Tag Archives: Incan Gold

4th April 2023

While Blue was off getting fish and chips for people, Pink chatted with Pine and Green and his family as they arrived. Green had just got out Incan Gold and was explaining the rules, when food arrived, so it was hastily put away while food was consumed, only to be got out again as soon as the chips had disapparated. Incan Gold is a very simple “push your luck” type game where players are exploring a mine and trying to get out with treasure before disaster strikes. Each round a card is revealed and players simultaneously choose whether to stay or leave and share what spoils they already have. There are three types of card: Treasure, Artifact, and Disaster.

– Image by boardGOATS

The contents of the Treasure cards are simply divided equally between players when they leave the mine, or as equally as possible leaving behind any left-overs. Artifacts can only be taken if there is only one player leaving the mine, all alone. Disaster cards are the problem—Spiders, Snakes, Zombies, Lava and Rock Falls. Each one is present in the deck three times, and when the third is drawn, the mine collapses leaving everyone in it without any treasure. This time, though, the group didn’t get off to a very auspicious start. The first card out was a Rock Fall, the second was Fire and the third was another Fire!

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So the group decided it was such a bad start that they would shuffle and try again. On the second attempt, the first two cards out were again Disasters, but the third delivered some Treasure. It wasn’t very much and nobody felt it was worth leaving for. That was a good choice as there was a little more treasure to come. Still not very much, but more littered the floor of the tunnel, and it eventually proved too enticing for Emerald and Violet who managed to net about five gems each for their tents. For the rest of the group, they pushed it a little too far and promptly lost everything as they got caught in a devastating fire.

– Image by boardGOATS

The second tunnel explored also lured in too many explorers before collapsing the ceiling on everyone. The third tunnel brought the first glint of Gold—an Artifact. Eying each other up everyone elected to stay, which was fine, but on the next turn, Lilac decided she would chance it and run. Luckily for her she was the only one and managed to net the Golden treasure on her way out, and left everyone else to die at the hands of a rather midget-like Zombie. Lilac managed to repeat the feat on the fourth tunnel, collecting the Gold treasure as she made a run for it, although everyone else managed to collect more treasure and eventually decided to save what they had found instead of dying a horrible death.

– Image by boardGOATS

The final tunnel brought some nice treasure, and another Artifact, but with too many people leaving, they had to leave it where it lay. Pine was the one who held his nerve and safely collected the Golden treasure this time, before a Disaster as those remaining were overrun by Spiders. In the final reckoning it was neck & neck between Pine and Lilac on thirty-six points, but Lilac just edged it by dint of having two gold artifacts to Pine’s one. It was close for third, though Lime was the best of the rest with twenty-four, just ahead of Emerald and Violet. The least effective was Greedy Green, who’d stayed just too long just too often, eager for more treasure only to be bashed and burned and brutally murdered time after time.

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Meanwhile, everyone else played the “Feature Game“, the filler Om Nom Nom. This is a fun and light little game of think and double-think where players are trying to eat without getting eaten. The game is set up by seeding the board with cute dice, rolled to give cheese, carrots and flies for the bottom of the food chain, and mice, rabbits and frogs for the middle of the food chain. Players then receive a deck of six cards representing the animals for the middle of the food chain and the top of the food chain, cats, wolves and hedgehogs. With game play reminiscent of 6 Nimmt!, players simultaneously choose a card to play which are then evaluated.

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Players who played cards at the top of the food chain eat anything below, so long as there is enough for everyone who played the same card. Thus, if there are four mice (including any cards played) and two cats, the owner of the cats take two cards each and get to keep their cat cards too with them all going on their scoring pile. If however, there was only one mouse, both cats go hungry and neither player scores anything. Cards played for the middle of the food chain eat the dice at the bottom of the food chain as long as there are enough dice for everyone who played the same card, but also as long as they don’t get eaten by anyone playing a card at the top of the food chain.

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Thus, playing a card in the middle of a food chain is all about timing: there is a higher risk, but also a higher reward as the dice showing red faces are worth two points instead of the usual one for a card or a die showing a black middle of the food chain critter. Although we’ve played Om Nom Nom several times before, it was new to both Teal and Lime. Teal started off well though taking a massive fifteen points in his first round. Unfortunately for him, that turned out to be beginner’s luck and he didn’t do so well in the next round. Purple’s game, on the other hand, went the other way, starting with nothing in the first round and taking sixteen points in the second.

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With others being more consistent, in particular Blue who scored a seven and an eight in each of her first two rounds, it was all down performances in the final round. In the event, Black and Pink both did well in the final round, and Teal improved on his score in the second round too. It was Purple that won the final, albeit low-scoring round, taking ten points, giving her a winning total of twenty-six, three more than Teal in second with Black and Blue tying for third place some six points behind him. It had been a quick fun game, one that is always good value and definitely deserves another outing soon.

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Both games, Incan Gold and Om Nom Nom, finished at much the same time, so everyone decided what to play next. Teal had brought Nidvelilir at Green’s request, but this wasn’t the night for that. Eventually, Purple traded places with Pine and Lime leaving five players, in one group which picked out a lot of possible five-player games. Since Violet was here only for the a brief visit they let her choose. Her selection was Zooloretto or King of Tokyo, however Purple made a face at both choices and suggested Carcassonne instead. Violet was less keen as she felt she had played that a lot recently, so Green made an executive decision to play Boomtown—a fun little bidding game that hasn’t had an outing for a long time and doesn’t take too long.

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Unfortunately, at this point Emerald was really beginning to feel the heat of the pub and felt he couldn’t participate. He went off for a wander to get some fresh air, ironically just before the back door was opened to cool everyone down a little. As he had decided to sit this one out, the rest of the group revised the rules which were simple enough on the face of things. A deck of sixty cards is shuffled and placed face-down in the middle of the table, along with two dice, a pile of Mayor pawns (one in each of five different colors) and Town tokens (two each of the same colours). One card per person is turned face up and each player begins the game with $10 starting funds to bid for the card they want.

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Each player has to increase the bid or pass, until there is one winner. And this is the clever bit of the game—the winner, pays the player to their right, who passes on half of the money to the player on their right and so on until either there is nothing left to give or the winner is reached (they don’t get any of their own money back). Everyone then gets a card in clockwise order. There are Mine, Dynamite, Saloon, Hold-up, Governor and Special cards, each of which has an effect. Mines and Saloons give players gold and the player with the most Mines in any Town/colour takes the matching Mayor token which forces others to give them money.

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Dynamite cards allow players to destroy other players’ mines, while Hold-up cards allow players to steal from other and the Governor allows players to upgrade a Mayor so their mines are worth double. Once the cards have been allocated, the dice are rolled and players receive income for their mines. The game ends when the deck is depleted and all the cards have been sold. The player with the largest total from their their points, money, the production value of all the mines they control, and five bonus points for each Mayor, is the winner.

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Maybe it was the heat, but aside from Green, no-one was quite sure how Boomtown would play out, and it took a few rounds for everyone to get the hang of things. The group didn’t get off to a great start, even when they adjusted the draw deck to make sure there was enough mines for everyone by replacing the action cards that came out. The second round brought out two sets of Dynamite though, and both Green and Purple ended up destroying each others mine. The bidding never got very high in the first half of the game, mostly because nobody knew what they were doing, and did not necessarily want to choose first.

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However, by about half way and when the Mayor pieces had all been claimed and the Saloons were built everything started to hot up. Although Lilac had a lot of red Mines, which netted her a little money from players forced to take the last few remaining, every time they found gold, she had to pass most of her claim to Purple who had a red saloon along with Saloon girls! Violet managed to claim a couple of Mayors along the way, and although she lost one of them, she managed to avoid the attraction of the Saloon, so kept everything she collected. With some judicial rolling on the Card Shark Dice, she managed to rob some of the others blind.

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By the time the last cards had been claimed and the final Mines had given up their gold, it was Purple who had become the master Miner, by something of a landslide. Violet was a respectable second with Lilac, having passed on so much of her wealth to Purple, just managing to stay whisker ahead of Green for third. Meanwhile, on the next table, with so many players Survive: Escape from Atlantis had seemed a good choice as it plays six with the expansion. This was released to mark the thirtieth anniversary of two very similar, much older games, Survive! and Escape from Atlantis, and is an agglomeration of them both.

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The idea is that players rescue their meeples from the central Island of Atlantis before it sinks beneath the waves. The original Escape from Atlantis had a fabulous sculpted plastic central Island, with lots of Sea Monster miniatures, however, although the thirtieth anniversary edition is arguably a nicer production, the Island is made up of thick card hex-tiles, and the Sea Monsters are made of wood. This version has safe land shown on the corners of the board each initially guarded by a Sea Monster, with randomly placed hexes forming the Island and a fifth Sea Monster in a central lagoon.

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The new edition varies from its predecessors only a very little in game play. On their turn, the active player has three movement points, and then they remove one tile from the Island of Atlantis before rolling the Attack Die which dictates which of the Sharks, Whales or Sea Monsters the player moves. Sharks and Whales are introduced as the Island sinks: when players remove a hex from the Island, the underside has either an immediate effect (bordered with green) or a delayed effect with the tile stored, usually to be played before a later turn, though a small number can be used reactively.

