Tag Archives: Ivor the Engine

31st May 2022

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

– Image by boardGOATS

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

– Image by boardGOATS

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

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

– Image by boardGOATS

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

– Image by boardGOATS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

– Image by boardGOATS

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

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

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

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

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

– Image by boardGOATS

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

Boardgames in the News: The Museum of Board Games in Newent (Again)

As reported last year, the small Gloucestershire market town of Newent, houses The Museum of Board Games, owned and curated by Tony Boydell (designer of Snowdonia, Ivor the Engine, Guilds of London and Scandaroon amongst other games). The other day, the former BBC and ITV news reporter, Anna Brees, popped in to chat and do a little filming…

– Video by Anna Brees

Boardgames in the News: The Museum of Board Games in Newent

On 28th August, in the small Gloucestershire market town of Newent, The Museum of Board Games opened its doors for the first time. The owner-curator is Tony Boydell, highly regarded designer of Snowdonia, Ivor the Engine, Guilds of London and Scandaroon amongst other games. The exhibition is largely the boardgame ephemera he has been collecting over years of designing and playing games with friends and family.

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At first sight it doesn’t seem like much—it is very compact, but actually contains a really surprising amount, and the games table front and centre, draws in unsuspecting visitors. There are always a couple of games out on this table for people to fondle and play. This could be anything from the fantastic War of the Daleks to Tiddley-Golf or Froschkönig. As well as exhibits available to play, there are also little quizzes to encourage people to explore the displays and everything is labelled and tagged by the museum cat.

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For the most part The Museum of Board Games comprises games from the 20^th century, but there are also copies of The History of England (until George III) from 1803 and more recent games like Glory to Rome and Ticket to Ride: The Card Game. The most unusual and rare pieces are on display in cases, but one of the nicest things about the museum are the stacks of game boxes ready to be taken off the shelf and looked at in detail.

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When anyone shows an interest in something, it will readily will come out of its box for closer inspection. There is a remarkable number of games with a tie-in to TV shows, but also unusual items like a beautiful home-made copy of Monopoly themed round Richmond (London) and copies of L’Attaque! (which became better known when it was reimplemented as Stratego).

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In recent years, there have been exhibitions at the V&A Museum of Childhood and The British Museum, but this is a much better experience. Although the exhibits are (of course) the centre of the museum, what makes a visit really special is the curator, Tony Boydell himself, and his remarkable knowledge of the games on display and of games in general. Tony can talk for hours on the subject (and he will, if you let him), and as conversation meanders, he will reveal more treasures from the nooks and crannies of the museum.

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As an afternoon out, the Museum of Board Games is well worth a visit, though speculative visitors should be aware that it is currently only open on Fridays and Saturdays (10am-4pm). It is also exceptional value, but anyone who really wants to support the venture, should visit the museum’s Patreon page. For those who can’t visit in person, there are a couple of reports on the BBC as well as Tony’s Blog on Board Game Geek.

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20th August 2019

It was ominously gloomy and empty in pub the when Khaki and Mulberry arrived. With Blue away for work, she had left the logbook with the landlord and it was sadly sitting on the table waiting for them. Fearing the repercussions of ignoring the demanding tome, they ordered food and took their places at the table. They were soon joined by Burgundy, Purple, Black, Lime and Ivory, making it a decent turn-out for a meeting that was very nearly cancelled.

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Once the feeding was over and done with, it was time to organise people to play games. Purple, Mulberry and Lime began with the “Feature Game”, Ivor the Engine. This is a great little game with fantastic artwork from the late, great Peter Firmin. Although it is designed round a the children’s cartoon, the cute artwork belies the viscous little teeth the game has. The idea is that players move their wagon round the board, playing cards to carryout errands which are paid in sheep – the player with the most sheep at the end of the game is the winner.

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At the start of the game the board is randomly filled with lost sheep. On their turn, the active player begins by collecting a sheep at their current location, if one is available, receiving bonus sheep if they take the last sheep in a location. Then they play cards and move their wagon playing cards before or after they move. There is one free movement and others can be bought with coal. The active player can play as many or as few cards as they wish, but there is a tight hand-limit of four cards and only one card can be played at each location. The cards can be used in one of two ways: they can provide a special action (e.g. extra moves or moving sheep about), or if the active player is at a location where there are no sheep, they can use them to complete a “Job” receiving sheep as a reward. Finally, players take a card from the face-up display discarding a card if necessary.

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It seems very gentle at first glance, but there are a couple of things that make the game quite strategic. Firstly, only one player can be in a location at any one time, which can be surprisingly inconvenient for players who have built a plan and a hand of job cards only to be obstructed by another player squatting in the wrong place. With cards at such a premium it is also surprisingly irritating when another player takes a desired card. Managing these is key to being successful, but the nastiest part of the game are the event cards. At the end of a player’s turn, they draw cards from the deck to replace any they have taken and place them face up in the display.

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If an Event card is revealed, then the actions must be carried out by everyone – some are nice, some are slightly inconvenient, others are downright nasty. For example, some Events cause players to move their wagon to the other end of the board which can be very helpful or extremely frustrating depending on the player’s plans. Players can also be forced to forfeit sheep, or worse, hard won resources or Job cards. Like Job cards, Event cards are also dual purpose, and (once the Event has been resolved) can be taken from the “market” at the end of a turn, like Job cards. They are valuable though, providing a means to score more at the end of the game, so they must be bought using gold, which is very rare and difficult to come by.

