted to match his cards, while Ivory had difficulties getting the cards he wanted (and was the only one to spend one of his refresh hand tokens, which cost him two points in the end-game scoring). The game ebbed and flowed, and although it vastly exceeded its advertised forty-five minutes, it wasn’t long before the stack of tiles dwindled and triggered the end of the game. At this point, players could choose whether to add tiles from their hand back into the game. Jade was aghast at the idea having struggled to get tiles throughout, but Ivory had an enormous stack and put a few back into the supply to keep things going for another couple of rounds.

– Image by boardGOATS

As the game drew to a close, the question was whether anyone would be able to make a move on the largest districts. The highest building that had been long fought over now belonged to Ivory, but had been cut off, leaving it pointless, which left two large red and one large blue district as well as some smaller efforts. Key was the number of Ginkgo points picked up during the game—everyone thought Ivory had a lot, but it turned out Black was the king of the Ginkgo tokens with a massive thirty-six. Blue was a little way behind him, but made up for this with her city scoring, which ultimately gave her victory with sixty-six points, nine more than Black in second who was well clear of Jade and Ivory who tied for third.

– Image by boardGOATS

Meanwhile, on the next table, Purple, Green and Pink were deciding what to play while they waited for Pine who was running late. Green commented that he didn’t want to play something new, so in the end the group settled on Splendor. This is an old favourite, though one with poignant memories for most in the group as it was a favourite of Burgundy who sadly passed away eighteen months ago—it would have been his sixty-fifth birthday at the end of the month. As always, with Burgundy in mind, the trio set the game up. It is a very simple, tactical engine builder, where players take it in turns to either take chips from the supply, use chips to buy a face up card from the market or, occasionally, reserve a card.

– Image by boardGOATS

Players win points for the higher value cards, or for collecting enough cards of specified colours to claim a Noble. This time, Pink tried a strategy that concentrated on going for cheap cards with the primary aim of scoring for Nobles. This had the benefit of giving him lots of cards which builds the engine quickly making other cards cheaper. The strategy worked well, but not as well as Pink needed it to for him to beat Green who ended the game, with a lead of three points. As Splendor came to a close, Pine rocked up, so the newly expanded, now quartet looked for something fairly light to play, and Pink suggested one of his favourites, For Sale.

– Image by boardGOATS

As Pink described it, like football, For Sale is a game of two halves. In the first half, players bid for properties which they then sell in the second half of the game. This time, Purple became a bit of a tent specialist (with tents of various quality), which turned out not to work so well for her. Pine ended up with the outside netty (one of the lowest value cards), but one that you are almost guaranteed not to loose money on. Once again, however, the winner was Green with Pink taking his second second place. So the question was, could anything upset that pattern?

– Image by boardGOATS

The group moved on to Botswana, a sort of set collection stock-holding card game that it is really hard to get your head round despite actually being very simple. The five animal suites each have six cards, which are shuffled together and dealt out. Players then play a card from their hand, and take any one of the animals on the table. The round is over when any one of the five animals has the sixth card played, at which point players score points for each animal they have, equal to the final card played. After three rounds, the player with the most points is the winner.

– Image by boardGOATS

This time, all three rounds were remarkably even. Purple was just one point behind green going into the final round, though Pink had some ground to make up if he was going to continue his run of second places. In the end, Green made it three from three, and relatively poor final rounds from both Pink and Purple left Pine to take second with Purple just behind. Green decided three was enough, and didn’t fancy tarnishing his winning streak, so headed off while Purple and Pink waited for their other halves to finish Ginkopolis, and looked round for a suitable filler.

– Image by boardGOATS

Coloretto is another old favourite, and one that plays really well with three. A really simple set collecting game, on their turn, players either turn over a coloured chameleon card and place it on a truck, or take a truck. At the end of the game (when the draw deck has been mostly depleted), players score points for each coloured set of cards. In general, the larger sets score more, but only the largest three score positively, everything else gives negative scores. For a bit of variety, the group used the scoring card from the Limit Cards/Extra Cards mini expansion (but without any of the other rules and cards). This gives low scores for the small groups, but very high scores for the large sets.

– Image by
boardGOATS

Aside from a query about the Golden Joker (which like the normal multi-coloured Joker can be added to any set at the end of the game, but additionally gives an extra card drawn at random from the deck), there was no real need to revise the rules. It was a good game, though Pink blotted his copy book with quite a lot of negative points and wasn’t able to improve on his two second places as a result. The run-away winner was Purple though, who finished with forty-eight points, eight more than Pine in second place. And with Ginkopolis coming to an end too, that was it for another week.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: In some games, you have to start building right from the gink-go…

20th July 2021 (Online)

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

– Image by boardGOATS

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

– Image by boardGOATS

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

– Image by boardGOATS

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

– Image by boardGOATS

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

– Image by boardGOATS

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

– Image by boardGOATS

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

– Image by boardGOATS

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

– Image by boardGOATS

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

– Image by boardGOATS

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

– Image by BGG contributor El_Comandante
adapted by boardGOATS

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

– Image by boardGOATS
from boardgamearena.com

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

– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com

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

– Image by boardGOATS
from boardgamearena.com

Learning Outcome: Theft is totally unforgivable.