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There was a lot of discussion about whether to include the Giant Squid and Dolphin mini expansions and what they did, but in the end, the group decided against it this time. In addition to placing their meeples on Atlantis, during the set up, players also place boats. These can hold a maximum of three meeples and are moved by whoever has the majority in the boat. It costs one movement point to climb into or out of a boat, either to or from a neighbouring land space or the water next to the boat. Meeples in the water can only swim one space per turn because it is tiring. Once in a boat, however, movement is easier and they can move as far as they want and are able.

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Thus, the priority is to get meeples into boats, but the decision players have is whether to try to put all their meeples in one boat or whether to hedge their bets. Pine and Pink tried the former. Pine managed to get two of his meeples in one boat and then, before he could get any passengers, set sail. Being early in the game there weren’t many Whales or Sharks about, and with only a short distance to safety, Pine’s pair made it there safely. From there, the game got quite savage with players preferentially taking land tiles with meeples on them, turning them into Swimmers with a long way to safety—one was unlucky enough to end up in the drink when a Shark dropped into the space next to him and swallowed him whole.

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Pink tried to emulate Pine’s success, but was a mite more greedy putting three of his meeples with a total value of eight in one boat. Although he had a plan to get the boat to shore, he reckoned without the appearance of a Whale which was promptly moved to the same space and proceeded to turn his boat into matchwood and transform his sailors into Swimmers. Whales aren’t interested in Swimmers though, so once his meeples were in the water, it left them alone. Pink then had ample opportunity to separate them out a little, and indeed was advised to by everyone else, but he choose not to. So, although everyone felt slightly sorry for him, it wasn’t long before the little clutch of Swimmers proved far too tempting a target and a Shark rocked up and ate them all.

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From there, there was a steady trickle of boats making landfall, with players trying to work together without doing the lion’s share of the work themselves. For every boat that made it to safety, however, there was at least one Swimmer that was eaten by a Shark or boat that was attacked by a Whale or a Sea Monster making it a bit of a war of attrition. But with six players, the game moves quite quickly and players don’t get many turns so collaboration is essential if players are to get anyone to dry land. Blue and Black cooperated effectively to get a couple of Sailors each home, as did Teal and Pine. Although for a long time, Lime was the only one not to have any of his meeples eaten, he was also the last to get one safe.

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With six players, the end of the game came round quite quickly. The game ends immediately when the Volcano is revealed under one of the last eight Mountain tiles and with so many players once the Woodland tiles have been exhausted the game can end any time, so one extra turn can make all the difference. And so it proved for many. It was Lime who turned over the Volcano tile, much to his disgust as he had a boat with two meeples ready to disembark on his next turn. Pink also had two in a boat near shore (total value nine) and Blue was equally unimpressed as it was her turn next and she needed just one move for her most valuable meeple to crawl up the beach.

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With Atlantis gone beneath a combination of waves and lava and every meeple that had not made dry land perished in the boiling sea, it was time to score. Each meeple has a value printed on the bottom, and although players knew what these were when they were placed, they were not allowed to look at them again. Teal had attempted to codify which meeple was which in their location on the spaces they were placed on, however, Blue quickly called him on this and like everyone else, over the course of the game he had mostly lost track of which was where. Pink and Lime had only got one meeple ashore a piece, but although they were relatively high scoring ones, everyone else had a similar value one home and at least one additional one too.

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Blue, Black and Teal managed to get three meeples ashore each, with Black totalling six points and Blue totalling seven. The winner was Teal, however, with a total of eight, though even one more turn or a slightly different turn of events earlier in the game would have made a huge difference to the final placings. It had been a lot of chaotic fun, but unquestionably, with so many players, there wasn’t much chance to plan and the game changed hugely between a player’s turns. With fewer players it is definitely a more strategic game, but with more, the onus is on players to work together more—indeed the players that did this this time, were the most successful.

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Learning outcome: Just when you thought it was safe to fall into the water…

16th February 2021 (Online)

Purple and Black were the first to arrive and chatted with Pine when he popped up. There was some chit-chat about where Mulberry and Red were at the moment and eventually Green, Lilac, Burgundy, and Ivory also joined the party. In a return to the “Roll and Write” style of game, the “Feature Game” was to be MetroX (aka メトロックス), a game based around routes on the Tokyo and Osaka underground maps. People were gamely mispronouncing the names of the lines when Burgundy asked which map we were going to be using, which was when Blue realised that she had sent out the wrong file. There was a brief hiatus as people fired up their printers and Pine explained how one of his friends had said he “looked like a row of sheep’s arses”, and then with the correct paperwork, we could get started.

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The game is quite simple: a card is turned over and players assign the number to a line and “build” that number of stations along the line. When a player completes a line, they score points with the first player (or players) scoring more points than those to finish the line in later rounds (similar to the scoring for columns in Noch Mal! and Noch Mal So Gut! which we played a few weeks back). There are four different types of cards, but the most common are plain numbers which allow players to just build stations and these are numbered two to six, with fewer of the high numbers. With each line restricted so that only two or three number cards can be assigned to it, Pine was quick to point out the obvious flaw and with it, the whole point of the game.

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Each line has roughly ten to fifteen stations, so while some could be completed with three high numbers, it is not possible to complete them all outright without an awful lot of luck (and/or some very bad shuffling!). However, most stations appear on more than one line, so the game is about using lines that run parallel creatively, sacrificing some to ensure others score well. There are catches though. Firstly, each line must be extended from the start end (the end with the “Indicator Boxes”, marked in red on our paperwork). This means that although stations can be built in the middle of the line because they are part of another line, stations cannot be added beyond this point (where the lines diverge) unless all the earlier stations have been completed.

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Secondly, normal number cards cannot “skip” completed stations. In other words, in a line where the first two stations have not been completed, but the third has, if a “Six” is used to build the first two, the third cannot be jumped, and the remaining four are wasted. So efficiency is the order of the game. There are a small number of special cards with a circle round the number that allow players to skip completed stations, but these are few and far between and are only low numbers. There is also a wild that allows players to fill in one station anywhere on the board without filling in an indicator box.

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In addition to scoring points for completed lines, players can also score a lot of points for intersections. In the deck of just twenty cards, there are three “Star Cards”. These allow players to build just one station at the cost of one Indicator Box, but instead of writing a zero in the box, they write a number that corresponds to the number of lines that go through the station. With some stations forming the intersection of four or five lines, these can be very lucrative, but of course these are in the middle of the board and therefore need careful planning and a bit of good fortune to be able to make them really count.

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People were not really taken with the rules and particularly with the fact they couldn’t see how it was going to work, generally didn’t feel it was “possible”, and that they were going to end up with negative points. Everyone was happy to give it a go though and we started with the Tokyo board. We started with a lot of high numbers which made the game seem really straight forward at first. About half way through though, we discovered that Green had misunderstood the rules (again!) and there was a bit of clarification and a pause while he tried to rectify things.

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Purple was the first to complete a line, claiming Fukutoshin. That focussed everyone’s mind a bit as they realised it wasn’t quite so impossible after all. Drawing a six triggers shuffling in the discard pile, and although Pink shuffled the deck thoroughly, the high cards returned, at least initially. Eventually, we drew some “Stars” and people were able to start picking up bonus points for intersections as well. Despite all his comments about how impossible it was, Pine soon claimed Namboku and Lilac claimed Chiyoda.

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The game ends when there are no Indicator boxes left, and it was as Pink and Burgundy started a count down of how many cards there were left that some players realised that they’d failed to fill them in every time. There was a bit of a flurry as people tried to correct things and then it was all over and everyone started adding up their scores. As usual, Ivory was first to post his score, and as usual, it was very competitive. Pine wasn’t convinced his score of thirty-four was right, especially as it was one more than Ivory’s, but either way, they were both beaten by Pink and Black with thirty-seven and Black took it on a tie-breaker.

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Now everyone had got the hang of things, we decided to give the second map, Osaka, a go. In contrast to the last game, the first card was a “Star” and the other two came out shortly afterwards, making it very difficult for players to score lots of points for intersections. Despite that, players still seemed to make good progress. In fact, there were five claims for completing four different lines in one round with Pine, Green and Ivory completing Midosuji, Sakaisuji and Yotsubashi respectively, and Black finishing Yotsubashi as well and New Tram.

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It was just as the game was coming to a close that the gremlins from a month ago came back to victimise Black and Purple. Unfortunately, we weren’t quick enough to spot it this time, and Pink had shuffled the deck before we noticed. The game was close to the end so it was sad that we couldn’t see whether Pink or Black did better in the rematch, and everyone else decided to finish up while they sorted out their problems. Like Take it Easy! a couple of weeks back, by the end, the players were desperately begging for particular cards they needed and as they got what they wanted there were sighs of relief, while other groaned when they got something they couldn’t use.

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When the last card had been revealed, everyone moved on to the scores. Once again, Pine, was right up there finishing with a total of thirty, but Burgundy, one of the most improved finished one point ahead with thirty-one. There was some chat about the game while Purple and Black rejoined us, and it seemed it suffered from “marmite factor” with Green saying it wasn’t for him (though if he’d got the rules right it might have helped), and Pine saying that although he’d won, he hadn’t really enjoyed it. On the other hand, Blue, Pink, and Burgundy thought it was clever and liked it. While we were chatting, Violet joined the group to talk about a new venture she was considering.