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Purple explained the rules very thoroughly as there are a couple of slightly fiddly exceptions, for example, it costs two coal to move along the main line, but eventually the game got going. Everyone started on the same side of the board and got in each other’s way a bit. Lime struggled a bit in a game that can be quite unforgiving despite it’s cute graphics and child-friendly theme. Things improved for him as he picked up six sheep on his final turn. Mulberry’s game started well, but in contrast to Lime, fizzled out towards the end. Purple got lucky as she picked up sheep throughout and cards that were conveniently close to her current position. Purple’s experience ensured she capitalised on her good fortune, finishing five points ahead of Lime, with thirty-three.

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Meanwhile on the next table, “the boys” were playing Azul: Stained Glass of Sintra. This was released last year at Essen and uses the market mechanism from the 2018 Spiel des Jahres winner, Azul. The idea is of this is that on their turn, players take all the pieces of one colour from a market and place the left-overs in the middle, or, take all the tiles of one colour from the middle. In Stained Glass of Sintra, instead of placing these pieces in a row and moving them onto a grid, pieces are placed directly into the player’s window. This is modular consisting of the double-sided strips laid out at random so everyone has a different starting setup.

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There are restrictions on how the pieces can be placed though: tiles must be placed in the strip immediately below their Glazier meeple, or in a strip to its right. The Glazier is then placed above the strip the tiles were placed in,, so he gradually moves to the right. Instead of taking tiles, players can choose to reset the Glazier’s position, moving him back to the left most strip. Players get points when strips are completed scoring the sum of the score depicted below the strip and any strips to the right that have already been completed. There is also a colour bonus—each round has a colour drawn at random at the start of the game, and any tiles that match the colour for the round score extra.

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Once a strip has been completed, it is flipped over; after it has been filled a second time it is removed. Any left over tiles that cannot be placed are placed into the glass tower and yield a penalty with players moving along a negative score track which has small steps at the start that gets larger. When the market is empty the round ends and the round indicator tile is also dropped into the glass tower which is emptied when the . There are also end-game bonus points with two variants available, one colour dependent and the other rewarding completing adjacent strips.

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Kahki started, but was the only one new to the game and didn’t know what he was doing. Somehow though he managed to build a lead which kept growing. Black and Burgundy weren’t far behind although there was a lot of smashed orange “glass” when Burgundy was forced to pick up eight orange pieces but only had space for four. Ivory struggled and there was yet more broken orange glass when he picked up twelve orange pieces, only having space for two. As a result, there were a lot of penalty points at the end, and it was only a surprise to Kahki that he was the winner by some twenty points.

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The Ivor group had barely finished the rules explanation by this point, so the group moved on to play Splendor. This is one of our most popular games, but has largely degenerated into an exercise in trying to beat Burgundy as he wins every time. The game is a very simple engine builder, where players can either take “gem” chips on their turn, or use them to buy a card from the display. Cards then provide a perpetual “gem” allowing players to buy more expensive cards which give points. Points are also provided by “Noble” tiles which are revealed at the start of the game and are won by the first player to get a certain combination of gem cards.

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This time, all the Noble tiles needed rubies (red), but very few ruby cards came out. Ivory started well taking an early lead with a few low scoring cards before Khaki caught up him taking a three point card. Burgundy made a very slow start, reserving a couple of cards while Black picked up a few points here and there. Ivory took the first Noble and managed to fight his way to fourteen points, but then the inevitable happened. Burgundy’s game suddenly snowballed and a couple of rounds later he bought his last reserved card and, as the last player in the round, brought the game to an end. Burgundy finished on sixteen points, just two ahead of Ivory who took second place in what was a very tight game where Burgundy was pushed right to the wire, albeit with the usual result.

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By this time, Ivor was finally finished, and Khaki and Mulberry headed off for an early night, leaving everyone else to play Alhambra. This, the 2003 Spiel des Jahres winner, is a tile laying game where players are building their city. Basically, on their turn, the active player may take money from the open money market; purchase a building from the building market and either place it in their Alhambra or their reserve, or engage in construction and re-construction projects with buildings that had been placed in the player’s Alhambra or their reserve. The core of the game is the market, where players buy building tiles with coloured money cards and add them to their Alhambra. This key purchasing mechanism comes from its predecessor, Stimmt So!.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor EndersGame

There are four different currencies which come in different colours. At the start of a player’s turn, there are four tiles available, each in a different coloured market, which can only be purchased with the currency that matches the market’s colour. If the active player can pay with exactly the correct amount, they can buy another tile, but if they over-pay, they get no change and their turn ends. While this all sounds simple enough, there is the little problem that sets Alhambra apart from Stimmt So!: most of the tiles have walls along one, two or three edges, and when placed, these must match up without partitioning the Alhambra. The walls are critical as poor play in the early stages can mean it is possible to get backed into a corner later in the game.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor EndersGame

There are fifty-four tiles in six different types, each type in a different colour. They are Pavilions (Blue), Manors/Seraglios (Red), Mezzanines/Archades (Brown), Chambers (White), Gardens (Green) and Towers (Purple). Most tiles have one or more walls around the edges and each tile also shows numerical value from two to thirteen, which is their cost. Each of the six different building types in a player’s Alhambra score in each of the scoring phases, with players receiving points for having the most of each type in the first scoring round. In the second scoring round the player in second place also scores and in the final scoring round points are also available for third place in each building type. Points are also awarded in each scoring round for players’ longest external “wall” section within their complex.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor mothertruckin

The game ends when the building market can no longer be replenished from the building tile supply, and there is a final scoring, whereupon the player with the highest score wins. In this game, the distribution of tiles was very uneven, with all the Tower tiles coming out early and and the Manor and Garden tiles coming out late. Ivory took an early lead after the first scoring round having picked up a lot of the early Towers. It was not to last though. Alhambra is a game that rewards efficiency, and Black and Burgundy both made the most of paying exactly the right amount and taking extra turns, while Ivory and Lime fell into the trap of putting tiles into their reserve which cost them an extra turn to place them in their Alhambras.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor EndersGame

While Purple had the most Towers in the second scoring round, others had caught up by the third and final scoring round. As a result, Towers finished in a three-way tie, so nobody scored well. Lime finished with the longest wall taking a massive fifteen points in the final scoring phase, but unfortunately he did not have enough points elsewhere to trouble the leaders, Burgundy and Black. Burgundy also had a substantial wall, giving him twelve points, and with his Gardens and Pavillions, he took a creditable second place, but was some way behind Black who finished with over a hundred points thanks to having the most Chambers and coming second in many of the other buildings and generally being efficient throughout.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor EndersGame

Learning Outcome: boardGOATs can survive without Blue and Green as long as Purple is around.

UK Games Expo 2019 – Not as Hot as Last Year, but that’s a Good Thing…

Last weekend was the thirteenth UK Games Expo (sometimes known as UKGE, or simply Expo), the foremost games event. Every year it grows bigger, and this was no exception. Historically, Expo is focused on gamers playing games rather than publishers selling new games, however, the exhibition aspect has been growing, and this year there were two halls full of vendors selling games and demoing wares. Last year, there was an issue with the air conditioning on the Friday which, combined with the thousands of “hot water bottles” walking about looking at games, made it unbelievably hot. This year, working facilities and a little more space made it much, much more pleasant, although Saturday was busier than ever!

– Image by boardGOATS

This year the hot games included Wingspan, copies of which were flying off the slightly wobbly shelves following it’s recent Kennerspiel des Jahres nomination. Foothills, a two player Snowdonia game by UK designers Ben Bateson and Tony Boydell (designer of the original Snowdonia, Ivor the Engine and Guilds of London) was another extremely popular game. Foothills is produced by Lookout Spiele, but there were sixty copies available from the designer’s Surprised Stare stand, which sold out in less than forty minutes (though there were a small number of copies to be had elsewhere for those that kept their eyes peeled).

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Surprised Stare were also demoing Foothills and another Snowdonia-based game, Alubari, which is due for release later in the year (hopefully). There was a new Ticket to Ride game available (London) as well as another instalment in the Catan series (Rise of the Inkas); the new expansion for Endeavor: Age of Sail was also available to see (coming to KickStarter later in June) and “old” favourites like Echidna Shuffle were there to be played and bought too. There were some very good deals to be had from some of the third party sellers as well, including some of the Days of Wonder games for just £15.

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One of the reasons for attending conventions is the opportunity to see and play games that are not available elsewhere. One example was Horticulture Master, a cute little Taiwanese game with beautiful artwork, which combined card collecting elements from Splendor with Tetris-like tile laying from games like Patchwork and Bärenpark. Another cute little game was Titans of Quantitas from Gingerbread Games, a clever two player strategy game based round the old fashioned digital rendering of the number eighty-eight. What really made this game special though was the fact that the stall was guarded by a fiberglass goat! Not everything was quite as wholesome though, as one Games Master was thrown out and banned for life for including content in a role-playing game that allegedly involved sexual violence and played on the shock factor. This is definitely the exception rather than the rule, however, and UK Games Expo is a great place for family and friends to spend a weekend.

– Image by boardGOATS

24th July 2018

It was a quiet night, and the atmosphere was slightly subdued as our thoughts were with Green who had had a very rough day and therefore wasn’t with us. Burgundy and Blue were still eating, so Pine, Red and Ivory began punching out Pine’s brand-spanking, new copy of the “Feature Game”, Azul. This week, Azul won the Spiel des Jahres Award, but despite the fact that it only came out at Essen last year, and has been difficult to get hold of for much of the time, we’ve still managed to play it a lot. Even so, Red seemed to have managed to miss out, so an explanation of the rules was in order. It is quite simple to play, if a little abstract. The idea is that players are tile laying artists decorating a wall in the Palace of Evora with “azulejos”. On their turn, the active player can either take all the tiles of one colour from one of the factory displays (putting the rest in the central market) or take all the tiles of one colour from the market in the centre of the table. They then place the tiles in one of the five rows on their player board.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor JackyTheRipper

Each row can only contain one colour, but players may have more than one row with any given colour. The catch is that each player only has five rows, each with a set number of spaces, one to five. Players can add tiles to a row later in the round, but once a row is full, any left-overs go into the negative scoring row. Once all the tiles have been picked up, players evaluate their board, and, starting with the shortest row, one of the tiles from each full row is added to the player’s mosaic and scored. Players score one point for a tile that is not placed adjacent to any other tile, whereas tiles added to rows or columns score the same number of points as there are tiles in the completed row (or column). The game continues with players choosing tiles from the factory displays and then adding them to rows, the catch is that as the mosaic fills up, it is harder to fill the rows as each row can only take each colour once.

– Image used with permission of boardgamephotos

End game bonuses, keep everyone guessing right up to the end which adds interest and occasionally it can be really nasty when someone ends up with a pile of tiles they can’t use. Red, Ivory and Pine got going quickly, and once Burgundy and Blue had finished with their supper, they moved to a table near the door to make the most of the draught and started a second game with Black and Purple. Having played the game quite a bit, nobody pulled their punches: It was only the second round when Blue had to pick up ten yellow tiles netting her fourteen negative points. She was fortunate that she didn’t have fourteen to lose, but when Black picked up seven yellow tiles a couple of rounds later he was less lucky. On the next table Ivory was being nasty to Pine, leaving him with Hobson’s Choice and minus ten points either way. Playing “dirty” clearly worked for Ivory as he won the first game, though there was some confusion of the scoring, which Pine blamed on his over-hot head.