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She wondered whether there would be any interest in custom dice featuring the boardGOATS logo. There was some discussion about weighting dice correctly so they are truly random and how the market would be, as nobody wanted Violet to spend money on something that would not give a return. With Purple and Black back from their gremlin-bashing, Ivory took his leave and everyone else moved on to playing the inevitable 6 Nimmt! on Board Game Arena. We normally play this at the end of the evening, but this time, with lots of people, it put in an early appearance.

– Image by 311matman on instagram.com

While we waited for Violet to sort herself out with an account, Pine pointed out that Green had been playing games, so Green had started investigating Pine’s profile, marvelling at the number of experience points he had. It was then that he pointed out that Pine was 24^th in the overall rankings for Cribbage. It’s true that most people who use Board Game Arena probably play Euro games rather than traditional games, but all of a sudden we realised we had a bit of a celebrity in our midst. Eventually though, we got over being star-struck and actually started playing…

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We’ve played 6 Nimmt! an awful lot, so it needs only a little introduction: players simultaneously choose a card from their hand and they are revealed at the same time. Starting with the lowest value card, the cards are added one at a time to four rows – the player who adds the sixth card, instead takes the other five which become their scoring pile. On Board Game Arena, we now play the “Professional Variant”, where cards can be added to both ends of the rows, causing mayhem when least expected.

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It takes a bit of time to get used to playing with the additional layer of complexity, so it wasn’t really a surprise that poor Violet won the race to the bottom, although he father, Green wasn’t really all that far behind. The winner was Pink who picked up just ten “nimmts” and finished with fifty-six points. Black was joint second with the inevitable Pine, who always does well at this game, though this time they were twenty points behind Pink.

– Image by boardGOATS form boardgamearena.com

Time was marching on, and with plenty of people still about, that limited our choices of game somewhat. Before Christmas, we had given Incan Gold (aka Diamant) a try, but strange card draws had let to a very odd game. As the dust settled, we decided to give it another go. The game is a fairly simple “Push your Luck” game where players are exploring a temple. Players decide whether they are going to stay and explore, or leave the temple and take any treasure with them.

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Players who stay in the temple will get shares in any treasure cards that are drawn that round, but if they are present when a second Hazard card of any given type is drawn, the temple collapses and buries everyone in it and they lose any treasure they have collected. In the first round, Black left first followed by Green and then gradually everyone else except Pine and Pink decided discretion was the better part of valour. Inevitably, they got caught, so in the second round Pink was the first to leave (quickly followed by Purple).

– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com

When a treasure came out everyone else tried to leave and take it with them, but as nobody left alone nobody managed to get it. Eventually, only Pine, Burgundy and Blue were left in and when Blue and Burgundy left too, Pine was all by himself. When he turned one last card he got fifteen gems all to himself and left with a total of twenty and the treasure as well, much to everyone else’s chagrin. In the third round Black managed to escape alone to take a treasure and Pine and Green got caught by a couple mummies and while everyone else escaped, nobody scored very well.

– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com

In the fourth round, Burgundy almost managed to repeat Pine’s effort when he was last in the temple and turned over a fourteen so took all of it, leaving with seventeen gems. The final round was a bit of a dud, with only Pink and Violet scoring and even they didn’t get much as they left together after the first round, so shared the seven gems left on the floor. They did better than everyone else though because the fourth card was a second snake and that was that. It was very close, but the winner was Burgundy, just one gem ahead of Pine. Black made an excellent third, proving that consistency is important as well as big wins. And with that, it was time for bed.

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Learning Outcome: It’s a great shame Henry Beck never worked in Japan.

22nd December 2020 (Online)

For our last meeting before Christmas, we usually meet for food and have special Christmas Crackers. This year, this wasn’t possible of course, so instead of crackers everyone had a Box of Delights to be opened simultaneously at 8pm (similar to the Birthday Boxes we’d had in October). The boxes included a range of chocolates and sweets, home-made gingerbread meeples, a miniature cracker, a meeple magnet, and a selection of dice and other goodies.

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With several little people attending, we decided to play something straight-forward first, so we began the evening with Second Chance. This is a very simple Tetris-style game game that we’ve played a few times this year. Players choose one of two cards depicting shapes and draw them in their grid. If a player cannot draw either shape, another card is revealed and if they are unable to draw that one as well, they are eliminated.

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Once the rules had been explained and everyone had been given their unique starting shape, the group settled down with their colouring pens and pencils and concentrated on trying to fill their grid. Pink was the first one to take a second chance card, and when he couldn’t place that shape either he was the first to be eliminated and took his bonus space. The winner is the player with the fewest empty spaces, so while being first out is not a guarantee of anything, obviously players who stay in the longest are likely to do better. And it was a long time before anyone else was eliminated.

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As people gradually found their space was increasingly limited, there were the usual pleas for something nice, which became more desperate as people needed second chances. Then there was jealousy as players like Pine were eliminated with outrageously large shapes while others, like Little Lime, stayed in when they got the much coveted small pieces. Meanwhile, everyone else concentrated on beautifying their art with Christmas colours and embellishments.

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Eventually, Purple, Pine, Burgundy, Blue and lastly Green were also eliminated leaving just five when the game came to an end because the deck ran out. Then it was just the scores. Most people did really well, though some, not quite so much. More than half finished with single digits though, including excellent performances from Little Lime and Little Green. There was some beautiful artwork from Lilac (as usual), but festive offerings from Green, Purple and Black too. There was a three-way tie for second place between Black, Blue and Green. On his own with only one single empty space though, was Ivory.

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With the first game over, we moved on to discussing the important matter of the GOAT Awards. Every year, we give the Golden GOAT to our favourite game played during the year and the GOAT Poo award to our least favourite game. Last year, Wingspan won the Golden GOAT Award and 7 Wonders took the GOAT Poo Prize. This year, the unanimous winner of the GOAT Poo was Covid and its effect on 2020—nobody could deny that Covid was definitely the worst thing to happen to games night this year. As Covid wasn’t a game, Camel Up took the award on a tie break from Terraforming Mars and Welcome To….

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Terraforming Mars just missed out on the GOAT Poo prize, but in coming fourth in the Golden GOAT competition, won the unofficial “Marmite award”, for the most divisive game. Kingdomino and and last year’s winner Wingspan both made the podium for the Golden GOAT, but controversially, the winner was 6 Nimmt!. The controversy wasn’t caused by the worthiness of the game, just that Blue ensured it’s emphatic win by placing all four of her votes in its favour.

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Although 6 Nimmt! is an old game, we’ve played it at the end of almost every meeting on Board Game Arena since March. In a year with little smile about, it has given us more fun and entertainment than almost all of the other games put together and was responsible for moment of the year. That was back in May, when Lime joined a game of 6 Nimmt! with a bunch of Frenchmen by mistake. That is just one of many memorable moments we’ve had with 6 Nimmt! this year though. Furthermore, since we discovered the new professional variant the game has gained a new lease of life, so it seemed an entirely appropriate, if strange win for a strange gaming year.

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While Pink did the count for the GOAT Awards, Blue reminded everyone of the rules for the “Feature Game” which was to be the Winter Wonderland edition of Welcome To…. The fact that Welcome To… had nearly won the GOAT Poo award was an inauspicious start, especially since the main protagonist was Pine who had struggled last time. A lot of the ill feeling was due to the dark colour of the board for the Halloween edition which we played last time it got an outing, so the pale blue colour of the Winter Wonderland version was always going to be an improvement.

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Welcome To… is one of the more complex games we’ve been playing online. The idea is that players are developers building part of a town in 1950s USA. Mechanistically, it is simple enough—the top card on each of three number decks is revealed and players choose one of the three numbers to play. They mark this on one of the three streets on their player board. The house numbers must increase from left to right and each number can only appear once in each street.

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Each card is paired with the reverse of the previous card drawn from that deck, which gives a special power. The special power can be rule breaking, enabling players to write a number a second time in a street, or give some flexibility in the number they must write. Alternatively, the special power can directly provide players with extra points through the building of parks or swimming pools. Finally, the special power can facilitate the achievement of extra points by enabling players to build fences separating their street into “Estates”, or increasing the number of points each “Estate” provides at the end of the game.

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Aside from the colour scheme and artwork, the main difference between the base game and the Winter Wonderland Version was the addition of fairy lights as a means to get bonus points. These are added to to a player’s board joining any houses where the numbers are consecutive. At the end of the game, players get one point for each house in their longest string of lights. Additionally, the third planning card selected gave a lot of points for anyone brave enough (or perhaps daft enough) to successfully connect an entire street with lights.

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Little Lime and Lime took their leave, and Lilac and Little Green also decided to give it a miss, but that still left eight players, albeit one who was very sceptical. Pine had nominated Welcome To… for the GOAT Poo Prize, and felt that didn’t bode well, but was prepared to give it a go. The Plan Cards, give players points during the game as well as being a trigger for the end of the game. As well as the street full of lights from the Winter edition, there was also one that gave points for a pair of estates (comprising three and six houses) and for players completing all six end houses.