– Image by BGG contributor JackyTheRipper

In the other game, there had been a lot negative points and a lot of bonuses, it was all surprisingly close. In the last round, Purple took the tiles she needed for a full set of reds and Blue had scotched a ten point bonus for Burgundy. Despite that, Burgundy still picked up a massive twenty-seven points in end-game bonuses, but much to everyone’s surprise he didn’t quite manage to catch Black who finished with a eighty-five. It had been quite a stressful game, but as usual, we’d all enjoyed it, and discussion moved on to the new release coming in October: Azul: Stained Glass of Sintra, which we are all looking forward to, as long as it doesn’t “do a Queendomino“.^*

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor Toynan

Red, Pine and Ivory had started their game first, and with only three players compared with four on the other table, it was no surprise that that also finished first. As they were looking round for something to play, Red spied Yardmaster, one of her favourite games, in Blue’s bag. Neither Pine nor Ivory had played it before, but it wasn’t difficult for Red to persuade them to give it a go. Unlike most other train games, in Yardmaster, players are building a locomotive rather than routes. On their turn players can do two from the three possible actions: draw a cargo card (either blind or from the face up discard pile); buy a railcar card from the four face up cards in the middle, or swap their “Exchange Token” with any other one around the table. To buy a railcar, players pay using sets of cargo cards, so a yellow number three railcar will cost three yellow “oil” cards. The exchange tokens allow players to use other cargo cards at a rate of two-to-one, however, if a player only had two yellow oil cards but also had two blue “coal” cards and the blue exchange token, they would still be able to buy the yellow number three railcar.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor joeincolorado

When buying a railcar, if the number or colour match the previous car, then it must be added to the end of their locomotive. If not, then players can park it in their personal sorting yard and add it later, when another railcar is being bought and added to the locomotive. This is the clever part of the game as it allows players to “stack” points in their personal train yard enabling them both to take some risks and strategically remove railcars from the grasping hands of their opponents. Players score is the total of the numbers of the on the railcars making up their locomotive at the end of the game. Ivory started out with a really clever move, using a discarded “extra move” cargo card to take another “extra move” card and Pine and Red thought it was all over before it had begun. It wasn’t though, and despite it being a very short game, Ivory quickly got bogged down trying to buy a high value, “Purple Four”, which gave both Red and Pine the chance to get past him. Although he was new to the game, it was clearly one that made sense to Pine who finished four points ahead of Red.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor moonblogger

As both games finished Blue, Burgundy, Black and Purple moved back to the group’s usual table and the options were discussed. With seven players and Red present, Bohnanza was always a possibility, but with the heat sapping everyone’s strength, nobody fancied playing anything too strenuous and the deal was sealed. Everyone is very familiar with this, even Ivory who has played it the least, so as Burgundy shuffled the deck and removed the cocoa and garden beans, everyone else reminded each other of the rules: must plant the first card in hand, may plant the second as well; turn over two cards from the deck which must be planted before any other deals can be finalised; trading can only be with the active player; draw four cards at the end of a turn; two coins for a third bean field; fields with only one card can’t be ploughed in unless they all have only one card, and don’t forget – you can’t rearrange your hand!

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor spearjr

As usual with a large number of players, it was a tight game and everyone spent most of it telling people not to trade with everyone else as they were winning. Three times through the deck doesn’t take long and people don’t get many turns, but it was Blue, Black and Purple who stood on the podium at the end with everyone else within a point of each other. It was Blue who made up for her dire showing in Azul though, beating Black into second place by a massive two points. There was still time to play something else, but the heat had clearly got to everyone as the conversation degenerated into a discussion about everyone’s favourite childhood cartoons and how many had inspired boardgames. The late, great Peter Firmin‘s Ivor the Engine and Noggin the Nog both got a mention, but then age and nationality created a bit of a divide, and the evening ended with Pine crowing, “My name’s Pig and I like cream cakes!” His head was definitely over-hot.

– Image taken from youtube.com

Learning Outcome: Children’s TV programs were very weird in the 1970s.

^* Queendomino is the follow-on to the 2017 Spiel des Jahres winner, Kingdomino. When the group played it, we found the new game replaced the smooth elegance of the original with a more clunky, complex, long-winded game that was no where near as good as the games it was trying to compete with (much like Tsuro of the Seas a couple of years before).

Boardgames in the News: But Emily loved him…

Sadly, Peter Firmin, “father” of Bagpuss and Basil Brush, passed away yesterday after a short illness, aged eighty-nine. In addition to the old, saggy cloth cat (baggy, and a bit loose at the seams) and the anarchic fox (boom BOOM!), together with Oliver Postgate, Peter brought many other childhood favourites into our homes. These include, The Clangers, Pogle’s Wood, Pingwings and What-a-Mess. To gamers though, the most interesting are probably Ivor the Engine, Noggin the Nog, both of which have recently inspired boardgames that Peter Firmin personally illustrated in his unique and beautiful style. He was a lovely man who will be greatly missed by all who knew him and those who were inspired by him.

– Image by boardGOATS

13th December 2016

Unsure of who was coming, to get everyone in the mood, we started off with the quick set collecting game, Coloretto. We’ve played this little filler a few times, but somehow, Red felt she’d missed out. The game is very simple: on their turn the active player either draws a chameleon card and places it on a “truck” or takes a truck (which means they’re out for the rest of the round). The idea is that players are collecting sets of cards, but only three will yield positive points, with the rest scoring negatively. The really clever part of the game is the scoring which uses the triangular number sequence (one point for the first card, three points for two cards, six points for three cards etc.), which rewards one large set more than two or even three small ones. It was very tight between Blue and Ivory who both picked up sets of six, but Blue finished one point ahead thanks two her second set, three green chameleons.

– Image by BGG contributor SergioMR

With everyone arrived, we moved on to the evening’s “Feature Game”, Marrakech, a very simple little area control game played through the medium of the Persian rug. Played on a small grid, each player starts with thirty lire and a pile of pieces of carpet. On their turn the active play can rotate Assam, the master salesman a maximum of ninety degrees left or right, before they roll the die to find out how far he must be moved. If Assam lands on a carpet square of an opponents colour, then the active player must pay the owner “rent” equivalent to the total size of the carpet. Once Assam has been moved and any dues paid, the active player places a strip of carpet. The carpet pieces are all the same size (twice as long as they are wide) and cover two squares on the board. They can also overlap with pieces laid previously, but cannot be placed wholly on top of one single rug.

– Image by boardGOATS

This is where the strategy comes in – is it best to try to make a large contiguous area which will be very lucrative every time someone lands on it (but that players will avoid if at all possible) or is it better to make many small areas that players will be more likely to land on? The game ends when everyone has played all their pieces of carpet and the winner is the one with the most money (each visible piece of carpet earns its owner one lira). Marrakech is a nice little game, but what really makes it is the quality of the rendition. Assam is a beautifully made and painted wooden piece; the “coins” are wonderfully tactile wooden discs and the carpet is well, a strip of coloured fabric. Without these touches, the game would still be as good, but would be very abstract.

– Image by boardGOATS

We had two copies and plenty of people who were interested in it (to quote one of the GOATS, “I want to play the carpet game!”), so we played two parallel games. Red, Blue, Ivory and Pine were first to get going with the slightly newer, brighter version of the game. Pine and Red started out quite aggressively building large areas of carpet, trampling on each other and Blue and Ivory in the process and building a mini-carpet-mountain seven or eight layers high. Throughout, it felt tight, but in practice, there was only ever going to be one winner and Red finished eleven lira ahead of Blue in second place. On the next table, playing with the more traditionally “sandy-coloured” version, Green, Ivory, Purple and Black were playing a slightly more strategic and less vindictive game. The result was a closer game with everyone within four points of each other, but was won by Green, just two lira ahead of Black.

– Image by boardGOATS

With both games finishing almost simultaneously, there was a quick bout of musical chairs, with Green joining Ivory and Blue for a game of Ivor the Engine (its first outing with the “mammy sheep” picked up at Essen). This is a cute little game with a viciousness that lurks just below the surface and belies the gentle art-work from the Ivor cartoons as drawn by Peter Firmin. The idea is that players are travelling round Wales collecting sheep and the person with the most sheep at the end of the game is the winner. A single sheep can be collected whenever you start your turn on a town or village with sheep in it, but more sheep can be collected if you are in a town or village without sheep and perform a task to “help Ivor”. Helping Ivor comes at a price, however, as in order to do this you have to play one of the dual-purpose cards from your hand, which means you cannot use it to help you in other ways. At the end of your turn you add one card to your hand from the face up displayed cards, however, when the chosen card is replaced from the draw-pile though mixed in with the errand cards are event cards which can be nice or nasty.

– Image by boardGOATS

Blue got lucky, and started off in Grumbly Town which happened to have only one sheep. Since she also had a card for Grumbly Town, this meant she could pick up the one sheep and then play the card to help Ivor, netting a total of six sheep before Ivory had even had a chance to take a turn. That was where her luck finished though, and Green soon caught up quickly followed by Ivory. The cards fell well for Green as he picked up several cards for Tewin as he traveled to the south-east corner of the board picking up lots of sheep as he went. Ivory had a little poke at him, taking a couple of his sheep when he had the chance, then , out of fairness, he then had a go at Blue, taking both the last sheep and the lost sheep token from her current location. Next turn, Green did the same to Blue and just to compound things, “the game” joined in, giving a total of nine sheep she’d missed out on.

– Image by boardGOATS

Feeling rather “got at”, and in desperate need of time she tried to stop Green from finishing the game by doing the only thing her cards allowed her to do – put sheep in Tewin to slow Green down. It was all too little too late, and twenty-five sheep is not an awful lot, so it wasn’t long before Green passed the threshold and triggered the last round. Still with no useful cards and in a position that was not going to trouble the scorers, Blue was forced to do nothing, leaving Ivory to do what he could to catch up. With some effort he was able to cross the line, but was still some way short of Green who still had his final turn to come. In the final accounting, Green finished on thirty-five, nine sheep ahead of Ivory, and more than twenty clear of Blue, in what had been a very unforgiving game.