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The game started with a lot of “Bis” cards and quite a few high and low numbers. It wasn’t a huge surprise then, when several people completed the end of street plan. Ivory was first to complete the estate plan and eventually, Blue who felt that the Christmas element should be accentuated, completed the fairy lights plan. The question was, who would be first to finish all three and when, as that was the most-likely end-game trigger.

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It was towards the end that Purple commented that Black had been eliminated. It wasn’t immediately clear what she was on about, but eventually it was apparent that one of his furry friends had decided that they wanted to be the subject of his attention and had firmly sat on his player board, very effectively obstructing play. That cat-astrophe put paid to any successful involvement in the game by both Purple and Black, but it wasn’t long before Green announced that he’d finished all three of the Plans and was ending the game.

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With that, everyone totalled up their scores. Pine said that despite his scepticism, he had actually really enjoyed the game and felt he had done reasonably well and indeed was a long way from coming last. It was very close for second place with Green just beating Burgundy into third by two points. The clear winner, for the second time of the night, was Ivory who finished with an exceptional ninety-five points. And with that, he decided to quit while he was ahead and everyone else decided it was only appropriate that they should play the newly-crowned Golden GOAT—6 Nimmt!.

– Image by boardGOATS

6 Nimmt! is so very simple, yet so much fun. Players simultaneously choose a card from their hand and these are then revealed and, starting with the lowest card, added to one of the four rows. Cards are added to the row with the highest number that is lower than the card played, i.e. the nearest lower number. When a sixth card is added to a row, the owner takes the first five cards into their score pile, leaving the card they played as the new starting card. The player with the fewest Bulls’ Heads at the end is the winner.

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Board Game Arena implements the game with everyone starting with sixty-six points and the game ending when someone reaches zero. It also adds a couple of other variants, the most exciting of which is the “Professional Variant”, where players can add cards to either end of the row. Because Board Game Arena deals with all the up-keep, it makes this variant much easier to manage, and the results often come as a complete surprise.

– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com

The reason 6 Nimmt! won the Golden GOAT, is that in a year where there has been so much to be miserable about, this game has provided more fun than anything else. This time, poor Burgundy went from jointly holding the lead to sixth place in just a couple of turns and threatened to beat Purple to the bottom and trigger the end of the game. As it was, he didn’t quite make it, and left Green who had only picked up seven “nimmts” in the whole game, to win.

– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com

With seven players, the number of options were limited to more 6 Nimmt!, Saboteur, or something we hadn’t played before. In the end, we went for a sort of compromise in Incan Gold which most of us knew, though we’d not played it on Board Game Arena. This is a fairly simple “Push your Luck” game where players are exploring a temple. Simultaneously, players decide whether they are going to stay or leave the temple. Players who are in the temple will get shares in any treasure cards that are drawn that round. These are divided evenly between the players and any remainders are left on the card.

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As well as fifteen treasure cards, there are also Hazard cards in the deck: three each of five different types. When a second Hazard card of any given type is drawn, the temple collapses and buries everyone in it and they lose any treasure they have collected. Additionally, there are five Artefact cards in the deck—these can only be claimed by players leaving the temple. Any players that leave before it collapses, keep the treasure they have collected hitherto, and take a share in any remainders left on cards. If they leave alone, they also take any artefacts, but only if they leave alone. Having left the temple, however, they will get no more treasure in that round.

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The game is played over five rounds and the winner is the player with the most treasure at the end of the game. The game is extremely random, but can be a lot of fun with the right people. This time it was particularly random though. The first two cards drawn were both Hazards and the first round ending after just five cards with only Green getting out in time. The second round was even worse with three Hazards in a row terminating the round before it had begun. On the plus-side, having had two rounds ended by Mummies, two of the three Mummy cards were removed from the deck, making it impossible for the mummies to end another round. There were plenty of other Hazards though…

– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com

The third round wasn’t much better, lasting only three cards with a second snake ending another round and only Pink taking any treasure. The fourth round started with an Artefact, but when Burgundy, left, he was joined by Pink and Purple, so none of them were able to take it home. Just three cards later, a second Giant Spider card brought down the temple and everyone finished with nothing (again). The final round lasted a little longer, but two players still managed to finish the game without any treasure.

– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com

Purple made an early escape and grabbed a couple of gems from the floor. Burgundy and Pink escaped shortly after and Black managed to sneak out as the Giant Spiders closed the temple for good. As a result of the unusually large number of Hazard cards, the game was especially low scoring. It ended in a tie between Pink and Green on ten, with Black two points behind in third.

– Image by boardGOATS from boardgamearena.com

With Incan Gold done, there was still time for one more game and it was only fitting to close with another game of 6 Nimmt!. Having done so well in the last two games made Green the target this time, not that anyone really had enough control to manipulate their own position, much less target anybody else. Pink, who had also done well in recent games, made a bit of a beeline for the bottom, and it was not much of a surprise when he triggered the end of the game. This time, Green could only manage third, and it was a two-way tie for first place between Black and Pine (who always does well in 6 Nimmt!, and always denies it). And with that, we brought our first online Christmas Party to a close and wished everyone a Very Merry Christmas.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: A box of sugar and exciting trinkets is ideal improving your concentration.

2nd April 2019

The evening began with a lot of people eating, the return of Mulberry’s daughter, Maroon, and the arrival of someone new, Lime. So while the usual suspects finished their supper, everyone else played a game of Incan Gold (aka Diamant). This is a light, “push-your-luck” type game, where players are exploring a mine by turning over cards, sharing any Gems these reveal. After each card has been revealed, players simultaneously choose whether to leave the mine or stay and see another card revealed.

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Unfortunately, as well as gem cards, the deck also includes Hazards like scorpions, snakes, poison gas, explosions and rockfalls. When a particular Hazard is revealed for a second time, the mine collapses. Anyone still inside the mine at this point loses all the gems they’ve collected during the round, while those that left early keep their winnings and stash them in their tent. So, the trick is that as players leave, the share of the gems grows larger, but so does the risk of collapse. Additionally, there are also Artifact cards. When one of these is revealed nobody gets any gems until they leave, but if they leave alone, they not only get the Artifact, but also any remainders from the division of spoils associated with the Gem cards revealed earlier in the round.

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The game is played over five rounds, and like all push-your-like games like this, players who are unlucky in the first round often feel they are out of the game. This is particularly true where one player does really well in the first round as they have can play safe and can afford to leave the mine early to consolidate their position. However, this time there were a lot of players and everyone was somehow encouraged to stay in the mind keeping things close. As the game progressed however, the pack began to split and a small group of leaders began to emerge. In the end, Mulberry’s wind-ups failed to put Pine off his game and he finished with more than twice her total, winning the game with twenty-five Gems. Purple was a close second though, with Maroon not far behind in third.

– Image by boardGOATS

With food and the first game finished, it was time to decide who was going to play the week’s “Feature Game”, Dinosaur Island. This is a worker placement game set in a dinosaur theme park. Although it’s not named specifically, the colour, theme, artwork and feel is clearly intended to evoke an impression of the most famous dinosaur theme park, Jurassic Park, despite having ten people and the Totally Liquid expansion available (which provides the pieces for a fifth player), we decided it was likely to be a long game and that sticking to four or fewer might be wise, and so it proved. The rest of the group were half-way through their chosen game, Las Vegas, before the dino-group had even finished setting up, never mind the rules run-through.

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Las Vegas is one of our most popular games, and the idea is very simple, on their turn, the active player rolls their dice and uses them to “bet” in one of the casinos. “Betting” is done by placing all the dice of one value on the corresponding casino. On their next turn, the player re-rolls their dice and does the same again. Each casino has a pot of cash and after the last dice has been placed, the player with the highest “bid” at each casino (i.e. the player who placed the most dice), wins the largest denomination note. Similarly, the player who placed the second largest bid taking the second highest denomination and so on. The catch is that before the order is determined, any dice involved in a tie are completely removed, so a bet of a single die can win, even though there could be several higher bets, which makes the game great fun.

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We usually play with the extra high denomination notes and the “Big Dice” from the Boulevard expansion, as well as the Slot Machine mini-expansion. The “Big Dice” add to interest in the decision making when pacing bets, as they are double-weight, and count for two dice. The Slot Machine, on the other hand, gives another place for players to bet, but instead of having a specific number, players can place all their dice of one number as long as each number is only placed once. At the end of the round, the player with the most dice in the Slot Machine takes the highest denomination note from the pot, but in the case of a tie, the total number of pips on the dice are taken into account, then the highest value dice.

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Once again, Pine was caught in a tussle, this time with Purple, which culminated in him placing four sixes to beat her “three-of-a-kind”, just to annoy her. Green almost always does badly at this sort of game and this was no exception, although the game was reasonably close this time. Mulberry and Maroon, mother and daughter tied for third place, but it turned out that the squabble between Purple and Pine might actually have had a real impact on the final result as they toughed it out for first place. In the end, those four dice might have been critical as Pine beat Purple by a measly $30,000 – a substantial amount to most of us, but a relatively small sum in this game where most players win quarter of a million dollars or more.