– Image by boardGOATS

Meanwhile, Red, Black, Purple and Pine were looking for something to play. With Burgundy away worrying about his MOT, Pine fancied his chances at Splendor. We’ve played this little chip-collecting and card development “engine building” game quite a bit, but we all still seem to quite like it when we are looking for a light filler game. Since Black, Purple and Red had also suffered at Burgundy’s hands recently, they were very happy to join Pine in the certain knowledge that, for once, Burgundy wouldn’t win. The idea of the game is that players collect chips to buy gem cards which can, in turn, be used in lieu of chips. More expensive cards are also worth points and the game end is triggered when one player reaches fifteen points (and the round is completed to give everyone the same number of turns). Points are also awarded for “nobles” which go to the first player to get a specific combination of gem cards and the player with the most points at the end is the winner.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor henk.rolleman

Everyone was up for it, and it started out with players taking it in turns to pick up cards, keeping everyone guessing as to who had the edge. Before long, Black, Pine and Red edged ahead, then suddenly, Black declared he had fifteen points and everyone else panicked. It wasn’t long before someone smelled a rat and there were demands for a re-count. With the discovery that Black had miscounted and only had fourteen points, there were the inevitable tongue-in-cheek accusations of cheating and a second “final round” began. Although this gave everyone a second chance, it wasn’t quite enough, and Black won with eighteen (despite “cheating”). Pine finished in second, three points behind, so he’ll have to wait a little longer to win Splendor. One thing everyone was pleased about, however, was that at least Burgundy hadn’t won, and that was almost as satisfying as beating him, though not quite, obviously.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor henk.rolleman

With Ivory and Green heading off early, that left five players and a debate as to what to play next. Somewhere in the discussion “Beans” got a mention, and from then on, despite conversation moving onto Christmas music and everyone’s favourite version of “The Bean Rhyme” (“Beans, beans, good for your heart…” – who knew there were so many different versions?), the final game was inevitably Bohnanza. This game is very simple: in front of each player are two “Bean Fields” and on their turn, players must plant the first card in their hand and may plant the second. Once the active player has planted the card(s) from their hand, then they turn over the top two cards from the draw deck: these must be planted by the end of the turn, though not necessarily in one of the active player’s fields if they can be traded. Once all these cards have been planted, the active player can then offer to trade any unwanted cards in their hand before their turn ends with them replenishing their hand from the draw deck.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor spearjr

The catch is that players are not allowed to change the order of the cards in their hand which must be “planted” in the order they arrive. However, it is possible to remove unwanted cards by trading them away (either during their turn or with the active player). This simple mechanic coupled with the different availabilities and values of cards when they are harvested, are the critical parts of the game. Thus one of the key points is the ability to value a bean and not overpay for it, or equally important, not give it away for less than it is worth. The problem is that “value” depends on perspective, and this caused an otherwise friendly little game with a bit of bite to become a little bit nasty.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor spearjr

Blue had picked up and planted the first two Cocoa beans, so when Purple drew a third, Blue asked whether she would trade. Blue didn’t have much to offer, but offered what she could and pointed out that there were only four Cocoa beans in the game and since we were less than a quarter of the way through the deck on the first pass, Purple could be waiting a long time. Purple had other plans though and commented that it was a very valuable card and determinedly planted it. On her next turn, Blue dug up her pair of Cocoa beans and put both in her money stack. So it was more than a bit irritating for her when she promptly drew the fourth Cocoa bean card. Blue was feeling a bit obstreperous after the rough treatment in Ivor and Purple was unable to offer a good trade. So, much to Purple’s disgust and despite the difficulties it caused both of them, Blue planted the offending bean before immediately digging it up.

– Image by boardGOATS

This had a couple of consequences. Firstly, Blue’s plans were now in tatters, and secondlym Purple had to choose whether to get rid of the Cocoa bean (with singles being hard to get rid of) or whether to wait for the second pass through the deck. Purple doggedly stuck with it, so it was particularly unfortunate when Blue drew the Cocoa bean card almost as soon as the deck was turned. With little chance to get rid of it and still in a very kamikaze mood, Blue planted it a second time before digging it back up again. Purple was not impressed. Fortunately, on the third pass, the Cocoa bean finally landed in the hands of Red. She wasn’t in a silly mood like Blue, so Purple finally got her second Cocoa bean and was able to harvest them for two coins. It was only just in time though and she had played nearly the entire game with only one field, and still finished third – quite an achievement. Red finished in first place, just one coin ahead of Blue who had spent most of the game trying to dig herself out of her self-inflicted mess.

Learning outcome: Value is dependent on circumstances and very much in the eye of the beholder.

31st May 2016

For the first time since he and Cerise’s new arrival, Grey turned up. Everyone was really pleased to see him, and as he fancied a “nasty” game, he joined the group playing the “Feature Game” which was Vanuatu. On the face of it, this is a fairly straightforward role-selection and worker placement game, but with more than the usual amount of interaction. The aim of the game is to obtain prestige in the archipelago of Vanuatu, by moving tourists and goods, fishing, and drawing sand pictures. The game structure is simple enough: players start by choosing a character, then they choose actions they would like to carry out, before the actions are resolved. There are one or two nasty elements that became more apparent as the game progressed.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor henk.rolleman

The way the actions are chosen and then resolved is particularly unusual. Starting with the Start Player, players take it in turns to place one or more of their action selection tokens. Everyone starts with five tokens and can place tokens on any single action space. Players cannot pass, but if they don’t place all their tokens on their first pass they get another turn to place one or more tokens, and play continues in this fashion until everyone has placed all five tokens. The actions are then resolved with players choosing which actions to take. In order to carry out an action, however, the player must have the most tokens on the action space (with ties resolved using turn order as a tie-breaker). In the event that the player doesn’t have an eligible action to take, they must remove their tokens from a space without taking the action. This makes it particularly nasty as, where a player has multiple options available to them, they can use this to delay other players from taking actions and sometimes cause them to miss actions altogether. In extreme cases players can end up doing nothing for a whole turn.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor henk.rolleman