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Dinosaur Island was still going on and was looking like it still had some way to go (though they had finally started). Mulberry, Maroon and Pine all wanted an early night, but Green and Lime decided to keep Purple company for another game, which eventually turned out to be Walk the Plank! This is another popular game and Green and Purple felt it was essential to introduce Lime to it. The game is a programming game with a pirate theme. The idea is that each player has a hand of cards and at the start of the round “programs” their turn by deciding which cards they are going to play, then they take it in turns to action one card per turn. The point is, although players have to choose three cards at the start of the round, by the time the final cards are played the game has changed so much that any plans made at the start will have gone completely to wrack and ruin.

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So, players start with three pirate meeples each and the aim is to push everyone else off the ship, along the plank and off the end thus sending them to visit Davey Jones’ Locker. Once again, Green was picked on by the others and was the first to lose all three of his pirateeples to the kraken, and therefore took on the role of the Ghost Meeple. The Ghost is confined to the ship, has a restricted set of actions and only gets to carry out one per round. Unfortunately, the game doesn’t play so well with two, and as a result when it got down to a couple of meeples each for Purple and Lime they got bogged down in a bit of a stale-mate. This didn’t make it any less fun though. In the end it was a Ghostly Green who helped push Purple’s final meeple off the boat and Lime did the rest giving him his first win; hopefully we can look forward to many more in the coming weeks.

– Image by boardGOATS

Meanwhile, on the neighbouring table the other four were playing the week’s “Feature Game”, Dinosaur Island. Although it took a long time to set up and explain, Dinosaur Island is not actually that complex a game. The game is played over four phases. In the first phase, a set of beautiful bespoke dice are rolled and players play their scientist meeples to choose dinosaur “designs” or DNA resources associated with the available dice, or increase their DNA storage. In the second phase, players can use their funds to buy upgrades to their technologies from the market place, which basically improves the quality of the actions players can take in the next phase. The third phase is the core, “worker-placement” round. This is when players can “build” dinosaurs, reinforce their security, convert DNA into other types of DNA etc.

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In the final, fourth round, players open their park to the public, drawing visitor-meeples blind, out of a bag. The visitors come in two types, yellow, paying visitors and pink “hoodlums” who don’t pay and are very good at avoiding getting eaten. The total number of visitors is dependent on the total excitement rating of the dinosaurs each player has in their park; the more dinosaurs a player has and the more exciting they are, the more visitors a player has and therefore the more money they receive in gate receipts. However, the more exciting dinosaurs also need better security which is expensive. If a park’s security is insufficient, the dinosaurs get out and start eating the visitors – each surviving visitor scores the park owner a victory point while visitors that are eaten cost victory points.

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There are a couple of little tweaks that give the game a lot of replay-ability. For example, there are eleven “plot twist” cards which introduce slight variations to the rules keeping things fresh. For example, turn order is normally dictated by the number of points each player has, but the group played with a “plot twist” that meant the player order was always the same, with the first player progressing clockwise one place each round. There are also thirty-nine end-game goal cards of which a small number of cards are selected for each game, when a set number of these have been completed by at least one player, this triggers the end of the game. Any number of players can complete these objectives and receive the points associated with them, but once one player has completed an objective, it will become unavailable at the end of the round. Thus all players who achieve an objective will do so in the same round.

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This time, the group, played with the aquatic dinosaurs from the Totally Liquid expansion, partly because they alleviate the incessant “neon pink-ness” of game, but mostly just because they are cool. Blue began by getting a bit carried away with the coolness of swimming dinos and started out taking a plan for a very exciting Megalodon largely simply because she had heard of it, and without thinking through the consequences. Having read the rules in advance, Burgundy had a much better handle on the challenges associated with the game and made a beeline for the special Dino Security upgrade which enabled him to increase the security in his park a second time per round at no extra cost.

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Black also understood the importance of threat and security and decided to try to deal with the problem by keeping his threat level down. One unfortunate side-effect of this is that most low threat dinosaurs are un-exciting and attract fewer visitors. It all became a bit academic though as his threat level spiraled out of control. Blue, realised she had made a bit of bish and needed to do something to enable her to start producing Megalodons without getting all her visitors eaten and hemorrhaging points. So she decided to concentrate on upgrading her technologies hoping to net the bonus seven points from the end-game objective rewarding players for having four upgraded technologies. Black quickly realised he couldn’t keep up with Blue’s developments and as it wasn’t going to happen for him focused his efforts elsewhere.

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Meanwhile, Ivory had bagged the popular T-Rex dinosaur plan and was producing them in large numbers. He, like Black also got heartily sick of pulling “hoodlums” out of the bag instead of paying visitors. Black bought himself a technology to deal with the problem, but Ivory chose a different route, employing an expert who arrested any hoodlums in his park with the net effect that they became less prevalent for everyone else as well. Experts are expensive though and not everyone could afford one, or felt they were worth the money. Certainly they are more valuable if they are employed early in the game so players get their money’s worth

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Everyone got points from the end-game objectives, but as the game came to a close it was clear who was in pole position. Although his security wasn’t quite sufficient the huge number of visitors turning up every round put Ivory in front by some twenty-plus points. In contrast, it was very close for second place however, with just five points between second place and the wooden spoon. The nature of the game means keeping tabs on points, security, threat and excitement levels is quite a fiddly business. Since it was possible to throw a very small blanket over the three competing for second place, it is quite possible that the scores weren’t accurate, nevertheless, the Black finished in second place in what had been a very enjoyable game.

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Learning Outcome: Security is very important and should not be neglected.

22nd January 2019

Green was delayed, so once food had been dealt with, we started with the “Feature Game”, Auf Teufel komm raus. This is a fun, push-your luck game with a betting element, in the vein of games like Incan Gold. “Auf Teufel komm raus” literally translates as “On Devil come out“, but roughly means “by hook or by crook” or according to rule book, “The Devil with it” (as the title is officially translated). None of these really give any information about the game though they inspire the lovely artwork. The game itself is fairly straight-forward though: everyone simultaneously places bets on the maximum value of coal that will be drawn out of the fire by one player in the round. Players then take it in turns to draw coals, either stopping when they choose or going bust if they draw a piece.

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The player who draws the highest total value coals without going bust gets a fifty point bonus, as does the player who draws the most pieces of coal without drawing a Devil token. Everyone whose bet was exceeded by the maximum value keeps their stake and wins the equivalent value from the bank. If the player with the highest bid was successful, they win double their stake money. This is key as it means the largest stakes are very lucrative making it in everyone else’s interest to stop once their stake has been met, unless they are in the running for the largest total or the most coals of course… The game ends when one player passes one thousand six hundred at the end of the round and the winner is the player with the highest score.

– Image by boardGOATS

The game is beautifully produced with lovely poker chips, nice wooden coal tokens, a colourful board and chunky score tokens, but it is the little things in the game play that make it enjoyable. Bizarrely though, it took the group several rounds to really get the hang of what decisions they were making. Firstly, players had to work out what a reasonable level for bidding was. There are approximately the same number of tens, twenties, twenty-fives, fifties and Devil coals with a smattering of seventy-fives and hundreds, but it took a round or so for people to get a feel for the statistics. Then there was an understanding of the tactics when drawing coal—it took most of the game for players to realise that once the highest bid had been matched, players might as well keep drawing until they win something as there was no penalty as long as nobody had “made a pact with the Devil”.

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Making a pact with the Devil is not something one generally chooses to do; it is simply a catch-up mechanism, but significantly changes the dynamic of the game. Basically, a player alone at at the back is given fifty points by any player who draws a Devil token. This prevents the “devil may care” attitude once the maximum bid has been met. It only happens rarely though (especially with six), as players don’t reveal their precise score, only the range of their score. As Black put it, players only know the rough size of each other’s “wad”. The aspect that makes the game fun though, is the encouraging, discouraging and general barracking as players try to manipulate others to their own ends.

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With the “wad” scoring and everyone feeling their way, it wasn’t entirely clear how people were doing to begin with, but Mulberry suffered from a huge unsuccessful overly optimistic bid in the first round. Making a pact with the Devil helped Mulberry catch up, while Pine pulled away at the front. Burgundy, Black and Blue weren’t going to let him get away with that and started pushing the boundaries with their bids and their draws. As players began to get a feel for what was a safe bid and what was a risky bid, everyone joined in with lots of “Ooos” and “Aaahhs” as coal was drawn from the Devil’s cauldron. Purple seemed to have an unerring knack of finding Devil tokens, but despite languishing at the back, the fact she had Mulberry for company meant neither of them could benefit from making a pact with Lucifer (maybe something that could be “House Ruled” in future). In the final round everyone put in large bids, but Blue’s was the largest, a hundred and fifty. Purple had gone bust while trying to meet Blue’s target, but the slightly more modest bids from Burgundy, Pine and Black had all been achieved, leaving all or nothing for Blue as the last player to draw.

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When the first token Blue turned over was one of the scarce hundreds, Black commented in jest that Blue had “marked it”. The reason for Blue’s slightly indignant reply of “Hardly!” became clear in the post-game chit-chat. There are several online reports of the coal tokens being identifiable. Blue had therefore looked carefully at the tokens that had arrived covered in tiny specks of white paint which she had spent an hour scraping off. This wasn’t entirely successful leaving some small scratch marks, so she had then carefully spent another hour inking the backs to try to homogenise them. This had left the coals with a wide variety of glossy sheens, so she had carefully spent another hour rubbing them all with carnuba wax to try to make them all similarly shiny. Unfortunately, the grain meant the pieces looked more even more varied with white wax deep inside the grain for some tokens and others smooth and glossy.

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Blue had then spent another hour rubbing all the tokens with oil which finally had the desired effect – there was still variety in the pattern of the grains, but there wasn’t an obvious trend. Once Blue had explained that she’d spent most of Sunday evening on the exercise, trying hard not to identify any of the pieces while getting inky, waxy, oily, numb fingers, the Irony of Black’s comment was appreciated by everyone. With Blue having drawn a hundred, everyone was on tenterhooks to see if she could draw the fifty she needed to make her bid successful. Pine’s successful bid meant he had just exceeded the sixteen hundred needed to end the game; draw a Devil and Blue would lose a hundred and fifty and finish some way down the rankings. It wasn’t to be though, with a flourish she produced a fifty, giving her three hundred points for the bet plus a fifty point bonus and with it, the game.

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Everyone had enjoyed the game though all were agreed that they’d start differently next time. It had been a lot of fun once we’d got going though, so it will probably get another outing soon. Poor Green had missed out, arriving about half-way through. That left us with seven though, and a conundrum as to what to play next. Time was getting on, but Green was keen to play something a little meatier. Although Burgundy was happy to join him in Endeavor: Age of Sail with the new Exploits, nobody else was in the mood and it is a game that really needs at least three. Blue was tempted, but with her fuzzy, “fluey” head wasn’t up to something new (she hadn’t played with the Exploits before) and Black was of a similar mind. Inevitably Bohnanza got a mention, and as Mulberry hadn’t played it before, it was looking a likely candidate. Pine wasn’t enthusiastic, but was even less keen on Endeavor. In the end, the group split into two with Blue, Burgundy and Purple opting to teach Mulberry “The Bean Game”, while Pine and Black joined Green in a game of Marrakech.

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Strictly speaking, Marrakech is a game about selling Rugs, but the group just couldn’t stop themselves calling them Carpets. The game itself is a very clever little abstract game made all the better by the addition of fabulous fabric “Carpets”, wooden coins, a large chunky bespoke die and a cool salesman who goes by the name of Assam. The idea of the game is that players take it in turns to roll the wooden die and then turn Assam zero or ninety degrees and move him the given number of spaces. If Assam finishes on an opponent’s coloured piece of Carpet (or Rug), the player must pay rent equal to the size of the contiguous area. Finally, the active player places on piece of Carpet covering one square adjacent to Assam (and one other square as the Rugs are rectangular), before passing the problem on to the next player. The player who ends with the most money and visible squares of Carpet combined, is the winner.

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After the first few placements it felt very obvious which direction the seller would have to be facing and then it was luck of the die. Green quickly built a nice large area in one corner of the board, but thereafter game-play resolutely remained in the other areas of the board. This was a bit of a mixed blessing as it meant Green kept his high Rug count, but did not receive any earnings from it. This was compounded when he made a tactical error, turning the faceless Assam into the path of everyone else’s Rugs. From there on, Pine and Black made regular visits to each others Rug areas, although Pine seemed to be coming off slightly better from the exchange.

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Eventually, with the Green and Black down to their last three Rugs in hand, for some reason Pine had an extra and still had four left. The group decided that he must have failed to place one at some point, so let him to place two on the next turn. It wasn’t clear how much that affected the outcome, but on final count, Pine had just one more Rug visible than Green, but had a advantage in coins so was declared the winner. With Bohnanza ongoing on the next table, the group looked for something short-ish and familiar and settled on Splendor, but decided to add The Orient module (from Cities of Splendor expansion), for no better reason than the fact that one of Pine’s favourite football teams is Leyton Orient.

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Splendor is a very simple game: on their turn, players take gems (rubies, sapphires, opals, diamonds and emeralds, in the form of special poker-like chips), buy a gem-card, or reserve a gem-card taking a wild, gold chip as a bonus. When taking chips, players must take three different chips, or, if there are enough chips in the stack, they can take two the same. Each card features a gem which acts as a permanent chip (i.e. where chips are spent when buying cards, gem-cards remain in the player’s display). Some cards also give points, and the first player that achieves a set combination of gem-cards also gets points for “attracting a Noble”. The winner is the player with the most points at the end of the round where one player reaches fifteen. The Orient expansion module adds an extra three decks of cards (one for each tier), which have special powers, like double bonus cards or joker cards which help players entice Nobles to their store.

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This time all the randomly drawn Noble tiles required ruby cards; three of them also needed opals and three needed diamonds as well. When laying out the Level One cards, all four came out as white diamonds and a quick check on the rest of the deck showed this was no fluke, and the deck really did need shuffling further! Once the cards had been randomised, the usual cat and mouse game ensued until Green took one of the Level Two Orient cards. This meant he was able to reserve one of the Nobles, much to Black’s chagrin, as he then had to change tac. The extra gold and additional gems that the Orient cards gave were used a few times to add a new twist to the classic game and Pine managed to use the ability to choose any Level One card he wanted to good effect as well. When Green managed to reserve a second Noble, the writing was on the wall.

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With only two Nobles remaining for Pine and Black to fight over, Pine decided that he would also go the reserve route and took the third, leaving Black floundering with just the high scoring cards as targets. Green managed to get his first Noble to take a one point lead, and very soon after completed his second reserved Noble to jump to a very good score of nineteen. Neither Black nor Pine could reach the fifteen in their final turns, although Pine was only a turn or two away from completing his Noble. Although we’ve played this expansion has been before, the question arose as to whether the ability to reserve a noble is to powerful. The conclusion was “possibly”, and there was some discussion about a “House Rule” to limit players to holding one Noble in reserve at a time.

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Meanwhile, on the neighbouring table, Mulberry was learning the delights of “Bean Farming” in Bohnanaza from Blue, Purple and Burgundy. The game is really simple, but very engaging as players are involved even when it isn’t their turn. The really key part of the game is that players cannot rearrange the cards in their hand, playing them in the order they draw them. Thus, at the start of their turn, they must “plant” the first card in their hand into one of the two fields in front of them, and may plant the second if they choose. Two cards are then turned over from the central draw deck, which these must be planted, but not necessarily by the active player. These cards can be traded or even given away, but must be planted in one of the fields on the table. Once these cards have been dealt with, the active player may trade some (or all) of their cards with others round the table, before they draw cards to refill their hand.

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Fields can only hold one type of bean at a time, but can be harvested at any point. Harvested beans give money according to the “Beanometer”, and the rarer the card, the more money it yields when harvested. Thus for Garden beans (of which there are only six), three beans will earn three coins whereas it will require ten of the twenty-four available Coffee beans to give the same return. The coins are taken from the harvested beans (the card is turned over to show the coin on the reverse), so the number of common cards reduces as the game progresses, but the rare cards become ever more scarce. The winner is the player with the most points after three trips through the deck.

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The game followed the usual flow with some players trying to persuade others to take unfavourable trades. Blue spent much of the first part of the game alternately drawing Green bean and Wax bean cards; with two substantial fields and a hand full of them she then benefited from lots of donations and nobody else fancied grubbing their plantations when Blue already had the majority of the cards. All in all, it was a very generous game with everyone giving away cards left, right and centre. Everyone benefited; Purple did particularly well with her Garden beans, but Burgundy got a couple of cheap Soy beans and Mulberry did well too. It was Blue who benefited the most though and it showed in the final scores…

– Image by boardGOATS

Splendor was still on-going, so Blue persuaded Mulberry to stick about for one more short game, NMBR 9. This was another one she’d not played before and Blue felt it would appeal to her natural spacial awareness. The idea is that one player turns over cards in the deck one at a time, and everyone takes the indicated card and adds it to their tableau, ensuring that the edge touches one of the other tiles. Once a few tiles have been placed to form a base layer, then tiles can be placed on top of other tiles as long as there are no overhanging parts, and the tile sits squarely on more than one other tile and it shares an edge with at least one other tile on that level. The higher the tiles are placed the more they score (tile value multiplied by the “floor” number).

– Image by boardGOATS

It was late, and Mulberry got into a bit of a tangle with the higher levels, but the generosity of spirit from Bohnanza lingered and everyone else let her rearrange her tiles so they conformed to the rules. And quick as it is, it wasn’t long before everyone was adding up their scores… With that over, Mulberry headed off while everyone else chewed the cud, discussed “Monster Games” at the Weekend (Food Chain Magnate or a repeat of The Gallerist) and whinged about Brexit. When the Landlord suggested we moved away from controversial subjects and tried Religion and Politics instead, we knew it was home time.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: Some combinations of games and groups benefit from “House Rules“.