In the first round, Blue showed how to score points, garnering a massive fifteen points by using the Collector to enable her to pick up extra beef which she was then able to ship immediately completing a vessel that Burgundy had started. Unfortunately, this left her with no money which meant her game then stalled such that four rounds later she had failed to even double the score she’d had at the end of the first round. Burgundy had watched some video reviews and had a good idea of how the game played, as such, he was the only one who really appreciated what an unusually large haul Blue had managed to take in that first round. Despite the massive deficit, he began to steadily ship visitors and buy huts, something everything else made the mistake of letting him get on with. Black on the other hand, was discovering first hand just how nasty the game can be and really struggled to string actions together and turn them into points. Meanwhile, Blue and Grey engaged in an extended scrap over some fish. Blue came off worst since Grey had a spell as the start player, though he didn’t exactly come off unscathed either.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor henk.rolleman

In the closing rounds Black finally managed to build himself a hut; Blue finally managed to get her fish, sell them and then took the start player. This enabled her to disrupt Burgundy’s plans by first nicking the character he wanted (Diver) and then pinching the high value treasure from under his nose. It was all way too little and much too late. Although Black had found himself pushed out in the first half of the game and Blue struggled to make good on her early promise (crippled by the exhausting fish wars and a lack of money), the game was quite tight between first and second. In the event, the deciding factor in the game was an almost missed moment when Grey bought resources and shipped allowing Burgundy to follow suit and also pick up the bonus for completing the vessel. With a small difference between first and second (by our scoring) that could easily have given Burgundy the game. In the final scoring, Grey liquidated his huge pile of treasure, though it didn’t yield quite as much as expected leaving Burgundy the winner, six points ahead of Grey.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor henk.rolleman

Delivering tourists to islands is fundamentally very important in this game, which is something we didn’t really appreciate until we got to the final rounds. The rules state that each player scores “two prosperity points for each of their stalls, for every tourist pawn present on their island”. The example in the text clarifies that a player with two stalls on an island where there are four tourist pawns scores eight points per stall, or sixteen points in total. We hadn’t appreciated the extra multiplier, so we evaluated the scores twice using the rules and our original understanding. In the event, it had no effect on the placings, just increasing Burgundy’s majority. It did give us a better understanding of how tough the game is though. The harshness also leads to a lot of “analysis paralysis”, since each move is so very critical. That said, we all enjoyed the game and, by the end could really see how clever it is. An unusually nasty game, this is definitely one to try again soon and is well deserving of its new release.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor henk.rolleman

Meanwhile, the other table were playing Ivor the Engine. This is a great little game that Purple had been itching to play for some time and, since Pine likes sheep, Green was happy to join in. The idea is that players are travelling round Wales collecting sheep and the person with the most sheep at the end of the game is the winner. A single sheep can be collected whenever you start your turn on a town or village with sheep in it, however, more sheep can be collected if you are in a town or village with NO sheep and perform a task to “help Ivor”. Helping Ivor comes at a price, however, as in order to do this you have to play one of the dual-purpose cards from your hand, which means you cannot use it to help you in other ways. At the end of your turn you add one card to your hand from the face up displayed cards, however, when the chosen card is replaced from the draw-pile, the game has a sting in the tail: mixed in with the errand cards are event cards, and these can be nice, or nasty…

– Image by boardGOATS

The game features the iconic art-work from the Ivor cartoons as drawn by Peter Firmin and little wooden sheep. We have variously called the “square five sheep” pieces “flat pack” sheep or “squashed” sheep, however, Pine’s commented that if you get five sheep, you get enough to make a rug! With only three playing we began the game quite spread out. Green and Purple stayed near their starting location to collect the last sheep and thus pick up the lost sheep bonus (an extra two sheep), but Pine got caught out by a double space. He had thought it was only a single space with one sheep and was expecting a bonus which disrupted his plans. Aside from that, it was a fairly quick start and we had all gathered in a number of sheep. Pine was the first to use a card action on somebody else and with both Green and Purple having a similar number of sheep, he let chance decide who was to lose two of their flock. Unfortunate for Purple fate decided it was she who must lose. In the very next round, Green was able to claim his second Grumbly Town card for four more sheep, so perhaps Pine/chance chose the wrong player to kibosh.

– Image by boardGOATS

To compound this mistake, the first event card to turn up resulted one sheep being lost from every region. This left Pine and Purple in cleared regions (good for claiming the cards, but not good for claiming the two-sheep bonus). For Green, however, one sheep remained. This helped him to get the 2-sheep-bonus and the location card. From this point on it was another “Get Green” game. Unfortunately for Purple and Pine, they had little opportunity to do this and the events (which came all together) were fairly benign. Green had one more “nasty” action card to use, which he played on his nearest competitor (well it would be unfair to play it on the losing player), so Purple lost another two sheep. In the end Green claimed his twenty-fifth sheep with a five sheep town card. His event card bonuses brought his total up to thirty-three with Purple close behind with several end of game bonuses. Overall it was a bit of a baaa-rmy game…

– Image by boardGOATS

With the fishing wars still underway in the South Pacific, Purple, Green and Pine moved onto Alhambra, another of of Purple’s favourites and also new to Pine. This is a tile laying game where players are building their city. Basically, on their turn, the active player buy coloured tiles with different coloured money cards and add them to their Alhambra. If they can pay with exactly the correct amount, they can buy another tile, but if they over-pay, they get no change and their turn ends. While this all sounds simple enough, there is the little problem that most of the tiles have walls along one, two or three edges, and when placed, these must match up without partitioning the Alhambra. These walls are critical as poor play in the early stages can mean it is possible to get backed into a corner later in the game. We’ve played Alhambra a few times as well as its predecessor, Stimmt So!, so we decided to play with a couple of expansion modules: The City Gates, which can be placed where there are two adjacent parallel walls enabling the player to build behind the wall, and The Magical Buildings, which provide one tile extra of each type which can be placed in any orientation.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor EndersGame