11th August 2015

It was a quiet week, so unsure of how many people we would be, we started out with what was supposed to be something quick, our “Feature Game”, Port Royal. This is a fairly light card game with elements of push your luck and and deck (or rather tableaux) building. On their turn, the active player turns over the top card from the deck: this could be a coloured Ship, or a Person. The player then has two options, they can turn over another card and add it to the row, or take one of the face up cards. They can continue turning over cards either until they choose to take one or until they go bust because they draw a Ship and the colour matches one that has already been revealed.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

When taken, the coloured Ships are immediately exchanged for money according to the number of coins shown on the card. They also have a military value which is where the People cards come in. The People cards cost money, but in general, yield both victory points and special powers. For example, Sailors and Pirates give players a military strength. If their strength matches that of a Ship, the active player may repel the Ship to avoid going bust. There are also Settlers, Captains and Priests which are used to fulfill the requirements of Expeditions. Expeditions are cards that are immediately put to one side when drawn and allow players to increase their number of victory points by trading People cards for the higher value Expedition card.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor jsper

There are other People cards too. For example, the Governor awards players two extra coins if there are five or more cards on the table, and the Admiral allows players to take more than one card. Once the active player has taken their turn, then the next player can choose to take a card from the remaining face up cards, paying the active player one coin for the privilege. Once everyone has had the chance to take a card, play passes to the next player. The game end is triggered when one player hits twelve victory points and play continues until everyone has had the same number of active player turns.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

The game has obvious elements of “push your luck card turning” like Incan Gold, dual purpose cards like Bohnanza, tableau building like 7 Wonders and Dominion, and set collecting like Splendor. However, it also has other interesting features. One of the most interesting aspects was the way that the appearance of some cards is delayed because they are tied up as currency. This meant that in our game, the Tax Man didn’t appear at all for the first half of the game and then appeared several times in quick succession. Similarly to Bohnanza, the composition of the deck also changes. In Bohnanza, the deck shrinks dramatically and as all the rare cards are turned into money their rarity increases. In Port Royal, it is the People cards that become rarer as they are played into harbours, and ships, which start off quite scarce, become increasingly common increasing the chances of going bust.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor msaari

Black and Purple started out collecting Settlers, Priests and Captain cards, hoping for an opportunity to upgrade the victory points with Expedition cards. Blue and Burgundy eschewed Expeditions and instead went for the expensive People, with powerful actions. That said, Burgundy struggled at the start, going bust in the first two rounds which left him penniless and hampered his ability to buy anything at all. Meanwhile, Green was fighting just to get the cards he wanted before someone else pinched them. Eventually, Purple took her second Expedition card and triggered the end of the game, but nobody else was close enough to threaten her position; Burgundy took second on a tie-break with Green, who both finished with nine victory points .

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

The rules booklet was not the best, however, and there were a number of questions we had that went un-answered. For example, we were unclear on how to combine the Admiral with either the Jester or the Governor. The question was, since the Admiral allows a player to take two cards, does that mean they apply the Jester/Governor special powers twice? On reflection, we felt the way we played (by a strict reading of the rules) was incorrect as it meant the combination was exceptionally powerful. Similarly, could a player repel a card if it was the first of a colour to be drawn, or is it only the second card that can be repelled? On balance, although it was a long way from being the “quick game” we expected, we all enjoyed it and felt it was a good game. Green in particular was quite taken with the effect the dual-use of the cards had on the draw deck and everyone had had thoughts on how they could have done better, but it was fitting that the one who currently has to wear an eye-patch won the pirate game!

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor tonyboydell

After some debate, we decided that we wanted to play a deeper game next which meant we were quite limited as we didn’t have many five-player games. We all enjoy Snowdonia, so since we’ve all played it before we thought we could fit it into the time we had left despite the prolonged setup time (not helped by the fact that Blue’s box contains most of two copies). Unfortunately, we got side-tracked by the possibility of playing one of the alternative scenarios. We started setting out The Daffodil Line and then we realised it only played four, so as the game is very tight anyhow we decided not to try to stretch it to five and broke the shrink-wrap on Britannia Bridge instead.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor tonyboydell

Snowdonia is a very tight, worker placement game, where players have just two workers and an optional third if they have the required train and coal. The game simulates building a railway, with players first choosing actions in turn order, then carrying out the actions in “action order”. The actions include collecting resources from the stockyard, clearing rubble from the route, building track, and building stations. There are points for most things, but one of the actions is to take contract cards which give players extra points for completing a set number of given tasks (e.g. laying three sections of track).

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor ansi

There are a number of interesting aspects to the game. Firstly, the weather. Snowdonia is well known for its rain, fog and very occasional sun, and this has an effect on the rate players can perform tasks. Secondly, the author, Tony Boydell, is known to dislike resource hoarding and has built in a mechanism to discourage it. At the start of each round, resources are drawn from a bag and placed in the stockyard. There are also a small number of white cubes in the bag – for each one that is drawn the game carries out an action. Since resources are limited, if players hoard them, the chance of drawing white cubes increases and the game speeds up, perhaps unpredictably.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor winterplum

Britannia Bridge (or Pont Britannia in Welsh) is the bridge across the Menai Strait between the the mainland of Wales and the island of Anglesey and the scenario simulates building a railway from the mainland to Holyhead on Anglesey. Thus, before players can build any track, they have to build the bridge. Uncharacteristically the weather remained quite sunny, though as it was Anglesey rather than Snowdonia, perhaps that was to be expected. This kept the dig rate up and the track-bed was cleared in record time. However, although four white cubes came out in fairly quick succession, after that, they seemed to lurk in the corners of the bag, so much so that we checked they were there twice.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor winterplum

Black and Purple both built locomotives early giving them the distinct advantage of the optional temporary labourer. Black used his to move his Surveyor collect contract cards and Blue decided to obstruct his plans by taking the some of the most lucrative (but most challenging) contracts. Everyone else looked at the short track and some of the high scoring options and decided to go for points. Blue, Green and Burgundy decided to wait until the maintenance was done before buying a train, but since the white cubes were so slow, by the time it happened they all decided the game was too far advanced for it to be worthwhile.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor tonyboydell

Although Black got an early train (The Dawn Raider) and made good use of his extra worker, he was unable to used his special ability as it depended on white cubes being drawn. Purple took the nine point train and also used the extra worker to move her surveyor. Burgundy scored a massive number of points by building bits of stations and the game sort of stalled with one track left to build and nobody very keen to build it. Green eventually got fed up and felt everyone else was picking up points faster than he was, so he decided to end the game. Blue somehow managed to scrape it all together in the last round building the last siding she needed to fulfill her thirty-one point contract for four track sections and grabbed a six point contract which she had already fulfilled. These, together with other bits and pieces this gave her a total of seventy-nine points, just two ahead of Black (who also completed three contracts) and someway clear of Burgundy who took third place with sixty-six points.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor winterplum

Although we enjoyed the variation and the Bridge undoubtedly changed the start, the different scenario didn’t change the game very much: contract cards were still very powerful and ultimately made the difference though Burgundy did incredibly well just building stations. In short, the weather and its effect on the “dig rate” together with the lack of white cubes made a much larger impact on the game than the Bridge. And that can happen in any game of Snowdonia.

– Image by BGG contributor aleacarv

Learning Outcome: The weather has a big influence on building a railway, wherever you choose to build it.

18th April 2015 @ “The Mix”

The drop in gaming session at The Mix in Wantage was a great success. It started quietly, but there were lots of new people there and lots of games were played. Green arrived first and was setting up tables when Blue and Pink arrived. By the time the first punters arrived PitchCar, Riff Raff and Camel Up had been set up and other games were out ready to be tried. Before long Purple and Black had also arrived and there was a steady stream of games being played including Toc Toc Woodman, Escape: The Curse of the Temple and Cube Quest, and a steady stream of pieces flying across the room. Old favourites like Dobble, Incan Gold, The Great Balloon Race and Carcassonne also got an outing as well as the Lego game, UFO Attack.

– Image by boardGOATS

Thanks to everyone who came, both visitors and gamers – it was great to see it so well attended. Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves, so it’s definitely something we’d be interested in doing again in a few months time.

15th July 2014

This week we started with a quick game of Kittens in a Blender. This is a light card game, if one with a slightly ghoulish theme. The idea is that on their turn, players must play two cards from their hand of six cards. If they choose to play a kitten card it can go onto the counter in the middle of the table; into the relative safety of the box, or straight into the blender to await its fate. Other cards allow Kittens to be moved one space from the box to the counter or the counter to the blender vice versa. And then there are the blend cards, which cause any kittens in the blender to be blitzed, the kittens in the box to be permanently rescued and the kittens on the counter to move to the blender to become the next in line for “kitten smoothy” (if they aren’t rescued in time). Players score points for every kitten of their own colour that they rescue, and lose points for those that meet a less pleasant end.

Yellow started out picking on Blue and Orange kittens and, well, Red ones too. So before long, everyone retaliated and the fur began to fly as it all got ugly quite quickly. Orange managed to do the least to offend everyone else and finished miles ahead of everyone else with fourteen points while everyone else struggled (or failed) to finish in paw-sitive figures.