Purple went for the Purple Towers. She was able to come so dominant in towers that Green was not able to attain any, and Pine only got 3. It seemed that whenever a tower tile came out the bag, it was just before Purple’s turn, and she was not averse to over-paying for them, though often she did not need to. It happened so regularly it was funny and she before long she had to buy the tile just to maintain the magic, even if it was detrimental to her actual game plan! Green went for the Green Garden tiles. He also quickly became dominant in them and was going to stop when he had the unbeatable majority, but when the Garden tile without a wall came out it was such a good fit for his Alhambra that he just had to go for it. Green also took the first two White Palaces, but was unable to get his hands on the others. Pine and Purple snapped them up to equal his two and Purple surpassed Green into the lead, which she then maintained, despite a last minute battle for the last couple of tiles.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor EndersGame

Red and Brown tiles were in very limited supply at the start of the game. Pine managed to collect a single one of each, and that was all he needed to maintain supremacy in these colours for quite some time. In the second half of the game everyone managed to get one red tile so the real battle for red did not happen till the final few turns. The final market board had three red tiles on it, so Green and Pine shared the category. The brown tiles were also loaded towards the end of the game, and Green took the lead briefly before Pine took it back again.
Blue tiles were fought over by Pine and Green. Both had two by the first scoring round and had to share one point (meaning they scored nothing); this was a tight battle, but Pine just clinched ahead at the end. Purple managed to place her Alhambra with some very long walls. She had a 17 point wall by the second scoring, but then had to do several re-designs as she found herself blocked with not enough gates to help her out. In the final scoring, Green romped home with nearly a hundred and fifty points, leaving Pine and Purple to fight it out for second place. For a while, it looked like Pine might take it, but Purple’s Towers and long wall clinched it in the end, in what had been a much tighter game than the scores suggested.

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor EndersGame

With the knife-fight in a phone-box that was Vanuatu finally over and not enough time to play anything else really, we degenerated into chit chat. Blue commented that she really wanted to like Alhambra , but found that she preferred the game play of the simpler Stimmt So! and Black concurred though that was far from the majority opinion and the expansions certainly added a bit too. Green had taken two of the gatehouses and used only one as he had been very carefully building his Alhambra not to box himself in. Pine and Purple took and used only one each though Purple could certainly have used an second as she had several re-designs. She didn’t want to “waste” anymore actions “just” taking a gate though. Everyone used and loved the Magical buildings though, Pine got the most (three of them), while Purple used two and Green was only able to get his hands on one. In this game though, we found concentrating on only the highest scoring items is not always a guaranteed route to victory, but should stop you coming last! We finished with a quick discussion of our plans for the weekend, which included a visit to the NEC in Birmingham for several of us who were going to the UK Games Expo. Should be a good weekend!

– Image used with permission of BGG contributor EndersGame

Learning Outcome: Nice or nasty, tight games are the most fun!

16th December 2014

This week we stuck to “old favourites” and started off with the quick fun and very silly game that is Walk the Plank!. We’ve played this a few times before, and we always play to the “last pirate standing”. Since Red had chosen the game and White had not played it before, Blue started off by shortening the plank and pushing Red off the end. This set the tone for the game with Red taking her revenge on Blue and then White joining in the fray. A few rounds in and with one Blue and a couple of Red pirates down, it was Blue’s turn to start. All three of White’s pirates were perched precariously on the end of the plank with Red’s one remaining pirate, so the game ended suddenly with a very loud splash when Blue inevitably shortened the plank…

With the arrival of Purple and Black (and their pizza), we decided to play another of Red’s favourite games, Bohnanza. It’s amazing how a game that so many people feel is such good fun, sounds so totally uninteresting when it’s explained. True, as White pointed out, this applies to quite a few games, but Bohnanza is definitely the “poster child”. After a quick rundown of the rules, we began. Purple was very generous, offering beans for free at regular intervals, though of course she had an ulterior motive. However, otherwise, as Black commented, “It’s a tough crowd tonight,” as deals were pushed and even turned down. It was fitting therefore, that such a tight game should end with a draw, with Red and Blue sharing the honours.

Next, we decided to play something a little deeper and, after some discussion, we opted for one of this years most popular games: Ivor the Engine. Although we’ve played “Ivor” a lot at games night, Red and White were both new to it. It’s a cute little game, though it has a sharp edge if you want to play it that way. With a full compliment of players, it was always going to be a fairly tight game, and although Blue started well with a couple of jobs at Mrs Porty’s House, everyone else struggled as Purple got in their way. Blue was promptly penalised for her good start though, when the first event card came out and caused the leader to lose sheep. Since everyone else had now cleared sheep from the locations that corresponded to their cards, Blue was then suddenly left behind. As everyone galloped on, Red, managed to pick up eleven sheep with one visit to Tewyn! Black was closing in on the finishing line, when Blue managed to complete a couple of jobs at Dinwiddy’s Goldmine and use the gold to buy a couple of event cards. That tipped the balance in her favour and she finished just ahead of Black.

We finished the evening with a few rounds of No Thanks!. This is another game we used to play quite a bit, but hadn’t played for six months. It is such a simple, push your luck game that experience isn’t necessary, and it really brought out White’s vindictive streak. After three games, honours finished about even and it was home time.

Learning Outcome: Old favourites are still favourites, and for a good reason.