Everyone else was here by now, so next up was our “Feature Game”, the new Spiel des Jahres winner, Camel (C)Up. There has been much debate about the correct name as the box is ambiguous. It was originally released as “Camel Cup”, presumably to reflect the Australian camel race, however, the Spiel des Jahres citation clearly calls it “Camel Up”, which at first sight seemed strange, however, once we started playing it became clear why this name was appropriate. The game consists of a race of five camels and players effectively bet on the leader and eventual outcome of the race. Thus, on their turn players can do one of four things: use the cool pyramid dice shaker to move a camel; bet on which camel will be in the lead at the end of the round; bet on the final outcome of the race (i.e. which camel will cross the line first triggering the game end, or which will be in last place when that happens), or place their oasis tile which can earn the owner money as well as help or hinder a winning/losing camel.

There are a couple of clever things about the game. Firstly, the dice shaker: this is a pyramid-shaped device, made out of card and held together with an elastic band. The idea is that players shake it, turn it upside down and push the slider to let out just one die. Although it malfunctioned a couple of times, in general, it works well. As there are five dice (one per camel) and when a die is “rolled” it is removed from the shaker for the rest of the round, this is used to determine the length of the round (or “leg”). Next, when a camel moves onto another camel’s space it is stacked on top of it, then if the bottom camel moves, the top camel takes a ride. This means that a riding camel can get an extra move, and stacks can contain any number of camels, so if a camel is lucky it can pick up a lot of extra moves. Finally, the way the betting is handled means that players don’t have to worry about stakes and odds. To bet on the outcome of a leg, players simply take a tile of the appropriate colour. Since these are stacked with the highest value first, if that camel comes home first, that player gets more at the end of the round. Similarly, the betting on the end of the race is done by players choosing a card from their hand of five (one per camel) and placing them in the “to win” stack or the “to lose” stack. The earlier they are placed, the more the player wins (if they get it right of course!).

Camel Up

The game began with the the Blue and White camels getting a slight head start. White made a surge forward and everyone made a dash for the White betting tiles, until one player put a mirage in front of it… For some reason, although all the other camels had no difficulty jumping the mirage, the White one really struggled and quickly went from the front to the back, a problem exasperated as every other space now had a mirage tile on it. The Yellow Camel managed to catch a couple of rides, and before anyone could do much about it, it was across the line, with it handing the win to the only two players who had played it before.

Time was getting on and we only had time for a short game before some of us had to leave, so we played Incan Gold. This is a game we played quite a bit a year or so ago, but hasn’t made it to the table in a while. Basically it is a push your luck game, where players are mining for gold and gems. Each player enters the mine and a card is drawn and placed to make a path; the value of the gems on the card is split equally amongst the players in the mine with any left overs placed on the card. Players then get the option to leave the mine (sharing all the left-overs as they go), or stay in the hope of getting more treasure. The snag is that in addition to gem cards of varying values, there are also “nasty cards”. You can draw lots of different nasty cards, but if s second of the same time type is drawn, the mine collapses and anyone left in loses whatever they had collected in that round. In this game, it was a tale of “nasty cards” as the first three rounds had at least two nasty cards in the first five every time. So it was all a bit scrappy with everyone nervously leaving early. Then, somehow, Orange managed to pull off a bit of a coup and got out of the mine with lots of booty, just before it collapsed. It turned out the lead was unassailable and Orange pulled off her second victory of the night.

Now much depleted in numbers, we decided to continue with the Spiel de Jahres theme and finished with a game of Splendor (one of the runners up). We played this a few weeks ago and like Camel Up, it is quite a simple game, but is much more strategic. The idea is that players are gemstone dealers and can use gem-chips they have collected to purchase cards. In turn, these cards allow players to buy more cards of a higher value, some of which come with extra prestige points. The end of the game is triggered when the first player reaches fifteen points. Black ran off with an early lead, however, while Purple struggled a little, Blue managed to catch up with a couple of high scoring cards. By this time Green had got his engine working properly and started to catch Black. It finished a very close game, but Black just managed to hold on, beating Green and Blue by one and two points respectively. Inevitably we finished with a discussion as to whether we Camel Up or Splendor was the better game. We concluded that while Camel Up was fun, with seven it was too chaotic so that the “sweet-spot” was probably four or five and it would probably be great fun with a family under those conditions. For us, however, we enjoyed Splendor much more and it will no-doubt make a return.

Learning Outcome: Camel racing is fun, but trading gems is Splendid!

25th June 2013

This week, we started off playing a slightly neglected old favourite, No Thanks!. It seemed like ages since we played it last, but it turned out that it was less than two months ago that it last got an outing. Since it is a quick card game where rounds take just a few minutes, it was ideal to play until everyone had arrived. Next we, we played the “Feature Game”, Incan Gold, which is another game we’ve played previously. In this game players are going down a mine and trying to get out with as many gems as possible before it collapses. One player made a bit of a killing in the opening round, but she failed to hang onto the lead and was pipped by just two gems at the very end.

It was a bit of an evening for games we’ve played previously, as next we played Alhambra (which was a “Feature Game” at the end of last year). This is a tile laying game where players have to collect sets and score points for having the most in any one set. Scoring takes place twice during the game and once at the end, and each time the number of points increases. This time, Blue (who won last time), got a terrible run of the cards and Red who had missed it last time, had an amazing game winning by a very large margin.

Racing fish may not seem like an obvious choice for a game theme, but it turns out that it actually works really well. We played Salmon Run just two weeks ago and although we enjoyed it, we were all a bit tired, so we decided to give it another go this week. For variety, however, we changed almost all the boards, using S2, 3M, 4E, 5E & F2. This time, Black got going much quicker than everyone else and headed left followed by Red while White went right. Black decided not to worry about fatigue cards and just run for it, while Red and White were more cautious. Black’s tactics seemed to pay off, however, as he made it to the spawning pool first and nobody else could quite make it in time.

Our final game game was Forbidden Desert which we also played last week, however it is a new release this year and it was a very close game last time, so we felt it deserved another outing. This time we didn’t have a Water Carrier, but we managed to make good use of the tunnels and the Navigator’s ability to move other players three spaces for the cost of only one action. These with the Archeologist’s ability to clear extra sand meant we ran out comfortable winners. We’ll have to ramp up the difficulty next time!

Learning Outcome: Doing well the first time you play a game doesn’t mean you’ll do well the second time…

14th May 2013

The first game we played this week was our “Feature Game”, the card game, Saboteur which is a little like a cross between two games we’ve played before: Avalon and Incan Gold. In this game players are dwarves working together mining for gold, with the catch that there could be a saboteur in their midst… Since nobody had ever played it before, the first round was a bit of an experiment for all of us and we all started out “honest” playing path cards and maps. However, suspicion arose a when one player claimed to have run out of useful paths and had to play a broken pick-axe, with inevitable reprisals. Unfortunately, he HAD been honest and there were no saboteurs, but as we just managed to get to the gold, it didn’t really matter.

Since we felt we were starting to get the hang of it, we went went for a second round and this time correctly identified the saboteur and pinned him down with a pile of broken picks, lanterns and wagons while we dug up the gold. When we picked on the same player for the third time, however, he was understandably distressed and protested his innocence. Nevertheless, since he had very obviously shut off one of optional tunnels we had been carefully building, the pleading fell on deaf ears and failed to prevent the hail-storm of broken tools, only for it to become apparent that, once again, he was innocent. When we asked why he had behaved in such a treacherous way, he forlornly explained that he was trying to stop us going the wrong way as he knew where the gold was. Next time I suppose we might listen to him…

Next, we played the Scandinavian Ticket to Ride, a game we were all reasonably familiar with. This is a really beautiful edition of “the train game”, but with slight twists to the usual rules. White and Purple took the first few points, but Black joined in quickly and play continued pretty much evenly. Black ran out of trains first which stymied Purple’s attempt to get the long track into Murmansk, however, we were all within ten points or so when we went into the final scoring. Unfortunately, it turned out that Black and Purple had accidentally conspired to block White making her take a sizeable detour. This had consequences for the number tickets she could complete. Black and Purple jointly took the Globetrotter bonus with five completed tickets each, but it was the magnitude of the completed tickets that made the difference and Black ran out the winner by some fifty points.

Next we returned to semi-cooperativity with a quick game of The Great Balloon Race. This is a great little race game (albeit with a ridiculously large box), where players have three different coloured balloons and the first to get them all home wins. The snag is that nobody knows who owns which colour and it is highly likely that players will share at least one balloon with other players. We last played this back in October and Blue and Orange got a bit victimised. This time it was Blue and Pink…

Finally, we squeezed in a game of Ice Flow. This is a really pretty strategy game where players direct teams of three explorers that are trying to get from Alaska to Siberia, climbing pack-ice, dodging polar bears, catching fish and occasionally jumping in for a quick swim. Although this is a new game to boardGOATS, we were all familiar with it, so with a quick reminder of the rules we were off, jumping from ice floe to ice floe. The game has a bit of a tendency for players to get stuck unable to get fish or rope, but we were wise to this and managed to control the resources quite successfully. Black got an explorer home first, followed by a couple of Red meeples, however, while Black’s last piece dodged a hungry polar bear, Red managed to get his final one home for the win.

Learning Outcome: A clever move can sometimes be mistaken for a guilty one, however much you protest.